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nicad13 · 2 years ago

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Crossroads: Chapter 6

The Shelter

Summary: Din, Rayne, and the Child take some time out to rest up and heal at a remote campsite in the woods next to a lake. What could go wrong?

Not much, actually. It works out pretty well.

Din works out a few sensory issues. The Child gets a name! Rayne is thrilled to be back at her favorite place in the galaxy.

Notes: Canon-compliant through Season 1, alt version of Season 2. Posting some old fic before the sequel, which will hopefully be complete by the end of Season 3. Start now so you're ready! AO3 link in the Source at the bottom.

Illustration by @catstanbulite. I still can't get over how beautiful these are.

Tags/Warnings: PTSD, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm, Angst, Sexytimes, Agoraphobia, Force-healing, Grief/Mourning, Baby Yoda gets a name!

Rating: Mature

---

Can you see the stars that are assembled? When you held love tight remember how it trembled? So soft to the touch Don’t hurry so much It will come as sure as we are bleeding Let’s groove before the vultures start feeding

Willy Porter, Breathe

---

He paused at his door, listening as Alaria and her mother spoke outside.

“Is he good to you?”

“He is, mother.”

“It’s just that some of the foundlings are…”

Abusive. He knew it just as well as everyone else. The word you won’t say is ‘abusive.’ Foundlings were often so trauma-ridden that they were unable to see anyone as anything other than an enemy. He didn’t think he was that far gone, had sat through years of counseling, had learned to control his anger, had learned when and how it was ok to express it and when and how it was not. Had he slipped up without realizing it? A sudden knot formed in his stomach.

“He’s not. He’s very kind to me.”

The knot let go.

“That’s good. You understand why I worry.”

“I do.”

“His distance concerns me. He often won’t respond when spoken to…”

He could hear Alaira take a deep breath. “He means no disrespect. Sometimes he just doesn’t have the words, or sometimes he has too many and doesn’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“It’s ok for him to say he doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t like to admit that. He’s smart. He’s used to having the answers in class. Conversations are different for him.”

It made his heart ache to hear her defend him.

“I know it’s hard. Remember, you’ll be separated next year.”

“I know.”

He stared into the visor of the helmet he held in his hands. He knew he was damaged goods. The Mandalorians had done what they could for him, but in the end, none of the clans wanted a child who could only speak half the time and lost most of the fights he got into, so they’d had to place him in the Fighting Corps. He wasn’t built for heavy infantry. He was better at sneaking around. Long shots with a rifle. His hand-to-hand fighting still wasn’t great. He couldn’t quite fit in anywhere. Regardless, Alaria’s parents had always been warm to him, and he admitted that he didn’t really know how to respond to that. Part of him wondered if they only tolerated him because he would be separated from their daughter soon anyway, both of them sent away from their childhood covert to make their own ways in the galaxy. Because it would be easier for her to leave him knowing that everyone who came after would be a little saner, would be able to hold up a conversation, would be able to say the word “family” without locking up.

There was a knock on his door, and he slipped the helmet on before he opened it. Alaria stepped in, her mother already departed.

He didn’t deserve her.

But that was alright. He would lose her soon, anyway.

This was the Way.

---

Din opened his eyes.

He could just make out the back of Rayne’s head before him in the dim light.

Don’t fuck this up, Djarin.

Alaria’s voice in his head.

That she had invaded his thoughts once already this week was bad enough. Twice was downright unsettling. The message was clear enough, though. Muzzle the anger. Give Rayne the benefit of the doubt. Remember that she was not the enemy.

At the very least, don’t give her a reason to Force-choke him to death.

Another knock sounded from the foot of the bunk, and he craned his head down to see his son clamber up and into the cramped space.

Rayne groaned and turned over onto her back, not opening her eyes until the kid flopped onto her stomach and burbled, driving the air from her lungs. “Ouh. Good morning to you, too.” She turned her head to the visor. “You awake in there?” Her voice was quiet.

“Yes.”

“Sleep ok?”

“Yes. You?”

“Yeah.” She hooked one of her fingers around one of his. “Today will be a better day.”

I sure hope so. Fearing he would jinx it if he said the words, he instead broke her hold on his hand to bring his finger to rest with a light touch at her lips. She closed her eyes and returned the kiss.

---

The Razor Crest dropped out of hyperspace at Methuselah.

“Jawas,” Din groaned. He was in the starboard jump-seat, his son strapped to his chest in the birikad, ready for what was promised to be a harrowing ride.

“Yeah, I figured they’d be here,” Rayne checked the instruments. “The comp was a few months ago so they’re still picking through the wreckage.”

A hail came over the com in the Jawa Trade language. Both Din and Rayne understood it well enough. “Ah! A latecomer to the festivities. You plan on getting that tub through the belt? We gleefully await your foolish attempt and will enjoy the salvage of your failure.”

“Dammit. They saw us,” Din said.

Rayne responded to the hail in Jawa Trade. “Anyone make it through lately?”

Din tilted his head at her pronunciation. It was a lot better than his, though he figured negotiating with Jawas was a necessary skill for a mechanic.

A string of expletives came over the com.

“Did they just tell us to fuck off?”

Rayne smiled. “They did. And they’ll tell anyone who happens to come looking for us the same. We’re fine.” She keyed the com back on. “Yeah, yeah. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in the lack of wreckage I’ll leave behind. Prepare to be amazed.”

“You speak Jawa like a Tusken raider,” came the response.

Rayne cleared her throat, opened her mouth, and transmitted a decidedly Tusken-like bark/honk/roar/screech that sounded vaguely like “Fuck you,” as far as Din could tell. He made a slow, deliberate show of covering the kid’s ears with his hands.

Uproarious laughter came back over the com, and Rayne put the ship in orbit. “I love those little bastards.”

Sometimes Din wondered if Kuiil had come back from the dead to posses the enemy sorcerer just to annoy him.

Rayne called up a scan of the asteroid belt, nodded at what she saw, then swiveled the seat around to face Din and the baby. “We’ll need to orbit for a bit and map the field so I can study it. Might be an hour or so. You guys don’t have to stay up here if you don’t want to.”

“We’ll stay put unless he gets restless.”

She nodded and turned back to her work. Din sat back as much as he could in the jump-seat and read up on the unofficial “rules” of Methuselah as written by the few pilots who had ever made it to the surface. Most of it boiled down to “leave no trace” and “leave each other alone.” Harvest no more plants or animals than was necessary for personal use, don’t come within twenty miles of another camp without hailing first, don’t stay there for longer than two months a year, don’t build any permanent structures, and so on. The place was apparently a natural paradise, and everyone with the ability to get there wanted to keep it that way.

He was eager to see it.

Rayne worked with purpose, taking notes, winding recordings back to re-watch them, peeking out of the windscreen every now and then to confirm what the instruments were telling her, a soft mutter escaping her every now and then.

The baby dozed, Mythosaur pendant half in his mouth.

After almost an hour, she leaned back, stood up, stretched, and turned around. “One last trip to the vac tube for me. I recommend it for you guys, too. Then we’ll buckle in and head down.”

Five minutes later, they were ready, both Rayne and Din strapped to their seats, the baby snug in the birikad tight against Din’s chest, Rayne’s goggles pulled down over her eyes. She commed the Jawas one last time. “See you in a few weeks, guys.”

“We stand ready to salvage your pre-Imperial engines the moment you shred them off your ship.”

“They scanned my ship,” Din growled.

Rayne smiled, spun the Razor Crest so it faced toward the planet, and fired up the engines.

Their movement was slow at first, picking their way through the outer edges of the field, Din and the baby quiet as per Rayne’s instructions so she could concentrate on everything around her. The plan was to predict where things would open up enough for the Crest to get through without much trouble, and thus far, the otherwise random movement of the asteroids did seem to open up a path before them as Rayne guided the ship through.

Her posture was alert, shoulders squared but arms and hands relaxed at the controls, feet steady as she eased the yaw of the ship to and fro to skirt the bigger rocks, head titled to the right or the left as she reached out and listened to the approach of asteroids all around. Just when Din was beginning to think this was going to be a tame ride after all, she stiffened in the seat. “Oop. Heh. Here we go.”

She pushed the ship into a steep, rolling dive, and Din watched as enormous, cratered masses zipped by, centimeters from the windscreen. His son giggled, ears perked up. They angled to port, and the engines roared once more, responding to her touch at the slightest provocation. Upside-down and right-side-up became meaningless as Rayne threaded the Crest through needle after needle, and the only thing that kept Din from screaming was what little he could see of the smile on her face.

She was born for this.

Once again, he realized he’d forgotten to switch his vambrace’s connection to her wristband off as it buzzed her pulse against his wrist. Fast but steady, and he watched her right shoulder as it rose and fell with her breath.

“Whoops,” she noticed an incoming asteroid at the last moment, banking hard and pushing it away at the same time, grunting with the effort. She remained calm as she swung them through a path she had not anticipated, and they came upon an enormous chunk of rock that seemed to have its own gravity, judging by the way she pulled back on the stick. “C’mon baby… c’mon baby…” she muttered as the g-forces hit them and all of their stomachs settled somewhere in their ankles. Din noticed the darkness creep in from the periphery of his vision and tightened his legs in response, determined to keep what little blood he had left in his head, regulating his breathing. They cleared the rock and Rayne pushed forward, lifting the g’s.

Back down into another dive toward the surface, and the rocks here were smaller. Din heard what sounded like sand getting thrown against the windscreen as Rayne rolled them through another patch, forcing out a breath as she threw most of the rocks out of the way. One still managed to catch the edge of the cowling of the port engine, sending a clang through the ship and rolling it to port just a bit. Din barked out a “Hey!�� before he could stifle it.

“I’ll fix it!” Rayne barked back.

And just like that, they were through.

Jawa cheers came over the com, the entertainment of Rayne’s piloting apparently making up for the lack of salvage.

“Hah hah, yeah!” She pumped her fists in the air, unlocked the swivel on the pilot seat and turned it, and Din met her in a high-five that nearly took his hand off of his wrist. She turned back to face forward again. “Yes!”

Din took a deep breath as the baby squealed with delight. “Nice work,” he said.

“You’re goddamn right that was nice work!” She shook her head as she let the adrenaline subside, taking her feet off the pedals as her legs and hands shook. “Whew…” With an uncharacteristically unsteady hand, she brought up a scan of the planet’s surface. “Let’s see who’s here…” The monitor brought up five points of light.

“Only five other parties? On the whole planet?” Din’s tone was incredulous.

“Welcome to the club, guys.” She tapped at the display. “Yes… Oh, yes…”

Din titled his head at her.

“My usual spot is open. And it’s mid-morning over there. We’ll have most of the day to set up.” A few minutes later, they were still at a relatively high altitude when they approached the coordinates. “I’m gonna do a spiral landing, if that’s alright.”

“Are you expecting anti-aircraft fire?”

She smiled. “No. Just want to expose as little wildlife to the approach vector as possible. And I don’t get to do it very often.”

“You got us this far…”

Just as they reached the coordinates, Rayne banked hard to port and put the Razor Crest almost entirely on its side as they corkscrewed down, shedding speed and altitude. Din looked to his left and watched the landscape spin around, catching sight of a long, thin lake with a clearing at one end, surrounded by forest. They leveled out as they approached the ground, and Rayne settled the Razor Crest at the edge of the clearing at the east end of the lake. Clearly forcing herself to not rush through the shut-down sequence, she counted herself through all of the steps as Din unbuckled himself from the jump-seat and loosened the birikad, the kid squirming as he sensed Rayne’s excitement. She still managed to beat them to the ladder, sliding down the rails, and Din set the child down on the deck as she bounced on the balls of her feet, waiting for the ramp to open enough for her run out and jump off the end of it before it was all the way down.

Din reached the top of the ramp, watching as Rayne jogged to the center of the grassy clearing, did a slow spin with her face turned up to the sun, and collapsed to the ground on her back with a happy sigh. His son tonked down the ramp as fast as he could, followed Rayne’s path with his arms outstretched, and just as he launched himself at her, she caught him, lifting him up as he flailed his arms and kicked his legs, squealing with delight.

The sun was warm but not overly so, an hour or two before its noon zenith, at which point it would be partially obscured by the asteroid belt if the odd band of shadows in the sky were any indication. The sky was otherwise clear and blue. The clearing ended at the sandy lakeshore to the left, with a tall mix of old-growth deciduous and evergreen trees around the rest of it, the ship itself nestled on the shady side of the clearing.

Something in his chest tightened as he realized it reminded him of Sorgan.

He shook his head, doing his best to clear it of the memory, and descended the ramp.

When he reached Rayne and his son, she was still on her back, eyes closed, the kid sprawled out on her chest with a smile on his face. “Welcome home?” was all he could think to say.

“Yeah,” she said. “Listen.”

He closed his eyes and did as she instructed.

At first, all he noticed was the ticking of the Razor Crest as it cooled, cycling through its normal metallic cracking and snapping. As it subsided, he heard the breeze though the leaves of the trees. The lapping of small, breeze-driven waves against the shore. The up-and-down buzz of cicadas. Even through the filters of the helmet, he could smell the water, smell the pine, smell the unspoiled freshness of it all.

God, if the manda couldn’t top this, he wanted no part of it. He’d chuck his soul in the lake right now if it meant they could stay here forever.

Ok, maybe not, but still.

He breathed it all in, filled his lungs with it, held it in as long as he could, then let it out in a slow exhale. “Yeah,” he said. “This was a good idea.”

---

They set up camp in short order. Chairs were placed at the rock-rounded fire ring, solar panels were unfolded, and Rayne swam out with the water-supply hose to anchor it forty feet from the shoreline. Din held his squirming son in his arms until she got back so they could test how the baby did in the water. He stood at the edge of the water line, yearning to shed the beskar and join her. He had been a proficient swimmer as a child, remembered enjoying the water, couldn’t really remember a time when he didn’t know how to swim. His life before the armor.

Mandalorians, as a rule, were not known for their swimming abilities.

When she returned to the shore, she stayed about ten meters out as Din freed the baby from his robe and put him down. The kid’s face nearly split in half with a grin, babbling a stream of nonsense as he ran to the water. The coolness of it did not deter him at all, and once he got waist-deep, he dove in, turned himself on his back, and paddled with uncanny skill to Rayne. “I guess we don’t have to worry too much about him drowning,” she said as he splashed past her, buoyant, ears folded back against his head.

“Is there anything in here big enough to eat him?” Din asked.

“No. Nothing venomous, either. Wolves and coyotes at night are the bigger issue, but I’ve already set up a low-frequency beacon on the ship that should keep them out of the campsite.”

He stood and watched as Rayne continued to spot the baby, then as they developed a game where she would duck under the water, come up ten feet away, tread water and wait for him to swim to her, then duck under again just before he reached her. It took longer than Din expected for the baby to tire, and when he finally did, Rayne guided him to shore while he could still do it under his own power. Din handed her one towel and scooped the baby up in another, feeling the coolness of his skin through the gloves, wrapping him up against the goose bumps and shivers, the baby still laughing and burbling through it all.

“He seems more talkative since we got here,” Rayne noted.

“Yes,” Din had noticed it as well. “He likes this environment.”

“Who doesn’t?”

He tipped his head in acknowledgement.

She wrapped the towel around her waist as he continued to dry the baby. “I’m gonna go do a little hunting after lunch. I can take him with me if you want some alone time. Go for a swim. Get some sun. Do something about that vitamin D deficiency.” A common problem among Mandalorians, he’d included supplements on his list for Rayne before they had left, but getting it the old-fashioned way sounded nice.

“Thank you. I will.”

They headed back to the ship, and Din tucked the baby into his crate for a nap while Rayne changed out of the swimsuit and back into her regular clothes. When she was done, she took a seat at the top of the ramp, looking out over the clearing, indicating for him to join her, so he did. “Glad we’re here?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “How are you feeling?”

“Head’s clear. Helmet fits the way it should, now.”

“Have a chance to look at your pupils yet?”

“They’re symmetrical and appropriately dilated.”

“Good. Anything else?” Be honest with me.

“Still tired. Back is sore. Ribs on my left side don’t quite feel right. That’s all I’m aware of at the moment.”

She nodded, understanding how things that hurt a lot could mask things that only hurt a little. Understanding that the bacta infusion couldn’t have possibly healed all of the damage that the cannon battery had done to him. “Sounds like someone tried his best to help you out.”

Din took a long, slow breath. “I tried not to let him. Pretty sure he managed it when I was sleeping.”

“Yeah. May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“I can give you a good once-over, tell you what I can fix, stuff like re-setting old breaks, soft tissue damage, that kind of thing. You decide what I fix and what I leave alone. Some of it will hurt, but you’ll feel better in the end. I’ll need skin-to-skin contact for it to work, but the helmet can stay on. I’ve already fixed everything from your neck up.”

He was quiet for a moment, gazing out into the clearing. “Sounds like cheating.”

“More like making up for the medical care you should’ve gotten but didn’t. I’ll leave normal wear-and-tear alone.”

“How long will it take?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later, he was seated at the edge of the bunk in his shorts and helmet, Rayne seated in a chair in front of him, working her way up his left leg with her hands, her eyes closed. She paused at his knee. “Partial ACL tear, here. Low-grade, but it won’t heal on its own. You’ve been passing this limp off as a swagger.”

He tipped his head as if in confession. “Forgot about that. Yeah, go ahead.”

She shifted so his knee was bent at a slight angle and flattened her hands out around the bend of the joint. It had been not-quite-right for a year and a half, a little swollen, a little unstable, the result of a scuffle with a cantankerous bounty. Nothing a direct bacta injection wouldn’t fix, but it would’ve required a day of complete immobilization and he hadn’t wanted to take the time off for it. Now, he felt an odd warmth start from his skin, felt as it reached in, one tendril at a time, to the center of his knee, that hard-to-reach place where the ligaments crossed. The warmth turned to an itch as the fibers regenerated and re-knitted, and the ever-present twinge that had been with him for a year and a half melted away.

When it was done, Rayne opened her eyes and looked up. “Better?”

Din took a breath. “Yes.”

She continued up, pausing with her hand on the outside of his thigh. “You have some bone growth in the muscle tissue here.”

“Huh.”

“Happens with blunt-force trauma.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No.”

“Okay.” She moved on to his right leg, pausing again at the knee. “You’ve had the ACL on this one replaced entirely.” Only now had she noticed the three small scars made by the scope to fix it.

“Yes. I was fourteen.” A mishap with the Rising Phoenix training. No bacta for that one. He’d blown the ligament out so completely there was nothing left, so they’d had to fix it the old way – take a strip of the tendon over the kneecap and graft it back in to replace the ligament.

Her fingers slid around that tendon, then spread to the sides. “They did a good job. Screws are in good shape. You have some calcium deposits in the cartilage.”

“They told me that would happen. Doesn’t bother me.”

She smiled. “It bothers me when you go up and down the ladder – I can hear it crunch from the other side of the ship. I’ll leave it alone, though.” Her smile disappeared when she traced six thin lines of scar tissue running across his thigh, just above his knee. She opened her eyes and looked at them, not having noticed them before. They were old. Not quite as old as the ACL replacement, but almost. They looked… almost ritualistic. The cuts had been shallow – no underlying tissue damage. She looked up to the visor with a silent question.

The answer was just as silent.

Maybe another time, then.

She moved up to his right arm, finding nothing amiss until she got to his shoulder. “This was dislocated, but it popped back in again. I’m gonna guess this happened when you lassoed the TIE?”

“Yes.” He’d forgotten about that one, too, only noticing that it was sore once she’d brought his attention to it. “This one hurts.”

“Okay.” Again, the penetrating warmth, the itch, the relief.

She switched back over to his left side, once again trailing over the collarbone break she had noticed before. “This treating you ok?”

“Yes.”

She could find nothing else wrong with his left arm.

She had him lie on his back in the bunk, head facing out, so she could check his ribs. She was half-crouched over him, most of her weight on one knee next to his chest, her other foot planted against the bulkhead on the other side. She found the broken ribs on the left. There had been some dislocation that the child had not known to fix before mending the bones, and though he had fixed the surrounding tissue damage at the time, the malformed edges were causing some inflammation. “I have to re-break these. It’s going to hurt.”

He took a breath. “I’m ready.”

She flattened her hands against his side, eyes closed. “I am so sorry…”

Three crunching noises sounded from his chest followed by his strangled grunt, and his right hand came up to wrap around her thigh, fingers spread wide and gripping hard as the pain surged through him. She worked quickly, Forcing the bones back together the way they were meant to be, smoothing the splinters, repairing the damaged connective tissue next to them, repairing the damaged lung tissue under that, all while working against the long, hard breaths he was taking. She was done after a few minutes, and it took him another five to catch his breath and settle back down.

She tried to meet his gaze through the visor, but wasn’t sure if his eyes were open. “You ok in there?”

“… Yes.”

In truth, he was more than ok. The endorphin rush was starting to catch up with him. That pleasant numbness, both physically and mentally, nothing hurting, nothing mattering, that someone could bash him in the face right now with a pipe and he wouldn’t feel it, and even if he did, he wouldn’t care.

“Can you roll over so I can check your spine?”

“… Okay…”

He did as he was told. She started low in his back, where his spine joined his pelvis, pressing her thumbs along his vertebrae, until she found two that were fractured. These had pretty much stayed put, but the muscles around them were tight. “This one won’t hurt as much. You ready?”

“… Muh…”

She pressed down and forward, and a long, indecent moan escaped him as his entire body went limp. Were it not for the tidal wave of relief crashing off of him, she would have thought she’d paralyzed him. She reached back for the pillow currently at his feet and brought it out with her. “Want to roll back over?”

Another low moan as he pulled his arms in and pushed himself over onto his back once more, head rolling to the side with the weight of the helmet. “I… I can’t…” One hand pawed uselessly at the air.

He was well and truly stoned.

She lifted his head to get the pillow under him, then threw the blanket over him, making sure everything from his feet to his shoulders was covered. “All good?”

“… Uh huh…”

“I’ll head out with the kid in a few minutes and you can take the helmet off if you want, ok?”

“… Uh huh…”

She ghosted a thumb along the horizontal band of the visor, not quite touching it. “Don’t get into any trouble while we’re gone.”

“… Kay…”

---

He wasn’t sure how long it was before he opened his eyes again.

He’d pushed the helmet off when Rayne and the kid left, hearing the ramp seal shut behind them, and settled once more into oblivion.

He felt almost nothing. His body almost weightless atop the bunk. The blanket nothing but warmth above him. Aware of the fact that there was almost nothing to be aware of. Only the warm darkness around him. All of the worries and anxieties of his entire life, of the last year in particular, absent from his mind.

He floated in that stupor for what felt like a long time.

Eventually, he was aware of his own breathing; long, slow, relaxed breaths. Then, he was aware of the knowledge of where he was, in his bunk, in his ship, parked at the edge of a forest paradise that he hadn’t had much of a chance to explore yet. Next, the dryness of his mouth, still dehydrated from the blood loss. Finally, the noise from his empty stomach was enough to drive his eyelids open and slap the light panel.

He pulled himself out of the bunk and found a datapad, bottle of water, pair of sunglasses, and tube of sunscreen on the chair. The datapad opened to a note from Rayne.

Took the kid hunting. We’ll be back by dusk with dinner.

Use the suncreen if you plan on more than half an hour of exposure. The specs are too big for me – you’re welcome to them.

Have fun!

He downed half the water bottle as he padded over to the ladder, hauled himself up to the galley, and downed the rest of it as he made a sandwich. He re-filled the bottle, then stepped onto the flight deck to take a look outside. A couple of hours had passed, judging by the change in the shadows, so he hadn’t lost too much of the day to being high on his own supply. The proximity sensors showed that nothing was around, so it was safe to head out without the helmet. With practiced ease, he got himself back down the ladder one-handed with his sandwich in the other hand and the water bottle tucked under his arm.

That’s when it hit him.

That’s when he realized on a conscious level that he was no longer in any pain.

He stood staring at the eye-level ladder rung, and his left knee felt just as good as his right. He could breathe without the hitch in his ribs. His shoulder wasn’t sore. His back didn’t ache. His head was clear.

He hadn’t felt this good in fifteen years.

He turned and padded back over to the portside exit, lowered the ramp, and for the first time in… ever? For the first time in his life, he stood at the exit of his own ship wearing nothing but a pair of shorts.

Huh.

He stepped sideways and turned so his back was to the hull, facing back into the ship, just to the bow side of the exit. No living thing has seen my face since I swore the Creed. Never in his life since swearing the Creed had he had the opportunity to be outside in the woods and be completely assured that no one else was around.

Taking the helmet off in the desert, with miles of visibility and very little in the way of life was one thing. But in a forest? Where anything could be in or behind the trees?

Did the Creed include insects? Wild animals? Frogs?

Our safety is in our secrecy.

Bugs and critters were unlikely to go screaming to the Empire about his whereabouts. Even Rayne’s bots were powered down and crated.

He was fine. Everything was fine.

Taking some time to get used to the idea, he sat at the top of the ramp and ate his sandwich, casting his gaze out over the clearing, having the sudden realization that he might be agoraphobic without the beskar. To be outside without the armor. Without any clothes at all, if he wanted.

He realized he was breathing hard and forced himself to slow down, finish chewing his food, take a few swallows of water.

Normal people did this all the time. He knew he wasn’t a normal person. He was a Mandalorian. He was supposed to be stronger than a normal person.

He finished his sandwich. He finished his water. He could do this.

He got up, refilled the water bottle again, grabbed a towel, and just for the extra challenge, removed the shorts. With zero hesitation, he flipped the towel over his shoulder, hooked his finger around the bottle, and strode down the ramp.

And then he cleared the shadow line cast by the trees behind the ship, squinting against the sun.

Dammit.

He turned around, went back up the ramp, grabbed the sunglasses, and went back out.

Much better.

He walked to the beach, and, unable to resist, waded knee-deep into the water. It was cooler than he expected. From where he was standing, the lake looked long and narrow – about a mile wide at most. It must have gone deep to be this cold with the air temperature being this warm. He decided to get a bit more sun before going all-in.

He spread the towel out on the sand and was careful not to spend too long laying out. He remembered his one bout of sunburn as a child and did not wish to repeat it. He had to admit that it felt good, though. The warmth of it on his skin, working its way through his muscles and down to his bones, the light breeze making the occasional slip against his skin. He suspected that the feel of this much exposure would normally have driven him insane; only his lingering endorphin high kept him reeled in. He turned over a few times, glad for the sunglasses as he lay on his back, and then decided he was ready for the lake.

Oh, it was glorious.

He shivered through it until he was waist-deep and then dove in, swimming again for the first time more than three and a half decades. He slid into a crawl stroke, remembering how it felt to have the water flow over his head, around his shoulders, down his body, kicking through with his legs. It had always felt more natural for him to breathe on the left side, and he was a hundred meters out before it occurred to him to stop and check where he was.

Hoo boy, he was way more tired than he should’ve been, and he belatedly remembered that he’d almost been dead less than 48 hours ago. Forcing himself to calmness, he turned over on his back and did a slow backstroke to shore, taking his time, until he could reach the bottom with his feet.

He pushed back a little deeper just to tread water for a bit, to enjoy being in the water again, and surveyed the sight before him. His ship parked at the edge of the clearing, its silver hull incongruous against the lush forest around it, a simple campsite with nothing but chairs, a fire ring, and some solar panels to power the ship’s batteries for the extended time that the engines would be off. He spun around to look back at the lake, a strip of dark blue extending out to the west, high green hills rising on either side of it.

All theirs, for the next few weeks.

He didn’t entirely trust it. Two days ago, he was pulling an enormous amount of blood off the deck of his ship and hallucinating in the fresher. Today, he was sunbathing and skinny-dipping.

Amazing what a change of scenery could do.

How had he gotten so lucky?

---

Din had the fire going by the time the ship’s proximity sensors warbled an alert. Ten minutes later, Rayne whistled her approach before getting quite within sight, and Din flicked his wrist, the control in the vambrace signaling the “all-clear/helmet’s on” chirp from the ship. Rayne returned with the baby in the birikad, a quiver of arrows slung across her back, longbow in one hand, and three field-dressed rabbits in the other. She lay down the rabbits and longbow before pulling the baby from the sling. “Have a good day?”

“I did,” he answered with a contented sigh, leaning forward in his seat to pick up the baby as he waddled over, arms outstretched, babbling and buzzing away. “He really is more talkative today.”

“He’s making up for having to be quiet all afternoon.”

Din nodded to the rabbits. “Looks like it worked.”

Dinner was ready half an hour later, and Din took his portion back to the ship. When he returned, the sun was setting at the other end of the lake, throwing the asteroid belt into a silhouette against the blazing magnetic field of the atmosphere, the lake sparkling below it all.

Din took the baby back from Rayne and picked up with feeding him dinner so she could finish her own. “How did he do in the woods?”

“Loved it,” she said. “So I, uh… thought of a name for him. If… that’s ok.”

Din lowered his head, hesitating on the commitment of it, the fear that once you gave something a name, once you had something to call it by, it was real. And when it was real, you could lose it.

While the Armorer had made the bond between father and son official, the designation had come from outside him. Something not to be contested. While Rayne's suggestion was also outside of him, it was merely that. A suggestion. Something he and his son could agree on together, or not.

The kid deserved a name. Part of being a father was putting your own fears aside and doing what was best for your child. He took a deep breath and plunged forward. “What did you come up with?”

“Yadier. Yadi for short. Sounds like it fits with Yoda and Yaddle.”

Din remembered Yoda. “Who’s Yaddle?”

“She was the same species. Another member of the Jedi Council.”

“Yadier…” He turned the name over in his head, trying it out, rolling the R on the end just a little. He couldn’t say he was thrilled with such a strong Jedi connection, but when pronounced with just the right accent, it had a nice Mandalorian lilt to it. “That could work.” His son turned his head to look up at him and smile as Din said it, as if he had already decided. Din gave him a bounce on the knee. “How ‘bout it, kid? Yadier work for you?”

The baby squealed with delight and clapped his hands.

Yadier it was, then.

---

He puts Yadier to bed in his crate on the ship, and they watch as the asteroid belt drops meteors across the sky, a slow but steady stream of golden streaks fading as they fall to the horizon.

He asks if it’s like this every night.

She says yes.

She asks if they can sleep outside, tonight.

He says yes.

The stars glimmer in the magnetic field, and as the fire dies down, the fireflies emerge, flickering in time with the cicadas buzzing in the trees. He closes his eyes and he can still see the green flashes on the other side of his eyelids.

She’s so gentle with him. Something he is so unused to. She’s more sure of herself here, out in the open, the stars as their roof, and tonight he is the one who comes undone before her. She can see the color the sun has brought out on his shoulders, can smell the mineral hints of the lake on his skin, tastes it on the hollow of his throat, and leaves the longest, softest of bites as high up on his neck as she can manage.

This time, he is the one to whisper “Please” over and over.

He closes his eyes against the flickering green and her trembling against him, the feel of the Force once more gripping his spine, and he falls into the rush of endorphins and oblivion.

This time, she is the one to whisper “Thank you” over and over.

---

“Tell me about your husband.”

She was curled into him on her side, arm still thrown around him, heart rate not quite yet back to normal, his skin warm against hers, and she wondered about his timing of the question.

“You said a name that wasn’t mine. I assume it was his,” he said by way of explanation, voice soft over the modulator.

Oh. That was fair enough. “Hayes.”

“Yes.”

She nodded, gathering her thoughts. “He was flight engineer. We were stationed on an Alliance cruiser together. We worked on the X-wings. He’d diagnose the issues, we’d both fix them, I’d test-fly them.” She paused, letting the long-neglected memories come back. “Our ships had the lowest failure rate on the cruiser.”

Din ran his thumb along the Rebel Starbird tattoo on her shoulder.

“He was short – only a couple inches taller than me, mostly muscle. Dark skin, brown eyes. Tough. He hated being cooped up on a ship. Would rather be in the woods planet-side. He wanted to be a scout-trooper so he could run around outside all the time but it turned out he was really bad with a gun and really good at spacecraft design, so up top he went.”

She shifted her position, flattening her hand against his ribs, stalling on the next bit. Finding the words, she pressed on.

“We were in the back of the hangar when a TIE fighter smashed through the entrance and the field generator started to fail. Stuff was getting sucked out so we had to evacuate. The problem was we were in the middle of scrambling launches. We had about a hundred people in there. SOP was for the pilots and droids to get themselves launched and for everyone else to get through the revolving air-locks to the interior of the ship. Hayes spent a lot of time walking on the ceilings, so he was wearing mag-lock boots. He went out and dragged people back in. I hung on to a pole and hoped people wouldn’t notice that I was Force-dragging them back. He saved twenty-five lives before the floor started to de-magnetize. Last thing he did before it let go entirely was pull me off the pole and stuff me through the revolver. I was too tired by that point to pull him in with me. He saved my life, got sucked out into hard vacuum, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.”

Din’s hand tightened around her shoulder as he drew in a long breath. “An honorable death.”

“Yeah.”

Her tone wasn’t quite as flat as it had been when she’d told him about Eagle, her clone uncle, but close. He couldn’t tell if her shivering was from the cool air or the memory. He pulled the blanket up around her shoulders with his free hand.

“He knew you were Force-sensitive.”

“Yeah.”

“Was it difficult? Keeping that secret?”

Rayne smiled. “Not so much. It freaked him out at first, but the benefits outweighed the cost.”

“Did he know your name? Your real one?”

“Yes. He was the only one.”

“What happened… after?”

Her smile disappeared. She wondered at his curiosity, wondered if he would reciprocate if she probed him in such a way. She decided to test him on it in a bit, and went forward with her answer. “It was… unreal, at first. You wake up next to a person most days for ten years, get used to it, and all of a sudden they’re not there when you wake up, anymore. You start every day with an empty bed to remind you. Then you get to your station and you’re reminded again when someone else is there instead of him. Then all of a sudden, the war is over, you lose your home on the ship, part ways with all your friends. First year was the worst. By the end of it I was ready to put a blaster to my head. That’s the first time I did the comp here. When I was feeling… reckless. And then I actually made it through. Hung out at this campsite for a month and realized since his dying act was to save my life, I at least owed it to him to make that mean something, so I stuck it out. It did get better. A little at a time. Eventually you hit a ‘new normal.’ It never goes away entirely, but it stops sitting on your shoulder all the time. A while later, it stops surprising you – only comes out when you let it. Until five years later you’re in bed with a Mandalorian and apparently slip up with the wrong name.” She allowed the corner of her mouth to pull up a little. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be.” Again, he brought his finger to her lips, and she returned the kiss. “I’m honored to be a member of your connections.”

“Tell me about Omera.”

He had already sketched the last year of his life out for her earlier, had already told her about Sorgan, how his first contentious meeting with Cara later turned into a partnership, how they worked together with Omera to save her town. Now, he gave her the details of that particular chapter. Omera’s kindness to him. Her daughter’s affinity for his son. Her own life of transition from soldier to peaceful farmer, a journey from killer to life-giver, a path to redemption, had touched him deeply. He had allowed himself to hope that maybe the same was possible for him, had almost allowed her to lift the helmet from his head and end it all. And then, the crack of blaster fire, the sharp reminder that he and his boy would be a danger to whoever they crossed paths with. And so, their departure.

“Will you go back if we can get Yadier to safety?”

Din felt the tension in his chest return, torn between indecisions, remaining silent.

Rayne slid her hand along his ribs. “It’s ok if the answer is ‘yes.’”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“What more do you need to know to make that decision?”

“Even if we find out where Yadier belongs, I don’t know if I can leave him there. I don’t want the things that happened to you to happen to him. I don’t want the things that happened to me to happen to him. I want him to remember me. That could take years to sort out. By that time…”

“A lot could have changed for her.”

“Yes.” He searched the tone of her voice, knowing she must have caught his omission of her from his equation, wondering what she thought about that. Getting Yadier to safety and proper training was the number-one priority for both of them. Moving his thoughts past that was a difficult thing for him to do. He also understood that she might not want to be part of the equation. While this was an adventure she was wanting, she had a life to get back to, if she wanted it. She was ok with staring into the faceless bucket on his head for now, but at some point, if things went long enough, she was going to want it off. He was going to want it off. The darkness would buffer them for a while, a loophole of her not actually seeing his face, but eventually… the future beyond that was a dark void, and he simply wasn’t ready to do the math on that, yet.

As always, her read on his confusion hit the mark. “One step at a time, Din. We take things as they come.”

---

The fireflies flickered. On and off.

The cicadas buzzed. Up and down.

The peeper frogs peeped. Peep peep peep.

How do people stand this?

Din lay on his back, assaulted by it all. The desert was easier. Most everything was dead and silent. If anything was coming after you, you could hear it coming. On Sorgan, the space of the village gave some distance from the cacophony of the forest most nights, and he’d always been clad in the armor when he was in the forest itself.

Here and now, he lay at the very edge of the forest, wearing only his helmet, shirt, and shorts, his armor and other clothes stacked in a neat pile by his side. Rayne lay next to him, similarly clothed against the cool of the night, her long, slow breaths of sleep indicating her complete lack of problems with this scenario. On a conscious level, he knew the low-frequency beacon was keeping the predators away, knew the proximity alarm would warble about anything that still managed to get through, knew Rayne’s Force vigilance would wake her if anything was amiss. He just couldn’t bring himself to trust it. Any of it. Not entirely. If he could just get back into the armor, have his sidearm handy, he would be fine.

Rayne would be a lot less fine if she woke up next to all of that.

He was exhausted, but he would get no more sleep out here tonight.

He extricated himself as quietly as he could, gathered up his armor, clothes, and boots, and headed back to the ship. He found Yadier only half-asleep in his crate, squeaking and squirming with his eyes closed. Remembering how easily the child had slept under the stars on Sorgan, he carried him back out to Rayne and tucked him in with her, and the baby settled with ease. He ran a finger along the top of one green ear, then along the curl of one chestnut lock of hair, and paused to watch the two of them sleep as the word “clan” ghosted through his mind.

He retired back to the Razor Crest, locked himself in the safety of his bunk, pulled the helmet off, and fell asleep.

---

Notes: Yadier is a Spanish name, which seemed appropriate. Its Hebrew root means "friend."

#the mandalorian #din djarin #grogu #omera

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hannigramficrecs · 4 years ago

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Newly Added Fics 5/16

Hello everyone, sorry again for the slight hiatus! I’ve replied to all the messages in my inbox (at least the ones that were sent to me before this past friday), so if you asked me something before that, be sure to check out my replies!

As usual, I’ve emboldened the fics I really liked and italicized the ones that are incomplete.

Looks Like Love by luvkurai [words: 5,987] — (AU)

After his sister's wedding, Will kisses his childhood housekeeper (and first love).

Betrothed by slashyrogue [words: 3,932] — (AU)

In one month he would marry a total stranger.

Titan Arum by ProxyOne [words: 64,614] — (AU)

Will is a botanist, working in the greenhouse of the local Botanical Gardens. He is getting his life back on track after his divorce, but he can't help but notice someone who keeps coming back to his greenhouse to draw, day after day. A man who seems to have been paying very close attention to him...

Find Me In The Dark by Rising_Phoenix [words: 40,131] — (AU)

After a fateful accident, the marriage of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter has reached its end. Grief and the inability to stop them from falling apart has brought an irreconcilable distance between the formerly deeply devoted couple. While Hannibal is apathetic towards his husband, ignores him, and is withdrawn, Will has started an affair with fellow teacher Francis and drowns his desperation in more and more alcohol.

Light of All Lights by whiskeyandspite [words: 20,377] — (AU)

Dracula-like fic without any of the vampires

The Stage Just For You by CarnivalMirai [words: 6,494] — (AU + Age Gap)

Will has landed himself the role of Odette for world-famous choreographer Hannibal Lecter's rendition of The Swan Lake.

There Will Be Bells by Entropyrose [words: 36,639] — (A/B/O)

In Georgian England, male omegas are very rare diamonds. Baron and Baroness Graham have a plan to build their wealth and social status by offering their son Will's hand in marriage to a mysterious older Duke, an Alpha named Lord Hannibal Lecter. Will's personal feelings need not apply.

Alpha Mart by slashyrogue [words: 63,164] — (A/B/O)

Will needs an alpha. After years of fake knots, half-assed suppressants, and his own damn hand during heats he’s reached the end of his rope. He doesn’t do dating so he decides to waste his life savings and hype with the current trend. Alpha Mart.

Enchanted By Your Name by CarnivalMirai [words: 9,207] — (A/B/O + PWP)

“Now, my husband would prefer it if I got the job done quickly.” He says, slashing down the back of each gag as he passes each man, watching as the silk falls gracefully to the floor. “However, I want to have some fun. Considering you’ve troubled my husband so much… it’s only fair, right?” One of the men whimpered fearfully. Or: The name "Will Graham" is a name you'll only ever hear once.

I've Been Building Black Ships by cloudsarefluffy [words: 8,116] — (A/B/O + AU)

Alpha Hannibal moves to the States with his sister Mischa after being overtly done with the fancy life of a count, and his blind omega neighbor gives him an insight into love that he never quite expected.

A Rare Find by hit_the_books [words: 5,379] — (A/B/O + AU)

Life as an omega bookseller can be quite lonely. However, as the owner of Graham’s Books, Will Graham is reasonably content. That is until he meets—long-time customer and crush—Doctor Hannibal Lecter in person for the first time. Attraction blossoming between them both, Will agrees to a dinner date with the good doctor.

We All Have a Hunger by 1ntothew1ld [words: 12,260] — (A/B/O + Age Gap)

Hannibal will ensure a properly slow and painful death for an alpha who allowed a beautiful young omega to go to waste as this one has. Too skinny for his own good, a stuttering and humble mess. The likes of the omega in front of him belonged at Opera houses and in million-dollar mansions, not scrounging for his next meal. Meek and afraid in some disheveled row house. When he finally looked back up the alpha had to conceal the utter punch to the stomach that meager glance was, blue eyes full of innocence but also hunger.

The Doctor Is In by Kummerspeck7 — (A/B/O + PWP)

Will nearly scoffed. "You can't expect me to believe you'd want anything other than a delicate flower to adorn your side, keep your ostentatious home, bare you the exact number of children you want--No more, no less-- all while being available at your whims." "Not at all." Hannibal disagreed. "I would no more put a wilting flower in my home than in a bouquet given as a gift. Tell me, Will, is that how you are treated? Forbidden from work, cloistered inside and used at Mr Brown's discretion?" "My Alpha's discretion." Hannibal looked pointedly at the curve of Will's neck, free from a single scar. "Not yet he isn't."

Teenage Wildlife by writtenbyizzy [words: 10,163] — (Age Gap + Sugar Daddy)

While reluctantly prowling Grindr for a sugar daddy to pay for his dog Bean's vet bills Will comes across Hannibal, and gets far more than he bargained for.

Just As Poised As I Remember by CarnivalMirai [words: 5,721] — (Age Gap + School)

When Will was in high school he had an incredibly handsome psychology teacher-- tall and sharp with a thick European accent. And now, a decade later, said psychology teacher-turned psychiatrist... just swiped right on him.

We Can Chase the Dark Together by K_R_Closson [words: 16,615] — (Fantasy)

Will tips him and Hannibal off the cliff. Instead of hitting the water, he wakes up in his bed, several years in the past. His first, and only, priority is to find Hannibal again.

We Killed a Dragon Last Night by inameitlater [words: 88,150] — (Fantasy)

Will remembers falling. He wakes up months before Jack got him to work for him. Months before he met Hannibal for the first time. Free from his past he decides to change events and meet Hannibal again.

My Only Constant Is You by TheSilverQueen [words: 25,369] — (Fantasy)

Hannibal Lecter is an immortal who can never die. Will Graham is a time traveler who can never stay in one place. Perhaps that is why they are perfect for each other.

Motinos Kalba by Lyla_Joy [words: 6,040] — (Fluff)

Five times Hannibal Lecter spoke Lithuanian on accident and one time he meant too.

You Make Me Feel (Good) by sourweather [words: 7,190] — (Fluff)

Will Graham has sensory issues. The world gets too loud, he gets overstimulated easily, but most of all he hates being touched. He never expected someone to work so hard to make him comfortable, to be so patient with him.

Pick Me Up by sourweather [words: 6,053] — (Fluff)

Will doesn't go to bars much. He doesn't end up needing a ride home much. But when he does get drunk, he always wants to ask Hannibal to pick him up.

Hard to Get by JSinister32 [words: 5,561] — (Jealousy)

Will and Hannibal had been broken up for six months. When confessions are made during a work function, can they find it within themselves to forgive?

Polar Opposites by Lyla_Joy [words: 19,513] — (Kidnapping)

“Says the cannibalistic serial killer who knocked me out and is now holding me hostage,” sassed Will. The Ripper didn’t smile but his eyes crinkled in the corner. “Please call me Hannibal.”

Fate Is A Keen-Eyed Hound by LydiaFearing [words: 5,890] — (Mischa)

Hannibal may be a successful, charming psychiatrist but Mischa worries that her brother is lonely so she gifts him a puppy. Hannibal reluctantly falls for his little dog but wants to get involved with time-consuming FBI work and not just anyone can be allowed to look after his pet. Luckily, Alana can recommend a boarding kennel in Wolf Trap.

The Significant Other: The Will and Hannibal Edition by house_of_lantis [words: 18,431] — (Murder Husbands)

After their terrible and abrupt break up, Will and Hannibal attempt to maneuver through their social circles, side step ongoing gossip, and deal with the fact that Will knows the truth of Hannibal. Through impossible odds, Will and Hannibal do find their way to each other again.

Dancing with the Beast by proser [words: 86,347] — (Murder Husbands)

In order to catch a mediocre serial killer, Will must pose as Hannibal's date for a series of pretentious social events. Hannibal is dramatic and jealous as ever, and Will is having a great time without the encephalitis. Of course, it's a love story.

Arriving at the Crossroads by HigherMagic [words: 7,558] — (Mpreg)

"You haven't been my psychiatrist for a long time," Will echoes. "But you've been my friend. You've helped me. With…" He gestures vaguely to his head. "When my brain was on fire. On consults. When it's dark and I need a guiding light." "It pleases me very greatly to be a source of comfort and reassurance for you, Will," Hannibal says. "I have wanted to be that for you, for a long time."

The Hanged Man by justhavesex [words: 13,076] — (Mpreg)

Will Graham had never wanted children before, but he had never considered it to be a consequence of his omegan brain not finding anyone worthy, but the moment he had met Hannibal Lecter he had been filled with want. In which a dinner party one-night stand results in a pregnancy that changes Will's entire life.

I Don't Even Like Lana Del Rey by perpetuallycaffeinated [words: 4,328] — (PWP)

The tension and low thrum of arousal were making Will speak impulsively. He knew this, but he’d just finished his drink. There was nothing he could use to stop the question, blunt and presumptuous and rude. “So, what, you’re my daddy?”

A Bad Combination In The Dark by perpetuallycaffeinated [words: 1,957] — (PWP)

When a nerve wracked Will Graham accidentally cuts his hand on Dr. Lecter's letter opener, things quickly get out of control.

The Best Bait by sourweather [words: 3,327] — (PWP)

Will is a good fisherman, he knows which bait to use for his catch. Will seduces Hannibal at a party by being sexy.

Whimsy by justheretoreadhannibalfics [words: 3,001] — (School)

Doctor Hannibal Lecter is standing in as a teacher while Professor Graham is out of town on a case. The students start to kind of like him, and become very invested in his love life.

Callipygian by ProxyOne [words: 2,260] — (Season 1)

Hannibal has a lot of sketches of Will, which he normally keeps safely away. One day though, Will shows up unexpectedly and Hannibal is caught unawares, and unprepared.

L'appel Du Vide by sourweather [words: 5,413] — (Season 1)

Will is hiding things from his coworkers. From himself. But Doctor Lecter knows.

Friends Don't Frame Friends: A Lesson for a Clueless Cannibal by LadyFelixTristis [words: 5,041] — (Season 1)

Ear? What ear? Will Graham doesn’t try to thwart Hannibal Lecter’s plans for him. He just does. By accident. And then on purpose.

For All My Pride, You Were the Fall of Me by nobetterlove [words: 13,212] — (Season 2)

After being released from the BSHCI, Will grabs the dogs he can't live without and leaves without a trace

Letters to God by CarnivalMirai [words: 4,698] — (Season 3+)

Will writes letters to Hannibal every day after his incarceration. But they never make it.

Blankets, Coffee Cups, and Christmas Morning by sourweather [words: 6,352] — (Season 3+)

Hannibal wants to enjoy the domesticity. The love, the closeness, the being Known. But something about his life with Will makes him want to lash out.

All These Fictionary Tales by ProxyOne [words: 18,492] — (Season 3+)

After the fall, Hannibal is presumed dead. Will has been declared dead. But Will isn't willing to believe that Hannibal would just abandon him like that

Seduction by BloodunderMoonlight [words: 7,086] — (Season 3+)

“For fuck’s sake, Hannibal.” Will glared at him, brimming with wrath he had only seen behind Will’s gun. He had no doubt Will would draw out a knife from beneath the duvet or pillows, but clearly words were enough to make him gobsmacked—“Are you a fucking virgin or monk? If all these can’t get you to bed then I don’t know what can.” Hannibal stood gaping at Will.

Blood, Cedar and Dog Hair by sourweather [words: 3,351] — (Season 3+)

Something terrible happens while Hannibal is in prison. Something he never prepared for.

Hidden Potential by sourweather [words: 20,789] — (Soulmates)

The first time you make eye contact with your soul mate, you see a vision of their greatest accomplishment. They call it your Peak. Unfortunately for Will Graham, his soul mate's Peak is a vision of blood and horror. Fortunately for Hannibal Lecter, his soul mate's is too.

Karoliai by slashyrogue [words: 4,577] — (Sugar Daddy)

Will works at a jewelry store. He has worked there for three months and sold less than any other person there. His boss tells him to sell something by the end of the day or he may not have a job tomorrow. If there was one thing Will hated more than having to talk people into buying jewelry they didn’t need, it was trying to do it two days before Valentine’s Day.

#hannibal #hannigram #hannibal fanfiction #hannigram fanfiction #hannibal fic recs #hannigram fic recs #hannibal fanfic #hannigram fanfic #hannibal fic #hannigram fic #nbc hannibal #hannibal tv #will x hannibal #murder husbands #hannibal au #replies

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endless-whump · 4 years ago

Text

Simon/Oliver: Rescued

CW: torture aftermath, dissoci@tion, mild self harm mention (brought on by panic) suicidal behavior mention, references to creepy and sadistic whumper, box boy whump,

Masterlist

----

“How long did they have him like that?”

The voices were quiet but they were so loud, too loud. Everything was too loud, the fabric of the blanket and the voices and the sound of the house’s heater. It was all just noise.

“I don’t know...I think it’s safe to assume it was a while, though.”

“It was a while.” Another voice confirmed quietly. “He was only this bad when they kept him alone for more than a week.”

“You’ll stay like this until you’re begging me to touch you,”

Oliver scratched at his arms, rocking slightly. Even with all the lights dimmed, everything was too bright. Too loud. He could feel the ghost of fingers trailing across his skin, all so unwanted and yet needed, needed to the point he felt like he was dying without it.

He needed it, he needed it, he needed it. Nobody wanted to touch him because they thought he was scared.

He was, but he needed this, and everyone refused to see that.

Simon was supposed to see that. Simon knew Oliver needed touch, but for some reason he was holding back.

Simon had touched him, had held him when they came back for him. But after that, nothing. Silence. He hadn’t even spoken a word directly to Oliver since they got back.

He dug his nails harder until his skin, wanting to disappear. Every little thing was just noise and noise and noiseand-

Oliver flinched at the feeling of a hand on his, then melted into it. The hand pried his away from his arm, murmuring something about not wanting him to hurt himself. It was all just noise to him.

As quick as the touch arrived, it was gone. It felt like he’d been burned, nerves alight with the pure sensation of someone else’s skin against him. It hurt so bad, but he wanted it. Craved it.

He didn’t dare chase the hand, though. No, he learned not to do that that hard way. He wasn’t sure how long it had been when they first came back, but what he did remember was the cold, solid hit from the baton when he’d tried to reach out and touch the man, desperate for something other than the complete lack of sensory input happening.

Someone kneeled in front of him, and Oliver recognized it as Sandy. She smiled, moving slowly so as to not startle him.

“What are you doing?” Someone behind her asked.

“He looked like he was in pain when he talked, I’m checking for damage. Oliver, is it ok if I touch you?”

Oliver nodded slowly, eyes still unfocused. He wanted her to touch him so bad, but also wanted her far, far away from him. Better to let her choose for him, it was easier like that. He wasn’t made to make decisions.

Gentle fingers pressed against the side of his neck, and he had to refrain from pulling away at the soft pain. Sandy seemed to notice his discomfort, frowning and feeling along his neck a little softer.

“I think he might have damaged his vocal chords, and maybe even his windpipe. There’s bruising that’s faded, and he’s got some swelling.”

There was silence after that, as if there was something unspoken they all knew but refused to admit. Simon was the one to break the silence with what they were all thinking.

“From screaming, probably.” He said quietly, crossing his arms. Oliver wanted to be held by those familiar arms so badly. “Cedr- he..he choked Oliver a lot, before. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened, he was gone for over a week.”

“Was there ever significant damage during initial captivity that would make him more vulnerable to throat injuries?” Sandy asked, her hands leaving Oliver’s neck. She leaned back but didn’t quite move away yet, observing him.

“Nothing that ever needed emergency attention but..I’m guessing it could’ve caused lasting damage. He’s... got some issues from it. Neurological ones, at least.”

The look in the woman’s eyes was an angry kind of grief Oliver vaguely recognized, one of restrained fury and pity.

“I see. Anything in particular?”

Oliver could see Simon from here, leaning against the doorframe. His face was dark, expression pained but distant, which Oliver hated.

“Memory issues.” He murmured. “Granted some of that is probably just the facility fucking up his head, but he’s got problems..retaining things, sometimes. Forgets things a lot.”

Sandy pressed her lips together, nodding. “Part of that might just be trauma. I’d monitor it alongside the suicidal behavior, but I don’t have any concerns about it pertaining to anything underlying right now. It might just have to improve with time.”

“We don’t have time,he doesn’t have time!” Simon snapped, making Oliver flinch where he sat curled up on the couch. “They’ve already taken so much fucking time from him. What if we can never get it back, huh? At what point is he gonna be just another washed up rescue that can’t be fixed? What then?”

“Come on, Simon, don't say that. He-”

“No!” He yelled, turning away. To leave. “This is myfault, and I can’t even help fix it. He’s better off with people who can actually help him, not me. All I do is put him in danger and keep him going in circles inside his head with his conditioning. I can’t solve this anymore.”

“S,Simon.” Oliver called weakly, forcing himself to focus. He had to pull himself out of the fog inside his mind, the thing keeping him tethered down. It was heavy, suffocating, burning. But he could push through it for this. Simon froze but didn’t turn around, hands clenched into fists.

Oliver pushed the blanket aside, standing shakily. Sandy moved to stop him but Mia held out a hand, eyeing him warily.

“Let him go,” She murmured sadly. “They need to work this out. This was going to happen eventually.”

It hurt, but Oliver ignored it as he stumbled forward. He set a hand on Simons shoulder, only earning a flinch, the other moving away. Oliver whimpered, moving to follow as Simon turned a corner and disappeared down the hall

“Simon!” Oliver called out, following him. He braced himself against the wall, wincing with the effort it took to stay standing.

“Stay away from me, Oliver.” Simon warned lowly, still walking away. “I’m nothing but a danger to you, and we both know that. It’s better for us both if we just try to learn how to live without each other.”

The statement hit Oliver like a punch, icy terror running through his veins. He was being left, abandoned, he wasn’t wanted anymore. This was what Cedric was talking about. He was too broken for anyone, and people always came to the conclusion things were better off without him

“S,Simon, Simon please.” Oliver begged, stumbling after him down the hallway. “Don’t leave, Simon please don’t leave.”

He couldn’t lose him. Simon was the one person he had left that he’d thought would always be by his side, no matter what. He didn’t know what he did wrong or how to fix it, maybe he wasn’t good enough or-

Simon spun around abruptly, startling Oliver a little as he stopped in his tracks. He watched the tears start, the flash of anger and hatred he knew wasn’t directed at him filling Simon’s eyes.

“I, I hurt you, Oliver!” He shouted, throwing his hands in the air. “I dragged you down the fucking stairs and, and I was..I was willing to.. I just- I failed you!” Simon insisted, shaking his head as tears streamed down his face. “I-“

Oliver took the step foreword, flinging his arms around Simon to hug him tightly. It was a terrifying step, one full of doubt in himself and fear and uncertainty, but under it all was a layer of trust. Trust he needed to bring back to the surface.

The touch burned but he wanted it so bad, it was its own kind of loud that drowned out everything else. It was something he could latch onto and focus on. There was a hesitation, Simon tense, before arms wrapped around him in turn, and all the noise seemed to disappear.

It was quiet, now

Oliver sobbed against Simon’s chest, clinging to him as if his life depended on it. He was so scared and part of him knew this was wrong and dangerous but he didn’t care. He just wanted Simon. He just wanted his family.

He didn’t want Cedric to be able to take that from him. He’d taken a lot of things from Oliver, but he refused to let Simon be one of them.

“I don’t care!” Oliver wailed, throat burning from the pain. “I, I, I don’t c,care. I forgive you, Simon, p,please don’t go.”

He was being lowered, hugged close to Simon’s chest as they both slumped to the ground. Simon made everything so quiet again, Oliver thought to himself.

“I’m so sorry, Ollie.” Simon sobbed, rocking and holding the other tightly. “I, I’m so sorry, I thought I lost you, a,and it was my fault.”

“No.” Oliver insisted, shaking his head. “It's, it’s not your fault. C,Cedric broke you l,like he broke me. If it's not..if its not my fault, it's not yours either.”

Simon cried into Oliver's hair, embracing him. “W,why, why would you forgive me, Ollie. I, I hurt you, and I could still hurt you- I don’t deserveit!”

Oliver looked up, skin burning with the touch as he reached up to hold Simon’s face, looking over him. Tears ran down his tan skin, dark eyes full of guilt and grief and hatred. The soft, dim light of the hallway illuminated the faint freckles dotting in an odd pattern along his nose and cheekbone, and Oliver traced it idly.

“You do.” He choked out, staring deep into those eyes. “Because..because you’re my family, and I love you. I trust you.”

Simon looked stunned for a moment before he let out a noise that half sounded like a sob and half like a chuckle, kissing the top of Oliver’s curls.

“I love you too, Ollie.” He murmured, closing his eyes. “I know you trust me, which is half the problem. I need to be able to trust myself again. Then I can let you trust me.”

Oliver nodded, letting his head be guided back to Simon’s chest. He took a shuddering breath, relaxing as the tingling under his skin from the touch calmed. They could work through this. They could build that trust again, for both of them.

----

Taglist

@insanitywishes @18-toe-beans @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @spiffythespook@simplygrimly @cinnamonflavoredhugs @finder-of-rings @deluxewhump @ashintheairlikesnow @briars7 @albino-whumpee @thatsthewhump

#whump #hurt/comfort #box boy universe #angst #sensory deprivation #recovery #kidnapping aftermath #my oc's #Simon and oliver #cedric #tw self harm #tw suicide mention #dissoci@tion

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compassionatereminders · 4 years ago

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Hi Kat, I feel really awful today for a variety of reasons and mostly just grief that I have so many things wrong with me. Like the main problem is the autism, which I actually like most of the time bc I love my special interests but my sensory issues are dialled up to 1000 right now and it means that I can’t go outside because the snow crunching under my feet is awful, I have to wear sunglasses and headphones constantly and I can’t even touch anything because the sensation is so horrible and makes me meltdown. On top of that I have ocd and the thoughts are just killing me, and I thought I got over it a year ago but it’s still there and it’s like torture. I also have some form of ptsd which is the real kicker cause flashbacks are the worst and make me very suicidal (in no danger, it’s just horrible) and I still need a therapist who can treat it because I tried with my current one and I ended up messed up for a week.

You don’t have to say anything really bc I know I’ll be better at some point, and it won’t last forever it’s just really horrible trying to stay alive right now. It’s nice to get it out though, thanks for listening.

What you're describing sounds horrible and I really don't blame you for having a hard time coping with all of this. It really isn't fair that you have to battle all of these things at once and I am sending you lots of love and strength. But you're right that it won't be this bad forever and that you just gotta hold on and push through until some of it starts to ease up. Because it will. As you say yourself, your sensory issues aren't always this bad and neither is your OCD. So both will eventually decrease in intensity and allow you to feel better than you do now. You've felt better before despite having these diagnoses and you will feel better again. In the meantime, you just gotta keep holding on. This won't last forever - you'll get through it!

#chat with kat #suicide tw

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severalspoons · 4 years ago

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Long Rambling Trigun Meta Discussion 2

I *hate* the reply function in Tumblr. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t function. It doesn’t even open up a findable page so I can respond, and I can’t directly answer the reply. That’s why I reblog.

So, here’s the next best thing:

tiggymalvern

I don't recall anything like that fic you mention from either canon. It's a lovely idea, if only I could imagine Vash and Knives stopping arguing with each other for long enough to do it.

This fic I’m remembering was surprisingly hard to find, and now I’m wondering if it’s from FF.net rather than AO3. Will share once I find it!

The twins argue while doing it, IIRC, and have very different approaches. Luckily for the humans, in this fic the engineer likes the plant and takes care of it well, given how little is actually known about how to do so post-crash. Even so, Knives almost kills the engineer, but Vash stops him and leaves behind a little journal full of advice and encouragement.

IMO, I feel like this is something Vash would be motivated to do more than Knives:

-- to repair his relationship with Knives

-- because he feels responsible for the people Rem saved

-- because he wants the bulb plants to be safe and happy

(listed in the order I thought of them)

But Knives would see this as slight progress towards Vash seeing things his way, so he’d go with it. What do you think?

tiggymalvern

I've never been entirely clear on the manga ending myself, and I think Nightow left it somewhat ambiguous deliberately. Vash and Knives are fighting, and then the earth forces attack them both, Livia intevenes and Vash and Knives fly off and

six months later we find Vash in hiding with the people who saved him, because Knives convinced them to, and then Knives plants an apple tree to help feed the peopl looking after Vash, and then he vanishes...

I assume he chose not to stay with humans and just went off somewhere, but it's left open

Interesting! Yeah, I got the sense it was supposed to be deliberately ambiguous, too.

Many people say that Knives died giving his last energy to save Vash, to the point where I thought that was canon.

No matter what happened with Knives and the tree, I have questions. If Knives planted the tree before dying or disappearing or whatever, I’d want to know where he got the apple seeds, and if providing the energy to make that tree survive on Gunsmoke killed him. If he turned into a tree (which I thought was the canon, but maybe not?), how? I can see why you didn’t interpret Knives as turning into a tree.

All I know for sure is, if Knives were dying, he’d want to do it on his own terms. Ideally in a way that would express his point and make an impression on Vash. I was going to say that creating a tree doesn’t seem like Knives’ style, but then I thought about the apple tree scenes in the anime. However that tree came to be, Vash would most likely associate it with happier times on the ship. Maybe he’d be fucked up enough to see it as a gesture of love.

Maybe it was the closest thing to a gesture of love someone as manipulative and self-absorbed as Knives could manage...

tiggymalvern Knives really is a person with no middle ground. When he believed Rem's teachings, he believed them wholeheartedly, that everything would turn out fine and people just needed to be given a chance. When he rejected those teachings and decided it was all just rubbish, he went maximum speed to the other extreme. Reject ALL humans, not just the individuals who had proven that they suck. And reject as in eradicate, not just avoid...

I love Knives’ all-or-nothing way of being. Maybe because I know and love so many people with a little streak of that. And it’s so believable. Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere about how a misanthrope is a disillusioned idealist.

Knives thinks in utilitarian terms (”the greatest good for the greatest number with the least possible sacrifice”) as a kid for the few short scenes before he turns evil. He also seems to think in terms of groups rather than individuals (”humans,” “spiders,” “butterflies”). It saves him the grief Vash goes through at coming to know and lose so many people, but it also helps him justify a racist ideology. I love that about him, actually. If I were to write a Knives redemption fic, a key arc would be helping him learn to see others as individuals. I have a few paragraphs of something like that written...

Kids definitely need wonder and to see the beauty in the world, but it's also a good idea to mention the possibility of weird strangers offering candy that are best avoided. For these bizarre new non-human children, those warnings would have been extra pertinent, and maybe would have reduced the shock of what came after. Knives is definitely more mature than Vash in those flashbacks. Like you say, he wants to discuss issues with Vash, and Vash just parrots Rem.

Agree.

I have a theory. Earth, in Trigunverse, seems a lot like our world, only worse.

I’ve seen a lot of people’s sense of wonder, beauty, fun, and curiosity squished. I was the weirdo in preschool, among other four year olds, for being too much like that. Maybe on Trigun Earth, a bleak place to begin with, that’s the norm. (And destroying people’s wonder/curiosity/etc. leads to depression and the ennui of modern life, but that’s another essay).

Some people, like those who run Waldorf schools, overreact by going to the opposite extreme. The worst, most ideologically rigid ones, deliberately wait to teach kids to read so they can explore the world unmediated by words a little longer. (And will even discourage kids who learn to read early, grr). Waldorf philosophy assumes young kids are basically sensing, feeling, and imagining beings, rather than thinking ones.

I get the sense that Rem is one of these sorts. She was squashed and made to feel worthless for the way she saw the world. Maybe that’s part of the reason she was so depressed and needed Alex’s help. She’s raising the twins the way she wished she had been raised.

That sort of parenting wasn’t appropriate for a plant, of course. But no one had raised independent plants to adulthood before. No one knew what was appropriate. No one knew how to teach them about danger (or how not to).

Growing up as a neurodivergent person in the Dark Ages, the only kid with allergies and sensory processing problems, etc., I understand all too well how badly things can go when even the most loving parents just don’t know what to do, and can’t find helpful information anywhere. Where helpful information isn’t just hard to find, but it doesn’t exist yet.

So as critical as I’m being of Rem, I sympathize with her. She really didn’t have much to go on but her own knowledge and experience, and she bravely did the best she could.

Vash isn't thinking for himself yet, but he's a kid, so that's allowable. It does make it harder for Knives, though, who feels he has to be responsible for them both.

You know, Knives does feel responsible for them both, and I hadn’t thought much about it and about the implications of that. No wonder he was so frustrated and furious. There’s definitely a sense of “something is deeply unfair and wrong” for a child trying to raise not only themselves, but their younger sibling(s). Perhaps that’s part of the reason I saw Knives as caring about Vash, in his toxic, screwed up way.

Plant biology is MASSIVELY confusing, and the more you try to piece it together, the more your head hurts LOL. But I think that's almost the point? ...Leaving the readers struggling to figure out the plants is the human perspective.

What do you think about the anime being so much from a human pov, especially considering that the most important characters in it are not?

Wolfwood is the support Vash needs to learn to control his plant powers among other things, the powers that have terrified Vash for so long that he ignored them. But Wolfwood isn't scared of them - or rather, he is, but not scared enough to abandon Vash because of them. He knows all about Vash, he knows all about July and the hole in the moon, he's seen Vash transform into some weird crazy thing with feathers, and Wolfwood still stays. Wolfwood lets Vash know that Vash's mistakes can be forgiven, and Vash is still a worthwhile person despite them. And because Wolfwood believes it, Vash can start to believe it.

Between how well you put this and the dynamic itself, I’m...blown away and don’t know what to say.

– “Vash, take care of Knives.” This breaks my heart because so far … he hasn’t. First he follows Knives around. Then abandons him. Then attacks him. I really do think Vash was trying. He followed Knives around for so long while being so angry with him for what he'd done, and yes, part of that was because he didn't want to be alone himself, but part of it was him trying to follow Rem's advice.

Yeah, true, he did try at first. I undervalued it because by the time the series starts, that was far into the past and Vash probably doesn’t even remember it, but still.

In the manga, Rem specifically says, 'Vash, don't leave Knives alone,' because I think she recognises that Knives is prone to extremes and needs a balance.

See, that instruction makes so much more sense. And I think the plants would have agreed. (Well, of course they would. They’re a collective consciousness, after all).

Rem probably also knew it’s bad for anyone’s health or sanity to be alone, and an emotionally unstable twin plant even more so. Knives would be in a solitary confinement of his own making.

Vash tried and tried to get Knives to change; he spent so much effort trying to explain why genocide wasn't the answer. But Vash failed, and eventually he recognised that he was always going to fail. So he left Knives, because he needed a life that wasn't that failure. He needed to do something to compensate for Knives. He took upon himself the responsibility of not only protecting the humans from Knives, but protecting the humans from the worst in themselves, which Knives' actions brought to the surface. And that is one hell of a lot to take on, and not a recipe for a happy life.

Yeah, that’s...a heroic life, but not a happy one. In a way, it seems almost as doomed as trying to change Knives.

#trigun #meta #character analysis #vash the stampede #knives millions #millions knives #rem saverem #baby plants #oversharing #me irl #nicholas d. wolfwood #vash/wolfwood #vash the stampede/nicholas d. wolfwood #vashwood #killing time #fucked up sibling relationships #trigun anime #headcanons

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The 20 Best Horror Movies on Netflix UK – Scary Films to Watch Right Now

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Netflix is an ever-changing, constantly growing treasure trove of hidden gems and secret delights (here’s everything new on Netflix UK this month). Sometimes, a teeny bit too secret though.

Who hasn’t sat down to watch a horror movie and found themselves scrolling endlessly, either not being able to find something they’re in the mood for, or not really knowing what half the titles are, or if they’re any good?

We’ve scoured the full current catalogue available to watch in the UK now and picked out the best scary movies. It’s a mix of classic and new, and a range of slashers, horror-coms, mumblegore, monster movies and more to hopefully scratch that itch with ease.

We’ll keep this updated as and when titles drop in and out of the service.

Hereditary (2018)

If you haven’t seen this slice of trauma, the feature debut of Ari Aster, you probably should. If you have seen it, you probably won’t want to again. Toni Collette stars as a woman whose controlling mother has just passed away setting of a series of horrible events. Aster says the film was partly inspired by his own sense of his family being cursed – this a movie absolutely drenched in grief and pain with astonishing performances all round. It’s tough going, but it’s a masterpiece. Read our review.

The Platform (2019)

This existential Spanish horror made a splash at the start of lockdown with it’s tale of prisoner trapped in an enormous vertical prison with a platform at it’s centre which delivers food to the inmate floor by floor starting at the top, so that each floor only gets what the floor above has left over. It’s political, allegorical, it’s clever and it’s very violent.

The Endless (2017)

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s gorgeous sci-fi horror stars the two as brother who escaped from a cult ten years ago and are drawn back in in search of answers when a strange videotape arrives. This is their third movie after Resolution and Spring and the two are only growing in strength as directors – The Endless is rammed with indelible imagery and deeply unsettling moments within a plot that is a joy to unpick.

What Keeps You Alive (2018)

Couple Jackie and Jules head to a remote woodland cabin to celebrate their first wedding anniversary but things go bad… Ok this sounds like the most generic slasher in the world but trust us it’s not. Twists hit early on (that we’d hate to spoil) and the tension ramps up fast in a very effective cat and mouse chase with a female bent. This comes from Colin Minihan who made Grave Encounters – this isn’t similar but both have a disorientating sense of place. Read our review.

Orphan (2009)

Released during the heyday of Dark Castle’s mid-budget horror splurge, Orphan is one of those genre films with an absolutely ludicrous (and therefore thoroughly enjoyable) twist, which we will not spoil for you. Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga star as a couple mourning the loss of their baby, who decided to adopt a little Russian girl called Esther from the local orphanage. Things quickly start to go very, very wrong as the pair start to suspect that wee Esther – who insists on dressing like a spooky doll – isn’t all she appears to be. Check out our review.

Insidious (2010)

The many sequels may have yielded diminishing returns but the first of this franchise, about a couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) whose comatose son appeared to be trapped in another realm by a evil spirit, is a very effective chiller. Horror genius James Wan directs, and the first half of this movie at least is pretty much guaranteed to make you jump out of your skin.

Annihilation (2018)

An all star cast including Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tessa Thompson, plus the quality direction of Alex Garland wasn’t enough to secure this horror sci-fi based on Jeff Vandermeer’s novel a theatrical release in the UK. Nevermind, that just means you can watch it for free on Netflix. Portman joins a crew of women exploring the mysterious Area X where he husband ventured some time before and came back changed. It’s a weird, unfamiliar landscape of beautiful flora and terrifying fauna defying explanation until the strange, indelible finale (not sure what it means? Have a read of this explainer). And you can check out our review, too if you like.

Daybreakers (2009)

You’ll get a little bit of everything with this Spierig Brothers curio. It was the film that really got the directing team noticed and it’s not hard to see why. Set in a dystopian world where basically everyone has been turned into a vampire, one corporation thinks it’d be a bloody (sorry) good idea to track down all the surviving humans and…well, basically milk them. Ethan Hawke stars as a vampire haematologist who starts to think there might be another way for this story to go after he’s collared by a former vampire (Willem Dafoe), who can cure everyone. (Living) dead good. Check out our review.

The Bar (2017)

Slightly bonkers Spanish horror thriller which sees a bunch of strangers stuck in a busy Madrid cafe when snipers begin shooting anyone who tries to leave. Confusion and personality clashes abound in this economical single location chiller with a dark sense of human as the inhabitants slowly discover what’s going on, who’s responsible and try to work out if and how they will survive.

Netflix UK: What’s New in April 2020?

By Kirsten Howard

21 underappreciated films to watch on Netflix UK

By Paul Bradshaw and 2 others

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s love/hate letter to the horror genre felt like something of a game changer when it finally arrived (it was shelved for several years because of financial issue with original distributor MGM). Chris Hemsworth and Haley Bennett star in a double layer story about ordinary kids vacationing in a woodland cabin, with Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins as very particular kinds of bureaucrats up to something in the background. No spoilers, just watch. Here’s our review.

Cargo (2017)

Martin Freeman stars in this Netflix original developed from a short directed by Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke. Set in the Australian outback, Freeman is a father trying to find someone to protect his child in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. More wistful and emotional than that sounds on paper, there’s a fascinating subplot about an Aboriginal girl mourning her father and the final set piece is unforgettable. Check out our review.

Lifeforce (1985)

A Cannon Films classic directed by late Texas Chain Saw legend Tobe Hooper, people are still discovering the ’80s madness that is Lifeforce. Originally entitled Space Vampires, it’s exactly what you’d expect, and so much more. Nude, energy sucking bat creatures are brought back to Earth after an interstellar mission finds a gaggle of them lying dormant in Halley’s Comet, and it all goes very badly for the planet. You can expect a scenery-chewing Patrick Stewart to pop up in between the tits and gore. Not literally! Although, sometimes literally.

Creep (2014)

No, not the one set on the tube, this ‘mumblegore’ horror is far weirder than that. Director Patrice Brice plays Aaron, a videographer hired by Mark Duplass’s Josef to make a video for his kid to watch after he’s died of a terminal illness. Or does he? Playing on the power of politeness and the awkwardness of male relationships this is a highly original, itchily uncomfortable watch. Creep 2 is also on Netflix, and also good!

17 of the best TV series on Netflix UK

By Louisa Mellor

Underappreciated comedy movies on Netflix UK to watch now

By Mark Harrison and 1 other

Hush (2016)

Another smart sensory-based horror, this time from Oculus and Doctor Sleep man Mike Flanagan. This home invasioner sees deaf writer Maddie (Kate Siegel) attacked in her woodland retreat by a masked stranger. He uses her inability to hear to sneak around and terrorise her, but she has tricks of her own up her sleeve. Check out our review.

The Invitation (2015)

Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, Destroyer) just keeps knocking it out of the park (and she’s recently been attached to a Dracula movie from Blumhouse Productions), and with The Invitation she continued to secure her place as one of the best directors around. Here, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend go to a party held by his formerly suicidal ex-wife, and discover that she seems to be happier than she ever was, but Will starts to suspect that rather than healthily coping with her mental illness, she may well have joined a doomsday cult instead, and be planning to kill them all. Paranoia and tension are at the max in this bad boy. Here’s our review.

Little Evil (2017)

Comedy horror from Eli Craig who made the wonderful Tucker and Dale Vs Evil. This time he’s playing on creepy kid tropes, particular those from The Omen movies. Adam Scott plays a man who discovers his new wife’s (Evangeline Lilly) son might actually be the anti-christ. And because it’s Eli Craig, of course it’s funny and very good natured as well as playing with the genre.

Gerald’s Game (2017)

Another Mike Flanagan offering here – what can we say? he’s damn good! – as Jessie (a spectacular Carla Guigino) and her husband Gerald drive to a remote house to try and spice up their marriage with a bit of gentle BDSM. One problem: Jessie is not into it. At all. Two problems: Gerald carks it, leaving her tied up with only her cunning to help her free herself from her prone, handcuffed predicament. Three problems: a mythical, supernatural killer may be in the house. Stephen King, you’ve done it again. Read our review.

Ravenous (2017)

Unusual Canadian zombie movie (in French) which sees remaining stragglers after an outbreak of the infected band together in disparate groups travelling to find other survivors. Ravenous sets up its infected as worshipping a sort of new religion of found items (chairs, TVs etc.) making comment on the zombification of society. It’s also funny and quite scary, so there’s that.

Veronica (2017)

Loosely based on a true story, Veronica is set in Madrid in 1991 and follows a young woman who messes with a Ouija board who thinks she’s accidentally summoned an evil spirit. Director by Paco Plaza, one of the two directors behind [REC], the movie gained minor notoriety when it first landed on Netflix because of a few viewers finding it overly scary. It’s true there are some seriously creepy bits (but you’ll be fine!).

The Perfection (2018)

Get Out‘s Allison Williams and Dear White People‘s Logan Browning star in this twisty, trashy but nonetheless enjoyable tale of two musical prodigies hothoused at a mysterious academy. It’s lurid and lavish (and it’s got some fairly dodgy sexual politics, we’d warn you) but great lead performances and a tricksy three act structure that keeps you guessing, make this an entertaining and unusual Friday night pick. Read our review.

Want more horror? Here’s our list of 81 genuinely creepy horror movies. Here are some horror movies it’s safe to watch with your kids. And here are some underappreciated Scream-inspired horror movies of the 90s.

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scruffypegasus · 3 years ago

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Sorry for being gone for so long

If you watch me on my DeviantArt account you’ll know what's up, so I'll just copy and paste some info from there So yeah, I apologize for my lack of activity I am just really honestly overwhelmed, but I do appreciate to all those who have reached out, all your words do mean a lot to me I just feel terrible that I haven't been any to have the energy to respond to all of you. And it's hard for me to explain what's going on, I don't like to bother people, and I don't necessarily like to repeat the same things over again, so here's a really simple version of events - I am in the process of trying to sell my home because where I live is making me unwell due to the pollution and outside mold/Fungus (As I have a mild asthmatic allergic reaction to such things) - Which leads into the fact I have been dealing with a mild allergic reaction for 3 months (And maybe longer, signs had been showing near the end of last year, I just thought it was something else at the time), and while I am taking the medication to deal with it, it's not able to make me fully better, because its the place that I'm living at that making me sick - This in tern has made me have very low energy to do anything, as my body tries to cope with the allergic reaction, which has been beyond frustrating, as my family needs my help to clean and get the house ready, yet I just don't have the energy to do it - With having to change things around the house in preparation to try sell, has trigger several Autistic reactions (Meltdowns) from me, which again have been very frustrating, as I know logically this has to be done, but my body still decides to have freak-outs about it anyway. - I have other health issues, but I can't do anything about them until we move - I've came to the point that I have been so emotionally stressed that I found it very emotionally painful to draw, which has just made me more stressed as that had been an outlet for me for many year's but I'm doing a bit better now. - And lastly I am dealing with the grief/mourning of 'my' cat Toby, who had to be put down, This is still something I'm dealing with, as it's complicated pet ownership as I had deep negative history involving Toby that is due to my older brother who the cat originally belong to (Basically my brother is a coward and couldn't be responsible)...and I honestly didn't think saying goodbye was going to hurt this much. But it dose I have never felt this kind of emotional pain before, that even though Toby had caused me so much pain for almost a decade, the anxiety, his demanding nature and other issues, despite all that I would miss his presence I will treasure what I have left of his memory even if those memories come with the bad, I had wished that I had loved Toby with my whole heart, and I thought that I would have been a cruel person that would have moved on quickly from his departure but that's not the case. As my family and my own heart have told me, I did deeply care for him, sure it was not the warm fuzzy kind of love, but the love out of duty, he needed someone and I provided for his needs, got him the food he liked, cat beds, scratching posts, Catio for him to be able to go outside-ish, toys and some love and attention even if it cause me great pain, because he had a tendencies when he was done snuggling on my chest to jump off which would aggravate my crack rib injuries, which made snuggle time not fun time for me. But I still wish I could have done better for him, that I had the patience to love him always instead of being brought down to my knees having breakdowns because he's done something. I know that in the long run I should have never taken on the duty of Toby that my autistic nature could not handle the long term sensory distress he caused me daily, but Toby needed someone and I was the only one who could afford to take him on. Yes I did end up starting a fight with my older brother, that caused other issues in the family and at the moment the fight has been put on 'pause' till we've sorted ourselves out and I'm not dealing with trying to move, even though part of me would like to continue the fight as the coward needs to face the harsh truth, but at the same time I also have to face the fact my older brother is rather 'fragile' it's why I hadn't talked about my grievous towards him sooner, as my family had told me to hold off as he wasn't in a good place. So yeah, I screwed up, big time by lashing out at him on the day of Toby passing, but I didn't care how much he 'cared' for Toby, he hasn't been their for 90% of Toby life I have! and I knew that my family would just tell me to hold off on how I felt towards my brother again 'wait till everyone has stopped grieving' 'Wait until we've found a new home' 'Wait because BLAH BLAH BLAH' I was so done having to 'wait' on someone else feelings, so I was like screw it we are all adults here, I can text my brother my frustrations of his lack of action and how much he has hurt me over the years because their was no way I was going to be able communicate that verbally. But it turns out we're not all adults here and so the fight is on pause, and I refuse to apologies for what I've said because it was the truth, the only thing I regret is the pain it caused the rest of my family, I didn't think my brother would lash out at my Mother because of my actions, I thought he would face me instead of talking to her, but I was wrong. Anyway that's still a future problem to deal with....later. But yeah sorry I've been gone so long, I'm going to post up some art I've had done before my unintended Hiatus happened, but I'll be doing another Journal Update later as I'm going to need some help.

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moiraineswife · 7 years ago

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Autistic!Kaz Headcanons

Just bc I can. You should all read @barrelrat‘s initial post about this that initially got me thinking this way/that inspired a few of the following. But basically I couldn’t sleep last night so here we are.

-Kaz longing for the quiet, peaceful familiarity of the farm when he first comes to Ketterdam. The city is too big, too loud, too bright, too crowded, too much. Everything overwhelms him for the first few weeks, and he clings to Jordie as the only stable, familiar anchor that he has.

-He picks up magic/sleight of hand quickly/easily because in addition to being a special interest, the constant, repetitive movements he practiced over and over again necessary to let him master the skills are stims. He does this a lot unconsciously. One of his favourites is manipulating small stacks of coins in his hands, or shuffling packs of cards.

-One of the things that makes him so successful with magic, with conning, with life tbh is his Need to know why. (this is canon, and I love it, so it’s not really a hc but see if I care) His plans are so detailed, so meticulous, and generally go so well because of how thoroughly he understands each and every detail of them. It’s not enough to know that, for instance, Wylan’s timed bombs will go off when he says they will, Kaz needs to understand the mechanics behind them. This helps him spot weaknesses, flaws, and patterns, and is one of the things that makes him so successful.

-Kaz being touch averse before Jordie’s death. Only now there are images and grief attached to the aversion. That makes it worse but also, in a twisted kind of way, better. Because at least now there’s a Reason behind it, and he can understand it.

-Kaz plans everything. From breaking into the Ice Court, to basic, every day to-do lists. He can do it all mentally, and keep track of everything that way, but he likes writing it all down. IT’s a way of taking control and it’s grounding/calming. Probably has an old blackboard/some chalk in his office at The Slat. It’s stimmy and it means he can doodle elaborate lists and plans all over it.

-Most of his stims are small things that he can hide. The streets worked out the notable ones from him a long time ago. He strokes the head of his cane, tracing all of the deep lines and groves in it, lingering on patches that are especially smooth. He flexes his hands - the feeling of the leather gloves curling around them is especially Good. Is also prone to leg dancing and finger tapping (especially to music. He picks out the beats of any nearby music and taps along to the them) But they’re all things that he can be discreet about. He used to hum, but when he was abandoned on the streets it was too much of a giveaway and he trained himself to stop.

-Kaz saying he has a headache when he becomes overloaded because he doesn’t know how else to explain that he needs to leave this place now.

-First signs of him heading towards a meltdown is always irritability. He becomes v easily frustrated, snaps sharply if interrupted, becomes frantic if he can’t easily find something, and is agitated and irritated by even small sounds in his vicinity. Will murder you for being too Loud when he’s like this because he just can’t deal with it.

-Never has meltdowns in front of other people. He instinctively suppresses them in public/on a job. This typically causes a massive shutdown afterwards. he locks himself in his room, turns off all the light, and buries himself in his bed where it’s dark and quiet. He refuses to see anyone during that time, and everyone knows not to bother him/to let him recover in peace.

-Has shutdowns more frequently than meltdowns. Becomes nonverbal during them, very withdrawn and unresponsive - typically the only communication anyone gets out of him then is nods/shakes of the head.

-Bad trauma days make his sensory issues much, much worse. Some days he can’t leave his room because the very feel of the air on his skin is too much. He won’t even let Inej see him on those days, he needs to be alone to be able to meltdown/stim and process everything the way he needs to.

-Occassionally becomes utterly Consumed by short but very very intense special interests. Once developed one in baking, it only lasted about a week but it was Intense. He was covered in flour for days and was constantly trying new things, and tweaking old recipes to make them completely perfect. Only Kaz could turn cake-making into a form of science. He experimented with different methods of mixing, different amounts of flour, the order he added the ingredients in etc etc etc. The Dregs were baffled but delighted. Nina swears she has never eaten better waffles in her entire life.

-His cane becomes a comfort object, he gets really angsty if he doesn’t have it close at hand at all times. His gloves are comfort objects too, even if he manages to stop wearing them all the time, he always keeps them on him. Inej brings him back a small, smooth, polished stone she found on her travels - it becomes a comfort object, too. He always has it in his pocket.

-Can recreate maps/building plans he’s studied incredibly accurately....But he has no sense of direction. Frequently gets lost in The Slat. Only manages to navigate the city bc he’s carefully memorised maps/routes/landmarks.

-APD has him threatening to gag Jesper at least twice a week because ‘I can’t process two different speakers/conversations at once, Jesper shut up.’

-Loves listening to Wylan play flute. Will legit sit and listen to him quietly for hours. Wylan starts noticing when Kaz is getting overloaded and, if he’s able, will discreetly play for a little while to help ground him.

-One time Inej changed her perfume an he became so irritated and bothered and he couldn’t understand why which was almost more frustrating. Eventually she realised what was wrong.

-Hates clothes with high/tight collars, they feel like they’re strangling him.

-I’m not entirely sure if this is possible Heartrender wise, or rather, if it was possible pre-parem but, like, humour me okay? He asks Nina to use her abilities to lessen the quality of his hearing/eyesight/touch, just slightly, and only for short periods of time, but it really helps when he’s becoming overloaded.

-Will cut you if you fuck with his routine/his plans in any way. (Always has v precise, detailed plans and no, we can’t go there first, because if we go there first then x, y, z will happen, and we won’t be able to do that, and the world will end no just everybody do as I say I have worked this shit out)

-Absently stroking Inej’s hair = The Best Stim.

-The pickiest of picky eaters.

-Kaz ‘I don’t like new things’ Brekker. Nina despairs over him bc he orders exactly the same thing every single time they go out for anything to eat.

-One time a restaurant took his item off their menu and Kaz Twitched uncomfortably until the owner told him they kept a few of the necessary ingredients on-hand for him so he could still have it. All of Ketterdam relaxed and a shrine was later built to this good woman’s sense.

-Had to carefully teach himself to read each individual person’s tone/expressions/body language etc for each job. He constantly studies people and improves his understanding of them - it’s like watching for tells in a fight/card game, but with everything. Keeps very detailed, very extensive notes. Doesn’t realise that not everyone has to do this until Nina spots his notes on her and is just like ??? Kaz ??? is this necessary ?????

-Dsypraxia!Kaz - performs incredible precise, delicate, deft lock-picking one minute. Bangs into the corner of a desk the next bc it was moved an inch to the right of its usual spot.

-One day, Mathias decides to be ‘helpful’ and sets about fixing up The Slat. Kaz walks in and freezes. ‘No.’ ‘But the floorboards were creaking here so-’ ‘No.’ ‘The roof leaked a little, I thought-’ ‘No.’ ‘The carpets were-’ ‘No.’ ‘The paintwork could use a little freshening u-’ ‘No.’ Kaz threatens to drown him in the fresh tin of paint he has open and ready next to him and methodically undoes all of Mathias’ fixes until the Slat is creaking, whistling, leaking, and tripping people up as it should.

-One time Nina got bored and decided to rearrange the furniture ‘for a change’. This did not go down well.

-Gunshots are sensory hell tbh.

-Views literally everything in terms of business arrangements bc it’s the only way he’s learned to really make sense of social interactions?? People are loyal to him bc he knows their secrets, and bc he’s the most beneficial to their interests than any other gang leader in Ketterdam. People will do favours for him bc he’s done things for them in the past/would do in the future. ‘I will make you waffles today, and you will promise to help me with my sensory shit at a later date when I need you to. The deal is the deal.’ ‘Uh...Kaz...We’re friends?????’ Kaz: *this does not compute* *Nina sighs and just nods and yes, yes, u strange boy, just prepare me my waffles*

-He slowly starts to understand things on a more personal/intimate/informal level when he’s with Inej and they start getting closer. But he still, at the end of the day, rationalises/makes sense of everything via a structure that’s simple, and logical to him, and that’s by viewing it as a job. Inej is patient with him, and pretty understanding...As long as he never gets to the point of, like, ‘I have kissed you three times today, this equates to a ten minute leg massage, I would like to cash this in now, please.’ (He never does. (Except once when he was teasing her about it and she just like ffs, kaz, u had me for a minute there.))

-Has a ‘mutually beneficial relationship’ with a stray cat he insists he hasn’t adopted. He feeds it and gives it somewhere warm to sleep. In return it is an A++++ stim toy. V soft and it’s a great, warm presssure stim when it curls up in his lap which is obviously the only reason he lets it do this. But he has not adopted it, this is strictly a business arrangement- I can see you rolling your eyes at me, Nina. (Its name is ‘Demjin.’)

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fuckyeahvalidation · 7 years ago

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Chronic Overcomer

Chronic overcomer is a phrase I heard and I knew it fit me right away. I might struggle with my chronic illnesses and have terrible days, but they don’t stop me from being the best me I can be. I might keep getting worse until I die, but until then I’m going to keep going and keep overcoming my chronic illnesses. I’m not going to stop fighting because this is a battle I won lose easily. I’ll put up a fight and I’ll keep struggling. I’ll limp and crawl if I must as I hold my stomach and bear through the pains. I’ll get through the dizzy spells and all the nausea because I am a chronic overcomer.

These all may be illnesses and disorders that are life long, but I’m still an overcomer because I won’t let them ruin my life. Sure, my plans are not the same as I thought they’d be. Things have changed, but I’ve gotten used to that fact. That I’ll always be sick, that I might need a wheel chair someday or at certain points, that I might need a feeding tube. I’ve gone through so many scenarios in my head of things about my body that could continue to get worse on my journey through life. I’ve gone through the stages of grief and I’ve pushed past those days. I’m still here, I’m still living to the best of my abilities, and I’ve got a great support system.

I won’t let society bring me down. I’m here. I’m disabled. I’m chronically ill. I’m autistic. I am so much more than those things though. I’m more than my illnesses and disabilities. Those things do not define me. Those are just parts of me. They make up parts of me. I don’t know at this point who I would be without them, but I know they do not define me because there is so much more to me than those few things.

My knees might hurt and I need to sit down, my chest could hurt from standing too long, my stomach could ache because I ate something it decided was bad for it today. There are several things that could go wrong, but I also could tell you ancient myth stories of the Gods and Goddesses of old. I could tell you about Point Pleasant West Virginia and the story of Mothman. Wanna know something about aliens? I’ve got you covered. Video games are always fun. I might not be the best at them, but I have fun with them that’s for sure. Give me something to research and I’ll tell you everything I can as soon as I get the information I need. I could tell you so many things of animes I love, but I’ll spare you the details for now because I just want you to know that there will always be more to me than these disabilities and illnesses that you may be able to see and others you can’t.

I’m here to tell you that I am a chronic overcomer and this, this is my story… The first signs of something being wrong were in elementary school starting in 4th grade so around the age of eight when stomach problems started to become a regular occurrence as well as nausea spells. There seemed to be no problems though when being checked so it was chocked up to anxiety and I was sent on my way. The problems still occurred often and I usually had to go home from school early because of the pains (though sleeping in the nurse’s office instead of being in class was nice).

The next thing to happen was in 7th grade during a science lab after I decided to sit on the floor for an experiment and when I went to get up my knee completely snapped out of place, leaving me in excruciating pain and almost passing out as a classmate took me to the nurse’s office.

After years of pain from that and going to an orthopedic doctor to evaluate me. After hours upon hours in his waiting room multiple times, I still didn’t have a clear answer even with multiple x-rays and MRI scans of my knee so I was sent off to physical therapy. There I was evaluated again and given a treatment plan to go there twice a week and it was helping. Once one of the physicians there looked at me and asked a few questions then moved my knee cap around I was told I have patellofemoral pain syndrome or more commonly known as runner’s knee. I laughed at them because I had wanted to do track, but due to my knee the summer before my freshman year of high school really started giving out on me and I had to decide not to go into the one sport I really wanted to do in high school and that was the first time that I had to face the reality that I couldn’t do everything that I wanted to do in life my body just simply couldn’t handle it and that was something I had to come to terms with.

On the other hand, I did get to take karate for quite a bit of time and that actually helped with my knee pain, but sadly I had to stop because of financial issues.

Graduating high school was an amazing accomplishment that due to my chronic depression I never thought I’d make it to that day, but I did and I got into community college. College wasn’t the best idea as my mental and physical health always declined in the winter time. My stomach was getting worse and I was constantly having to go to the hospital for one problem or another.

One trip resulted in me finding out a diagnosis that I hadn’t heard before; gastritis, which is an inflammation of the lining of my stomach due to so many pills, mostly 500-milligram naproxen for my period cramp pains, but also ibuprofen and probably Pepto-Bismol too. They all slowly ate away at my stomach lining and since it’s gone untreated for so long most of the effects done can’t be changed back so easily. At it’s worse it could turn into stomach cancer which is a scary thought at first, but things like this you come to accept overtime.

A diagnosis that has been here in my life from the time I was born, but never knew about until very recently was me being autistic. You are born autistic, but sometimes due to various reasons, children go undiagnosed. I am one of those people I didn’t get diagnosed until the age of 21.

The more I thought about me being autistic the more it made sense. The more I let myself stim to release happiness, anger, sadness, or stress it made things feel better. A lot better than I did before I knew.

I started realizing that I have special interests such as history, aliens, and Mothman. I could talk to you for hours about any of these things if you’d let me. There is still so much that is undiagnosed in me like my personality disorders, Borderline personality disorder, Avoidant personality disorder, Dependent personality disorder, and Paranoid personality disorder. There’s also my Auditory and Sensory processing disorder’s that come along with being autistic. There might be even more that I don’t know about, but hey I’m here for the journey and this is my life.

There are all these things surrounding me and telling me that I can’t and for a long time I listened to those voices that said I can’t, but now I don’t because I know I’m a chronic overcomer and I can overcome these illnesses and disabilities even if they’re with me for the rest of my life, even if they get worse, I’m prepared.

I hope you are too…

#Echo's echo #actuallychronicallyill #actuallydisabled #actuallyborderline #actuallydependent #actuallydissociative #actuallyanxious #actuallyparanoid #actuallyautistic #actuallyavoidant

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garden-of-succulents · 7 years ago

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I was busy this weekend with a lot of work stuff, during which I had a couple related discussions with coworkers, friends, and mental health colleagues about safe spaces, about how people with different personalities or issues or mental health needs interact, and it reminded me of issues we’ve had in fandom, both among fans and when discussing the work we’re fannish about. I thought it might be worth introducing a concept into the discussion.

Something I only learned about as an adult when I got into disability advocacy was the concept of conflicting access needs. That is, disabled people may need certain accommodations to make a space accessible to them, like wheelchair ramps or braille signage; and sometimes those needs directly conflict in a way that is nobody’s fault and doesn’t mean anybody’s needs are invalid and evil.

(Essay content notes: Trauma, mental illness, illustrative examples from a domestic violence shelter including abuse and suicide attempts. And also some examples that are a little less blameless and “nobody’s fault”)

For example, a person with poor vision may need bright lighting so they can see and read, while another person with chronic migraines or sensory processing issues may need low lighting to avoid headaches or overstimulation. These are both legitimate access needs, but they mean you probably cannot make the same space accessible to the same people at the same time. These are issues that need to be solved with a lot of thought and extra dedication of resources, and there’s nowhere near a standardized guide of responses to these situations.

Conflicting access needs come up all the time in the mental health field. For example, some people have strong emotions and need to be able to express them without judgment or restriction to be healthy; others have high levels of anxiety and extreme negative reactions to emotions expressed loudly or forcefully.

Content warning: domestic violence, trauma, child harm: When I worked in a women’s shelter, one issue that came up a lot had to do with children: Women and children would arrive freshly traumatized and settle into a new, scary space with different rules and strange people. The children would often panic if they lost sight of their mother and want her near all the time. At the same time, their mothers needed time and space to process the trauma they’d been through and tell staff about what they’d been through. Letting children sit in on their mothers’ interviews with staff, where they talked about the abuse they’d experienced, would be extremely harmful to the children--it substantially raises their risk of PTSD to see the adult they rely on to make the world safe break down and become overwhelmed with fear or grief, much less to hear about the things that had been done to her. We had to expend a lot of time, effort, and staffing hours to making sure that both mothers and children got what they needed--that there were a lot of staff on hand to soothe, distract, and play with children while their mothers were busy dealing with their own trauma, as well as counsellors and advocates available to help their mothers. End specific content warning

The more experience I get, the more I think it’s impossible for any one space or environment to meet everybody’s access needs at the same time. What some people experience as safety threatens others. Some people need to fall apart, and others need not to see someone falling apart in front of them. And unlike the shelter, friendships and social groups don’t have staff who are hired to put their own needs on hold for an eight-hour stretch; everyone involved has needs to look out for. (And actually, that’s not even true; as staff, our employer was non-negotiable about our need not to be physically threatened and prohibited us from working with clients who threatened violence against us. But we stretched ourselves thin ignoring our other needs--to sit down, to cry, to wait for the shaking to pass, to complain, to get angry, to go out for a snack or a smoke--when we had clients to take care of.)

(Relatedly, my experience with mental illness and mentally ill people is why I don’t believe in “safe spaces”: It is absolutely worthwhile to make a space safer, to remove a lot of obvious triggers and distressing material. But the more traumatized the group you are working with, the more elusive safety is because people carry their trauma around with them: they can’t be safe in their own heads and bodies. A lot of traumatized people constantly revisit and rehash what hurt them. To promise a “safe space” to many people is to make a false promise that will inevitably prove false and disappoint them. Therefore my view of what makes “safer spaces” work has changed a lot, away from restricting the kind of content on display, and towards empowering people to use tools to help themselves feel safe and in control. To saying, “Feel free to leave if you need to take time to yourself” or “Just put your hand up like this if you want us to leave you alone” or “here is how to keep this kind of content appearing on your screen”.)

These are issues I hardly got any training in and I’ve been in the mental health field for almost a decade. They’re discussions that feel like we’re breaking new ground in every time I have them with people with twenty years of experience. These are discussions that are hard find any clear, firm, 100% correct answer. Often the answer is “more resources”--more people, more empathy, more time, more thoughtfulness, more knowledge--and that’s a shitty answer when we’re in a situation where everyone is stressed, upset, at the end of their rope, in pain, and already doing the best they can.

These are tough issues.

I’m mentally ill and neurodivergent; I have mentally ill and neurodivergent friends. And it is so easy for us to hurt each other. My Autistic friend has an anxious week and has to stop spending all her energy on reading subtle social signals to finish her thesis; I’m depressed and socially anxious and feel the loss of her attention and lack of response to the small feelers I send out to see if she still likes me; when she finds out I’ve been sitting on my insecurity all week, she feels like a horrible friend. We’re not necessarily bad, nor wrong, but we hurt each other all the same. And the reason we can still stay friends is because we can talk things through and find ways to give each other what we need.

Content warning: domestic violence, abuse, suicide: On the other hand, sometimes you can’t negotiate that gap and stay together afterwards. At the shelter, a lot of women who’d just left their abusive partner would come into the counselling office carrying their cell phones, saying, “He says he’ll kill himself if I don’t come back. He’s tried it before and I believe him. I think I should go.” Sometimes this is a bluff, an abuser’s tactic to get control back--and sometimes they’re not. But in those cases the women thought that their partner’s pain and distress--which were sometimes very real--meant they should put themselves back in danger. We had to remind them that their partner’s need for someone to help them deal was not actually greater than their need to stay safe and alive. More than once, I helped a woman call 911 or the local Mobile Mental Health Unit to alert them to a person at high risk of suicide--because as much as she loved him and wanted him to be safe, she and I could look at the facts and know that her going back wouldn’t really help him, and would definitely harm her. End specific content warning

It matters a lot to me to try to have these discussions, tell these sorts of stories. A lot of my fiction is an attempt to complicate the bland, romanticized stories about mental health I got my information from when I was a teenager, that left me unprepared to handle these conflicts.

There isn’t an easy answer, not “more kindness” or “more boundaries” or “help others” or “look out for yourself”. The easiest answer I have is, “This is hard.” Caring about other people is an active struggle; being a good person isn’t a state, it’s a series of trade-offs and the best decisions you can make at the time.

Short, easy answers--”This is right, the alternative is wrong,” or “Fuck them” or “Only this is important”--may keep you safe or help you get through in the short term, but they also have their own costs. They’re coping mechanisms, not ultimate truths.

#stuff i wrote #mental health thots #this included fannish analysis originally #but it felt weird and wrong to leave in #so i took it out

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topbeautifulwomens · 6 years ago

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The greater part of our nation nowadays is inspired by the economic system–discovering most people today likely both ‘environmentally friendly’ and again-to-principles. Nevertheless, as organic as they wish they could be, the majority live in a anxietyful world and are continuously on the lookout for natural options for overall health difficulties like despair, anxiety, fret, grief, loneliness, mental exhaustion, brain fog, sleeplessness, PMS symptoms and so many a lot more. The peace and tranquility that should manifest by themselves as normal attrihoweveres are usually weighed down by environmental realityors these kinds of as stress in the office or–even even worse–unemployment. Many others experience in opposition to social isolation, poverty, chemical compounds and toxic compounds or even bad diet program and countless more phrases.

Aromatherapy is BIG business today and at the end of this report you can be assured that we maintain our guarantee that you’ll never have to spend mega-bucks abenefit! This article is more than an overobserve of this historical three000+ 12 months outdated art. As you wander down Lavender Lane’s fragrant healing route with us you will discover how–for more than a quarter-of-a-century we had been instruct and everying and sharing how you can generate a compendium of natural and therapeutic aromatherapy concoctions in mere ‘mins for pennies’. In addition, should you desire to retail your products at craft fairs or on to shop cabinets or in spas or even mail purchase like us; we are going to fortunately show you how. We are going to also percentage with you one of the most important levels of your advertising–how to deal your concoctions–making you look as specialist as is your creation.

1st, here is a ‘crash program’ on aromatherapy that the ‘newbie’ should at minimum have some thought of. Every single essential oil consists of numberless chemical components. To best illustrate a comparison, settle for an apple for instance. FACT: 1, whole, clean, refreshing apple contains over 10,000 nutrition in combos of anti-oxidants, phytochemicals (plant vitamins) enzymes and more. However science so far has only identified a portion of them, and right up until more are discovered; they’ve not got a clue what the rest of them are or what they do–and apples have been close to given that the delivery. Aromatherapy (the art of applying an essential oil to this end or that) has been around since people have. Nevertheless, each sort of essential oil is created of many distinct aromatic molecules of which more than thirty,000 have been identified and referred to as, and it is acquainted for a single essential oil to contain 100 different aromatic molecules. One can only fathom their countless real complexities and their unbelievable qualities or restorative rewards.

Just how aromatherapy operates is nevertheless unclear. What we do know is that simply odoring a fragrance can influence us bodilyly and psychologically by altering hormone creation, brain chemistry, stress degrees and general metabolic process..

An ‘essential oil’—or the ‘soul’ of the plant if you will, is 50 moments more centered than that of the herb or flower it was very carefully extracted from. Crucial oils give vegetation their characteristic odors, making it possible for us to take deep drafts of a fragrant rose bloom or drink in the fragrance of lilacs and lavender. It really is because essential oils are by their very mother nature aromatic, that the therapy involving their use has been christened “Aromatherapy.” And no matter whether a individual is seeking to enhance their beauty, relieve soreness, improve calories, reduce stress, grow hair, market rest, heal wounds, evoke special inner thoughts, or even eliminate fleas–you will find an essential oil for all these and countless other conditions.

BEAUTY SECRETS? Billions of pounds a year are put in yearly by customers who are making an attempt to gradual down the getting older method–or at least dangle to as young an look as they can for as long as they can. The face is usually the most uncovered part of the body–bombarded by warmth, chilly, drying, perspiring, wrinkling, filth, smoke and a world of other invisible toxins. Today particularly, stress is on the increase, getting a substantial effect on most people’s life. And as such, normally takes a amazing toll on the body which is very much reflected in the face. If the consumer is looking to enhance their beauty they have to take special care of it and there is a compendium of products that can be provided into their regime–each of which contains the appropriate essential oil(s) to fulfill their purpose.

People products are located in the forms of cleansers, steams, exfoliants, masques, toners, floral h2os, moisturizers, bath oils, therapeutic massage oils, and more. When these pure essential oils are inserted into these mediums (provider oils, waxes, sea salt, lotions, floral waters, butters, cleaning soaps, and many others.) the essential oils penetrate to the dermal layer of the pores and skin in which new cells are increasing. And based on which essential oil is used in which software, their assorted characteristics will both motivate and regenerate skin cells, reduce bacterial and fungal bacterial infections including zits and other connected skin problems, soothe sensitive, sensitive, infected skin, promote the launch and removing of metabolic squander products, and produce healthful skin cells temporarily adhering to solar harm, burn offs, wrinkles or healing of wounds. Includeitionally, these essential oils contain plant “hormones” that aid harmony and ease hormonally related skin problems. When incorporated into a bath or massage, or via inhalation, these essential oils may be of aid in the reduction of muscle mass pain, menstruation, lung congestion, insomnia, fever, problems, infections, indigestion, constipation, etc.

Odor and the psyche also is nothing at all new. The manipulating of fragrance to have an effect on the emotions dates back to the ancients and today is no different. In accordance to a 1992 issue of the British Magazine of Occupational Treatment, it explains the likely of aromatherapy to “promote health and well-being”. In medical center environments, individuals receive aid through massage, inhalation, baths, compresses, lotions and lotions. According to the magazine’s complete list of potential employs, aromatherapy can diminish stress, sedate, relieve depression, invigorate, promote job and notifyness, stimulate sensory recognition, aid interaction and conversation, deal with particular health care problems and provide pain relief.

Scent is an integral part of culture. Towards the time we get up we’re accustomed to bathing or showering with a scented body soap or gel, a fragranced shampoo and/or conditioner, adopted by a scented deodorant and then maybe by a scented soon after-shave, perfume or cologne. Our cleansing gives are laden with scent to make our apparel, our dishes and our houses smell fresh and clean. We buy scented candles, incense, oil lamps and potpourris that we may be surrounded by aromas. Yet—these are probably ALL artificial in nature.

“Pure” essential oils are extracted right from the plant, whereby any allergic reactions usually associated with fragrance are virtually non-existent. It is the “synthetic” fragrances that create many problems. With the increase of synthetic chemicals, and the larger power of these fragrances, the U.S. Meal and Drug Management quotes that four,000 different chemicals are at present used in fragrances–most of which are in perfumes and colognes and is on the increase. The problem is that through the inhalation of “synthetics”—many suffer a wide range of physical issues from sinus pain to anaphylactic surprise and seizures. This fact on your own should be cause sufficient to educate people in the direction of the incorporation of “pure essential oils” over synthetics–especially if they could make their own candy scented body and skin care products as well as their own therapeutic concoctions.

NOTE: Make sure you be assured that there is MUCH ADULTERATION out there because of to a general absence of education and learning coupled with greed as to essential oils as opposed to the synthetic fragrance oils–and which is why it is doubly important that YOU, John & Jane-Q-Community turn into knowledgeable of these important distinctions.

So that the novice will not be confused or confused as to how aromatherapy works–here is an easy to imagine, easy to recognize case in point of how these pure healing oils get into the blood-stream–do their thing–and get out. We all know how good garlic is for the body–curing a compendium of ills. Just take a clove of garlic, minimize it in fifty percent and rub the soles of your ft a couple of times. Set your socks and sneakers on and go about your business. In about 3 several hours you can style it. That is it. When you bathe, your body’s pores open up to receive these healing oils, as does your body respond appropriately through massage or through inhalation. Scientific studies with brain wave frequency has demonstrated that smelling Lavender improves the alpha waves in the back of the head, which are associated with rest. The fragrance of Jasmine increases beta waves in the front of the head, which is associated with a more alert condition.

Aromatherapy is sweeping the world like wildfire and as we experience through this enlightening article; if the reader thinks that this healing skill is one thing that they needs to incorporate into their lives as well as that of others; we hugely advise you consider this street.

There has been a lot of data handed on to you so far and before you view the essential oil list, the purpose of this article is to share with its visitors that they or their people or attendees may find aromatherapy to allay their respective problems, and that they absolutely can–and never need pay mega-bucks once again for these therapeutic and unique plannings.

The following is but a smattering of the most frequently used essential oils and some of their numerous uses. Observe: These oils are advisable for exterior use only.

• LAVENDER for stress, muscle pain, headaches, helps prevent scarring, extend marks and has a resetation for slowing wrinkles, etc.

• ORANGE for high blood pressure, managing flu, colds, congestion and for killing fleas…

• ROSE GERANIUM for eliminating irritation, infection, eczema, acne, burn damage, scarring, stretch marks, law blood pressure, etc.

• PEPPERMINT for headaches, muscle spasms, inflammation, indigestion, nausea, congestion, etc.

• ROSEMARY for memory, poor movement, low blood pressure, sore muscle tissues, rheumatism, cellulite, etc. (And-balding. However, you’ve got to have a little life still left up there.)

• EUCALYPTUS for sinus & throat infection, fever, flu, herpes, acne, boils, insect little bites, lice, herpes, vapor rubs, aftershaves, colognes, etc.

• LEMON oil for viral & bacterial infections, hypertension, water retention, fat gain, bruises, increasing general well-being, etc.

• TEA TREE oil for insect bites, cuts, sunburn, shingles, candida, diaper rash, earaches, acne, paper cuts, head lice, abrasions, scalds, herpes lesions, ringworm, athlete’s foot, boils, eczema, and much, much more.

SAFETY: Overexposure to essential oils, either through the skin or by nose, can lead to nausea, headache, skin irritation, emotional unease, or an overall “spaced out” emotion. Becoming some fresh air aids you to overcome these symptoms.

Just to show you how easy recipes can be–here are some illustrations:

For countless numbers of a long time the ancients set elaborate rituals that combine scorching and cold baths, ointments and aromatic massages.

THERAPEUTIC BATH SALTS 1 cup Lifeless Sea Salt (course or good grind).

Add twenty five-35 drops of essential oil or oils depending upon what therapeutic oils you have decided on for what illness. If you have chosen a blend you need to consider that each oil has a high-be aware, centre-note or foundation note which is the evaporation time; so the end scent may exchange from what you smell throughout preparation.

1 tablespoon ‘Turkey Pink’ oil which is water-soluble. Nearly all oils float, but not this one. As an alternative it’s going to marry with the bath water and soothe and moisturize your body.

If you decide on to coloration your salts use a couple of drops of meal-risk-free food coloring until the wished color is obtained.

If you choose to make a fine grind all you need to do is put the salts in your blender and blend. It’ll not likely hurt your blender marginally and I favor to grind before I add the other substances.

Combine something well and package. Be sure to use a fairly, wide-mouthed container and then package accordingly. Remember–presentation is as important as is the creation itself.

Dependent how much water is in the tub–add 1/2 to 1 cup per bath. As soon as combined in the bath, the salt will melt, the color will dissipate, the ‘Turkey Red’ oil will soothe and moisturize, and the essential oils will penetrate your body inside of minutes. Additionally, by the very inhalation of the chosen oil(s) and the fragrance, it will either relax your or invigorate you. This application is remarkable because your skin is the biggest organ of your body.

SALT SCRUB:

For individuals who prefer showers, these are great exfoliants. (Will not use on the face).

To 1 cup of fine Dead Sea salt add 25-35 drops of essential(s) and enough carrier oil (Safflower, Grapeseed, Olive, Turkey Red, etc.) to entirely moisten the salt. You never want it too dry and you don’t want it too runny. Rub on to loosen all those useless cells and invigorate the new ones, then clean off.

SUGAR SCRUB:

Taking the earlier mentioned recipe, as an alternative of salt use uncooked sugar. We use turbinado.

HEALING MASSAGE AND BATH OIL:

To sixteen ounces of carrier oil (Turkey Red, Candy Almond, Grapeseed, etc.) add about one hundred sixty to twenty0 drops (total) of essential oil or oils. This equates to 16-20 drops per ounce. Shake well and let the oils marry right away. For a bath oil use approximately 1/4 cup of oil. The carrier oils may be mixed and matched.

NEVER PAY MEGA-BUCKS AGAIN!

As we hope you have discovered, most of these natural, healing and therapeutic creations are very basic to make for you and your family members and friends–and they make cool items too.

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