#and sometimes the resulting clusterfuck makes it look like no one cared. but they did

[kagoutiss]

ive been gathering sources on loz development for a while now and i want to finish writing an essay at some point on. basically Why I Think Loz Is The Way It Is, but in the mean time i wanna drop one of my favorite articles here related to zelda development & writing, which is this WIRED interview with a staff member named Yoshiaki Koizumi, who i wish more people knew about. and it’s not like a huge revelation or anything and Koizumi isnt the only person on the team who has ever cared about the games, but i think his work & commentary on the series helps add some context a lot of people are looking for, and at some point i might compile a larger list of interesting articles to check out. but this is a good one lol

[relaxxattack]

idk if you care about postcanon much but am i the only one that things that like....the base concepts from the epilogues couldve ended up being really good if they just. stuck to that, and maybe did away from ult selves???

like, in my mind the idea of post canon collapse and specifically dirks response to that was a very clever and in character concept and we'll never see what it couldve been with a little focus

ouurrrghhh the epilogues are so like. yes they Could Have been good; the idea of resolving wtf happened with lord english and vriska is GOOD. but the execution (and everything else) is just.... absolute Hell

the end of homestuck was, as everyone knows, kind of rushed because hussie was so burnt out, and as a result theres a lot of things that had Obvious unfinished bits. like, jade taking on the suffering of the retcon timeline is literally never addressed? jakes self esteem mental breakdown thingy is never talked out? dirk doesnt process his self hatred verbally? terezi doesnt get closure about vriska? dave never gets to actually come out to his friends despite really importantly and sweetly building up to it for like 947538 acts? karkat and kanaya dont get to fully explore that whole saving their race thing? kanaya and rose's relationship in general felt like they didn't get the closure they deserved after act six ...

homestuck was a story about characters talking things out with each other (sometimes way too much), and thats what made it earnest and sweet.

that was missing from the end of the story, instead getting replaced with a Big Epic Battle and some endscenes. and yes, the credits imply that things went happily, but like, they don't actually give Emotional Closure on those issues because the characters didn't get to talk them out the way they always have.

the epilogues in my opinion should've picked up where homestuck originally left off. OR, if they REALLY wanted to keep their earth C horrible political soap opera angst next gen clusterfuck, they could have at least kept adding "YEARS IN THE PAST, BUT NOT MANY..." chapters to re-address any of those left off plotlines.

like, yeah, homestuck was Good, and yes, i cried at the end. but they had a chance with the epilogues to go back and undo the mistakes of an author who was too tired to really help the characters reach their full potential, and instead they bashed every single character and made them into bitchy plot-drivers to create angst without personality. (like, FUCK can we talk about how jane and dirk's epilogue characterization goes against their entire character arcs? about how roxy's gender thing kind of spits in the face of all her obvious transfemme coding from hs proper and also makes dirk out to look like a dick for no reason?? can we talk about how jade dave and karkat all get reduced to only their love lives instead of any of their actual character struggles?? but that's another conversation)

conclusion: epilogues bad. they had some good concepts yes. commander karkat also fucks. but the epilogues just don't feel like homestuck. they aren't fun like homestuck and they don't scratch that magical itch homestuck does where it weirdly warps around through time to answer every question in a neat little bow. intead they just make more problems and more questions, forever.

[thegrapeandthefig]

The Mushroom Discourse

This is what I get for having stupid questions. Before I jump into the clusterfuck this post is going to be, let me just explain how I got there in the first place: It's fall and mushrooms are just *everywhere* currently and it came to make me wonder about the phallic shape some of them have and how curious it was that this trait hadn't been used by the Ancients in some way.

And this simple observation led me down a deep rabbithole, because clearly no one gives a fuck about the history of mushrooms in the ancient world, but everybody cares about psychoactive shrooms. As a result of that, there's very little material about mushrooms in a typical ancient Greek's life, but A LOT of speculative material from a particular side of academia that is, for the most part, not really taken seriously by most scholars.

If this is so fringe, then why mention it at all? Well, because, like with other questionable content *cough cough Robert Graves cough*, I see it being taken by pagans as fact and not being critical about it. I could be writing an actual useful post but here I am, I guess.

The Shroom Theory

What I jokingly call the "shroom theory" refers to the idea held by a handful of scholars, that the secret of the Ancient Mysteries are psychoactive mushrooms.  Initially, what sparked the idea is an interpretation of the Pharsalos stele, sometimes called “The Exaltation of the Flower”, dated somewhere between 470 and 460 BC. 

When the stele was discovered in 1863, scholars have interpreted the two women as being Persephone and Demeter holding flowers (poppies or roses). Recently, the interpretation of those two women being Demeter and Persephone has been re-evalued and it's more likely that the stele represents mortal women, not goddesses.

In 1911, Rufus B. Richardson was the first to suggest that those looked like mushrooms, without making any further comment. It is only in 1955 that writer Robert Graves suggested the use of mushrooms for their entheogenic properties as part of the Eleusinian mysteries. As I've stated in a post earlier this week, Graves' hypothesis know little popularity amongst historians. For the most part, this trend checks out when looking at the scholars who did stand by this theory: ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, psychedelics researcher Giorgio Samorini, ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, chemist Albert Hofmann... The only actual classicist still alive today to support this theory is Carl A. P. Ruck.

Carl Ruck: a look into the theories

In all honesty, the summary of the idea he shares with Wasson is basically, and I quote "entheogens were the origin of religion". I think it's important to point this out. Wasson and Ruck especially, do not just think that entheogens have something to do with greek Religion particularly, they think religious experience at its core was created from the hallucinogenic properties of mushrooms. And so, in Ruck's bibliography, you will see him go over the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Dionysiac Mysteries, Mithriasm, Renaissance art, and the fucking forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden because at this point why the fuck not, I guess. 

If there were any kind of credibility to his theories, it's definitely where he lost it. Even in his more recent articles, like the one from 2016, there are so many mistakes and jumps to conclusion that you do wonder if he wrote it high, because it sure looks like it. For example, when mentionning restina (the Greek wine with pine resin, that I have written about in the past), he completely fails to mention pine resin at all. Instead, the citation goes this way:

"Since the alcohol produced by natural fermentation is limited to around 13%, after which concentration the aqueous environment becomes too inhospitable for continued growth of the fermenting yeasts, the toxicity of the wine was due to these fortifying herbal additives. These included even deadly poisons like hemlock in sub-lethal dosages and venom milked from serpents. This tradition survives in the modern Greek folk wine of retsina and in the demotic naming of the drink not ‘wine’ ([w]oínos), but the ‘mix’ (krasi)."

That is an extremely misleading statement. Because Ruck fails at giving a proper description of what retsina is, you are led to believe retsina is composed of either a "fortifying herbal additive" or "deadly poisons". Except, retsina is no stronger than a regular wine, and pine resin isn't a dangerous substance.

This is a detail, but it shows how Ruck words his work in a way that voluntarily omits information to serve his argumentation.  To conclude this long rant, I will only add that his bibliography is also concerning, as he obviously doesn't have a lot of authors to choose from to support his theories, and so, he has the tendency to either cite himself, or himself and his co-authors.

Last words This is not to say that psychoactives do not or did not have any place in ancient societies, or even ancient religions. There might be a layer of truth somewhere in all this, but Ruck et al. go too far in their speculations. We simply do not have enough evidence to make claims of this nature. Don’t just believe them blindy. Keep in mind that I’ve summarized a lot, there’s much more that is just so far-fetched that it’s just ???

If you want to read Ruck’s works and judge for yourself: 

R. Gordon Wasson, S. Kramrish, J. Ott, C. A. P. Ruck, Persephone's Quest : Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, 1986

C. A. P Ruck,  Mushroom Sacraments in the Cults of Early Europe in: NeuroQuantology, 2016

[malachi-walker]

Catra’s Combat Style

You know, I’ve seen some people say that Catra has plot armor and shouldn’t have been able to win that fight against Hordak when he had a gun that leveled buildings and she was on the defensive before that amazing suckerpunch, but Catra has never been a powerhouse of raw destructive power.

The reason why she is such a dangerous combatant, the reason why she wins or least fights to a draw people like She-ra and Hordak who are way stronger than her is because she is insanely agile, can take a beating (remember when Adora slammed her into a mountain so hard it cracked and she was bouncing around again two seconds later) but above all else… She’s smart. Cunning, even.

She knows better than to go head to head with someone like Hordak, particularly when he’s firing off his gun all over the place. Instead she waits until the right moment, when there’s a break in his concentration, and then she closes the distance and goes right for the thing that’ll do the most damage in the least amount of time: his power supply. After making sure she destroyed the weapon that was his major advantage.

That’s not plot armor, guys: that’s just good tactics. The same quality that had the Horde winning under Catra’s command until her guilt/sanity slippage lead to spreading their forces too thin. And although that was a giant fuck up on her part, all of history’s best tacticians have had some screw ups, sometimes spectacular career-ending screw ups, but it still doesn’t change the fact that they were otherwise damn good at what they did. (For examples, just look at the absolute clusterfuck that was the Battle of Teutoburg Forest or the Battle of Cannae, both of which involved smaller or less well trained forces absolutely curb stomping the Romans at the height of military power, because they were lead by generals who knew how to combat the Roman battle strategies and use them to their own advantage.)

Catra’s a good tactician. She knows how to play to her own strengths, and more importantly, she knows how to neutralize her opponent’s. That’s why she wins against severely overpowered enemies. And that makes perfect sense considering she’s been spending her entire life fighting back against people who were either bigger or more powerful than her.

That’s not plot armor. That’s consistent storytelling.

Personal Hordak opinions under the cut. Please don’t click if you know you’ll get mad.

And if I’m being perfectly honest? I don’t care that Hordak got humiliated. I don’t care that he lost out on a chance to maim or murder a young woman that his corrupt dictatorial system chewed up and spat out as a better fighter than he is. In fact, I find that kind of poetic.

Frankly I have seen nothing up to this point that indicates that Hordak was ever a good general or strategist. Despite having numerous technical advantages, he was stalled against the Rebellion for nearly two decades and didn’t even get much done when the alliance dissolved. Yes, he’s got a big fancy gun that can do a lot of damage and he’s got armor that lets him tank a building falling on him. But that’s it. And without access to his tech or an army of clone brothers to throw into a meat grinder he doesn’t know what to do. Once you take away his toys, he’s screwed, because that’s what happens when you pool all your resources into one skill.

And last but not least: he has committed multiple planetary genocides in a fully sane state of mind and had continued to show pride for it, even in his “humanizing” moments. Catra attempted to destroy the world after a three season suicidal breakdown and she’s unforgivable. Meanwhile, Hordak has been responsible for wiping out billions if not trillions of lives as part of his day job, but people still try to woobify and forgive him for that because of one relationship (note: this is not me calling anyone who likes Entrapdak wrong or bad. I’m just pointing out that the cuteness of their relationship doesn’t absolve Hordak of his many sins any more than her relationship with Adora absolves Catra) and a sob story.

So no, I’m not sorry that Hordak didn’t get a chance to play the big badass serious villain. Far as I’m concerned, he’s a bad general and he’s skating by on a freudian excuse of a sob story (though I still think his character has potential), and after everything he’s done he deserved to have it finally bite him in the ass, especially at the hands of someone who ranks among those who suffered most as a result of his actions and his decision to replicate the cycle of abuse.

I could watch this all day.

Shout out to @cactihaveflowerstoo​​ for letting me use their gifs. They had no input on the content of this post and are a lovely person overall. Go check them out for more awesome gifs.

[come-into-the-fallout]

Hi there!! congrats on the new blog! For the FO4 companions, can I request what flusters them the most? like something the SS does, either on purpose or innocently haha

(Hihi! Thank you very much for the request! I'll do my best!)

Companions React to being flustered/embarrassed

Cait

People genuinely caring about Cait is something she isn't very used to. Raiders are usually harsh and rude, but Sole isn't, at least not to her. Whenever Sole gives her the slightest compliment or bit of praise she's redder than her own hair and trying not to let the 'tough persona' fall.

Curie

We all know that Curie has her own little quirk when it comes to her comments (Like talking about spending too much time of the terminal when people don't really do that anymore). Sole can't help but at least chuckle whenever she says things like this, ultimately confusing Curie. She asks what's so funny about the situation, prompting Sole to explain that things were a little different than how she remembers and that they find her naiveness a little amusing. Curie would feel slightly embarrassed, but would laugh along with them a bit still.

Codsworth

No one said having a large metal sphere for a body was always easy. Sometimes Codsworth would get himself stuck in tighter spaces while trailing behind Sole. What would follow is Sole trying their hardest (but failing) to contain their laughter while they figured out how to get him unstuck. Being a Mr. Handy meant being the pride of General Atomics, yet here he was. Lodged in some area while he waited to be pried out.

Danse

Power armor was no doubt a very useful asset to have. Although everything has to have it's flaw. Sometimes his power armor wouldn't properly let him out, especially when the core ran out of juice. Resulting in him wiggling about in attempts to break free. Sole would stand there for a minute, waiting to see if he was able to successfully get out of the grasps of his own armor. Most of the time he couldn't, leaving Sole to fidget with the back and get him out themselves. Getting stuck in a humiliating situation was shameful enough to Danse, but it was worse when someone was watching and had to be your savior. It would be worse if Sole decided to tease him about it.

Deacon

The most obvious and noticable trait of Deacon's is to shape the truth. And he does it well... Unless there's a witness who likes to point out otherwise. If Sole ever decided to call out Deacon on his attempt to twist a story he'll never show it, but it does leave him feeling a bit humiliated. Nothing worse than getting called out on your own bullshit.

MacCready

Being a good shot was something MacCready tended to brag about. He wasn't wrong but still... There would obviously be some mess ups from time to time. He despised those. And he despised people seeing those. On rare occasions Sole would see him miss a shot that literally no one should be able to miss. They'd turn to him briefly, brow raised before laughing and returning to combat. Yep. He absolutely hated those moments with all his soul.

Hancock

There is no such thing as a full moment when you're traveling with Hancock. The man always finds himself in the most peculiar situations when Soles not looking. He can't even answer how so don't ask. Of course not everyday is like that for the rest of the people Sole knows so the stories of Hancock's mishaps are quite the tell to tale to others. Hancock can only chuckle at the memories of the events and shake his head with a tinge of embarrassment residing in his chest.

Dogmeat

Can....Can dogs get flustered?

Nick

Nick's not prone to let himself be embarrassed. He's aware that everyone trips up now and again, so why bother worrying about it. But he can get flustered still. Being a synth, he usually faces prejudice for just existing. So whenever Sole goes out of their way to express their kindness towards him he counts himself a bit lucky he's incapable of blushing. He doesn't know if he'll ever get used to them being so damned friendly towards him.

Piper

The reporter has a tendency to run her mouth and doesn't have really any plans to stop until she's finished with what she has to say. It's not at all rare to witness her going a bit too fast. Stumbling over her own words, forcing herself to catch a break before she can continue. If Sole didn't laugh so damn hard maybe she could continue sooner and get over with the embarrassment easier.

Preston

Working around a settlement was probably the thing that Preston did the most. He had an unconscious habit to bite of more than he could chew half the time though. Noticably when he had to carry numerous things at once that involved one or two trips back. In his head, the more you carry the quicker it is. And while yes, this logic is true, he doesn't consider that he has a limit on how much he could carry. Sole and a variety of other settlers has watched him fall over from being encumbered more times than one would be able to count. Making a huge scene did make Preston's face burn a bit, but he opted to laugh it off with everyone else. Still, quite awkward to experience.

X6-88

Being a courser meant being precise, efficient, and agile at all times in all situations. So why in all of hell does X6 find himself tripping on air on several occasions? Why is he even stumbling at all? Sole finds the irony to be entertaining, much to X6's dismay. He gets up and either turns to them to make a comment on how he doesn't find the situation funny, or simply walks away while masking his shame.

Strong

Strong's a super mutant. It's quite common sense they're not at all the brightest. Which is why Strong often spews out lines of complete naiveness at the most basic of sarcasm and metaphors. Sometimes Sole busts out with laughter at the comments. Which confuses Strong even more, yelling about how he can't find what's so funny. Strong dislikes being confused.

Ada

Ada's programing is fairly stable. She's able to simulate emotions even! It does mess up a bit though, usually her pathfinding. Leaving her to sit in the same place for a couple of minutes. Turning in numerous directions as she attempts to figure things out. The bizarreness of the sight leaves Sole hunched over and unable to suppress their laughing. Ada asks if they're alright and for them to give them a moment. It is probably the most shameful situation she could be put in.

Gage

The raider tries to think things through properly. But whatever plan he constructs isn't always the smartest. Resulting in a clusterfuck of chaos and Sole wondering how this even happened in the first place. After the mess has settled down they'd confront Gage on what happened back there and he'd attempt to explain his thought process. Sole proceeds to slap their palm to their face whilst letting out a fit of giggles and teasing remarks. Gage would then tell them to shut up and get over it, turning to walk off in attempts to ignore their laughing.

Longfellow

With old age came the fact that you're memory starts to become worse and worse. And Longfellow was no exception. He just didn't expect to forget basic words so often more than he forgets his past experiences in his life. He would often sit with Sole, attempting to pass his knowledge to them through their conversations. And he would often lose track of the words he planned to say, then proceeding to describe said word with a bunch of other words in hopes Sole would remember it more than he could. They'd remind him but it was hard when you were practically choking on your own laughter. He'd sit there, gazing off in another direction while they got it out of their system. Curse his memory.

(DLC companions need more attention in reactions I swear. This was more embarrassing situations for them than getting flustered but I did my best!)

(Also it's 5AM. This took 3 hours. How.)

[thosecoldestgoodbyes]

[for @timetobeaspy​]

Of all the places in the world, he did not want to be here. Given the choice, he’d be taking down personnel of more important means in a country far away from anyone he knew. But of course, his limited connections had brought him stateside. Thankfully, he wasn’t anywhere that he knew Curt to be, in fact on the opposite coast, which brought both relief and dull heartache to him.

The last year had been hard for Owen to say the very least. Anyone he ever once called a friend thought him to be dead, and he was sure to keep it that way. As a result, his days had been spent alone, dodging anyone he thought resembled Chimera members and making his way gathering information to rid himself of the organization that had turned their back on him.

He’d been careful. All this time, he’d been travelling under a false identity, not opting to wear a disguise but still covering his accent and name as best he could. He laid low and only conversed with others when necessary. The loneliness was draining, and in times when the silence grew gnawing, Owen thought about his last interaction with Curt. He’d kissed him. He had held him close, begged him to stay hidden, to not save him...yet again. Sometimes he wondered how Curt was getting along. Sometimes he thought about finding him again. He always talked himself out of it though. It was safer for Curt to believe he was dead. Gone were the days of intentionally putting him in danger. 

While Owen still harbored some anger for his ex partner- who could be rid of such harsh emotions without much more closure than the clusterfuck of their last conversation- he didn’t view Curt as the villain he thought of him as for four years. He also didn’t quite see him as the man he’d fallen in love with either. One thing was certain though- he missed that man like crazy.

The daydream of Curt shattered when he heard clattering coming from inside the building he’d been staking out. He hoped his contact hadn’t gotten himself into trouble as he groaned and made his way through the doors, pulling his gun from his waistband and looking for the source of the noise.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Help Wanted (final chapter)

Thank you so much to everyone whose enjoyed this fic! Writing it has been a real joy and a relief right now, especial thanks to @minky-for-short​ and @spiky-lesbian​ my lovely beta readers!

Please consider leaving a comment on Ao3 if you’ve enjoyed this fic!

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

----

Fjord and Caduceus get the happy ending they deserve

WARNING: This chapter deals with physical domestic violence, it doesn't happen on page but the results are seen. Also, conversations around internalised homophobia

----

“Are you really going to let him leave without saying goodbye?”

It was all Yasha had said to her that evening, since she’d come storming in after her disastrous ‘conversation’ with Fjord. Not at first, of course, both of her girlfriends knew better tha to approach her when she was in a mood like that, giving her space to burn her anger away. Jester, of course, had immediately crept onto the sofa as soon as the coast was clear, wrapping her soft arms around her and not asking for an explanation, just holding.

Yasha didn’t speak her love through touch as much as Jester, instead there was a cup of warm tea in front of her all of a sudden and the strong, sure presence behind her he knew so well, a hand on her shoulder.

And those words, in her quiet, level voice.

Jester looked like she wanted to say more, that expression on her face like she was just full of words and was about to burst, until Yasha laid a gentle hand on top of her head and suggested that maybe she could go and help her make dinner. The tiefling bit her lip and flared her nostrils but eventually nodded and hopped over the back of the sofa, Yasha turning after her and leaving Beau with those words.

“Are you really going to let him leave without saying goodbye?”

Not admonishing or judging, there was none of that in her tone, as steady and sure as the sight of home from a long distance. It was just another moment where Beau felt her girlfriends knew her better than she knew herself, like they saw what was under the anger at the surface, the anger that many would assume was all there was to her. So many that sometimes Beau would believe it.

Because of course she wasn’t going to let her best friend go for gods knew how long without a goodbye. She couldn’t have their last interaction be them screaming at each other on a street corner, throwing words like weapons. No matter how she felt about his choices, he was still her friend. They’d been through far too much to leave it like that.

It had just taken her up until now to realise it.

Sighing, Beau unfolded herself and stood up, heading for the door, “I’m going to go to Fjord’s.”

Relief flooded Jester’s expression and Yasha gave a small nod, “We’ll have dinner ready for when you come back.”

Beau gave them both a rueful smile, taking a moment to admire the simple domesticity of them with Jester chopping carrots and Yasha stirring a pot on the stove. She couldn’t believe this was her life now, after so much time believing she was undeserving of anything half as lovely. A square window of warm yellow light on a dark street, always there for her.

And she would repay them by continuing to get better.

Beau shouldered on her jacket and slipped her feet into her comfy walking trainers, already planning out what she was going to say, how she was going to rescue the clusterfuck that had been their last interaction. At least it wasn’t the first time they’d had to do this, they were practically experts at navigating their way back to friendship after both letting their anger do the speaking for them.

She was a second from putting her hand on the door when someone knocked on it.

Frowning, Beau opened the door and sucked in a sharp breath.

Fjord stood on their doormat, panting heavily like he’d run there. A gym bag sat at his feet, haphazardly stuffed and hastily zipped. He was shivering in just a t-shirt and jeans, the cold night air turning his joints a harsh, dark green, arms wrapped around himself protectively and his eyes red and raw.

And an angry swelling around one streaming eye.

“I…” his voice was raspy, like he was struggling to get the words out, “Um, I broke up with Avantika. Can I sleep on your couch tonight?”

Fury flooded Beau within an instant, her jaw clenching hard and her hands turning into white knuckled fists. Adrenaline snapped hard in her chest, making her voice a low growl, “I’m going to kill her. I’m going to fucking kill her.”

Fjord closed his eyes, shrinking down, looking so completely defeated, like a man with water up to his jawline and rising, “Beau...please, I...I just need a friend right now. Please?”

Beau found it hard to control her emotions, as a rule, particularly negative ones. They seemed to take root in her, in her muscles and chest and nerves, and take over until it was so hard to care about anything else.

But the one thing Beau did care about more than anything was the people she loved.

So she inhaled deeply, feeling it fill her up, as the monks had taught her. And as she exhaled, her jaw unclenched, her fingers spread and palms opened.

“Of course,” she reached out and put her hand on Fjord’s arm, gently bringing him inside, “Jester can have a look at that eye and we’ll make a bed up for you. Stay as long as you like, man, seriously.”

Fjord’s lower lip trembled and he bit down on it, hard, just nodding.

“Hey,” Beau murmured quietly, dropping her voice before folding him into the attentions of her family, the wide eyes and gasps and immediate action, the realities of his healing, “You’re safe here. Okay?”

Fjord gave a shuddery gasp and in it Beau could hear every time he’d let something slip as a teenager about the realities of the Asylum, every disastrous break up with women he couldn’t force himself to love, every impossible rule he’d been given to live by, every nightmare and flinch away from a raised voice, every scar he’d been given by so many people. She heard a lifetime of hurt start to shift like an earthquake starting to stir.

“Okay,” Fjord breathed, tears starting to fall.

Caduceus stayed in bed far past his alarm, lying on his side and listening to it’s dull buzz in the predawn gloom. He’d been awake long before it sounded but now it had, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

All he could do was replay the kiss over and over in his mind, the last moments he would ever spend with Fjord. He frantically searched for something, anything he could have done to change the outcome, changing his words and actions over in his mind like puzzle pieces he couldn’t make fit. Was there any way he could have kept Fjord close to him, taken the fear out of his eyes, any way he could have turned him around in the darkness?

He knew it would do no good but he couldn’t stop his mind chewing it over, punishing himself for every choice and everything he could have done differently.

It was as if the clocks had turned back on him and he was the firbolg he’d been two years and change ago. The one with weights on his wrists and ankles keeping him pinned to his too small bed, lost and depressed and scared to go out into the loud, foreign city he didn’t know, endlessly punishing himself for leaving too soon, for leaving too late, for leaving full stop. Falling before he’d even taken his first step, building walls around himself when he’d worked so hard to be free.

He couldn’t bear that again. So Caduceus did what he had done two years ago and touched the earring that looped through his right ear. He’d always played with his ears as a child, running his fingers over their soft edges to calm himself whenever he was anxious. Apparently he’d done it as a baby too, when he’d been born with the largest set of ears any of his family had ever seen on a newborn, so the story went. So when he’d been thinking where to set his mark of the Wildmother, the choice had seemed obvious.

He ran his thumb over the carved, polished oak, following the whorl of the wood and took a deep breath.

“Please give me strength,” he murmured, “I’m going to need you to get through today. And...wherever he is, please protect him. Please make sure he’s okay.”

And then he got up, far from ready to face the space in the cafe beside him that would always feel empty, but at least able to try.

He tried to focus on simple things, once the door to the cafe had closed behind him, letting out it’s usual cheery ring.

Take off your coat. Hang it up. Take out your apron. Put it on, double knotted at the front. Take the first chair down. Then the next. Then the next.

Simple instructions for an exhausted brain and an aching heart. And it worked, for a time. It stopped him thinking about how Fjord would be coming up the street right now, how the bell would seem extra bright when he pushed it back. How he would call out a friendly hello and probably use some slang term Caduceus wouldn’t understand but he would put together from context. How he’d be wearing shorts, even in the cold and Cad would tease him for it and Fjord would jokingly call him his grandmother in return. How he’d help him take the chairs down, going twice as fast as he did, asking when Cad would be putting the croissants in the oven because it just so happened he’d missed breakfast that morning, just a coincidence. How he’d call him Caddy and be the only person who ever had.

Maybe it wasn’t working as well as he’d thought.

Fortunately, the ringing of the bell above the door gave him something else to think about.

“I’m sorry, we’re not quite open yet,” Cad straightened up, “But if you’d like to take a seat, I can get the kettle on…”

“I think I’d like that,” Fjord answered, his voice small and hopeful, “If you had the time.”

Caduceus froze, eyes widening, wondering if he was still back in his bed, listening to the alarm and had finally drifted to sleep. But he never would have imagined Fjord like this, looking so tired and hollowed out, with a fading, sickly yellow shadow over one eye and a fresh scab on his lip.

The marks were all he could see, hand lifting to touch them, heal them without question but he forced himself to stop, “Who…”

Shame darkened Fjord’s expression and he hunched his shoulders, “Um...Avantika…”

Cad’s jaw dropped and he felt a pit of disbelief open up inside him, quickly filled by an anger he’d only felt rarely but when he did, it was like a forest bursting into flames, “What?”

Fjord winced, “Don’t worry, I’m done with her. I mean it, for good. She’s leaving anyway and...and I just want to let it go, okay?”

Cad quelled his anger, tucking it away to examine later, “So...she’s going and you’re…”

Fjord smiled then, even as it clearly tugged painfully on his lip, “I’m staying.”

Cad blinked, shaking his head slowly, wanting to believe it so desperately but terrified of being hurt again, pulled in two directions at once, “You’re staying? For good?”

Fjord nodded, “With Beau and Jester and Yasha until I can sort something more permanent than their couch. I mean, I still need to get stuff from...from her place and...I-I’ve never really put down roots anywhere so…”

He even sounded different. His accent had shifted slightly, like a layer of it had been pulled away. A lot of him seemed to have been pulled away, actually, pared back and stripped down and he was trying to figure out what was left.

“I’d like to work here again, if you’d have me,” Fjord asked shyly, “I mean, I’d completely understand if you weren’t comfortable with that. After...after everything.”

Yes, Cad wanted to answer wholeheartedly but he made himself stop.

“After what, Fjord?” he said instead, “I think we need to talk about it. It doesn’t have to be right now but we need to.”

Fjord shook his head, “No. I mean, thank you but no. You’re right, we need to talk about it and we need to talk about it now. I’ve waited far too long already.”

Cad nodded and gestured to the table he stood by. None of the tables or chairs in the cafe matched, as he’d sourced them from half a hundred different thrift stores and flea markets and scrap yards. This one was black wrought iron with a mosaiced top, flowers done in squares of leaded glass. It was a table made for partners, for third or fourth dates, only big enough for two people to sit close with not an inch of spare space.

Fjord sat across from him willingly. He’d looked like he’d slept in the clothes he was wearing and judging by the room, they were probably Yasha’s. Cad wondered if the ladies even knew he was here, as early as it was.

“I, um…” Fjord cleared his throat, “I want to apologise for the kiss last night. Not that I did it, just the way I reacted. Well...maybe how I did it too. That wasn’t how I’d want our first kiss to go. What I mean is, I want to kiss you, Caduceus. I...I like you. In that way.”

Cad felt something come to life in his chest, a fluttering that settled in his throat as his heart began to pound, “I like you in that way too, Fjord. I have for a while.”

Fjord’s golden eyes widened, “Really? I...I hoped, I thought I saw it sometimes but I didn’t know if I was seeing what I wanted to see.”

“Neither did I,” Cad smiled kindly.

That made him smile again, that shy hesitant smile. He took a deep breath, fixing his gaze on the table top while he marshalled his thoughts, like he was having to rearrange everything with this new information.

“Um...it might seem stupid but knowing I...I can feel this way, I’ve kind of only known it since yesterday. Well, not really, it’s always kind of been there but up until now I tried to hide it, even from myself. It just wasn’t something I could be, it wasn’t allowed in the world I lived in until I met you,” Fjord swallowed hard, “In the orphanage, I would have been beaten up for it. In high school I would have been even more rejected than I already was, on Vandran’s ship, I...I would have lost the only man who I could call a father. But I didn’t realise how much it was hurting me, how...how it was like an infection? The more I tried to hide this part of me, the sicker I got, the more twisted, the more sad.”

Cad only nodded and gazed at him, trying to be a constant, sure presence.

“But...I’m done feeling sick,” Fjord took a shaky breath, “I’m done hiding it. I’m...I’m gay,” his voice broke almost immediatley and his face crumbled, tears flooding into his eyes, “Gods, I’m sorry…”

Cad leaned forward, voice soft, “Oh, Fjord, it’s okay. I promise it’s okay...can I touch you?”

Fjord nodded wordlessly as his shoulders shook, gripping back just as tight when Cad wound their fingers together and held fast.

“It’s okay,” Cad stroked his thumb across his knuckles, feeling the scars and callus there, “Fjord, it’s okay to feel grief, it’s okay to feel lost and confused and happy, all of these things come with realisations like this. But I need you to understand you’ve just done a wonderful, brave, beautiful thing and I am so very proud of you.”

Fjord didn’t fight his tears, they fell on their joined hands as he gasped out, “But...I don’t know when I’ll feel comfortable kissing you, I don’t know when I’ll be able to say ‘I love you’, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have sex with you...Cad, I can’t ask you to take all this on.”

“Yes, you can,” Caduceus said, firmly, “You can, Fjord, because you are worthy of love. You are worthy of patience and care and kindness. You can always ask. And I am saying yes.”

Fjord gave a sodden, shaky gasp and collapsed fully into his tears, pitching forward, stumbling until Caduceus caught him. He caught him and he held on tight, as strong as any anchor had ever held a ship, folding him into his arms and letting him sob into his chest. With the scent of fresh breeze and dew heavy flowers around them, Caduceus held the man he loved and who loved him back and let him cry. As he would through so many hard days and difficult times.

Eventually, Fjord’s tears ran out. In Cad’s arms he felt so small, like he’d shrunk down without the weight of the poison he’d purged. He let him pull away for air, holding his face in his hands and stroking his damp cheeks so gently.

He wasn’t looking at the mask of a man who had believed all the lies he’d been given and swallowed the hate he’d been shown for long, long years. But nor was he looking at the man who’d made him laugh so much, who’d been occupying his cafe for the last months, the one who had reached out to the Wildmother and Caduceus with hope and desperation in his eyes.

Caduceus was looking at someone new, someone halfway between those two and someone entirely himself. He was looking at Fjord at the very start of a long and difficult journey. He was looking at the man he now realised the Wildmother had put him on this earth to love.

They kissed, a soft and gentle kiss, shy and sweet as honey. And this time, Fjord smiled from ear to ear.

It would be hard for both of them at times. They would both struggle and cry and need different things at different times. But it would always wash up better than when they started, they would grow together stronger.

And both of them knew the light would always be left on.

A year was a long damn time to keep a secret. Beau was pretty pleased with herself for managing it.

She would hide her knowing grins behind her coffee cup as they’d all sit together in the Blooming Grove and someone would bring up how strange it was that Caduceus hadn’t found someone for all the time he’d been in the city. She’d feel a burst of pride when one of them would comment on how much happier Fjord was looking, how his tusks were coming in, how therapy seemed to be doing him a world of good, if they really were just going to ignore the fact that his accent had totally changed. She’d snort down laughter whenever Caleb would cluelessly comment that Fjord and Caduceus had been in the back room an awful long time for guys who were just supposed to be getting sugar and why did that take two people in the first place anyway?

Because she’d spent nearly her whole life looking out for her best friend, ever since they were in high school. There was no way she was going to miss how Fjord would put his hand in places it had no rightful reason to be during work hours, when he thought the counter was hiding them better than it was and Cad happened to be passing by. She wasn’t going to miss how, whenever busy days or stormy weather would have Fjord paled and shaking, Caduceus would be the person he’d turn to. She wasn’t going to miss the extra long lunch breaks in the back room or how late Fjord would come home some nights, after cleaning up apparently took hours longer than expected.

But she said nothing, shrugging innocently whenever asked, all while watching through the corner of her eye as Fjord stole a kiss to the back of Cad’s hand behind the coffee machine.

There were no secrets with family after all.

[22drunkb]

Some thoughts about Bran Stark

Okay, so--not to butt in and trample around, as someone who never read the books and stopped watching the show sometime around season 3--but the thing is, I feel like the ending has finally allowed me to understand exactly what it was that turned me off Game of Thrones, which I never quite did put my finger on till now, and I want to at least write it out once. (Ironically, this has made me like the story better, though not its execution.) To attempt a spoiler-free summary: I’m going to be thinking about the thematic structure of the story and why that should make certain things make sense, and how they came to not make sense anyway.

The thing is, thematically and structurally, Bran ending up king makes absolute and perfect sense. It’s just that they didn’t write the story in line with the structure they were given. The problem with the show is--and always has been--that the writers don’t actually understand what “subverting fantasy tropes” means or could look like, and they don’t care about it in any meaningful way. What they care about is doing big, bloodthirsty, quasi-historical fiction with a lot of nudity. (See: the Civil War show they wanted to do.) And Bran’s whole situation only makes sense (or would have made sense, if executed properly) in the context of high fantasy.

Keeping in mind that complicating high fantasy tropes was an important part of what Martin reportedly set out to do, each of the Stark kids (the story’s backbone) had a clear thematic purpose. Each of them a) was a take on a trope, b) had a clear character trajectory that would allow that take on the trope to be developed while functioning as a working character arc, and c) through that trope-inflected arc, could allow the audience a window into specific part of the society (i.e., they supported the worldbuilding), which in turn allowed the further development of these takes on the tropes by giving them specific, appropriate settings and side characters to bounce off of. This is to say that GRRM did a good job setting himself up to do “trope subversion” in a way that would comment on the things he wanted to comment on, function as part of a larger world and story, and help support a plot that would be in harmony with all of the above. This is one very solid approach to character design. To be clear, despite this paragraph being about characters, I’m talking about themes--it has nothing to do with their personalities or whatever. This is about what ideas come together in the concept of each character and therefore how each character’s story develops the ideas.

A good reason to approach character design in this way is if you have set out to subvert, complicate, comment on, or otherwise mess with genre tropes. To do so, the characters have to themselves be tropes, or at least be designed in close relation to tropes, in order to derange them. So like, just to take the simplest two examples:

Robb: The Prince. Firstborn, shining favorite, destined to inherit. Set up (normally) to avenge his father, restore order to his kingdom, and go home. Bungles it entirely by seeking true love; meanwhile, in the course of his story we learn about the regional politics of the North, the politics of alliances by marriage and kinship, etc. Narratively, his failure allows the entire political and military situation to get infinitely more clusterfucked. All of those pieces fit together well thematically.

What is being subverted here is the prince’s marital destiny. We have loads of fairy and fantasy stories about prince and prince-types for whom pursuing true love just happens to be convenient (they can marry whoever they want), or whose pursuits of love are rescued by fate (his true love turns out to be his promised princess all along! She’s secretly a magical being of some sort, and that trumps betrothal agreements! The one he was originally supposed to marry died or decided to marry someone else! etc). This is totally kosher in traditional high fantasy (or in the folklore that the genre draws on) because it’s an expression of the harmony of the story-world; the characters go through their trials and adventures and end with a resolution in the form of marriage that announces that all is as it should be. What it looks like GRRM set out to do is ask what happens when people still follow those rules and the rules aren’t in harmony with the world they live in.

In particular, the entire thing points square at the fact that princes are political animals. It seems to me that Robb’s story was meant to say, well, actually, sometimes people with power just have to marry people they don’t love as a condition of being powerful (which comes up constantly throughout the whole show). After Ned and Catlyn, basically every “true love” couple is dysfunctional, incestuous (Cersei and Jaime, Daenerys and John), and/or gets narratively stomped on, as far as I’m aware. (Did Sam and Gilly make it? If so, I think that’s allowed because they’re commoners.) Ironically, Ned and Catlyn set Robb up to fuck up by modeling one of these convenient political-and-true-love marriages. He thought he was supposed to be allowed to have it all. He was wrong. The end. Next. But the show seemed to expect me to feel that the outcome was unjust and tragique for Their Love, when all that was unjust and tragique about it was that Robb was idiot enough to bring the consequences of his actions on his entire group of followers. That is the point. That his status has to constrain his behavior, and when it doesn’t it has consequences for others. The status itself is what’s being problematized.

Jon: The Secret Heir. Second-oldest, bastard-born, treated with contempt. In relation to the family, literally a supplementary person. Set up (normally) to be rediscovered as the true heir to the throne and end up as king (moving from the margins to the center; getting the acceptance he couldn’t have as a bastard). The twist is the “true” dynasty he represents is composed of inbred lunatics, and his potential access to the throne goes not only via that bloodline but via repeating their tradition of incest. Dovetailing nicely with that, he was set up from the start as less wanting access to the kinship system than wanting to be free of it, so instead of becoming king by virtue of being a Targaryen, he stops the reinstatement of the Targaryen line altogether. Meanwhile, for most of his story, as a “supplementary person” he gives the audience a view into a lot of corners of Westeros that are concerned with what is excluded from Westeros: the Night’s Watch, the Wildlings, and indeed the White Walkers.

Again, all of that lines up together well. It’s part of the larger derailment of the blood-as-destiny notion of a “true” king, heir, ruling dynasty, etc. (I think the main reason GRRM goes so hard on the incest, not to mention having not one but THREE bastard characters, is in service of this; it also means Jon’s character arc of wanting out of the bloodline system fits into the thematic structure. See? Everything ties together neatly.) But I mean. We all know the character was not executed well.

And so on. I could do the same for Sansa and all the rest of them. (Sansa and Arya are probably the two most successful executions of what their character designs set them up to do; it’s not a coincidence those are the characters whose stories people seem to be happiest with.) But the thing is, a lot of these tropes, while certainly common in high fantasy, are also found in lots of other genres. Chosen Ones and Unexpectedly Eligible Chosen Ones and Princesses and Warrior Maidens (whether in literal forms or not) show up all over the place. The fact that these aren’t strictly fantasy archetypes perhaps means they were less prone to being mishandled. Bran, though. Bran belongs firmly and only in high fantasy. He is, literally, supposed to be a magic priest-king. A take on the Fisher King, even (I’ll explain about that later). And his story was weighted toward the end because of what it seems like Martin was trying to do more broadly, meaning it was much more on the showrunners to do it right.

High fantasy is always trying in some way to engage with ~the numinous~, which is to say the sort of never-explainable mystery and magic of the world. Magic in high fantasy is usually closely tied to deep time, the land, nature, or the metaphysical. Ancient beings, lost secrets, nature spirits, hidden realms, that sort of thing. It’s part of the genre’s inheritance from the mythology and folklore it’s all based on, which had a much more enchanted, vitalist view of the world than we generally do now. (In a way, that’s the purpose for high fantasy’s existence as a modern genre--keeping some access to that.) What Martin set the whole story up to do was question the tropes that often go along with the genre by making the setting one in which almost everybody has forgotten about all the magic and mystical knowledge that is in their history. Westeros is an extreme, historicized take on the Shire, basically. (”English pastoralism you say? I’ll see you and raise you the English Civil War” -- George R.R. Martin, presumably.) They have no notion of what’s really out there and what’s really possible in the world, and have quite comfortably isolated themselves in a situation where they need not remember. As a result, the social institutions that were developed long ago in relation to the ancient magics and knowledges become, instead, just social norms that can be manipulated, distorted, and played out in a much more historical-fiction kind of fashion, which gives Martin lots of room to point out that, say, ironclad patriarchal bloodlines cause problems. (That is, if you take away any magical justification, by virtue of connection to the land or the spirit realm or what have you, for the right to rule, then you stop having to have your One True Kings also be good people. It allows him to pull apart the different pieces of that trope and suggest that their being connected in the first place is questionable. Which it is! He’s right and he should say it!)

But the magic has to come back at some point, or else it’s really not high fantasy. And it seems like what he wanted to do was have all these elements from outside Westeros--the White Walkers, that god whose name I’ve forgotten, and Daenerys with her dragons--converge on it such that the characters would have to go back to their deep history and call those things back up in order to deal with the real world they live in (instead of the wealthy political bubble of all the scheming) and thus get to a point where they could actually change their system for the better. You can think of it as a very elaborate deus ex machina in a way, except the deus ex machina isn’t Daenerys showing up with dragons to fight the White Walkers or Arya having trained (again, outside Westeros, for the record) just the right way for killing the Night King. It’s all of these external forces forcing the characters in Westeros to get their fucking shit together. Otherwise there’s really no resolution to the war, in a high fantasy version of the story. It’s just historical fiction with some weird bells and whistles. Without a need to go back and figure out whatever the First Men were up to, there’s no incentive to go back to the numinous. That he intended for sure that some version of a return of the numinous end up being a big part of the climax is reinforced for me by the fact that the Starks--again, the backbone of the whole story--are set up as being unusually in touch with this mystic/magical heritage (the old gods, the crypt, the godswood) and unusually faithful to the traditional ways. They were introduced that way for a reason.

So where does Bran come in. The thing is that Bran is literally named after the mythic founding king of Westeros, Bran the Builder. The other thing is that both of those Brans are clearly named after Bran the Blessed, a literal mythic god-king from Welsh mythology whose name means crow (but who for various reasons also often gets associated with ravens, which in turn are commonly associated with transcendent knowledge, magic, etc; it’s a long story). So you have a younger member of the story’s key Stark family, already closer to the sources of magic and mystery than most. You name him after the founder of Westeros who lived in a time of magic, traffic with other beings, and great building works and other inherited accomplishments for which the associated knowledge has since been lost, etc. You have him gain mystical abilities to transfer his consciousness to other bodies, or through time (absolutely typical Mystic Powers). You have him even take on a special priestly status passed down from the era of magic by leaving Westeros to hang out with other kinds of magical beings, which means he is now explicitly named both Bran and Raven.

OBVIOUSLY this kid is supposed to be king. He’s going to restore the realm to a situation in which the ruler, the realm, its various life forces and nature spirits, and the metaphysical are all connected to one another and, in a sense, present in the same body (which is the kind of genuine mythological shit high fantasy is always drawing on). But the writers then just sat around and did nothing with him for years on end until whoops hey he’s king now. Of course no one thinks it makes any sense!! It’s fucking malpractice!!!!

If you go to the GOT Wiki and just read Bran’s page, everything makes sense and lines up well in terms of a list of events. (Although it’s really notable how short the entry from s8 is, and how everything it lists is things that happen to Bran, pretty much.) There is a progression that makes sense. But from what I understand--this was certainly the situation when I stopped watching--nothing was ever done to suggest that any of this mattered. The Three-Eyed Raven, the forest spirits, the magics and so on--it was treated at most as a backstory machine. It had no connection to or effect on the rest of the story, so far as I can tell. The fact that none of this played into the battle with the White Walkers at all is flatly insane. The thing I most remember people saying about Bran after that episode wasn’t even “Why didn’t he use X or Y that he learned in the forest?” but “Why was he there?” which just goes to show how completely and utterly bungled this entire piece of the narrative was. Like, if your high fantasy story is making its audience ask “Why would the story put the one character with the greatest knowledge of ancient magics and powers at the scene of a battle against an all-but-forgotten ancient threat,” then I’m sorry, it has gone fully off the rails, and not just in its most recent season. That’s not subversion, it’s just fully dropping the ball.

You know what would make sense as a lead-in to Bran becoming king? Oh, his performing some spectacular feat of insight, magic, strategy, or all three at the battle that no one else could have pulled off because no one else had his background or powers. Even after years of screwing this part of the story over, that could at least have bothered to make a case for why any of it mattered to the rest of the story. It would not have been very subversive, but when you’ve fucked up this royally you don’t get to be precious about your radikal innovative approach, Davids. I can’t believe Peter Dinklage had to sit there and make a bullshit speech about storytelling, when a decently-handled story would have made it seem natural and self-evident by then (you can still have surprises along the way!) that Bran should be king.

Anyway, in closing: part of the reason I checked out when I did was that I felt like they weren’t doing the things I thought they should do as the story developed. Genuinely, one key part of that was that they seemed to be doing absolutely nothing with Bran, which was baffling to me because it seemed obvious to me he was set up to be an incredibly important character. At the time, I thought they were going somewhere close to this with Bran but just taking way too long at it for some reason. What’s now clear is that the showrunners didn’t understand what they should have been doing with him. (Everybody who was taken aback by this outcome is not a fool for not seeing this. They were, quite reasonably, following the narrative cues they were given along the way, all of which said “Bran doesn’t matter.” It’s maybe clearer to me because I stopped watching.) And what that now makes clear, in my opinion, is that they never really understood what Martin was trying to do by “subverting fantasy tropes”; that in fact they didn’t really understand the genre, let alone what subverting it entailed. Which is exactly what bothered me about it even years after I stopped watching, but couldn’t put my finger on--until, ironically, they proved me right about Bran.

[mksc77]

30 for Christmas prompts, thanks

Thanks so much for the ask, anon, sorry this took so long!  I’ve tweaked canon a little bit for Chain Reaction :)

30--”Ugh, I’ve caught a cold.”

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Sharon sat at the kitchen table with a stack of Christmas cards to mail out. Christmastime often made her miss Emily's and Ricky's younger days, but she had to admit that writing a short message and signing cards was much less of a hassle than getting them ready for pictures and dealing with them moaning and groaning about it. She got a tissue from the Kleenex box beside her and blew her nose, grateful when the tea kettle on the stove whistled. Andy had just had a cold and had whined incessantly about it for over a week, but it wasn't nearly as bad as his antics had made it out to be. After adding honey, cinnamon, and a little lemon juice to her steaming mug, she got back to her Christmas cards.

A few minutes later, Ricky came in. He and Andy had been tasked with buying the Christmas tree that morning. Sharon sipped her tea. "Where's Andy?"

"He's going next door to ask John to help us bring in the tree."

Sharon narrowed her eyes. "Why will that require three of you—never mind. I don't want to know."

Ricky shrugged. "You'll find out soon enough."

It wasn't long before the three men were dragging in the tree. And kept dragging several moments after a normal-sized tree should've been through the door. "Andy, what the hell?!" Sharon couldn't help exclaiming. She followed them into the living room, her eyes widening as the tree nearly reached the fifteen-foot ceiling. "Andy!"

Her pine needle-covered husband looked over at her as he started unwrapping the string from around the tree, all innocence. "What?"

"This is enormous!"

"Yeah, well, we thought-"

"Uh, you need to work on your first-person pronouns, Andy. There was no we," Ricky interrupted. "I told you Mom was going to lose her mind."

"Fine. I thought last year's tree looked tiny in here-"

"It was ten feet!" Sharon moved closer to the tree. This one had to be at least twelve or thirteen. The lowest branches were as high as her knees.

Rusty came in from his bedroom, where he'd been studying for upcoming exams all morning. "What is all the commotion?!...Holy crap, that's a big ass tree."

Sharon nodded at Andy. "Clark Griswold here thought last year's was too small."

Rusty looked over at her when she sneezed. "Oh, god, Mom, are you sick? Stay the hell away from me, I can't get sick before finals!"

Andy glanced at her. "Yeah, you don't look so great."

"Ugh, I've caught a cold." Sharon gave Andy a pointed look. "Your cold."

Andy grinned. "Hey, is it my fault you couldn't stop kissing me?"

Sharon nodded. "It's absolutely your fault for being so damn cute." She looped her arm through his and tilted her chin up to kiss him.

"It's a good thing we haven't eaten lunch yet," Ricky muttered. "It would've just come right back up."

"It's like they try to gross us out," Rusty agreed. "Just be glad you don't have to be here much when this place is a clusterfuck of mistletoe. Andy puts it everywhere. The tradition is to kiss under the mistletoe, not make out, but try telling them that."

Ricky grimaced. "You have my sympathies."

Sharon rolled her eyes and started back to the kitchen. "I'll cook lunch," Andy offered. He looked back at Ricky and Rusty. "After we make a pit stop under the mistletoe."

"I never thought I'd say this, but I can't wait to get back to studying," Rusty grumbled. "Next year, I'm hiding that damn mistletoe."

Sharon sat back down at the kitchen table and continued with her Christmas cards while Andy pulled ingredients out of the refrigerator. "I'll make the Margaret Flynn cure-all," he promised, still sounding a little congested, himself. "But I'm not so sure you can pin this on me. If you had what I had, you wouldn't be writing Christmas cards right now. You'd be in bed."

Sharon rolled her eyes. "It's the same thing, Andy, I'm just not the same baby that you are about a little cold."

Andy looked wounded. "It was not a little cold!"

Sharon placed her pen on the table and sipped her tea. The sniffles and mistletoe reminded her of a certain Christmas a few years ago. Rusty had recently pointed out that she and Andy were "dating," and neither of them were sure how they felt about that revelation. The "non-dates" had slowed down, and they weren't sure how to act around each other. After a couple of weeks of thinking about it, Sharon was coming around to the idea, but Andy had taken a couple of steps back. Rusty was also experiencing rejection, and they had commiserated about it after they'd finally solved the case. Rusty didn't know the specifics with Andy, but she'd been frustrated enough to generally vent a little that evening over burgers. She also felt a little dejected that he was back to calling her 'Sharon,' but she wasn't about to bring that up. She'd never thought much about the possibility, but hearing him referring to her as 'Mom' in front of Jeff, the guy he liked, had sounded so natural and warmed her heart. And, god, Jack had been such an ass, basically guilting her about Christmas through the damn interview camera. That had just been the beginning of another headache, and she hadn't been happy with Emily and Ricky for keeping that from her. Especially since they were able to leave town soon after but left Rusty in the middle of the aftermath.

That evening, Nicole and Dean dropped their boys off to spend the night, and Emily, Emmett, and Marie came over for dinner. While they were eating, Marie dropped her fork on the floor and looked over the side of the high chair. "Fuck!" Sharon's eyes widened as the other adults tried not to laugh, and she was soon trying to suppress laughter herself.

Six-year-old Logan and four-year-old Alex were thankfully engaged in their own conversation and didn't notice, but it didn't get past anyone else. The table exploded with laughter, and Emmett finally composed himself first. "Honey, that's not a nice word, so don't say it again, okay?"

Marie gave him a disbelieving look and glanced around the table until her eyes landed on Sharon, then pointed a chubby finger in her direction. "Gammy said it!"

Mocking looks of reproach from the other adults were immediately directed at Sharon. "She's repeating everything we say, now, you have to be careful," Andy chided, in a perfect imitation of Sharon to the rest of them. She'd been getting onto everyone else about cussing in front of Marie for months now.

"This is too funny," Ricky added. "Mom breaking any kind of rule is hilarious enough, but it's the best when she breaks her own."

Emily laughed. "When Marie repeats what she heard her dear Gammy say and gets kicked out of daycare, clear your schedule, Mom, because you'll have a new job."

Sharon rolled her eyes, remembering exactly when she'd gotten busted. "This wouldn't be an issue if someone would put the toilet seat back down every now and then," she muttered in Andy's direction.

Once dinner was over and the kitchen was clean, Sharon started her kids' Christmas playlist while the kids and grandkids poked through her ornament collection and started hanging them on the tree. She would definitely be going behind them and rearranging many of them later, but they were having a good time. The younger ones were, anyway, the older ones weren't so keen on this task. The Glee soundtrack had provided some good, upbeat, kid-pleasing songs, and they bounced around to We Need a Little Christmas as they strategically placed their ornaments. Well, Marie was doing a little more of just watching the others than decorating, which she needed help with, but it worked. Sharon missed Ricky's comment that it didn't feel like Christmas without 'Mom being an ornament Nazi,' but she did notice when she wasn't satisfied with one of his ornament placements. "No, not there, Ricky."

Not surprised, Ricky pointed his finger torward her. "There. Now it's Christmas."

Ignoring him, Sharon lay against Andy on the couch, humming softly as he draped a blanket over her and kissed her forehead. "You don't feel warm, so you definitely can't blame me for this," he informed her. "It can't be the same thing."

Sharon rolled her eyes. "You never had a fever, either." Like a child, he'd claimed that her hand had to be wrong sometimes and insisted on using the thermometer, although it had rendered the same result.

"No, I think we just need a new thermometer," Andy insisted. He stroked his fingers through her hair. "This song reminds me of the Santa murders from a few years ago. But I like this version of it better, I've gotta admit." He'd never wanted to hear Johnny Mathis again after watching the security tape from the flash mob so many times. "Except I was the one with the cold then."

Sharon nodded. "I was just thinking about that earlier. And then you passed it to me after an impromptu rendezvous under the mistletoe after the makeshift Christmas party."

Andy shrugged. "Or, you could've just gotten it from being in close quarters during the case. Provenza caught it from me, too, but I swear it had nothing to do with mistletoe."

Sharon laughed. "There's an image I could've gone without. But I like my version of how I caught it from you better, at least I got a kiss out of it. A good one, might I add."

December 24, 2014

After the case was wrapped up, Sharon was in her office, going over some paperwork before heading home. It was hard to concentrate, both from the sadness of not being at home with her children and from the recent revelation of Provenza's new relationship. She smiled, despite herself, remembering how she'd had to forcefully gesture for her team of elite detectives to leave the murder room after Patrice showed up like they were a bunch of gossip-hungry teenagers. She looked up when she heard a knock at her door and invited Andy inside. He told her a little bit about the end of the case and paused. "You know, if you can't make it home for the holidays, maybe home can come to you." Confused, she got up and followed him to the break room. He opened the door for her. "Merry Christmas."

Sharon's eyes lit up when the first thing she noticed was her old Christmas village. It wasn't arranged exactly like she usually did it, but it was close enough. She did notice a small green gift box adorned with holly berries with her name on it tucked neatly in the snow, and her curiosity got the best of her. She smiled when she opened the gift and found a small angel. The mystery of the sender was solved when Andy appeared beside her. "Merry Christmas!"

Sharon turned and gently tugged at his tie, wishing it was suspenders instead, but anyway, then quickly pulled her hand back before anyone else saw. "Andy! Thank you. You didn't need to get me anything."

"Yeah, well, I saw it and couldn't help but think of you."

They shared a long gaze and might've kissed right then and there if everyone else hadn't been around, but Emily and Rusty, seeming to be in the midst of a heated discussion in the hall, caught her eye. All three of her children had appeared to be up to something, a fact she'd picked up on despite the fact that she regrettably hadn't spent much time with them in the last couple of days. "Excuse me." She still wasn't convinced that they weren't hiding something from her, and she felt like she’d gotten so close to breaking Rusty, but Emily's announcement about being a soloist the next year was exciting enough for her to push it to the back of her mind for the time being and enjoy the rest of the party.

A little while later, everything was cleaned up, and everyone was leaving. After promising her children that she wasn't far behind them, Sharon went to her office to gather the remaining paperwork from the case and straighten up her office from the last couple of days of chaos. The Christmas decorations would stay up for a while. She was never in a hurry for Christmas to be over, especially now that she'd worked for most of Christmas, and the Catholic tradition of leaving Christmas decor up until Epiphany was one she didn't complain about. She looked around the murder room for a few moments before going to the break room to make sure none of her dishes or anything else from the condo had been left behind. She was surprised when Andy was still there. "Hey, I thought you were gone."

Andy shrugged. "I'm not seeing Nicole and her family until tomorrow, and Provenza and I usually spend Christmas Eve together when we don't have to work. He's with Patrice now, so I'm not exactly in a huge hurry to get home."

Sharon gave him a sad smile. "I'm glad you'll get to see some of your family tomorrow. You should probably get some rest, anyway, you've sounded a little congested since yesterday." Things had been different between them for the last couple of weeks, but she could sense a little bit of normalcy creeping back. She noticed the mistletoe above them, and an idea came to her. She didn't know if it was Christmas or what, but she'd been toying with the idea of moving past the friendship stage with Andy since the night they went to The Nutcracker. She just wasn't sure how Andy felt about it, but the electricity that seemed to be between them felt right. "Thanks again for my gift," she added, hoping to pick up where they left off at the party. The long gaze returned, and Sharon's heart fluttered when Andy's face started to move closer to hers. He seemed to think better of it and leaned back again, and her heart sank just as quickly.

"I, uh, don't want to give you my cold," Andy explained, unable to make himself look away from her.

Sharon looked up in a pointed gesture. "Well, you know how I am about rules, and I'm even more strict about Christmas ones. You're going to have to do better than that."

Andy's hesitation must have been more about not knowing whether she wanted to than about him not wanting to, because he didn't waste any time. "Well, I am a diligent rule-follower."

Sharon forced herself not to roll her eyes and choked down a disbelieving laugh as she cautiously slipped her arms around his waist and closed the space between them. She liked the closeness and complied as Andy tilted her chin up and kissed her. It was slow and tender, but not without passion, and she felt stirrings in her that she hadn't felt in a while. Her mind raced with the complications that came along with a relationship with her subordinate, but she forced herself to push those thoughts aside and enjoy the ride for now.

A complaint from Ricky pulled Sharon from her thoughts. "I still can't believe you threw away my pinecone elves. They were the essence of Christmas."

Sharon rolled her eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you that they were falling apart?"

"A lot more times than you should have to tell an adult," Rusty answered. "Don't worry, Ricky, Harry, Sam, Franklin, Scotty, and Twinkles are in pinecone heaven, I'm sure."

Even after Ricky and Andy had surrounded the tree with ornaments as far up as they could reach, the top half was still massively empty. "A stepstool should be required for the angel at the top, not to decorate the top half," Sharon said. "I refuse to have a half-empty tree, and how are we supposed to get the lights around the whole thing?" They had a pretty large stepstool, but she wasn't sure that it would suffice.

"We'll figure it out," Andy assured her.

True to his word, the tree was fully decorated some time later. Sharon had to admit that she liked the large tree, but Andy didn't need to know that just yet. Emily and Emmett left with a nearly-asleep Marie soon after, and Logan and Alex were starting to look drowsy, too. "All right, boys, I think it's about bedtime," Sharon announced. They didn't protest, and Sharon guided four-year-old Alex to the bathroom to help him with his bath and get him ready for bed. Once both boys were in their pajamas and tucked in, Sharon and Andy curled up in the recliner in the living room. With Rusty intending to get up early to study the next morning and Ricky having an early flight, they both said goodnight and went to their bedrooms earlier than normal. With a piano version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing playing in the background, Sharon lay on Andy's shoulder and enjoyed the Christmas monstrosity in front of them. The pine scent was strong and filled the room, even wafting into nearby parts of the house. After another mug of tea laced with cold-soothing ingredients her grandmother had sworn by and a dose of NyQuil, Sharon was ready for bed, herself.

Andy wasn't tired yet, but he got in bed and read while Sharon was still in the bathroom. When she crawled into bed beside him in one of her warmer nightgowns, it was more obvious that she wasn't feeling well without her makeup. Andy softly kissed her and absently ran his fingers through her hair as she lay on his shoulder. "Tell me when you want me to turn off the lamp."

"S'fine," Sharon mumbled, the cold medicine clearly kicking in. She usually didn't like for anyone to be touching her while she slept at night, much to Andy's dismay, but she was asleep against him just a couple of minutes later. Andy straightened the covers over her and kissed the top of her head. "I love you."

[placesthatchangedpeople]

Montana Academy testimony

This testimony was found on Reddit. All rights go to the author.

I’m not going to go into the hell that was SUWS Carolina [wilderness], as that is a whole different can of worms, and the boarding school was far more sinister. I arrived at Montana Academy a few weeks after turning 17. I was absolutely terrified after what I had been through spending 9 weeks living in the woods, but I was at least happy that I could use a toilet and sleep in a bed. [To get rid of any confusion later on, I was born male. At this point in my life I was still living as a boy, and trying very hard to convince myself I wanted to stay that way.] When I got to campus I was greeted by my team leaders and paraded through the lunch room as the entire student body looked at me [as all new students are]. I’m still convinced this is a power play devised by the creators of the school to subtly break your guard down. I said goodbye to my mom, grandmother, and my uncle, and began the worst period of my life.

So the Staff of our team was our team leader Dave, and boy, Dave was a piece of shit. He was the type of guy who would get a shit eating grin whenever he could punish you. You could fucking tell he got a semi off of it, and we would all talk about how much we hated him behind his back. I remember the ear to ear smile he got on his face as my eyes welled up with tears when he told me I couldn’t spend Christmas away from the ranch with my mom, because I was short by one signature on my checklist. That’s Dave in a nutshell. The weekend team leader was Sam and I think he was even worse, because he had the amazing ability to make you feel safe and loved one week, and then emotionally beat you to a pulp the next. For instance... There was one weekend where Sam and I had a long emotional talk where I opened up to him about how much my dad meant to me and how I would give anything to have him back. He gave me the biggest hug and told me he was here for me. The week after was rough and I was so excited to talk to him again, but when his shift started, he sat down and immediately screamed at me in front of everybody for not sitting down fast enough at the table, and put me on privilege freeze for a week. This would happen all the time. It was like he got off on building up our trust and hopes and then he would have a bad week at home and treat us like absolute shit.

I started with every intention of bettering myself. I had fully subscribed to the belief that I was broken as a result of “immaturity”, and the Founder of M.A.'s book was so fond of claiming. Despite coming from a broken home, childhood neglect, death of a parent, sexual abuse, trauma etc, it was MY fault that I ended up at M.A. I was ready to do my part. Unfortunately I wasn’t perfect as the staff expected me to be. I tried my ass off to do chores to the militaristic standards that they upheld, but I often fell short. Perhaps I missed a nearly microscopic hair in a bathtub. Sometimes, my sheets were a little crooked. And for each little transgression there was a severe consequence. If you made more than one mistake on your chores within a week, you could kiss all of your privileges goodbye. No phone call to your mom. No movie night. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you’re locked in an environment where you have maybe one tiny thing to look forward to a week, losing it because of something that is often not your fault is the most heart wrenching feeling in the world. Sometimes the punishments would go beyond cruel and just become abusive. About 5 weeks into my stay, I made the grave mistake of telling my team leader Dave that I had finished my assignment because I was having a really horrible day and just wanted to continue reading my book. Unfortunately he decided to double check. When he found out I wasn’t being honest, he assigned me to my first drudgery. That weekend I spent 6 hours outside in 20 degree weather scraping ice off of every single pathway on the entire ranch campus. I asked once if I could stop because my hands were rubbed raw and starting to bleed, and my weekend team leader Sam refused. I shouldn’t have lied, he insisted. By the end of the night, my hands were covered in blisters and I had learned my place. At this point I was broken, or so I thought. I didn’t know it could get worse.

As for therapy… My 1st therapist was useless. She was liable to cry about tragedies that had occurred during her own life. Ironically she was as cold as ice when it came to my issues. When it came to the issue of me being sexually assaulted in the 1st grade, she breezed right past it, and moved on to other issues. When I told her that I had always wished I had been been born a girl, she didn’t seem to give the slightest semblance of a fuck. When I would bring up the death of my father, or my mother’s alcoholism, she would go into how her brother died and start crying, and the next thing I knew I would be awkwardly wondering if I should console her. The biggest breakthrough in our therapy was when she came to the confident conclusion that the root of all my issues was that I was… wait for it… ADDICTED TO VIDEO GAMES… Every therapy session turned into her trying to convince me that I never wanted to play video games again, despite the fact I was drinking heavily and using substances before entering wilderness. After I finally promised her I would never touch another game again, we finally moved on to trying to process the loss of my father, and even that was a useless endeavor.

Group therapy was a clusterfuck. I don’t exactly know a better way to describe it than to call it “conflict therapy”. Seeing as how the entire M.A. operation was based around punishing students for their mistakes it was only natural to pit them against each other. The students of M.A. were each separated into 7 teams of roughly 10 students each. I spent 90% of my time with my team. They were your my friends, but I can guarantee they knew me fucking biblically. During group, it was common for one student on the team to be singled out and for every other student on the team to just fucking lay into them. It happened to everybody. We were all encouraged to tell on each other if we witnessed any rules being broken. I couldn’t trust my best friends with a secret at M.A. because the consequences were so dire. One tiny mistake could land me there for an extra year. Imagine the fucking paranoia that this causes. I was ALWAYS being watched. I began to question every single thing that I did. I began to believe the punishments I was being given were because I was useless, and because I couldn’t do anything right. After about a year I was 100% fucking brainwashed. I because some kind of M.A. Drone and I genuinely believed that I needed them to survive. It was like I was in a fucking cult, and if they had fucking cyanide in the punch I wouldn’t be writing this right now.

I think this next part was the most fucked up. This was the point where my red-pollyped festering cunt of a therapist decided to use me as an example, to teach a fucking seminar. My team was planning a father-son weekend trip. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Well, problem is, my dad’s fucking brain drowned in its own blood and so he’s in a box in my mom’s closet, so I can’t exactly take that out to Bowman lake with the boys. Luckily for me my therapist called me in and informed me that I was allowed to spend a weekend with my Uncle [who I love very much]. I was so happy, I was jumping for joy! A few weeks pass, and the father-son weekend is getting closer. My therapist calls me back in and tells me to sit down, and then informs me that she actually thinks it would be great for my “therapy” if I went with my team on the trip... I begged her to let me spend the weekend with my uncle, but she said it would also be good for the team’s therapy. So that weekend we all went to the lake. It was a really wonderful experience for everybody except for me. For the entire weekend I was alone. Some of my friends and their dads spent some time with me but I honestly wanted to be alone. Being the only kid without a fucking dad on a father-son trip is fucking humiliating beyond words. The worst part was on the last night of the weekend where the therapist held a group therapy session and the whole fucking thing was centered around me and my fucking dead dad, and all the issues that come with having a dead dad. My therapist had some really great and sensitive questions prepared... “Do you miss your dad?” “Do you feel guilty about anything?” “Why do you feel like it was your fault?” “Do you think your dad would be proud of you?” “Do you wish your dad was here?” “How did you deal with your mom falling apart?” “How do you feel that your mom is drinking again?” and the therapist just keeps pushing me and pushing me and pushing me until I’m inconsolable, and having a panic attack, and I just want her to shut the fuck up. I felt so broken, humiliated, and violated. How fucking dare this bitch of a therapist come at me with all of this heavy shit in front of people I've never met, when all she ever wants to talk about in our sessions is how much I like video games. They don’t care in these fucking places. They wanted to give these stupid fucking dads something powerful to witness so they could write a fucking Facebook post about the amazing work that's being done at MA. May they rot in hell.

Medical malpractice was also Rampant. While at M.A. I was struggling with weight and eating issues. My team “suggested” that I run a half marathon because our new team leader liked to run and they love to fucking push even the smallest beliefs and hobbies on their students. The shoes I was training in had literally no insoles. I asked for new shoes and was told to write a proposal. I wrote one and was never responded to by the treatment team [big fucking surprise]. After weeks of training we finally ran the half marathon. Halfway through, I felt a shooting pain in my foot. I told my team leader as he was not too far ahead. He didn’t give me much of a choice but to finish. For the next 6-8 weeks I asked the nurse every day if I could please go to the doctor as my foot was killing me, and nobody ever did anything about it. Finally after asking over what must have been 50 times, they agreed to let me go into town to get an x-ray. The x-ray found that I had snapped the middle metatarsal bone in my foot clean in half. So not only did M.A. make me run 6 miles with a broken foot, they made me do hard fucking labor on it for 6-8 weeks before allowing medical treatment. Care for Transgender students was disgustingly ignorant and based on lies and misinformation. Despite trying to come out as trans to my 1st M.A. therapist, it was just ignored. I tried multiple times to bring it up, but I’m now certain that my therapist didn’t know what a trans person was, and so she just thought it would be easier to switch the subject. When I moved on to the Sky House [the halfway house portion of the program] I said fuck it and just fully came out. This was met with backlash from the therapy team. Since I was at the Sky house now I had a new therapist and he had a lot of info about transitioning. Unfortunately, all of the info was fucking wrong, and he filled my head with misinformation, lies, and half-truths, in an attempt to make it sound like starting hormones was harder than getting a fucking doctorate from Harvard.

After Finally graduating M.A. I had been brainwashed into believing that getting a script for hormones was like a quest for the holy grail. I had no idea how fucking easy it actually was. I tried to live a normal life. I moved in with my aunt and uncle for a little while until I went off to college. I stayed sober for a few months, but as soon as I got to the university, things started fucking unraveling fast. I realized that I had been horribly abused and that the “therapy” I had been undergoing was nothing more than expensive babysitting. I fucking lost it I started drinking and taking any substance I could. I failed out of my school and moved back home. I drifted around for 3 years drinking, and being a disgusting and terrible person. I had to figure it all out on my own. I fucked with drugs I never should have and fell in with people I had no business being with. I drank too much, and made many regrettable decisions. But I still figured my fucking life out. I figured out that I needed to fucking get it together. I made a goal. I needed to transition. That was problem A. I got sober, went to my Nana [my hero] and found a therapist and within 2 weeks I was on hormones and began my transition, and by pure luck, I found love. It’s been a little over 4 years since I’ve gotten sober and things are far from perfect. I have severe PTSD from going to that hell of a school. I still dream about it multiple nights a week, and wake up in a fucking panic. I never leave the goddamn house because I start to panic, and I have serious trouble holding a job, so instead I work from home as a camgirl, inserting large objects into me for money. I’m lucky though that I now have my girlfriend to help me through it. Without her, I don’t know what I would do most days. Also, its really fucking great to not have to be a goddamn boy anymore. If anyone else had a similar experience [and I know others have] you’re not alone, and good luck.

[artificialqueens]

(I Can Still Recall) Our Last Summer - Chapter Seven (Group Fic) - pureCAMP

A/N - And here it is folks, the end of an era that no one cares about! The finale is upon us, and as always, I’d appreciate, you know, one nice ask *crying emoji*

Anyways, on with the 9.3k clusterfuck

Sharon had never felt more out of place in her life. The waiting room was mostly, for one, filled with elderly people, who kept to themselves until their name and number was called, when they would shuffle down the corridor and disappear into one of the many rooms. For the extreme opposite, the only young patients seemed to be children, coughing and spluttering and playing with the starkly coloured toys in the corner of the room. Sharon could tell from the decor that the clinic was expensive and high quality, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t bleak and grim at the best of times.

She tugged her coat around her body self consciously and shifted in her chair. Five minutes had been the expected wait time she had been given, and yet fifteen had passed with no mention of her name. Considering her increasingly-often need to dash to the bathroom for one reason or another, she wasn’t enjoying her time so far. And of course, on top of everything, she felt utterly exhausted.

In all honesty, she didn’t know what was about to happen. General knowledge told her she would be lying down and talking about what lay ahead of her, but she knew none of the specifics.

She really wished her friends could be with her.

Raja had wanted to come, and both her and Jinkx had begged for catch-up work so that they could miss their first two lectures to attend the appointment and then travel back, but they had been unsuccessful. Which meant - as Sharon had expected, but still foolishly hoped otherwise - she would be going in alone.

She knew her support base were thinking of her, but she really, really wished they were sat beside her. Raja would be boosting her self-esteem and Jinkx would be making her laugh, all while they rubbed her hands and soothed the churning anxiety in her mind.

Instead, she bounced her leg and hoped that would help to eradicate the nervousness.

“27, Mrs Abby Baker to see Dr Reed.” The automated voice called out.

Another white-haired woman struggled to her feet and shuffled, insanely slow, to her appointment. Sharon tried not to lose her mind and stared at the painting of a bunch of sunflowers in front of her.

Her mind had been made up; admittedly, she had made her choice the second her mom kicked her out of the house and disowned her. Raja and Jinkx warned her to think on it, just in case it was a spur of the moment, hot-headed decision, but she was sure. She still took their advice, however, and the more she dwelled on it, the more she knew she was making the right choice for her.

One way or another, she was going to have a baby.

After all, the baby didn’t ask to get mixed up in the drama and confusion of her summer. A six-week long affair and two fortnight flings had resulted - somewhere along the line - in the creation of a life that had the potential to be the best thing in Sharon’s topsy-turvy world.

Even if it wasn’t the best thing, it was pretty much the only thing she had. Sharon didn’t have a home, a penny to her name or any belongings worth keeping besides her few treasured items. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she was going to do her best to keep going.

Besides, in terms of her home life, it wasn’t like her decision mattered. Her mom would regard her as a sinner no matter what choice she made. She would still be alone, without a home or any money. 

So she was going to see if the baby was healthy. If it was, she would keep it. Then it would be off to the island to begin a new life. Sharon comforted herself with the knowledge that she would only have to go to the mainland for checkups at the doctors and some occasional shopping. Everything else she needed could be obtained from her own little paradise - the island she would finally get to call her official home.

“31, Miss Sharon Needles to see Dr Visage.”

At the sound of her own name, Sharon’s breath hitched. She took a moment to compose herself and headed down the corridor. As she walked, she prayed silently that she wouldn’t completely embarrass herself by throwing up on the doctor, or something similar.

If Dr Visage did a double take at the nervous seventeen year old walking into her room, she did it subtly enough that it put Sharon’s mind a little at ease. The doctor had a kindly face, with thick dark hair tied back and sparkling eyes that told of her good humour and warm nature. She greeted Sharon with a friendly handshake and invited her to sit and talk before beginning.

“Sorry for such a long wait,” Dr Visage apologised. “You can call me Michelle, since I’m guessing I’ll be seeing you a lot. You’re Sharon Needles, correct?”

Sharon nodded.

“And you’re seventeen years old?”

Slightly embarrassed, Sharon opened her mouth as if to defend herself, only to be cut off with a reassuring voice.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Michelle told her. “I’m not here to push any agendas or judge you. My job is to support you and keep you and your baby healthy, nothing more. Don’t worry.” She smiled. “Now, I’m just going to ask you a few questions before we get started.”

She did her best to answer honestly, and listened carefully as Michelle explained why she was asking each question and what her answers would determine. She was gently walking Sharon through the entire appointment, which she felt incredibly grateful for.

“Alright,” Michelle scanned the computer screen in front of her. “I would put you at about nine weeks pregnant. Does that seem about right to you?”

Sharon thought back to where she had been nine weeks ago. Against her will, her mind was flooded with sensations she had tried to forget - the feeling of being nestled in Justin’s arms, foolishly believing it made sense that he would protect and cherish her. She stiffened.

“Yeah. Makes sense.”

Michelle smiled sympathetically, launching into a spiel about how it was difficult to predict the exact conception and clarifying that her estimation may be out by a few weeks - which made Sharon’s stomach churn. “We can discuss when you’ll be due in a moment, but it should definitely be in April. Now, I’m just going to set this up…”

Sharon’s mind was spinning. April. In April, she was going to have a baby. All of a sudden, a random day in a random month of the year would become one of the most significant dates in her life, and yet she had no idea which it would be. That thought alone sent her reeling, and she tuned in to what Michelle was saying a few seconds too late.

“I’m sorry, it’s going to go where?”

“It feels a little weird, but it doesn’t hurt.” She was reassured, with a little laugh. “And then I’ll just use this on your stomach if you can lay down here for me…”

Simply going along with Michelle’s instructions, Sharon lay back where she was directed, trying not to squirm as her shirt was lifted and the ultrasound set up. Michelle was busying around her, plugging things in and rigging sets and adjusting screens and switches that Sharon didn’t care to look at. Everything was happening far too quickly and she couldn’t take any of it in.

All at once, the room was filled with a strange hum. A faint gurgling thump could be heard. Sharon assumed it was the machine working - although not unpleasant, it was quite loud and she couldn’t make out anything in the crackling.

“That’s the heartbeat.” Michelle told her. “Hear it?” She imitated the quiet thumping with her hand. It was needless, however, because as soon as Sharon realized, her ears had identified the beating and she was transfixed.

“It’s already got its own little heart…” She murmured. “It’s so strong already. How is it this strong already?”

Michelle smiled warmly. “Their heart and your heart are going to work together in these coming months, as you’ll discover. Would you like to take a look at your baby?”

Choked up, Sharon just nodded. A lump had risen in her throat, much different to the usual nausea she felt. It took all of her willpower to hold back her tears in order to gaze at the screen, waiting for the image to appear. Michelle seemed to be as filled with anticipation as Sharon was, fiddling with the buttons in an almost frantic manner to strengthen the resolution.

The screen flickered to life. Sharon’s willpower shattered.

It was so small, curled up like a tiny bean right in the middle. Sharon had been expected some kind of shapeless blob that would trigger nothing inside her, and she found herself confronted with otherwise. She could make out a tiny head, the shape of a body and one little arm, raised as though it was waving at her.

“Baby’s just working on getting a little prettier for you,” Michelle commented, wordlessly handing her a tissue. “Most limbs are formed and their little heart is going strong. They’re looking perfectly healthy and a very good size. For reference…”

She leaned to one side, and then presented two photographs - one of her ultrasound, swiftly printed, and one of a small, pink cherry. “This is the rough size of your baby right now.”

Sharon’s fingers closed around the pictures, the tears spilling over her cheeks. “How can I already love it so much?”

Her baby, no bigger than a cherry, was tucked up inside her at that very moment, heart beating like crazy, and Sharon knew in that moment she would protect it with her life.

“I know just how you feel.” Michelle told her. “I have two daughters of my own… it’s scary but it’s magical. Treasure it as much as you can.”

-

With the appointment out of the way, and the realization of the baby solidified in her mind, Sharon turned her attention to the next most pressing matter - money. Again, Raja had offered all kinds of loans and financial assistance to help her, but Sharon knew she couldn’t rely on her friends forever. She felt bad even taking a penny from them. She needed work.

Sometimes, when desperate, she had been able to score shifts at the taverna that Maria owned, before the band would perform. Working the bar was easy, and it was decently popular among both locals and tourists, but she wasn’t too keen on that idea. Being surrounded with alcohol and drunk people during late night shifts…

No, it didn’t really appeal. Briefly, she wondered what opportunities there were for work on the island. Most of the businesses were family-owned, family-run, passed down from generation to generation. They were lifelong trades taught by father to son and mother to daughter, long-forgotten but highly valued arts that she had no chance of learning. She could sew, yes, but that wasn’t really enough. She had no hope of breaking into any local industries.

Then it hit her.

“Nope. No way. No way, sweetheart! I can’t let you do that!”

“Please, Pat!” Sharon begged, standing her ground so the powerful little woman couldn’t push her away. “You need me, I need you. It just makes sense!”

Pat sank into her armchair, sighing defeatedly. Her fingers curled around the glass of bourbon - an offer that Sharon had politely refused - and she swirled the liquid inside, staring at Sharon through the glass rather than directly in the eyes.

“Honey, how can I let you throw away your life looking after some crazy old lady?” She asked, pursing her lips. “I know you care, bless your heart, but you have so many opportunities, just like your friends.”

Sharon shook her head. “I don’t, Pat. I wish I did. But I need this job, and you need me.”

“Sharon… why do you need this job so much?” Pat’s voice was heavy. She seemed to sense the almost solemn mood of the conversation, the gradual shift from a casual offer to a hint of desperation.

Lowering her head, Sharon swallowed and crossed one leg over the other, fidgeting uncomfortably. It felt strange to be sitting opposite the old woman without Willam slung over her lap, but that was part of her predicament in the first place. She would have to get used to it - because she wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“I think you know why.” She mumbled, and cleared her throat. “If she hasn’t told everyone out of shame and disgust, then you’ve probably already noticed.”

Sharon didn’t miss Pat’s wince. It was unsurprisingly but still hurtful that her mom had outed her business to everybody in the church and wider community. She followed Pat’s gaze, watching as she eyed Sharon’s stomach and then, for the first time, looked into her eyes.

“I have to ask-”

“I don’t know.” Sharon predicted the question before it could leave her lips. “Would you still take me on if it wasn’t his?”

Pat smiled gently. “Sweetheart, you know I don’t care about that. I just don’t want you to be trapped to some old lady, whether or not there’s a relative of mine in there.”

“Pfft,” Sharon retorted. “You’re hilarious, and you barely look older than twenty five.” At that, Pat laughed. “And I need money, first of all. Babies… babies are expensive.”

“You’re damn right. Fuck it, shut that door and make yourself comfortable. You’re hired.”

That solved two issues that had been pressing on Sharon’s mind since the appointment. From then, she fell into a comfortable, if slightly busy, routine. Each morning she rose early - most often to be sick whilst Pat, unable to bend over, perched on the edge of the bath to rub her back - and then made breakfast. Pat would then indulge in whatever she wanted to do that day, often drinking or visiting the market or just going on a short walk to the beach and back again, Sharon assisting her along the way. After lunch, another meal cooked by Sharon as she honed her skill, Pat would have a little siesta. In that time, Sharon found herself cleaning, finding the repetitive process oddly cathartic in soothing her growing anxiety. The day would finish after a late evening meal, a long chat and collapsing into bed.

It was an easy, relaxing structure to follow. It gave Sharon time to think, to focus on what she wanted, and update her friends on every little change through letters.

Pat had been asking a question for a while that Sharon didn’t want to answer. It was far too grim, too morbid for her to dwell on without getting teary. She wasn’t crying at every tiny instance, as Jinkx’s letters had been convinced she would, but it never failed to cause her eyes to grow misty.

“You need to think about it, Sharon. This won’t last forever.”

Sharon blinked and shook her head, continuing to polish the mirror. “Pat, I won’t let you keep talking like this.”

“But really!” Pat exclaimed, throwing her arms into the air. “I know we like to have a laugh, darling, but I’m ninety three years old and I’m… not in the best of health. This job isn’t a permanent fixture. Soon enough I’ll be in God’s kingdom, hopefully smiting your cow of a mother.”

Sharon giggled weakly, the joke doing little to alleviate the heavy topic. “I can’t think about that now. I have a job, an income and a baby to think about.”

Pat hummed. “I know, I know. But there must be more to life than this for you. You must have some kind of dream, some hope for something better. I’m a wealthy woman, sweetheart, I can help you, but not for much longer. Not with the way I drink, anyway.”

Shaking her head, Sharon opened her mouth to reply but was cut off. “As your boss, I demand you tell me no lies and indulge me in your biggest fantasy. If you could do anything, what would you want? Realistic or not.”

“I…” Sharon swallowed, dropping the rag and studying herself in the mirror. Her bump had grown. “I want to have my own hotel. I don’t know what I’d call it, but it would be peaceful. You don’t have to worry about anything when you’re there. If you need somewhere safe to go, you’ve got your own little pocket of paradise to go to. There’s no angry parents, you can just dance and enjoy the food and the entertainment like you’re supposed to.” Inadvertently, she balled a fist. “No one judges you for being a single mom. Nobody stares and calls you names. You get treated like a real person there.”

Pat’s expression softened. “Sweetheart-”

“It’s a pipe dream.” Sharon said abruptly, picking up the rag from the floor and viciously scrubbing at the mirror. “I’m young and I’m pregnant and I’m poor. I didn’t graduate high school. What would I know about running a business?”

The old woman shook her head. “You’re thinking too much. Who says you can’t? If you had a bunch of buildings and some money to make it into a hotel, who says you won’t be able to make some magic out of it?”

Sharon sighed. “I don’t know.”

Slowly, carefully, the old woman rose from her seat, shuffling to slip on her shoes and then pressing a kiss to Sharon’s forehead. She beckoned Sharon outside, leading her down the front path and up some of the many steps around the island.

“Pat… where are we going?”

She shrugged. “I could tell you were getting upset, so I figured I’d cheer you up. I have a little gift for you. A thank you for everything you’re doing for me.”

Sharon shook her head as they walked. “Pat, you don’t have to thank me! I’m happy to be caring for you, and I…”

She trailed off. The walk had only been ten minutes at most, and now the two found themselves stood in front of a small cottage. It was wide and squat, tucked in the landscape like most of the tavernas, and the front door was wide open. Pat was smiling.

“Pat.”

“Check it out.”

“Pat.”

“Go on. Go inside.” Pat grinned, pleased with herself.

“Pat, you didn’t…”

Pat nodded. “Go look around!”

Somewhere inside her, Sharon knew she should’ve been feeling a little guilty. Pat had paid out of pocket for this little place, all for her. It was by no means big, but Sharon didn’t need acres of land and a house filled with splendour. She needed a home to raise a baby in, and this seemed to be perfect. Besides, she reasoned - Pat was far wealthier than her crass attitude and humble lifestyle let on. Sharon knew that the entire Belli family, Willam included, were fabulously rich. This was probably pocket change for her.

The kitchen was small but open plan, nestled in alongside a small living space with a worn red sofa and two armchairs in the middle. Although old and slightly creaking, the wooden stairs held strong as she ventured further into the house, noting a small bedroom with a double bed, a bathroom and one larger, empty room.

This could be the nursery, Sharon thought absent-mindedly.

She hurried downstairs again, where Pat had settled herself into an armchair. Her wrinkled fingers were clasped together, her entire demeanour one of pure satisfaction.

“It’s not perfect, but…” Her eyes gleamed. “It’s yours. You can’t be cooped up with me any longer. We’re running out of space, the size of us both.”

Sharon laughed, fighting back tears. “I love it. I love it. I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything.” Pat pulled her into a tight hug. “I had some lovely young men come and carry your things here, so everything is either stowed where it should be or sitting in boxes around the place. I didn’t expect you to unpack alone, so help is on the way, but…”

She smiled. “I’m off to the taverna. I’ll see you later today.”

-

Loneliness became the next biggest challenge Sharon had to face.

Of course, she still saw Pat everyday. Their routine had been revised slightly, but she was nevertheless a full-time carer for the old lady. Pat had started to sleep more and go out less, so Sharon’s duties lessened over time. She cooked and cleaned and chatted, and then returned to her own space.

And, naturally, she was never entirely alone - her bump made sure she could never forget that. She would always have her baby with her, snuggled up tight.

But she missed everyone dearly. It had been difficult for Raja and Jinkx to coordinate visiting, and so far they hadn’t managed. They exchanged letters as often as possible, but Sharon could hardly bear the waiting. It took days for her letters to arrive and days to receive responses back. Her best friends were too far away for comfort.

Overall, she just felt alone.

The past few days, she had taken to wandering her home. It was looking better now that she’d put some love and care into it - a fresh coat of paint and some new second-hand furniture had worked wonders, all paid for with her monthly paychecks. Most of the time, her mind was occupied with thoughts of the future; her baby was going to grow up inside these walls, and create lifelong memories that didn’t exist yet. Good things lay ahead, but they weren’t close enough yet.

Sharon filtered through her wardrobe, wondering if she should give up the ghost and toss out some of her old clothes. It was abundantly clear that they didn’t fit anymore - nothing did, but sentimental attachments kept her from throwing some of the garments away. Even the damned blue sequin dress that had forced her to reveal it to her friends held memories she wasn’t sure she could let go of.

“What are you doing to me, baby?” Sharon murmured, gently cupping her bump. “I never used to be like this.”

Her fingers suddenly brushed against a familiar fabric, surprising her. She could pick out the exact fabric any day, and identify it from a line-up of thousands of similar ones, but it didn’t make sense. Why was it…?

She pulled at the hanger, allowing the shirt to slip off into her hands, and let out a quiet gasp. Sharon let herself rub the fabric against her palm, the memories imprinting themselves into her skin and forcing her to relive them.

“See, that looks way better on you than it ever did on me,” Justin commenting, shifting himself into an upright position. The covers were carelessly slung over his legs, leaving his naked chest exposed and glistening with sweat. Sharon longed to rip the covers off and run her fingers through her tousled hair, but she resisted the urge.

“Doesn’t it always?” She teased, twirling. His white shirt had been the first item discarded; she had been unable to keep her hands off of him as soon as they shut the door, and had ended up pinning him against it as she undid the buttons.

Now, in the glow of their post-coitus haze, she had wrapped it around herself, inhaling the scent of his cologne. It felt like she belonged to him, and she loved it.

“I’m wounded!” He gasped, clutching his heart. “Light… fading…”

Sharon burst into giggles. “What, because I look better than you?”

“Darkness… approaching…”

Sharon rolled her eyes. “Shut up, drama queen. I’m never taking this off.”

“I need… the kiss… of life…” Justin rasped, pathetically reaching forwards as if he hadn’t just been confident and swaggering only moments ago.

“You do know the kiss of life isn’t a kiss, right?” Sharon checked, watching him through the mirror. Her own hair was a mess, her lipstick was smudged - undoubtedly peppered all along the muscles on his chest - yet there was a light in her eyes that had never been there before. Justin set her on fire and his flames were inescapable.

Justin dropped his act and laughed, leaning back to fix Sharon with a stare that sent lightning bolts zipping through her. It was all she could do to hold back a sigh.

“Of course I do. I need your kiss of life, not a kiss of life. A subtle but important difference.”

Sharon cocked an eyebrow, trying to act calmer than she felt. “And that difference is?”

“Get over here.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. Every ounce of willpower dissipated from her body as she collapsed on top of him, kissing hard as he tore his shirt from her body. Both were desperate to feel skin on skin, refusing to let any barrier go between them. Sharon pressed herself against him and inhaled again, embracing the familiarity of the moment. She found herself smiling into the kiss.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” Justin growled, pressing heated kisses along her jaw and down towards her breasts. “Keep the shirt, it’s yours as long as you agree to be mine.”

Sharon giggled, love-drunk with the exhilaration coursing through her veins. “I already am, silly.”

Oh, how things had changed since then.

She held the shirt in her fist, letting its scent walk her through the memories and finally, briefly, allowing herself to think about him. Had he been thinking about her? Would it ever cross his mind to come back, to find her and fall in love with her all over again?

Her mind raced with scenarios, seemingly desperate to play them all out in the short time she was allocating. Was it possible that he was married now, but desperately unhappy, wishing nothing more than to return to the island and live out his life with her? Did he ever suspect that perhaps their nights together had resulted in something more? Was he trapped in his normality, clinging onto their faded romance to keep him going through the dreary work day? Did he miss her more than life itself?

Or - the thoughts she tried to push aside, to not allow any real estate in her mind - was he happy now? Had he used her as a stress relief, and settled easily back into his picture perfect life? Had his white wedding gone ahead, surrounded by family and friends who lauded the faultless couple and their commitment to one another? Was Sharon nothing more than his dirty secret?

It did no good to dwell on such thoughts. Sharon knew that now. Justin had loved her, and then he had stopped loving here. There was little else to it, she knew.

At least, from his perspective.

As she went to hang the shirt up once again, a slight fluttering stopped her in her tracks. Slowly, she retracted away from the closet and held the shirt again.

Was that…?

Sharon shook her head. She was imagining things for certain. Still, in spite of her surety, she slipped her arms into the soft white fabric, feeling a slight sense of accomplishment at being able to wear it comfortably. Moments later, her stomach fluttered again.

The baby was kicking.

It was a strange sensation; sort of like a muscle contraction she couldn’t control, a tiny little thump. The baby was trying to make certain that she knew they were in there, fighting for mama’s attention. Battling through the heartache of her old memories and the outpour of affection towards her baby, Sharon placed a hand over the fluttering spot and smiled gently, letting out a sigh.

“Well, I guess we know who your daddy is, huh?” She swallowed heavily. “You definitely seem to know him.”

-

Dear Sharon,

I miss you so much, you bitch! Jinkx + I coming next week for birthday fun so we’ll see you soon I hope! Can’t believe you’re going to be eighteen. And that you’re pregnant too. Wild.

Dr Visage is an angel, isn’t she? Glad she’s taking care of you.

Drop in on my mom at some point this week. She has been knitting tiny socks for the baby because she’s a little eager.

Eric is being a cunt again. I think I might just have to fuck his brother Don to spite him. Thoughts?

Sent you some cash with this letter, and a little camera too, in case you wanna take pics of stuff. Memories for when you’re old.

See you Sunday!!

Your favourite whore,

Raja xx

–

Dear Sharon,

I hope you’ve been working on some melodies between cooking your baby and looking after Pat because I’m DYING to sing with my girls again. It’s been too long!

Don’t have much time to write because Amy is due to arrive any minute and you know how it is. Looking forwards to seeing you next week though! What’s the betting that Raja either has a rich boyfriend or convinced her dad to let her have that weird cosmetic procedure she keeps banging on about? Life in plastic might not be so fantastic.

Also, I read that sometimes pregnant women get wild cravings so if you start eating weird things I’m gonna laugh my ass off. If it’s normal things then that’s boring and you can do better. Mom says if you ever want some of her spicy bean casserole she’s happy to make it for you. Anyways, update me on your alien.

Amy’s here, gotta go. Miss you!!

Love Jinkx xx

–

Sharon stood on the dock and watched the tiny dot grow nearer and nearer to the island. She had to laugh - of course they had decided to wait for the mid-morning tourist ferry to get them to the island, rather than rowing themselves over. Then again, she reasoned, she had always been the best at rowing, and she was officially out of action. And she’d written to each of them just to make sure they knew that under no circumstances would she be meeting them on the mainland for convenience.

Her newly developed anxiety about going to the mainland alone was something she needed to deal with eventually, but not right now.

Eventually, growing tired from standing for so long, Sharon took off her shoes and sat at the end of the dock, letting her feet rest in the sea as she watched the boat beginning to approach. Only when it drew close enough to make out the shapes of the passengers did she stand again, not wanting to be caught sitting. It was odd, she thought to herself, that it felt so embarrassing to have to cave to her body’s needs. She was pregnant - there really was nothing wrong with sitting.

But whatever. She stood and watched, smiling as the passengers disembarked and went their separate ways. Predictably, her two goofy friends were the last to get off; they always wanted to make a grand entrance.

At once they were upon her, squeezing her tight and laughing joyously at the reunion. All four of Raja’s suitcases had somehow jammed into Sharon’s side, and Jinkx’s wide-brimmed sun hat was brushing against her face, but she grinned into the embrace nevertheless. It was the most physically uncomfortable yet emotionally fulfilling hug Sharon had ever experienced. Almost instantly, some of the stress she had been holding in a pent-up ball in her chest melted away.

“Oh my god, you’re huge.” Were Jinkx’s first words as she wriggled out of the hug, staring at Sharon’s bump.

She giggled as Raja hissed, “Jinkx! Bolster!”, then looked down and matched her friend’s wide-eyed, shocked expression.

“Shit. You are pretty big. Still gorgeous though!” She added, Jinkx nodding in agreement.

Sharon laughed and entwined her fingers into her friends. “Did you forget how long you’ve been gone? Things have changed since then.”

Jinkx paused, then shook her head. “I’m not in the mood to do maths.”

“Twenty weeks.” Raja rolled her eyes, stealing the hat from Jinkx’s head to model it on her own. “So that’s…”

“Halfway point.” Sharon nodded. “About four and a half months. But we’ll hear all this later, at the appointment. I thought you guys might wanna come along and see what it’s all about.”

Raja and Jinkx smiled warmly, and Sharon felt her heart expanding with gratefulness. “We’d love that.”

“Anyway,” Sharon grinned. “Wait until you see my place. It’s not much, but… I love it. It’s a home, and it’s not her home.”

In preparation for their visit, Sharon had bundled nearly every blanket and pillow she owned into makeshift beds, though she knew their first night would be spent squeezed into her bed together. Maria had kindly offered to house them for a while, but she’d politely declined; the older woman was already doing enough for her at this point.

It was disconcerting, sometimes, how much Sharon felt she’d matured. Only a few months ago she had been emotionally volatile, sullenly hiding from her good-for-nothing mom, trying to spend all of her time at her friends’ houses. Now she had her own place, and had been desperately cleaning and tidying and prepping for their arrival like some sort of crazed mother goose.

Maria greeted them at the taverna when they stopped for a break, panting in the early morning heat with the effort of hauling suitcases up the notoriously steep, rocky island. Although it was much cooler towards the start of the day, the girls still found themselves sweating and desperate for something to drink when they stopped off. Like an angel, Maria had ushered them to their usual table near the jukebox and busied herself with two cocktails and a glass of icy water whilst Raja tried to find a decent song to play.

“We should do a Supermodels reunion tonight!” Jinkx suggested, humming one of their old tunes. “Thoughts?”

“Hell yes!” Raja replied, at the same time as Sharon went, “Absolutely not.”

They both turned, surprised. “What? It’s a terrible idea! You want me to perform looking like this?”

Jinkx pursed her lips. “You look beautiful! And it’s not like we need to dance, we can just sing the words and rake in some extra pennies. We could do Kisses of Fire again, or something else just as fun.”

Sharon shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think I can even reach those notes anymore.”

It was only a half-lie. She hadn’t tried to sing properly since she found out, having had no real reason to. Singing didn’t bring her the same joy that it once had - it wasn’t an expression of her freedom anymore, but a reminder of how limited she had become. No, the main problem was how often she had been thinking about the one person she swore she wouldn’t. Refreshing the memories of them in her head would only worsen the situation.

Really, she had tried to move on. Justin obviously had. But it wasn’t easy to erase the romance that changed her life for both better and worse. She couldn’t even pour her heart out onto paper anymore, let alone into music. She had tried, desperately tried, to send him a letter. Just to explain everything.

Dear Justin-

No.

Justin-

Far too formal. As if he was in trouble. She didn’t want to make him feel like that - even if she knew that she was in trouble.

To the one that got away-

No, no, no. Who did she even think she was?

Dear Justin,

I don’t want to write this letter. I don’t know how to write this letter. You’ll never read it, anyway, because I won’t send it. I know that you’re married now, and probably really happy. In a way, I’m glad I could help you decide if that perfect life laid out for you was the one you wanted or not.

I’m lying. It kills me that you chose her, it kills me that I was just a stepping stone. But I want you to be happy, and I can’t ruin your happiness.

What kind of person would I be if I ruined your bliss by telling you about my hell? Is it better or worse if I don’t tell you? There are so many outcomes that I don’t want to think about. Some good, some bad. I’m stalling telling you the truth in a letter that I won’t ever send, that’s how afraid I am.

I think part of me wants to accept that I am a good judge of character, and I know you to be a good person. If I told you… If I told you the truth, would you come back? It’s strange. I’ve lost all confidence, I don’t know if you would. But then if you would, is it out of guilt? I shouldn’t really dare to hope that any spark lingered. Your absence probably proves that the spark is gone, at least for you.

All I’m doing at this point is wasting ink and paper penning this useless letter to you. I don’t even know where in the world you are. Maybe you’re miserable like me. Maybe you’re the happiest you’ve ever been.

I truly don’t know if, if I saw you again, I would embrace you with open arms or cast you to the side. It’s one of those heart vs head decisions where I know my head is right, but I know my heart will betray me.

Perhaps it’s right that I won’t send this letter, and you’ll never know about me and the baby. It’s easier that way. I just have to stop thinking about you.

She remained subdued for most of their journey to the mainland, where Michelle was waiting for the three to arrive. It was all she could do to try and clear her mind before the appointment, not wanting to be hung up about her ex in one of the most significant moments of her life. Thankfully, as soon as she saw the grainy image of her baby on the screen before her, all of her outside stresses melted away.

Michelle examined everything carefully, searching for discrepancies Sharon had no idea the woman could spot. After a few tense moments, Jinkx and Raja holding her hand on either side, she broke into a huge smile.

“A little small, but nothing to worry about. Some women just have small babies! My two were huge, so you got lucky.” Michelle grinned.

Raja, ever impatient, rolled her eyes. “Michelle, that’s charming. Can we see the magic now?”

She chuckled. “Fine, fine.”

Sharon held her breath.

“She’s perfectly healthy, congratulations.”

The birds outside seemed to sing a little louder, the sun shining a little brighter than before. Flowers bloomed in fragrant bunches. A million wrongs were righted all at once. Little pockets of happiness seemed to burst into joyous laughter all over the planet. Collectively, the world let out a little relieved sigh.

“She! Jinkx, Raja, did you hear that?”

Jinkx squeezed her hand even tighter. “You’re having a girl!”

“Another Supermodel!” Raja joked, blinking away the tears in her eyes. “Oh my god, a little mini Sharon is on her way! Hi, angel!”

Sharon’s heart had never been so full. All of the loneliness, all of the stress and hardship that she had been through and knew still lay ahead of her, melted away into nothing. Though it had been far from easy and would only get harder as it progressed, none of that mattered. This little girl was going to heal her heart.

“I… I can’t believe this…” She murmured, welling up. “If only-”

She paused. If only Justin were here, she had thought about saying, but decided against it. There was still the possibility that Jaremi or Willam could be her little girl’s dad, though she doubted it. Of course, whilst she had no way of knowing, she was sure it had been Justin. Still, as Raja and Jinkx didn’t know about her other stupid rebound flings, there was no point in debating which one was the dad. All that mattered was that Sharon got to be her mom.

“What, darling?”

Sharon cleared her head and smiled. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I have you two and I have my girl. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

Jinkx tackled her in a hug, Raja choosing the safer option of bringing her hand up to kiss it. Their eyes were gleaming, and Sharon took a moment to appreciate just how supportive they were. Despite everything, she was lucky to have them in her life when she needed them most.

“You know what this means, right? Other than a new Supermodel?” Raja asked, earning a giggle from each of them.

“Enlighten us, Oh Mighty Raja.” Jinkx laughed, seemingly on the same wavelength.

“We need to go shopping!”

-

Sharon wasn’t sure how they’d done it, but she had been convinced to try and sing with them. Maybe it had been their fierce protectiveness and mutual excitement for the new life - a little girl! - growing inside her, or their never-ending support. Regardless, somehow, they had softened her already weak heart into giving in.

They arrived back at Sharon’s in the mid-afternoon, laden with armfuls of tiny baby clothes and shoes that seemed too small to ever belong to a person. Sharon had insisted that they kept their money for themselves, that she could manage on their own, but Raja had simply rolled her eyes and Jinkx had told her in no uncertain terms that as aunties, this was their job.

Highlights of the day included watching her friends become utterly smitten with the tiny pink pastels they were filling their baskets with, and feeling similarly clucky as they browsed endless baby aisles. Sharon found herself more fascinated with the soft muslin than anything else; in just a few months time, her baby girl would be alive and squirming, safely wrapped in a blanket just like the ones she stroked between her fingers as they passed by. Although it was terrifying, she looked forward to finally meeting her.

Another highlight, surprisingly, came from a scoff and a judgemental comment from an older couple. Sharon hadn’t noticed their attentive gaze, too engrossed in the ridiculously tiny shoes, but Raja and Jinkx were already on high alert.

“The state of young girls these days. I mean, she can’t be more than eighteen, look at her.”

“I’ll bet she did it just to try and stop her boyfriend from breaking up with her. Wonder how that turned out.”

The couple snickered, their comments loud enough for Sharon to hear them. She took a deep breath in and focused on the shelves in front of her, determined to ignore it and continue shopping. The girls had other ideas.

“Well shit, I sure hope you two aren’t parents. I bet your kids are the fucking bullies of the school, the way you talk.” Raja spat, spinning on her heel to face the suddenly affronted couple.

Jinkx nodded. “Accidents happen, doesn’t mean they can’t be happy miracles. Unlike you, she’ll be a great parent to her baby, because she cares about people and doesn’t judge others like an asshole.”

Eyeing each other, the couple each raised an eyebrow. “Typical irresponsible kids.”

Sharon saw Raja tense, and knew that any moment, she would launch forward and start a scrap with the couple. Needing to diffuse the situation, she grabbed Raja’s hand and pulled her back, smiling gently as she did.

“Ignore them,” She said softly. “Look, you don’t have to defe-”

“Get your nasty ass away from my fucking friend, you piece of unholy shit!” Raja struggled to get free, straining and pulling until the couple eventually took the hint and decided to get out of their way. When they were gone, she apologised and brushed herself down, her chest heaving with anger.

“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

Sharon shook her head, unable to stop the grin from sliding onto her face. “No. You’re both awesome, I love you so much. You really don’t need to do that for me.”

“But we want to, baby. We want to.” Jinkx told her.

“I know. That’s why I love you so much.”

Encounters like that were one of the many reasons Sharon was so filled with anxiety about going to the mainland. It was comforting to have her friends so fiercely sticking up for her, but she still didn’t feel completely at ease until the island began to climb into view from the sailboat. It had truly become a safe haven to her in a way that transcended the little paradise that had once been her escape from her mother. Now, it was a home for her new baby, ready and waiting and protected.

-

That morning, Pat was sitting in her chair, fiddling idly with the knitting needles she seldom used. A small project hung from one of them, pink and white, and she looked uncharacteristically nervous. Sharon was on guard immediately, setting down her bag and sitting opposite her.

“Everything okay? Is there anything I can get for you?”

Pat shook her head. Sharon only continued. “Maybe that pouffe if your arthritis is acting up? I could run upstairs-”

Again, she shook her head, this time clasping Sharon’s hand in hers to silence her. Her eyes were kind and filled with a desolate sadness that Sharon didn’t understand, but wanted to fix. It was the least she could do.

“Honey, you’re in no condition be running up any stairs.” Pat reminded her, smiling gently as she blushed a little in embarrassment. “I need to talk to you about something, something important. I just want to come out with it first and explain later, save the build up. I don’t want to cause you unnecessary stress.”

Sharon held her breath, but whatever she expected, this wasn’t it.

“I’m going into a retirement home.”

A million questions scorched the tip of her tongue, practically falling over one another in a hurried attempt to get out, but not a single one made it past her lips. All she could do was examine Pat with the intensity of a terrified child, desperately wondering why she had made that decision. It made sense, given her age, but it now meant that Sharon was out of a job and at such a crucial time when money was so tight, she needed that employment more than ever before.

“My needs are getting more and more complex, I’m not getting any younger and we both know that. My family have agreed I could use the help and, sweetheart…” She squeezed Sharon’s hand. “I don’t want to rely on you when you have so much else going on. You have been an absolute angel to me, and you have a knack for looking after people like I’ve never seen. But in just a few more months you’ll be busy with a baby and I can’t take priority over that.”

At some point, Sharon had teared up. She wasn’t sure when.

“You’re going to be a fantastic mom, I know it. You’ve selflessly dedicated your time to me and I know you will do the same for that beautiful daughter of yours. I can’t wait to meet her. But I need to get out of your hair so you can focus on what truly matters. However-” The sad sparkle in Pat’s eyes made way for an almost mischievous, proud glint. “You didn’t think I’d leave you without a few gifts, right?”

Sharon sighed. “Oh, Pat, you know you shouldn’t-”

“Nonsense!” The old lady replied. “It’s my wealth and I’ll lavish it on whoever I choose. These are for you.”

She handed over three items - a piece of paper, an envelope, and the knitted thing - a tiny dress, perfect for a newborn. Sharon took the paper and read it, unsure of what to expect from the gift, after stroking the soft fabric of the dress and imagining it on the daughter she had yet to meet.

Pat had outdone herself.

“This… this is the deed to those old buildings on the top of the island…” Sharon murmured, before her gaze shot upwards. “Pat.”

She grinned. “I already said, caring for people is something you’ve proved you’re amazing at. I’ve called some renovation and repair teams… you’re building that goddamn hotel. Take care of your guests like you did with me and I guarantee you’ll be a success.”

The envelope, Sharon found moments later, was wadded with money.

“Even when I’m six feet under, I won’t have you going hungry on my watch. To help with bills, just in case you’re in this situation because of our Bill.” God, that woman was wicked. Sharon wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, and settled for a weepy mixture of the two. She was downright speechless, a quality that few had the ability to render her into.

In a matter of weeks, everything changed. Pat was gone, Sharon was at home, and the waiting game of labour seemed to be the only thing on her horizon. Most days, she went out to check on the construction and talk planning with the team, who seemed equally shocked and impressed that their boss was eighteen and heavily pregnant. 

Raja and Jinkx would be arriving soon, giving them plenty of time to support her before the baby came. They would have a nice, calm few weeks together, and then her daughter would finally be here and everything would begin to fall into place.

-

Raja and Jinkx arrived on the eve of forty weeks, perfectly on time, and were down at the dock.

Maria, the bartender and owner of the taverna, was washing glasses in the sink.

Maria’s son Jose was collecting new shipments of ale from the loading bay.

Sharon was out on a walk along one of the shallow cliffs, where Justin used to take her.

Not long now.

Raja and Jinkx stood chatting, excitedly wondering how long they would be staying before the baby came. Raja was complaining a little about having to lug her own many, many suitcases up the notoriously uphill island, and Jinkx was reminding her through her laughter that given their friend was nine months pregnant, she had to cut her losses.

Maria thought about Sharon, who had picked up a few extra shifts since Pat had entered the home, and wondered how her part-time employee and long-time performer was doing that day. It was about noon, so no doubt she was enjoying some lunch and preparing for the arrival in a few days time, her workload reduced to nothing.

Jose spotted the two girls on the beach and wondered which one of them was hotter, and which one was more likely to respond flirtatiously if he offered to help them. He fixated on the tall, dark haired one and offered to help both carry their suitcases up the island.

Sharon winced a little bit, let out a sigh, and then winced much harder. It hurt.

Raja, in her element, allowed the young man to take her bags and gave him a wink, hoping to convey everything she was willing to do. Jinkx, rolling her eyes, followed her friend and shook her head as they made their way towards the taverna, where Sharon was going to meet them.

Maria decided, on a whim, to see how Sharon was doing. She liked taking a walk around this time, and was most likely on her usual route. It was only a short journey from her small taverna to where she would probably be.

Jose began regretting offering to help. These girls were carrying bags laden with wet cement, clearly.

Sharon swallowed hard and tried to stand up. The pain had subsided but then it had come back, worse.

Raja and Jinkx chatted idly about how Sharon was late. Typical, really. They laughed and switched on the old jukebox.

Maria’s eyes landed on Sharon, registered the situation and bolted, promising to come back with help.

Jose sat down and thanked the lord his mother was gone, so he could pour himself a nice cold beer and let his poor arms rest.

Sharon waited. It was all she could do.

Raja and Jinkx gasped as a panicked Maria burst through the doors, alerting them that Sharon needed their help. 

Maria grabbed her son and yanked the beer away from him, yelling at him to run ahead and help the poor girl to her feet, possibly even to carry her if she became too weak to walk.

Jose thought of his poor tired arms and silently prayed as he made his way to help.

Sharon got to her feet without Jose’s help and took his arm. It would be fine once she got to her house. That was what she told herself.

-

She was so tiny.

She had been cleaned and swaddled in soft yellow muslin as she started to cry, and Sharon’s arms reached out instinctively to cradle her. Her cries soon quieted as she relaxed into the safety of her mama’s arms, wrapped up warm and tight into a small bundle. Her little nose peeked out from the blanket, and her rosebud lips were parted slightly in an awed reaction to being alive.

Sharon’s chest heaved with the effort but she clung on to her newborn, needing the reassurance of her warm weight as much as the baby needed her heartbeat. Maria was removing towels and Jose was running to send a message on the next ferry to Pat and Raja and Jinkx were cooing, but Sharon had only eyes and ears for her daughter.

The name had been an easy choice. An homage to the woman who had given her a home, a job and a career to build, proving that life didn’t have to disintegrate into nothing during a bad situation. Patricia may have been an old name, mostly unsuited to a small baby, but the name Sharon had chosen fitted perfectly.

“I bet that asshole Justin will kick himself when he finds out what a beautiful daughter he’s missing out on.” Raja cursed, before going starry-eyed once again and cooing at the baby. “God, she’s just stunning, isn’t she?”

Sharon sighed gently. “Don’t say his name. Please. Not in front of Trixie.”

Of course she couldn’t send any letter to him, or let him know. There was an entire, living breathing baby in her arms, and that was no small feat to try and care for. It was cruel of her to expect Justin to be able to cope with it, and even crueler for her to inflict an unwilling parent onto an innocent child. Things were better this way.

“So she’s never going to know about him?” Jinkx asked, using one finger to lightly rub against Trixie’s impossibly soft cheek.

“Never.” Sharon said firmly. “Look, she’s so small. She’s all mine.”

“She has the most tiny perfect little features…”

“She’s the image of you, Sharon. You to a T.”

The compliments kept coming, but Sharon didn’t really hear them. Her mind had drifted, trying and failing to imagine her own mother feeling the same compassion for herself as a baby. In that moment, she knew that she would endure any hardship, sacrifice anything, if it meant Trixie would be safe. She would never allow her precious daughter to come to any harm, or feel that she couldn’t go to her mama in times of need.

No, Sharon would do it differently. She would be better than her own mother, and Trixie would be better than them all. Sharon would guide her.

“Don’t make the same mistakes I did, baby girl. Do it right, unlike your mama.”

[snkpolls]

SnK S3E17 Poll Results (Manga Reader Version)

The poll closed with 362 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results of the manga reader poll. Anime only watchers are suggested not to read if you do not wish to be spoiled about certain events! Anime only viewers, click here to view your poll results!

RATE THE EPISODE 354 Responses

Similar to ranking systems seen outside of this poll this week, the episode has gotten a very high score, with no one voting for anything under a 4. WIT really outdid themselves with this one!

Chapter 82 is one of my top 5 favorite chapters of the series to date. This episode is top 5 of the series to date. Absolutely top notch.

Best episode of all media (and i'm not kidding!!!!) We don't deserve SNK/WIT

Absolutely amazing. I’m a manga reader who watched with an anime only. We normally discuss while watching, but even I who knew what would happen couldn’t make a sound. We were completely speechless. Amazing episode. Definitely top 3..maybe 2.

Best ep in the series. WIT and the cast absolutely delivered these past two eps.

It's great. Hats off for staffs who delivered this episode

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 356 Responses

Levi taking out the Beast Titan was ranked as the most favored moment of the episode. Following closely behind was Armin’s sacrifice. The third most popular moment, aside from the votes of those who can’t just pick one scene, was Eren dealing the finishing blow to the Colossal Titan.

Let's not forget about the jawdropping Sawano music pieces, the music during the Armin burning scene made the scene so powerful i teared up, as well as Marlowe's monologue one!

I've waited almost two years to see Levi vs Zeke animated and it was so much more glorious and heart breaking in the anime. And the Armin scene had me in tears, every single time, which didn't happen when I read the manga. (Then again I didn't cry at all while reading manga).

I was extremely disappointed with the Levi vs Beast Titan fight, the music choice for that scene was so underwhelming and out of place, and the animation - while better than anything else in the episode - still manages to look extremely lazy.

Am I the only one who actually likes Zeke's monologue? Yes? Ok then.

I never cared much about Armin, he isn't even in my top 5 characters but his death made me cry and every time I see the scene I get emotional. Music was perfect and Inoue Marina did an amazing job.

WHO WAS THE EPISODE’S MVP? 356 Responses

Armin easily takes the mantle as the Most Valuable Person this episode, with Levi following behind at 15.4% of the vote. In third, people voted Pieck as the MVP.

Armin is the mvp of this episode. No matter how much wit wants us to think it’s Levi with the end card, Armin is the mvp.

Levi was, is, and always will be glorious. That break in his voice, that rage... I'm in tears.

WHO’S SACRIFICE HAD MORE EMOTIONAL IMPACT ON YOU? 357 Responses

Erwin and Armin had to make choices that brought them to the brink of death. 63.9% of respondents expressed they felt more emotional for Armin’s sacrifice while 36.1% hold Erwin’s closer to their heart. We thought about adding a “both” option, but some poll makers wanted to be evil and prepare you for the next episode. >:)

I HATE the question with Erwin and Armin as the only choices btw. :( Both of them sacrificed their biggest dreams to ensure victory for humanity, and choosing one over the other downplays the strength of both of them in making their choices. That's what made serum bowl so terrible imo. I love both the characters dearly, and the entire thing is a clusterfuck of a Sophie's choice type scenario (I picked not ready for the serum bowl question, if you couldn't tell).

WHICH CHARACTER HAD THE BEST “FINAL BLOW” AGAINST THE ENEMY? 358 Responses

At 45.8%, Eren gets the most vote for “best final blow” for taking down the Colossal Titan, with Levi following closely behind at 41.6% with the Beast Titan.

Levi vs. Zeke was Imai at his finest, Marina killed it once again as Armin, Reiner vs. Levi Squad was incredibly satisfying, and Eren finally taking down Bert was breathtaking. This episode deserves all the praise it's getting.

Didn’t expect to be so conflicted over Eren taking down the Colossal - he finally got revenge but at what cost ;_;

Daaaaaaayyyyyuuuummmmm. Levi VS Zeke was just *chef kiss*.

WHICH WAS THE BETTER ONE LINER FROM MIKASA? 353 Responses

“Annie. Fall,” still remains as the more iconic pre-mortem one-liner from Mikasa.

THOUGHTS ON WIT CHOOSING TO OMIT ANY MUSIC WHEN EREN TAKES OUT BERTOLT? 355 Responses

Nearly 66% of respondents were happy with WIT’s decision to keep the environment quiet during the Colossal Titan’s takedown, allowing the audience to truly focus on the moment. 21.4% were happy with the choice but also would not object to there having been music. 9% feel that it would have had more impact with some music.

Not having any music was a parallel to back when Eren tried to kill Bertholdt in Trost and failed, also because Armin is badly wounded, not having any music gave respect to his "sacrifice"

I never consider the music of an episode beforehand and I was too into the moment to notice there wasn't any

I'm pretty confused abouy how they chose to do it, i guess i was expecting something more impactful, and the no-music, seen from afar thing didn't do it for me

I was too busy crying to notice there wasn’t music

Would’ve been perfect if the silence hadn’t been blocked by berts needless exposition imo

Sometimes silence is better than music.

850 YEARBOOK VOTE: WHO HAS THE BEST TEETH? 349 Responses

It was almost a tie, but Zeke’s teeth win the yearbook vote with 30.9% of the vote. Just behind him with 30.7% of the vote is the random redshirt that got 2 seconds too much of screen time. 26.6% feel that the Attack Titan has the best teeth. Sorry, Bertolt.

The vast amount of weird looking teeth in this episode freaked me out

WHO WORE THIS LOOK BETTER? 344 Responses

Reiner wins the most handsome look with 61.3% of the vote. But you have to admit, the resemblance is uncanny.

REINER LOOKS LIKE JAMES CHARLES IN HIS TITAN AHAHAHA

HOW WELL DID THIS EPISODE ADAPT THE CORRESPONDING CHAPTERS? 354 Responses

The majority of manga readers feel that the source material was handled extremely well this episode, with only 0.3% of respondents feeling it could have been handled better.

Mikasa taking down Reiner was definitely more badass in the manga too. Her expression is too serene here. Hange was infinitely more BAMF-y and I am very glad for this at least.

Levi vs Zeke had an amazing animation, but i didn't like Levi's slashing flurry at the end of it. It didn't make any sense

I thought I was going to be ready for that Armin scene, but it was so much more intense than the manga. I ended up crying so much.

I wish they added more emotional Levi's faces like in the manga, but it turned out pretty ok

The adaptation was pretty badass this time around imo. My roommate lost her appetite watching Armin's sacrifice

If it weren't for the perfect plot that WIT was adapting, this episode would have been one of the worst quality wise, and I wish they would have taken more time and care to adapt one of the best moments of this series.

WAS LEVI VS. ZEKE: ROUND 1 ALL YOU HOPED FOR? 357 Responses

71.1% of respondents were left feeling extremely pleased with WIT’s adaptation of Levi vs. Beast Titan. 21% were happy, but perhaps not totally blown out of the water like the others. A few small groups of people are either neutral, or felt underwhelmed and/or disappointed.

This was so awesome!! Levi was so badass and damn, rage looks good on him. Zeke clearly didn't see any of it coming!

The voice acting on Levi's part was beyond what I'd hoped for so I was emotionally into it, but the over-the-top drama of the slishy-slashy moment kind of downgraded the actual visuals for me. But you know what, overall I think it was quite good - not brilliant, but good.

It was way too flashy

Zeke's monologue didn't really feel well this time. Yet, the whole scene was pretty good.

SO COOL ALL HAIL GOD LEVI!!

Couldn't fully enjoy Levi slicing Zeke now that I know he'll have him another time and fail at killing him again (with yet unknown circumstances for Levi) :c

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WIT CENSORING THE SCENE WITH LEVI’S BLADE IN ZEKE’S MOUTH? 353 Responses

52.1% of respondents were pretty understanding of the situation, feeling that the censorship couldn’t have been avoided. 23.2% feel that they could have at least shown a little bit of sliced flesh. 14.4% are hopeful that we’ll get a more gorey version of the scene when the bluray animation comes out. A small percentage were very displeased.

Censorship is understandable all things considered, but it managed to be effective. Sometimes, your imagination makes things worse than the reality of it, such is the case here.

HE HAS SO MUCH TEETH WHY DID THEY GIVE ZEKE SO MUCH TEETH NO HUMAN BEING HAS TEETH THAT GO THAT FAR

The guy got absolutely destroyed right before, the blade still pierced his mouth, I don't give a shit.

I actually think that too much realism would be overkill for fast paced animation. They managed to keep the scenes intense and smooth and i wasn't bothered by it at all.

I was pleasantly surprised we saw the blood from the blade thrusting in his face. I don’t require more gore than that lol

i wanted to see it SO BAD ugh :rip:

Anyone disappointed about censorship in anime in 2019 isn't really knowledgeable about the industry.

I don't care, gore is cheap, snk is better than that.

HOW DID YOU FEEL SEEING ARMIN’S SACRIFICE ANIMATED? 356 Responses

Over half of the fandom felt more emotional about Armin’s sacrifice than they did reading the manga, a testament to how well WIT adapted the material, given we all know the ultimate outcome of Armin’s fate. 26.1% of respondents felt that the scene was equally moving in both mediums, while 12.6% felt more emotional while reading it happen in the manga.

Both were equally moving for sure but the anime version had that extra element of Body Horror™. Armin's skin literally melting off is something I will not forget for a long time.

Emotionally, this episode didn't get me as much as the manga did but that is mainly because I've got like 2+ years of rereading it and working through my emotions.

Armin was just as annoying with his ocean and he should've died here.

Showing the skin melting off was an absolutely brutal touch

After I read that scene I spent a lot of time thinking and mulling it over. After I watched that scene I had to pause because I couldn't see anything through my tears. They are just different types of impact, there's no way to compare them

Seeing his pants in pristine condition right after took me out of it, so probably manga > anime,  but both really good

I told you I wasn’t ready. I had to watch my son melt. M e l t. He is truly a hero and I’m sobbing.

THOUGHTS ON BERTOLT’S STEAM BECOMING AN INFERNO? 353 Responses

61.8% of the fandom felt that WIT’s animation helped really put into perspective the pain that Armin was dealing with during his sacrifice. 21.% really enjoyed WIT heating up the steam attack by turning it into an inferno as a cool effect. 9.3% may have felt that it was a little too dramatic, and a small few didn’t really care either way.

The inferno made the decoy plan even better and shows how powerful bert is with his titan.

It made it even more suprising that Armin survived this

Not really consistent to 02/06 where he just emits hot steam, but whatevs.

I was willing to buy Armin miRaCulOuSlY surviving in the manga bc it was just hot steam (and a nearly 50m fall but whatever). He was literally cooked alive. He caught fire, everything was fire. He’s dead. It’ll be even worse when he’s alive and starts the serumbowl in anime form. The inferno cheapened the whole premise of that fight because there’s no way in hell that armin should’ve survived all the shit they added in the anime. Rant over.

Bert for the win

Shinganshina’s first deep fryer looked pretty cool!

DID MIKASA TAKING OUT REINER HAVE AS MUCH IMPACT AS IT DID IN THE MANGA? 353 Responses

45.6% of voters felt even more excited about Mikasa delivering the final blow to Reiner than they did while reading the manga. 41.1% felt that the scene was adapted well, but that it could have been done better. 8.8% found the animation a bit awkward and didn’t enjoy the moment as much because of it.

Finally Mikasa played bigger role in the anime. She was a real badass.

The only knock that scene has is just... Mikasa get out of the mouth! There's an explosive in there! How did you not get hurt?!

Mikasa has come a long way from being picked up and carried away to safety. The girl who watched Shiganshina crumble because of this guy just stuck her whole-ass body in his mouth like nbd and blew his shit to pieces. Call that narrative satisfaction.

It was wonderfully animated, but when I read it in the manga I felt very sad for Reiner. In the anime, the music was very triumphant

I loved the fluid animation. It’s so fitting for the scene!

Yes. It simply made me cry another time for my poor Reiner

THOUGHTS ON WIT MOVING UP THE FLASHBACK SCENE OF EREN AND ARMIN BECOMING FRIENDS? 356 Responses

The majority of the fandom, at 64.9%, felt that moving the childhood flashback scene added more weight to Eren finding Armin’s burned body on the roof. 21.6% aren’t too concerned about the placement and are just happy to see it at all. A small amount of people felt it was better placed in the manga.

Torn, it made the end of this episode way better but might make the start of next episode a little less impactful, we'll see.

I think their voices should have been more childlike. They sounded too mature.

Baby armin is the cutest thing ever. I' m also glad they did some justice for eremin for the first time in the anime

WHO IS CUTTING ONIONS?? WHY MUST YOU HURT ME WIT?

WHICH SCENE FROM THE PREVIEW ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 354 Responses

Seeing the Yeagerbros meet for the first time won out with 37.3% of the vote. Following closely behind is the moment when Levi tries to inject Erwin with the serum. 24% of the fandom are looking forward to seeing Eren and Mikasa’s defiance once Levi realizes that he can still save Erwin.

BUT REALLY, HOW EMOTIONALLY READY ARE YOU FOR THE SERUMBOWL? 354 Responses

34.2% of the fandom feel the impending turmoil coming up as they watch a number of beloved characters either dying or fighting each other. 29.7% are ready to feel everything. 26.3% are looking forward to seeing the characters express their very base and raw emotions. A small few either don’t feel affected or are not really looking forward to the chapter being adapted at all.

One of my favorite characters is Bertholdt so I'm not prepared to see him begging and death next week…

I watch with two anime-only siblings, the serumbowl is going to divide the household into WW3

oh jesus oh fuck i'm not fuckin ready for serumbowl 2.0

I’ve cried so much the past three episodes. I can’t even imagine how bad next week will be.

Last week before Bert dies please no

At least the serum bowl will be dealt with in one episode and we won't need to deal with the endless cliffhanger which definitely did not contribute positively to that part of the arc. It's inevitable with a monthly manga, but man, those few months were rough.

My body is not ready, send help

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

It was so good overall! The anime continues to do a really great job in bringing life to the manga, this episode especially. Not ready for the emotional rollercoaster of next ep tho asgskdk

It was fantastic. I'm so happy with this season. But how dare you guys not give us multiple choice or "all of the above" as options on some of these

So because of the manga I was reAlly beginning to dislike Floch but seeing the survivor scene really reminded me of why his character is the way it is

Zeke’s monologue was much more terrifying than in the manga, specifically when he raged at the soldiers, it was intense. It’s really got me hyped for the next chapter. “Game set” indeed. The way they are lining this up can’t be a coincidence.

i wonder what the cart titan/pieck was doing the whole time

The preview for E18 was wayy to much spoiler imo.

Armin is MVP 5eva but also RIP the anime only fans, it's been so satisfying to see their reactions all over the interwebs

NGL, they put more in the episode than I thought. Guessing that they’ll dedicate 3-4 eps on post photo exposition

This episode was the best of them all. It brought powerful emotions and made me 100% sure that Levi made the right choice with saving Armin's life. Armin is the bravest of them all and I hope he will become a hero in the final arc of the manga. However, for now I can imagine the feelings and emotions the anime-onlies have. They didn't expect Armin to sacrifice himself and die. In the other shonens main trio always survives, while here the situation is different. However, I hope they won't be disappointed after finding out that Armin is still alive. It may feel like strong plot armor for them. Anyway, I love this episode very much!

I've never been so glad to be a manga reader. Watching this episode without knowing that Armin will be okay would have fucked me up for a long time.

I do feel that Zeke's animation turned out a little too cartoonish as he was ripped from his Titan. Which is a weird critique on an anime episode I know, but. The style seems off. Sloppy somehow. Compare this animation to the beautiful chase scene with Levi in episode 2 of part 1 of this season and it feels like two completely different animes. The VA's have done an outstanding job, though.

Armin has evolved to Arman

Can we appreciate how Bertolt was rendered in this episode? His VA did a fantastic job as always and made him more sympathetic. You could sense that Bertolt was rather chill with his monologue. At several times he wasn't ready to commit but he did anyway. Emotional parting is hard for him.rman

Marlowe's scene in chapter 81 was heartbreaking and eerie enough, but this... that shit H U R T E D

My poor heart still hurts after Armin's sacrifice. Like if you cry everytime.

No question regarding Levi vs BT ost? They used such an awesome ost for Armin's sacrifice and made the scene more epic than the manga, which made me really really happy. On the other hand, in Levi vs BT, they used such an ost which didn't even match the fight's mood. Just because of the wrong choice of ost the scene had much much lesser impact.

For me, this episode was the most anticipated from the manga ever since I read it years ago, and they delivered. It's the best so far, but I hope Blu-Ray can make it better

Like a roller coaster of emotions this show was for me, Levi's fight against Zeke put the animation on a high level if I forgot the two last episodes (because it was "meh" for me but good anyways). The promise that's still remain in force, the sacrifices in vain, three epic and decisive battles that put a semicolon in the saga AND the next episode or serum bowl nightmare. Ugh, I need to take a breath because I've cried more that I expected

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 332 Responses

Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ll see you again in a few days!

[hesflyingonbrokenwings]

Dearest V,

it's been almost one year since we last spoke, so I guess our lives might have changed a bit since then...

I hope you've had a peaceful holiday season with your family – speaking of whom, the warmest of greetings and best of wishes to them – may your parents and your cat have a wonderful and healthy start to this decade.

I went head-first into last year thinking I'd see greater changes by the end of it, but, as Oli put it quite concisely, "then I found out how hard it is to really change" – for example, I had quit smoking weed in summer and started to enjoy life free from it, only to start toking again three months later when my mental wellbeing started spiralling downwards again... in the end I have to admit that while I may have felt like I could make a meaningful change in my life, I'm still sitting around trying to find out of my depressive ways, and I'm growing more and more unsure by the day that going back to who I once was is an option at all... after all, people grow up, and I guess part of who we are is determined by our experiences... I should definitely try to seek professional help this year, so maybe over time I'll be able to create the version of myself that I need to be so I can finally stop being down all the time. While that means I may not exactly be "past me", I sincerely hope you'll like whatever person I'm going to be then.

The years we've spent side by side have shaped me in a number of ways, some healthier and some unhealthier. On the upside, obviously, there's the hundreds of memories that we've shared and that I still like to look back on every once in a while (even though I'm slightly concerned about how many of those involve weed and / or booze), the music you've introduced me to (I still enjoy your Spotify mix every now and then) and so on. What's probably more on the unhealthy side of things and might sound a bit crazy is that, interestingly enough, I still sometimes feel like you're watching my every move, judging every single thing I'm doing, and it's driving me nuts. I don't know the exact reason and it confuses me... on the one hand it's kind of annoying and a bit restrictive, and on the other hand I just want to figure out where exactly that comes from. I guess part of it is because of what I've experienced over the past years, the numerous occasions on which you've trash talked the time I've spent in relationships with other people to feel better about yourself. Then again, maybe part of me just wants you to still care, when the rational part in me reckons you probably you don't care about me anymore – I mean, why would you, you can do so much better. I don't think I'll find answers for now, more stuff to discuss with a therapist once I've found one, I guess. Then again, maybe it'll help me make saner decisions for the moment, I don't know. What I do know, though, is that I'm done with this whole trash-talking business, that is, if we start talking again, please just let me decide for myself what to make of my past... I hope this didn't sound too harsh, it's just something I might've left unsaid for too long. Oh well, and speaking of long-lasting impact, then there's like hundreds of things that still evoke your memory anyway, whether that's any mention of anything related to law school, or the former capital, or still wearing the things you gave me, or, oh yeah, living in the same flipping part of town. Also reminds me, I still haven't touched the new BoJack episodes or the Chris-chan documentary yet... watching TheOdd1sOut's Sooubway part 4 without you feld weird enough, somehow. I guess it goes without saying that there has hardly been a day this year that I haven't thought of you at least in some way, mostly thinking about how awkward it would be to run into each other on the streets, whether we'd exchange words and what the hell I'd have to say about how my life was going and what I've learned or accomplished and so on if that became the case. It obviously didn't, but I still spent some time thinking about what I'd have to say and it was interesting to observe how it changed over the year. I guess you were right about some things, first and foremost about how I should try to get myself up from the fucking ground first before attempting to build up anything in life.

That being said, there are two major milestones I've reached last year, and I hope you're at least a bit proud of me – I've used the spring semester to finally complete my mandatory internship, coding for a software company that was a pleasure to work for, and they offered to hire me as a working student right away and as a proper engineer once I finish uni. Anyway, since the office isn't exactly close to uni, I've decided for now to keep working at uni for two more years. They have been quite understanding and the offer to hire me again still stands. Since I could definitely see myself working in software development after uni, I have started working towards a proper computer science bachelor's degree which I'll pursue in parallel with my usual master's. And, what might surprise you even more, believe it or not, I've been smoke-free for more than 7 months now, and I'm making damn sure I'm not touching another cigarette or anything else containing nicotine again – fuck off, big tobacco! I almost also managed to finish my bachelor's degree, but my assigned thesis topic was so cryptic and far off from what I expected that I ended up not handing in anything at all... but I'm making sure to finish in a second attempt before the next semester starts, wish me luck!

Anyway, how's your 2019 been? Is everything alright at uni? Have you passed the bar yet, and how's your internship situation (been) going? Also, I've heard that the houseshare didn't work out (it really sucks to hear that), did you find another nice place to stay near uni and how do you like it? How's your bass journey coming along? I hope you're still having fun with the bass and I'd love to hear some of the riffs you've been rocking out to one day. (Speaking of rocking out – I don't know whether he told you, but Sebi and I have been trying to start a band for a while now. While we somehow procrastinated our way around it almost all year until recently, we've started jamming and recording voice memos, so who knows, maybe we'll have written some kick-ass tunes soon.)

Lest I forget, speaking of 2019... a very belated happy birthday! Whether or not to contact you for your birthday was a harder decision than you may think... in the end I decided to keep at a distance and not leave a message, I still hope you've had a great time (at least it probably won't have been a disappointment like the times I've been involved) so make damn sure to enjoy your remaining time at 22... because you know what Blink-182 has to say about them darned 23-year-olds.

Quick change of topic, politics is the same clusterfuck as always, isn't it? When the 12/12 general elections were announced, I was hoping so badly that Great Britain might be coming to its senses... and then the results were out, oh boy. Well, if this is what the Brits truly want, then good riddance, I guess... also, I hope the Americans won't make the same mistake this year but I'm not too sure about that... but at least the old fucker finally got impeached, about time. I know senate is likely to acquit him, but I don't want to think about that just now... for now, let's just stick with "they've finally got him."

Enough for now, I hope this note reaches you someday – if you feel like replying, just interact with this post, leave me a PM or so, you'll find a way. Just know that I still don't quite feel like I'm ready to take contact back to a normal level just yet, so it might take me the usual couple of weeks to reply in case there's anything you want me to reply to... until then I'll just go back to lurking in the shadows, trying to figure out my life while checking in on your Tumblr every once in a while to know you're okay. (Oh well, it's your Tumblr we're talking about, maybe "being okay" doesn't exactly cut it, but you get the gist.)

Best, L

[hazbin-huntress]

Uhh, just found this blog but how about “Shut up and let me help you” with OC and Cayde?

I’M SO SORRY I’M ONLY GETTING TO THIS NOWI really had no ideas but!! Due to some things that happen in Aridana’s story line and my boyfriends help, I finally have something!!And thank you so much for requesting this, I legit screeched when I saw this pls send more pretty please i live and breathe for my Bayonet aaaaasorry its long .v.If anybody wants to read more, or have me continue this or whatever, let me know!!! ^^

~~~A mission. All it was was a mission, she thought. Help one of Sunny’s Warlock friends with some deep field research with the Vex, in and out. It was never supposed to go wrong.

It was never supposed to go like this.

The Warlock’s name was Oracle-7, an Exo who primarily studies within the Vex field as to learn as much as she possibly could. After the events regarding Osiris and the looming threat of Panoptes coming marginally close to practically breaking time and reality as we knew it, Zavala was only now slightly more lenient towards researching the Vex. Of course, Sunny’s… passionate persuasiveness definitely played it’s part in getting the Titan to ease off a bit.

Oracle requested assistance from the Vanguard regarding her mission. She knew the dangers that the Vex held all too well. However, she also knows when she can’t simply go into the field on her own. The Exo discovered a few clues of a mysterious entity sighted within a few places that were known for a heavy influx of Vex, but ever since the Taken War, the Vex have become more unpredictable than ever. Knowing the risk, Oracle requested a decently skilled Guardian to accompany her, hoping the Vanguard would at least consider it before whatever this was went off the grid again.

So, with a Hunter’s natural sense of adventure, and Aridana’s natural sense of curiosity, she practically begged Zavala to let her go. He was hesitant. Sunny and Aridana both hold spots as Right-Hands to their respective Vanguard, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have the skill. It was the risk that he was worried about. It would be near impossible to fill her position if, Traveler forbid, something happened.

He didn’t want to think about how the others- Cayde, Sunny, Buck, etc.- would take it if something happened either.

But once again, with a bit of persuasion, the Titan caved, and sent her off. He couldn’t help but curse himself when a high-alert distress beacon signaled through the Vanguard communication line.

Oracle had sent the alert, her voice mildly frantic with the sounds of a battle going on in the background. “This is Oracle-7 of Fireteam Ordinance, requesting immediate assistance. The mission went off course, we were ambushed by Taken and we’re pinned!”

Zavala rushed to the coms center, moving Cayde from his original spot, despite his harsh protest. “Fireteam Ordinance, this is Commander Zavala. We’ve received your beacon and are ready to send a team effective immediate-” the Awoken was cut short by another voice suddenly coming through.

“Oracle, we don’t need a rescue squad!” a familiar Huntress’ voice rang. “We fought a war against these things and won, we can handle this!” A quick huff of mild irritation and concern sounded from the Hunter Vanguard as he snatched the microphone from Zavala.

“Ari, don’t take this the wrong way, but as great as we Hunters are, no one’s invincible. Now talk to me, what’s goin’ on?” the Exo questioned. He winced back just a bit at the sudden loud muffle that came through as a response.

“We ran into some unfamiliar Taken… thing. We have no idea what it is, honestly, but whatever it is-” Oracle’s voice cut off, a sound of an explosion going off near-by, “Damn it. Whatever it is, it’s bringing massive waves of Taken with him! We need help before someone-”

“No one is getting killed, Oracle we can handle this fine!” Aridana snapped.“We don’t know what this thing is, Aridana! Look what it did to those Vex, imagine what those Taken flames can do to us!”

The atmosphere in the room tanked. Taken flames? They might not know a lot of information about the Taken, but flames, Taken flames, that was concerning.Aridana took over the the main line, the distinct sound of a blade being swung making itself known. “Zavala, Cayde, we don’t need a rescue squad. Just ignore-” her sentence was cut short, a quick huff and a bit of a grunt left her as she dodged an attack.

Sunny was with the other two Vanguard now, worried about her friends’ safety. Her gaze quickly turned to Cayde, both Exos knowing full well the extent of Aridana’s stubbornness. The Hunter spoke through the coms once more, “I hate to say it, Ari, but you know damn well if a Warlock of all people is panicking, you should be getting the hell out of dodge.” His head turned to Sunny, who immediately responded with a nod. “Keep yourself in one piece, we’re on our way.”

Aridana harshly furrowed her brow, trying to balance focusing on the fight as well as the communication line. “Have you all gone deaf? What part of we’re fine don’t you people get?!” she snapped, followed by the sound of her signature Heart’s Wraith sounding off soon after.

Cayde narrowed his optics, “The part where you’re not an unstoppable God who can’t be killed?”

“I never said I was! If anything trying to keep a conversation in the middle of this clusterfuck is the most dangerous thing I’m doing right now, so back off and let me focus!” she said, finishing through clenched teeth.

“Or, fun idea, you quit being such a stubborn ass before you get the both of you killed, and I don’t end this conversation with the biggest migraine since the goddamn Golden Age.”

It was rare when Cayde’s tone raised into aggressive. He usually only did it when it came to high stress situations, like a losing streak in a poker game, or even his Right-Hand Hunter getting herself killed from her own stubborn idiocy. Obviously.

Sometimes he curses himself for caring so damn much about her.

The noise of their fight grew stronger over the coms as Sunny quickly made her way to the Hangar to get their ships ready. Aridana hissed through her teeth as she took a blow to the arm, a gash making itself quickly present. “For the last fucking time, Cayde, NO. We don’t need a rescue, we don’t need back-up, and we don’t need a lesson in common sense from someone who’s made more stupid decisions than I have years on my life!” she yelled.

The Exo’s hand slammed onto the dash of the coms controls, “For fuck’s sake, Aridana, for once in your life can you just shut up and let me help you?!”

“DAMN IT, CAYDE, I don’t have TIME for-”

“ARIDANA, MOVE!” Oracle’s scream cut through like a bolt of lightning. The Hunter quickly turned to find the Taken monstrosity not but a mere few inches away from her. Before she could fully react, the sound of a blade quickly rang through the air before meeting with her left arm, just below the shoulder.

The sound it made was sickening. The unmistakable sound of metal meeting with flesh, followed by the splatter of blood that resulted from the blade’s harsh yet swift movement. Two separate thuds met the floor. Aridana first, dropping to her knees while she grabbed the wound as tightly as her shaking hand could. In her shock, she didn’t even realize the second thud was the sound of her left arm, now laying limp and lifeless on the ground.

The Vanguard, however, could only tell that something detrimental happened. The sound of a blade going through flesh was irrefutable to any Guardian, let alone the Vanguard.

Cayde’s expression turned from angry to mass concern before you could blink. His hold on the microphone tightened to a practical death-grip. “Ari?” he questioned. No response. “Ari, can you hear me?”

Still no response.

“Aridana, answer me!” he said, fear practically consuming his previous tone without realizing it. Even Zavala had a deep look of concern over his normally stoic expression. The Hunter cursed as he slammed the dash of the controls once again. The only sound they could make out past the gunfire and the eerie noises of the Taken was the faint, struggling huffs of the Huntress attempting to breathe; to steady herself.

Her eyes finally met with her arm a few feet away from her. Her body and breath continued to shake as she couldn’t help but stare at the heavy flow of blood coming out of where her arm used to reside. Aridana’s mind raced as she considered bringing out Bentley just for a quick fix for now, the shock from her injury causing her to forget just how bad of a situation this had just turned into. Calling her Ghost now would be practical suicide.

Suddenly, an odd whirling sound made itself present as her eyes darted back to her arm a few feet away.

He was doing something to it. He was doing something to her arm.

The veins within the limb flowed with a sickening black, slowly coursing through it in it’s entirety. Her body filled with dread, eyes wide with an indescribable fear of the unknown that she hadn’t felt for centuries. Her voice was quiet, shaking as she struggled to get words out; to say anything.

“No… Don’t…” she spoke hardly above a whisper.

It was as if the world was silent, aside from the ringing in her ears. The Taken creature looked at her as he slowly raised his arm.

Its hand clenched shut, and the last thing that made it back to the Tower was the harshly distorted sound of…

Screaming.

Cayde threw down the microphone and sprinted out of the Hall of Guardians before Zavala could even think of stopping him. He raced to the Hangar, Sunny already waiting impatiently with their ships. She saw the look in his eyes and her concern was immediately replaced with a mixed emotion of fear.

“Cayde, what’s going-”

“They’re both in trouble.” he cut her off. “Aridana’s in trouble. Something happened, something very fucking bad happened. We need to go.” Cayde loaded up his Ace of Spades, turning towards his ship. He was taken aback just a bit when he noticed that Sunny had already left with her ship before he could even say the word ‘Now.’

The Vanguard let out a sigh as he transmatted into his signature ship. He gripped the controls tightly as he flew away from the tower, following the distress beacon’s signal.

“Aridana, for everyone’s sake, you better be alive by the time I get there or I’m gonna kill you.”

It was Ari. She had to be fine.

She had to be.

[dehvastation]

In Training (With @MismatchedFreak)

Qhuinn: [I checked my phone for the hundredth time and damn near shouted for joy when the email came through from Rhage. I would owe him two cases of tootsie pops and a night of patrol but right now, I didn’t care. I shot a quick text to Fritz asking if he could prepare a meal for two that I would pick up after my class and then hoped like hell that Dehv would be on board with my plan. It had been five months of calls and texts, of stolen moments and Skyping each other. Our schedules had just been one big ass clusterfuck of missing each other and overlapping timeframes and I had had enough. So yeah, maybe I bribed the hell out of Rhage. Not like he was going to mind an extra few hours ‘recovering’ with his shellan or getting an extra night in with her while I took his patrol. I already told the brothers at the hospital what I was doing too, and their females backed me up so I knew I had their support. I flipped to my messages to send Dehv a text and laughed when the message from him came rolling through. My fingers flew over the screen to type my reply ~Funny you should ask…as soon as class is over, don’t get caught up in chatting with the others, I’m stealing you away for a bit.~ I hit send and then finished dressing in my leathers and a form fitting black tee. I tugged on my socks and boots, then tucked my phone into my pocket along with my wallet and keys, then stepped out of the cabin and dematerialized to the manse. I had to fight to keep the smile off my face though, I didn’t want the rest of the trainees to see me in a good mood, I mean, I couldn’t let them think they’d have an easy day, where would the fun be in that]

Dehv: ~ I had just finished lacing up my boots when my phone made a noise. I jumped on it and then grinned at the message. I was going to be totally useless in that first lesson with knowing what was to come. There was a few whispers about me and Qhuinn around the trainees. But so far the only ones who knew for sure that the two of us were together were Davidson and Nhick. I trusted them, and they then understood why I was late to nights out or whatever when I got five extra minutes to see Qhuinn before he went off on patrol. I didn’t tell them much, and they really didn’t ask, they just checked in with me now and again, and sympathised when I complained about my schedule. Not that I was complaining seriously, well sometimes I was, but mostly I was just letting off steam. They understood and it made things easier. I continued to get my ass kicked my Bernie and Tie, both were fucking awesome trainees, but sucked at the theory side. Which meant that they took out their feelings of lacking on everyone around them. I didn’t dislike them, but I was wary of them. When Qhuinn had started teaching us about various weapons, and especially ones that could be used on demons, while never telling us they were for demons, they got even more confused. Despite their endless questions, ribbings and downright inappropriate comments I continued to ignore them. I was older than a lot of the trainees, and I figured they’d grow into themselves in time. I had to hope anyway. I snorted and then checked the time. I wasn’t going to have time to text back and get there in time. Punctuality was far more important right now, and Qhuinn was teaching the first class. I grinned at the thought and zipped up my jacket. I tugged my bag over my shoulder and ran down the stairs to the front door. I waited until it locked once I stepped outside before I made my way to my garage and my car. It didn’t take two minutes to get inside and start the short journey to the Brotherhood Mansion

When I pulled up and parked, I wasn’t paying attention as I made quick work of the concrete between the car and the door. I nearly crashed into Nhick as he stepped off the bus, I laughed and clapped him on the back before we waited on Davidson joining us, “Evening. Did you see the email about getting some free time today. It’s probably my first free minute in the last 6 months.” They both looked me, raised a brow and then started laughing. I just snorted at them and then tugged them both towards the locker room. I spied Qhuinn coming in the other direction, I winked and tapped my watch to tell him that time couldn’t go fast enough before I was tugged through the doors so I could stash my stuff in my locker. ~

Qhuinn: [I had made it about ten steps from the training center when I was stopped by Tohr, “Wrath wants a meet tomorrow night to discuss how things are going, I’ll tell him you’ll be there, right” I nodded and confirmed. I wasn’t stressed about meeting with Wrath, I had kept my nose clean and done a damn good job. I hadn’t even killed any of the trainees, no matter how annoying serome of the little shits could be. A few of them were working my last nerve and I wasn’t sure how much longer they were going to last in the program. Yeah, we needed boots on the ground, but I’m fairly certain Wrath wanted more than knuckle draggers to represent the damn race. I couldn’t even trust a few of them to partner off with half the class because they were fucking morons who refused to listen. My favorite was the two idiots I overhead discussing their thoughts on letting gays into the training program…that came up when Blay and Sax came down one night to go over some paperwork. It had taken every ounce of restraint I had in me not to break their necks that night, but it was close. And their time was coming. I was reminded of that night in the locker room with Lash and how my anger got away from me. Wrath should be fucking impressed with how much I’ve grown. Instead of killing them, I’d simply humiliate the shit out of them, then get them bounced out of the program. My lips quirked in the corners and then grew when I heard the trainees start filing in. I lifted my head in time to see Dehv rounding the corner and gave him a slight nod in return before tweedle dee and tweedle dum tugged him through the doors. I coughed to cover the snort and cracked my neck as I walked into the gym. I grabbed the folder from the door with the tests in there and grinned as I sorted through them. This was going to make the lesson all kinds of fun. I dropped a various weapons into the center of the mats and then leaned against the back wall while I waited for the trainees to exit the locker room. I didn’t even have to watch to see when Dehv came out, I could sense him as easily as anything lately, and once more followed by his shadows who elbowed him when they saw the pile of weapons and me standing there. The room filled in and I was just about to get started when the last two trainees, Tie and Bernie came strolling in like they were hot shit, not even caring they were late. They hadn’t even changed yet and that was just going to make it that much easier.] You two might as well not even bother changing, I doubt you’ll pass the first round of testing and if you don’t, you’ll find yourselves on your ass after tonight. Ten minute pop quiz, your results will determine how I start your pairings tonight. We’re doing a round robin of fights with weapons. You draw blood, you’re out. I want to see control. You take your opponent down and stop just short of actual drawing blood. Show me where the best strikes would be with the weapon you choose from the pile. Remember they all have their uses. Once you’re down, you’re out. If you’re out, you sit on the side and take notes. Some of you will be repeating this course based on how you do. The last trainee standing will earn one of these…after you take me down.

[I pulled a dagger out of the sheath I wore on my hip and held it up to the light.] It’s a hand-crafted gargatoan bladed bone dagger. One taste of your enemies blood and the blade will not miss its target for 24 hours. So if it scratches them as they dematerialize or run….you can track them, you can hunt them down, and then you can end them. Now. Who’s ready?

Dehv: ~ I laughed as I landed against Nhick, whose arm came up to steady me, Davidson instantly apologised to us both. “It’d be good if you learned your own strength at some point before you hit 400.” I grinned and stepped away from the two, making my way to the locker so I can throw my bag and phone in there. I only kept out my writing stuff and a drink. The two things I should technically need in the theory lessons we’d had so far. As soon as I was ready I joined up with my friends and could see them stop talking abruptly. I snorted, “What?” they both turned to look at me and then slowly smiled, Davidson was the one who answered, “We were debating asking you for food now we’re a lesson down. But Nhick here figures you probably have some kind of………….business to take care of?” They both kept a straight face for all of two minutes before cracking up. I rolled my eyes and shoved at both their shoulders, getting a punch in the arm in return from Davidson. “Watch it, or I’ll tell Qhuinn who’s bruising me and see what he says.” I glared at Davidson as seriously as I could, seeing Nhick slap his hands over his face to hide his laugh when Davidson paled and started shaking his head, smoothing hands over my shirt. I managed to hold my laughter for one more beat before I smacked his hand away, “I’m messing with you. You bruise me all the time when we spar. Idiot.” I grinned at him and he turned to look between me and Nhick, “You’re both assholes.” I laughed right along with Nhick before nodding at the door and then starting to walk, “I can’t help myself, but to answer your question, yes I am going to see Qhuinn in the free period. He’s also off, and we might get more than 5 minutes to talk to each other that’s not over text or facetime.” They both started whispering and ribbing me, poking where they could. I laughed happily and shoved at them both, knowing that we probably looked in sane as we walked through the doors of the room. We quietened slowly as I realised that there was paper and pens on the desks, and weapons laid out on a table. Well damn. Today wasn’t going to be a normal day. I was glad I’d come in my sweats rather than wearing my jeans like I would normally. We stood around awkwardly, I glanced at my watch once before I heard the late comers arriving. We all turned to face them, I could feel the tension in the room, coming from everyone including Qhuinn. I watched him and then looked to the males as they entered. I rolled my shoulders to try and dispel some of the frustration. Nhick and Davidson were standing either side of me, and I could feel they weren’t impressed either. Though our attention was quickly pulled back to Qhuinn as he started speaking. I felt my eyes go wide when he spoke to the latecomers. I’d seen him pissed, and he could easily have gone nuclear on them for being so rude. When he mentioned the test before the physical I smiled to myself. I could see both Davidson and Nhick had their heads bowed too. They knew that the two would likely struggle with the theory side of things. And then we have to spar each other until we got it spar with Qhuinn. Well shit, that was going to be interesting. I could feel both nudges that came from the males either side of me. I bit the corner of my lip to stop myself from grinning. My gaze traveled around the room, trying hard to keep things under control before we were given the go ahead to start. I lifted my hand along with most of the other trainees in answer to the question that Qhuinn asked, then turned to walk to my desk. I folded myself into the seat that felt smaller and smaller by the day and then read over the front of it. Basic test format, questions, answers. I guessed that we’d then work through the answer to ensure that everyone got the right ones. I didn’t much care, I knew I’d fallen behind with some of the theory because of patrol and my business, but I still figured I’d be alright. If I wasn’t, I’d just have to take notes for the session, still valuable. I smiled over at Qhuinn, it turning into a full blown grin as I realised I’d get to see him fight. Whether it was against me or one of the others. It would still be fun. Watching from the sidelines would likely mean I was itching to get out of the session by the end. If we fought each other, I had to remember to avoid his nose. No way was I going to live that down if I broke it yet again. I snorted at the thought and then shook my head when that attracted attention, “Nothing, sorry. Can we start?” ~

Qhuinn: [As soon as most of the trainees started taking their seats, I grabbed my phone and started setting the timer. Dehv’s snort had me lifting a brow as I turned my head, that grin on his face had my thoughts going a whole different direction, but I managed to quickly school my features. I gave a quick nod and pressed the start button] Go ahead and start. You have ten minutes

[Most of the trainees started right off. It was a fairly standard test going over the shit we’ve covered endlessly. I knew theory sucked, everyone wanted hands on and I couldn’t blame them. But the Brotherhood was sticklers for this shit. They didn’t want dumbasses out on the streets representing them and I couldn’t blame them either. I tried to keep the balance and hoped I did a decent enough job with it. I started walking around the class, checking out the answers as I did. Some of the trainees, Dherric, Jhasper, and even Nhick especially, were flying through the test. And from what I could tell, doing a killer job. Others were going over the questions a little more studiously. It was no surprise though that Tie and Bernie hadn’t even started. As I got closer, I heard them muttering under their breath their thoughts on the whole situation. I checked the time and popped my neck. I shifted my steps and gave the room another sweep to give the other trainees the appropriate time before the distraction I knew was coming happened. I checked my time. Sixty seconds left. I glanced up in the corner of the room where the camera was situated and gave the slightest of nods, then changed my trajectory once more. I was coming between the two desks when they jumped me. “Why should we go through the bullshit when we can just take you and the weapons now?” “Yeah, you said we were getting tossed anyway…” An elbow connected with ribs and I grinned before narrowing my eyes at the class] No one, I mean no one fucking move, you hear me?

[They were out of sync, they were trying brute strength and no thought in their attack. I threw an elbow back and hit Tie in the throat, then spun and connected a left hook into Bernie’s jaw. Tie choked and stumbled back, towards the pile of weapons. I wasn’t worried about him though. Instead I stared at Bernie and ran towards him, dropping a shoulder and tackling him to the ground. He dropped like a sack of potatoes and his head bounced off the ground with a sickening thud. I could say it knocked him stupid, but that would be no different than any other day. He growled and tried to wrap around me as he swung his arms like windmills at me. His ham-hock hands connecting but only glancing blows. I lifted my head to the rest of the class] This…this is why you need to know your opponent and always be on your guard.

[I shifted to the right just as a dagger grazed my ear. It landed and barely missed hitting Bernie in the forehead. His eyes went wide and I turned my head to see Tie launching at me. I rolled off Bernie and Tie landed on him instead. Bernie was pissed about the dagger and let Tie know by jacking him in the face twice before the doors opened and Tohr came walking in with a smirk on his face. “Good job, you fucking idiot. I’m impressed you didn’t kill either of them, they sure as hell deserved it.” Behind him was a pissed off looking Zsadist and an even more pissed off Wrath.  I dusted myself off and got up to speak to the three Brothers while they picked up Tie and Bernie off the ground. They’d caused some shit in other classes but not enough to get bounced…until now. Wrath slapped my back and then confirmed the meeting tomorrow, before they all left, leaving me with the trainees who were all, surprisingly quiet. I closed the door behind Wrath and took a slow, steadying breath. I already knew Dehv was going to be pissed at me, I’d caught his glare at least once but had to force myself not to look for him during the fight. I had to hope he’d not jump in and that he’d let me handle this. Thankfully he restrained himself. That would go a long way to proving to Wrath and the others we had this shit under control too. I took one more breath before I turned and wiped the blood off my bottom lip as I gave the class a slow grin.] So…who’s ready to see how they did?

Dehv: ~ I licked over my lips and then turned over the paper when Qhuinn told us we were able to. I exhaled slowly and then started reading down the questions. I never worried about not knowing the answers, as long as I got a decent score, I knew I would be safe in the programme. I gave a quick look around the place, smiling when I saw Nhick knuckling down, Davidson sat in front of him looking a little less confident. I smiled at my friends and then flicked my eyes up to watch Qhuinn wander around the room. He looked great, and I felt that little sliver of anticipation run through me as I flicked my eyes to the clock again. Shit! I was running out of time. I focused on the words in front of me and tried my best to answer them as I could. I really wanted to pass this exam and get my butt into the sparring. I had just finished writing on the final answer, my eyes shifting to the top of the page again to check over my answers when I heard the scrape of the chairs on the floor. I lifted my gaze and instantly felt my muscles tense. I was moving before I even realised I’d done it, a growl rumbling in my chest when both trainees tried to attack Qhuinn. I heard his words, and I locked up, feeling arms wrapping around me as my eyes flashed. I registered that both Davidson and Nhick were pinning me, having dumped my ass back in the chair again. Nhick was practically in my lap as they kept me still. Their words were quiet in my ear, telling me that Qhuinn knew what he was doing, and I had to leave him to get on with it. He was the tutor and they weren’t going to have me kicked out as well because I got involved where I’d been told to sit out of. I knew my eyes were glowing, and my fangs elongated as soon as I saw that dagger come towards his head, I surged forward again, this time Nhick did sit on me, hooking his legs around the chair legs to hold me in place. I growled at him again and felt Davidson smack me around the head. I turned towards him and his voice was kept low, “We’re trying to stop you getting your ass kicked. He’s not in danger, fucking stop it.” I exhaled hard and closed my eyes. I knew he was fine, I knew he wasn’t hurt and was probably enjoying himself far more with this than he had been while we were doing the test. I also figured out once my brain connected back on line again that Qhuinn had probably anticipated it. He told us it was important to know your opponent. He’d seen it coming, and had probably put himself in the line of fire. What a fucking douchebag. I growled again, this time because I wanted to beat some sense into the idiot. I slowly relaxed myself and settled back in my chair, Nhick didn’t move, neither did Davidson, though their arms relaxed slightly. I watched as Qhuinn got things under control, and then the doors opened and Zsadist, Tohr and Wrath walked in. I heard the collective intake of breath when the King entered, though I’d seen him more than I cared to remember over my training sessions and check in meetings. Davidson whispered in my ear from behind him, his breath against my ear making me swat at him, “That’s the fucking King. Think he’s as hardass as the rumours say he is?” I snorted at him, “Yes he is, don’t get on the wrong side of him, and shut up or he’ll hear you having a moment.” I grinned as Davidson laughed quietly. I realised he had a chair and was sitting in it while wrapped around me, Nhick on my lap doing the same probably looked insane. My friends were complete idiots. But they had stopped me making a fool of myself and ignoring a direct order from my tutor. I sat for a minute as Qhuinn wiped blood off himself, and I felt that rumble start again in my chest. Both friends tightened their hold on me until I wheezed, “Fuck off, I’m fine. Get your asses back to your seats so we can find out if you’re sticking around to fight.” They both grinned widely and then slowly extracted themselves from around me. With a patronising pat to the head they took their seats again and I looked up to where Qhuinn was standing by the board. I nodded curtly when he asked the room who wanted to know how they’d done. I’d get past being pissed slowly, but for now I had to participate in the class, and put everything else to the back of my mind. ~

Qhuinn: [When I turned, it took everything I had to school my features because it became readily apparent now why Dehv hadn’t jumped into the fight. Not only to me but to several others in the class based on the confused looks on their faces. Not that Dehv was noticing anyone else’s reactions, not with the glare I was getting. I was definitely going to hear about that later. The sad thing was, I was actually looking forward to it. I wasn’t used to having someone call me on my shit and he wasn’t afraid to do it. At least he didn’t do it in class, which was nice. I knew Nhick and Davidson would give him shit for it too, which amused me. Once they extracted themselves from the tangle of him anyway. Fucking clowns. Though if I wasn’t so thankful they kept him from getting his ass handed to him, I’d have a little chat about personal space…who knows, maybe I still might. It was fun making Davidson nearly piss himself. I bit my cheek not to laugh at that thought. I hoped the others would see that we could do this, that there was no preferential treatment, that we controlled ourselves enough so that soon we no longer had to hide. But maybe now he had an idea of how difficult it was for me watching him go through his own sparring shit day in and day out without being able to intervene. It fucking sucked at times, but we had to play by the rules. And I had had everything under control. Still, I fucking loved knowing he would have had my back. I gave a nod and quickly turned my back to the class, just to give myself a moment and started writing answers on the board as I spoke] Alright, honor system grading. Zero to One wrong will line up to the left, two to three wrong, to the right, four wrong in the center, five or more, against the wall, you’ll be taking notes.

[I turned back around to see them start marking down the right and wrong, some scratching out answers to put the correct one in its place, though I wasn’t worried about them cheating. Most of the trainees were good kids, even if they weren’t all the best at the theory side, every damn one of them at least tried. And it showed. During the first rounds of the fight, I’d sit and work with those who needed the extra help. They’d have another chance. The trainees started to get up and move to their respective lines, some a little more dejected than others. Nhick and Dherric went left, Dehv and Jhasper right, Davidson to the center along with Carter, and on and on it went. Three trainees ended up against the wall with me. Group one only had the two fighters, group two had five, and group three had three. It was a little uneven so I had to take the highest scoring one from the third group and partner him with the lowest scoring one from the second group, but in the end, it worked out. I grabbed one of the trainees who wasn’t going to be participating, Cannon, and grinned wide at the deer in the headlights look he suddenly had on his face as I marched him to a clearing in the center of the room] Alright, now, you all know that fights won’t always be fair. And it won’t always be your brute strength or your speed that gets the job done. It’s easy to let your emotions and your adrenaline take control in the heat of the moment, but you gotta always be in control of yourself and your weapons. You need to think about what you’re doing and what your opponent is doing, what they could be doing. Try to think ahead of the game. On the streets, your fights won’t be perfectly choreographed, your opponents won’t attack you one at a time like they do in the movies. But, if you can remain focused, you got a better shot of keeping your head. Now, I want to see you disarm your opponent and take them down, without drawing blood, show me ‘fatal’ strikes without harming them. Once you’re down, sit out and join the others in back. It should look something like this

[I handed a dagger to Cannon and then stood opposite of him with my own out. He stood there for a moment looking between me and the blade, then back to the other trainees and I raised a brow before taunting him. He ran at me like I was one of the dummy bags we had hanging and I sidestepped him easily enough before I grabbed his wrist and kicked out a leg, sending him flipping onto his back with a thud. After he groaned, I helped him back up and told him to try again, but this time to mean it, to act like I was any other trainee. I think the fall knocked the uneasiness loose because now his head was in the game. He circled me a few times and actually managed a few decent attempts at disarming me before I had managed to pin his arms behind his head and drop his dagger to the ground. I pretended to stab his heart and grinned over his shoulder] Ok, not too shabby, now, the rest of you, show me what you got.

Dehv: ~ I kept my gaze up at the board where the answers were being written down. I switched coloured pens and then started marking my sheet, adding in anything I got wrong as a separate note to that question. It allowed me to go back to it at a future date to ensure I understood where I went wrong and what was the right answer. Once I was done I added up my answers and put that clearly at the top of the paper. Not terrible, I didn’t get 100%, but I wasn’t shameful either. I glanced over at the other two, not surprised to see that Nhick had almost his 95% and Davidson was only 10% behind him. I stood and squeezed their shoulders before looking around to work out where I’d need to be, I stepped to the right and checked Davidson and Nhick were settled too. I knew they were fine, but we worked really well together and I checked on them without thought. I grinned when I found myself standing beside Jhasper, we were in a group of five, and I was pleased when Qhuinn came around and moved us into more even groupings. I was also glad that for the most part the majority of the group got a decent score. It made me proud of how far we’d come from when we’d first started the programme. I looked up at Jhasper and smiled at him, clearing my throat before I spoke, “This should be interesting. After that display, I’m not sure anything we do can beat it.” He grinned and shook his head, “At least those two fuckwits are out the programme now. Should mean we get a little more done in these sessions. They’ve injured me by accident every time we’ve paired up.” I felt my eyes go wide, I’d been able to mostly keep the two at bay, but I knew Jhasper was younger than the rest of us, so he was still finding his way and growing into his transitioned body. I hadn’t any clue that they went at others that hard, “Shit, that’s good they’re out the programme then. We have to trust each other, and maiming and injuring each other isn’t the way to boost morale.” He laughed and I grinned at him before turning my attention back to Qhuinn to see what he had in mind for the next round.

I nodded along with the explanation and grinned. I’d used strength against others in the past, and I’d done damage by controlling my anger and my strength when it was needed. This I could do and I hoped I could do well. Though whether I wanted to fight Qhuinn at the end was another matter. Would he be happy to go no holds barred, or would be pull his punches? I watched some of the others listen, the odd one sneer and shake their head as they tried to ignore the logic to his words. It amused me to see that some of the trainees were really inexperienced, and I hoped that a knock on their ass and their confidence this early would mean they’d start to listen, grow and change rather than find it hard to build themselves back up again. I watched Cannon get picked to go toe to toe with Qhuinn, and it had me chuckling. I knew that’d not do any damage, but I also knew that they thought Qhuinn was scary as fuck, even Davidson, who knew I’d not get involved with someone who was dangerous to anyone who didn’t deserve it.

I felt my eyes widen at the first attempt, a collective gasp echoing when Qhuinn sidestepped and the trainee started getting frustrated. Though, with prompting he started to understand what Qhuinn was getting at, and that had the others reacting in the same way. Noticing the things he was doing that were going to be ineffective, I felt a nudge and leaned closer to Jhasper, “You ok?” He nodded and then whispered, “Didn’t think this was a thing, but it’s worked fast. He’d down and he barely got a shot in.” I nodded at that and then ran my fingers through my hair, “Yeah, doesn’t help we’re trainees and he’s a professional though, hey?” I snickered and then moved forward to select a weapon. I chose a couple of knives that felt like they fitted in my palms perfectly and then moved to a clear area so I could face Jhasper. I was surprised to see that he’d picked up a similar weapon to me, though whereas mine were serrated and sharp, his seemed duller and more rounded. I bet that hurt when you got caught wrong.

I rolled my shoulders and dropped down, grinning at the younger Trainee before shrugging a shoulder in disinterest. I could see his anger flare at that gesture and I chuckled to myself. He ran at me and I mimicked Qhuinn’s move from earlier, side stepping and taking Jhaspers feet out from under him. He hit the mat with a loud bang, though he bounced right back up to face me. I winked this time and continued to watch him. I saw the anger bleed slowly out his eyes and he rushed me. I went to sidestep again, but this time he countered and shouldered past me, boot hitting my knee to bring me down to the mat with a shout of pain, the elbow to the mouth didn’t improve my mood, “I’m not those assholes, you’re meant to show the blow, not take it.” I rolled my eyes and spun the knife in my palm as I stood again. I flexed my knee to check it was just a bruise before licking at my lip, the blood welling just slightly in the split. Nothing serious and it’d be healed before morning.

I growled as I watched Jhasper circle and this time when he ran at me I didn’t move, instead sweeping my leg under his and gripping his hips to take him down to the mat, quickly using the heel of one boot and my knee to pin his arms to his side, my daggers positioned at his throat and over his heart, “Like this.” I growled, his breathing was coming in short huffs of air from where I’d slammed him down on the mat. I left my weight on his right wrist just long enough to see the wince flash over his features before I stood and stepped back again, gesturing for him to come at me again. ~

Qhuinn: [Once the first group started their sparring, I walked around with the three who were not fighting and checked on each pairing. I was pointing things out as I went while still explain the purpose of the exercise. I knew they didn’t understand. They were used to hard and fast. Hit or be hit. I shook my head as I brought them to a clearing and told them I would give them five minutes to work together on a plan to take me down, when I came back they would see the difference. Then I went back to checking the trainees. I heard Dehv’s growl and felt my own building at the sight of his blood and was just about to call Jhasper over for disqualification when Dehv took him down. I bit back my smirk and nodded.] Jhasper, you’re out. Dehv, move over and join Barron. Davidson, good takedown. Join Kelvin. Nhick, good work with that cue stick, I like seeing some thinking outside the box with the weapons. You might not always have what you’re familiar with and you’ll have to improvise. Trick, out. I said no blood. Get on the mat. Alright, everyone, get ready for round two.

[I grinned and walked over to those who were out and the one’s who were waiting for me. The three who’d been planning lifted their heads and gave a slight nod when I asked if they were ready and I gave them the okay to start. Then…I turned my back on them while I attended the first round losers. As expected, the trainees were loud when they attacked and they were choreographed. I dropped two on their asses with no damage and the third managed a fake rib shot with a dagger before they two landed on their asses with a ‘fatal’ wound.] Every time my ass ended up in the hospital, was usually because I acted before I thought about what I was doing. I rushed headfirst into the fight and my enemies knew it. I made stupid mistakes and missed the obvious shit. Control is also good because sometimes, you need to keep the assholes alive

[The groans I got to that had me laughing and nodding in agreement…but it was true] I know. It sucks, but sometimes, you do what you have to because you need information. If you control the situation. And you can control yourself, you hurt them just enough, you subdue them, then you get what you need and you make a lot of people, very fucking happy.

[This time, I took another volunteer and went through the motions again, and again, and again, until each trainee had a go at me while the others were sparring. And as each trainee lost. They joined us on the match and new pairings were formed. And I continued to train…it was only fair that I wear myself down as much as who ever I would be facing in the end]

Dehv: ~ I stopped dead in my tracks when Qhuinn told Jhasper he was out. I wondered if it was because I took him down, or because he’d drawn blood. Either one could have been it, but I was happy that we’d been moved around. I rolled my shoulders and turned to Barron and grinned, “Having fun yet?” I winked and then growled when he made some comment about me being teachers pet. I rolled my eyes right along with that growl and then waited on his attack. We moved through various rotations until I was face to face with Nhick, I grinned at him and waggled my brows, “You always enjoy kicking my ass, want to see who has the most control?” He laughed and then grabbed up what looked liked tongs for a BBQ. I snorted and shook my head, grabbing the accompanying spatula and then faced him. We both raised out weapons and tapped them together, making the noise of light sabers while we did. I saw him risk a glance at Qhuinn, and I turned to check to see if he’d seen. I wasn’t sure, and I looked to Nhick who shrugged. We were both laughing, which was fine with me. We’d go the work, but we liked to enjoy it along the way. I then stepped back and both of us did a little flourish with our weapons, I knew if Davidson was here he’d have grabbed the little fork thingy that went with our two weapon choices and would be doing the same. It was another minute or two before we calmed down enough to get involved in the session, both going at each other, unable to take the other down, or get a fatal blow in. We knew each other so well and we were pretty matched in terms of fighting. Davidson blew us both out the water when it came to the physical, mentally Nhick took it, I sat somewhere in the middle with both. If I studied hard or I got lucky with the fighting I could beat either one of them, but if I was just having a normal day, they both blew me out the water. I was just about to start laughing again at how frustrated Nhick looked when I saw an opening. When he came at me, I ducked under his arm, gripping it tightly to turn with him. I took his legs out from under him and went down to the mat with him, the arm with his weapon pinned to his back as I placed the spatula at his throat, even as his face was squished into the mat, “Now, young Skywalker, you will die.” Nhick snorted and then started laughing as I rolled off him to let him up. We both bounced to our feet and he huffed, “I guess you win. Idiot.” I laughed and went to put the spatula back, Nhick threw his down with mine and went to sit down. I turned to the room and realised that there was only Davidson left to fight. Whoever won this fight would be thrown in the ring with Qhuinn. I was glad when I got a minutes break before fighting. Both myself and Davidson were sweating and breathing hard, but mostly I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Nhick’s fight had made the whole thing even better and I was still chuckling at the look on his face when he’d hit the mat. Davidson wandered over to him to check he was alright and I took that opportunity to walk over to see Qhuinn. I stopped on the way to grab my bottle and then stepped in front of our wonderful tutor, making sure I was a little closer than I needed to be. I kept my back to the room so that he was facing the rest of the trainees, but I made sure I spoke quietly enough that only he could hear me, “You’re on the last two, who would you prefer to pin to the mat come the final round??” I waggled my brows and then winked, bring my bottle to my lips so I could take a long drink. The cool liquid very welcome after hours of controlled fighting. I kept my gaze on Qhuinn’s and grinned as soon as I’d finished my bottle, not even subtle in the way I let my gaze rake over his body, enjoying the fact he’d also been working out for the last however many hours. “Davidson is on a roll though, so you’ll probably have to keep that thought for later.” I chuckled playfully and then cocked my head back against the group, “Well, better get back into the mindset to see how I go with this fight.” ~ Qhuinn: [As the pairings continued on, I started pairing off the trainees who were out and giving them pointers. Most seemed to be grasping the concept and taking notes, which is what the exercise was for. This was the loosest I’d been with any of them and they’d taken the opportunity to ask me about some of my past. The rumors of my own time as a trainee were things I’d heard and I knew that some were just dying to ask me. It was finally Jhasper who broached the subject right as Dehv and Nhick decided to be idiots with their bbq utensils. I snorted out a laugh before I answered Jhasper and pointed to the two on the floor, reminded the trainees that anything could be a weapon and that despite the seriousness of what we did, sometimes you needed to be able to have fun with it or risk losing your mind. I then turned to Jhasper and gave a slight nod before I took Barron down when he tried to attack me from behind. Once I slammed him on his ass with a ‘good try’ I grinned] It’s true. I wasn’t in control of myself. Some one attacked a friend of mine and I reacted without thinking. It didn’t matter that it was my cousin who was being a dick. I beat him to death in the locker room before they could stop me. I was disowned and the only thing that saved my ass from a certain death in retaliation was whose honor I was defending. Basically, I got lucky as all hell with that. You’re all going to make mistakes, it’s bound to happen, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, I think you’ve all got skills we need. Don’t turn out like the two who were hauled outta here earlier. Ok, everyone, pair off and give it another shot. No weapons this time, just clean takedowns.

[I dusted off and walked over to congratulate Davidson and then turned in time to see Dehv take down Nhick for the final blow with his spatula. I checked the time and knew if I wanted my time with him, my plans were going to have to change, but I didn’t think anyone was going to mind too much. Davidson walked over to check on Nhick and I lifted my head to see Dehv walking my way with his water. That grin on his face told me he was enjoying himself today, which was what I wanted, but his question had me snorted before I could stop myself. I just shook my head and made sure my voice was nice and low in reply] Oh, I already have plans to pin you down in about 15 minutes, Dehv. It’ll just be a matter of if we have an audience or not when it happens.

[I flashed a wicked grin as I cracked my neck and gave a pointed look at the time.] Alright kiddies, looks like we only have time for this last round. Whoever wins, that’s it.

[The trainees around me groaned and then started laughing, “You were never gonna fight any of us were you?” I shook my head and grinned] Nope, I wanted to motivate you all and it worked, didn’t it?

[They grumbled a little more but most laughed and then asked about the weapons. I explained the dagger again and then motioned for Davidson and Dehv to get started because the reward was legit, even if the end fight wasn’t]

Dehv: ~ I groaned softly and moved to sit after Qhuinn threw hit little image in my head. I was more than happy to go right along with that, I just had to get through the next half hour with Davidson. I cleared my throat and muttered a ‘jackass’ to Qhuinn on my way past, making a beeline for the bench with my bottle of water. I found myself surrounded by Davidson and Nhick pretty quickly. Both of them squished in either side of me and grinned. I ignored them while Qhuinn spoke to us all, I knew that the plan had been to fight him, but we were going to over run, normally that would be fine, but not today. I kept my eyes forward until I felt the nudging start. I growled and looked between them, “What?” They both grinned at me and leaned in to speak quietly, “You sitting here for any particular reason? A certain male trainer who just pressed your buttons? Because no one else noticed that change, but we did. Your besties. We know you best and have your back or front. We can walk with you so no one else can see if you need. You know, protect your modesty.” They’d managed to get the entire offer out in one sentence between them. I growled low and hissed, “You two should just get it on and then mate, since you’re already finishing each other’s thoughts.” They both started choking, I sat with a huge grin on my face, the entire exchange had settled me and allowed me to focus on what I had to do next. Davidson was on form today, and I was fairly sure I couldn’t beat him, but if I could hold my own for at least a round or two, I would feel like I’d done by best. I went ahead and took a poker this time as my weapon, grinning when Davidson picked up a fairly sizable knife. “I really hope you have enough control not to actually kill me with that thing.” I grinned at my friend and then moved over to the mat. I rolled my shoulders and then tried to focus on the fight ahead. Davidson was experienced to a degree, and he didn’t rush me like the others had. We ended up circling a little before one of the other trainees got frustrated and yelled at us to get on with it. I flicked my gaze to Qhuinn, knowing that the faster this was done the faster the lesson was over. I swallowed my training and then pushed off against the floor to send my body across the mat. It took more effort than I was willing to admit not to wince at the stupid move, but I met the swing of the knife with a block. The vibration from the strength from the two of us shot up my arm and made me growl. Davidson mimicked my groan and then stepped back to regroup, he hopped as I swept a leg out, and then swept the knife again. I was still slightly off balance from trying to get him down to the mat, and could only lean backwards slightly. The knife sliced through the air, narrowly missing my chest. I was sure if I looked down I’d see a rip in my shirt, though I knew for sure no blood had been spilled, the sting of broken flesh didn’t accompany the move. I dropped to my back and then rolled over and away, pulling myself to my feet quickly while still gripping my poker. Davidson was laughing silently at me, and I found myself grinning right back. He hadn’t rushed to try and take me down while I was on the floor, the window had been quite small, so I was glad. I shifted my weight again and this time Davidson was the one who rushed me, and I was sure I saw a wink from him as he launched himself full assault, his feet even left the mat, as he reached for me. I blinked stupidly at the sudden change and then oomphed as he landed. He grabbed my shoulders with his hands and I curled the fingers of my free hand into the fabric of his shirt at his hips, the weight of him throwing me off balance and onto my ass on the mat. Had I not been so surprised I’d have twisted with him and taken him down with me on top, securing the win. As it was he landed on top of me, his knees either side of my hip with that stupid knife pressed up against my throat. He was making sure I knew he’d won as I had to strain to lift my chin high enough to ensure there was no blood drawn. Though I had managed to land with my poker in an upright position, the bottom rested on the floor and the tip was pressed against the side of his ribs. Had be landed in an actual fight, the poker would have gone straight into his chest and pierced his heart. I watched as Davidson looked between the knife and my poker, the knife still sitting hard against my throat. He then eased his grip when I patted his hip to let him know I wanted up, the knife pulled away so that I could breathe again properly. I then humphed when he sat down on me and used me as a cushion, “Guess that means we’re even, right?” He looked at me and then up towards Qhuinn. I just exhaled and then dropped my arms to the mat so I looked like a starfish, my friend still sitting across my hips. I was glad it wasn’t on my chest, I needed to breathe out the adrenaline that always stayed a few minutes after I’d finished sparring. I did turn my head though, eyes seeking out Qhuinn as I waited to find out if we were calling it a draw and finishing up the lesson. ~

Qhuinn: [I was damn proud of myself at turning the tables on Dehv when he threw the jackass comment my way. He’d been doing his damndest to wind me up every chance he could over the past few months so I took my little victories when I could. For this match, I chose to sit off to the side to observe while the rest of the trainees sat in a circle to watch. Much like the fight with Nhick, the fight with Davidson would be well matched. Mainly because the three were practically joined at the hip and knew each others styles so well. It didn’t stop me from smiling as I watched Dehv’s form though. He was fluid, even after this many rounds of going at it with the others. They both were. The Brotherhood should be damn proud of this class of trainees. Yeah, not all would be foot soldiers out on patrol, some were going to be used as security for safe place and shit like that but they’d do a damn good job there too. All that faded away once Dehv and Davidson actually started getting into the fight though. No more circling each other or horsing around. They were actually showing the skills they’d learned over the months and did a damn good job of it. Davidson showed a level of patience I wasn’t sure he possessed underneath his quick to class clown demeanor. Especially when he was squared off with either Dehv or Nhick. I sat up a little straighter as I watched the two put on an actual showing. The other trainees also took notice as well, each watching the level of control over the weapons Dehv and Davidson were showing. When Dehv landed on his back and the knife was at his throat, I almost called it but then noticed the poker pointed up at Davidson and my grin widened. I started a slow golf clap as the two flopped around and Davidson landed back on Dehv like he was his own person couch. The other trainees took a moment longer to cotton on what just happened and I could hear the groans and mutters] Good job. As you can see, there won’t always be a clear winner in a fight. These two know each others strengths and weaknesses pretty well and still couldn’t outmatch the other. Which means, you all get another chance at the top prize for your finals. I want you all to keep practicing though. Get together with some of your classmates and see what you can fight with whats around you. Your backyards, your houses, alleys. No damaging peoples properties or starting shit in public though. Just be aware of your surroundings and see what you can come up with. Our enemies don’t give a shit where they attack us. Or how armed we are. And since I know you are all still not in the habit of carrying, Cannon I’m looking at you, it’s good to start trying to think on your feet. Now…go hit the showers and get the hell out of here. Dehv, Davidson, good job. I’m almost impressed

[I gave them both a grin as I walked over to them both still laying on the mat and crouched down, looking Davidson in the eyes as seriously as I could. I kept my voice quiet so only the two of them could hear me] If there’s one bruise on him, I will take it out on you in the next class, are we clear?

[I watched his eyes go comically wide as his face went three shades of green and I couldn’t stop my laugh from slipping out.] I’m fucking with you, kid. But seriously, get up and go shower, you stink. Dehv, meet me in the office when you’re done.

[I pushed back to my feet and then went to the office where the trainers had their own shower set up so I could take care of getting myself cleaned up. It was finally time for me to get my hands on my male after far too many months of waiting.] #InTraining

[tottwriter]

Progress Update

So! The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that I’ve been making considerably fewer story updates for a while now. I haven’t really given much of an explanation up until now (hand injuries aside), because I’d kept hoping that, any week now, things would resolve themselves and I’d go back to “normal”.

Well, spoiler: They haven’t. and for at least a few more months, they probably won’t. With that in mind, I’d like to let people know what’s been going on.

I’ve been a single parent for five years now. I make no secret of that, or of the fact that I have health issues - disabilities - which sometimes affect my ability to write. What I haven’t really covered before is the extent to which my various health complications are hereditary. 

The fact of the matter is, over the last few months I have been experiencing a considerable amount of stress and time loss due to my son developing several persistent symptoms of some of these conditions. We’re currently waiting on a formal diagnosis - which will likely only arrive after several more hospital appointments - but he’s been on and off missing school, and experiencing a lot of insomnia to boot. 

It goes utterly without saying that my first priority is my children. I feel like that’s pretty obvious, but lately it has meant taking him to appointments, fetching him from school early at times (then making arrangements for my daughter to be collected), and comforting him when he is distressed and in pain, or unable to sleep. 

At the same time, I am keeping a closer eye on my daughter, who will quite possibly start experiencing the same things in a couple of years. I’m hoping that by forging a relationship with the consultants I see for my son now, I can speed up that side of things when the time comes. 

I’ll be blunt now - I am well aware that this is not information which is particularly interesting to many people. I’m not here to make this a cry for help or play the martyr - there’s nothing life or death or particularly dramatic about my situation, and I have plenty of family support. My children have a good relationship with their father and he and I get along and are working together on this. In the long term, it’ll all be completely fine. 

For the short term, however, I am emotionally devastated, and the result of that is that my creative output has almost run dry. It’s not just a matter of losing time and physical energy in order to care for my son - he’s ten. For the most part he looks after himself pretty well these days. I probably lose more time to seizures than I do to the extra caretaking, and that always left me with plenty of time to write in before.

What’s wiping me right now is the emotional side of things. My son is in pain almost every day, and while as a parent that’s pretty hard to cope with - hell, as a human it’s hard to know that someone you care about is in pain all the time - what is really compounding this one is that on some level, it is my fault. This is a condition he inherited from me, and I know it’s not going anywhere. 

I want to tell him I’ll fix it, or that even if I can’t, someone else can, but I can’t make that promise because I know damn well it’s a lie. In fact, if his health follows the same pattern that mine did, it’s actually probably going to get worse for a few years before it starts to improve. 

I often joke that I spent half my teens on crutches or in hospital. It’s not much of an exaggeration, and although I just sorta got on with it at the time, that was when no one knew what was going on, or that my constant ankle injuries were anything other than bad luck. By the time I started experiencing regular excruciating pain in my knees and hips, I was old enough to more or less get on with it, albeit with the aid of very strong painkillers and good friends. It was a bugger, sure, but at that point I’d gotten used to it. 

Now I’m faced with the prospect of probably having to tell a ten year old to “get used to it”. That pain and discomfort and dizziness are going to be his faithful companions throughout his formative years. Honestly I can’t actually describe how that feels, other than to say it’s a piece of shit. 

This is a long post to make, about a topic which is honestly pretty sensitive, and I’ve tried to keep it relatively free from woe-is-me sentiment. I’m not here to fish for comfort. Honestly, I’ve gone back and forth on whether to share details about this at all. I’m aware that this is personal stuff, and that a lot of people don’t need or want to know. 

I thought about dropping it below a cut, too, but ultimately decided to leave it in plain view. I’m not going to make this post again, but I did want to make it visible. Not, as I say, for the pity party, but because these health complications are serious, ever bit as important to me as the political issues I might share, or the LGBT+ issues I highlight.

Disability is a huge facet of how I have been shaped and grown over the years, and I refuse to hide it tidily away behind a cut to be glossed over, intentionally or not. Ultimately, this is a twofold statement. Firstly, to explain why my fiction has been thin on the ground lately (it is absolutely 100% not that I have lost interest in writing or my fandoms), and secondly to make a definitive statement about the nature of disability, and how insidious it can be.

I do not consider myself depressed at the current time. I’ve experienced it before, post-partum, and I can tell the difference. But there’s no denying that my mental wellbeing right now is compromised by the situation I find myself in, and at the moment I don’t know how long that will last, or how it will affect my other health problems. 

I’m going to do my best to keep writing. And this...this clusterfuck will pass in time. Until it does, all I ask is that people continue to bear with me, because I might still slip up and promise to finish something soon, only to miss the deadline I’ve set myself again. If there’s one thing which will probably never change about me, it’s my constant habit of pushing for unrealistic goals. 

I’m not going to mope after this post, either. It’ll be right back to my regular randomness, so please don’t feel that you need to tread on eggshells or avoid certain topics. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t life or death, just...creatively draining.