#and there’s the mothers talking endlessly about their children’s problems

[francesderwent]

Harriet Vane, my whole heart

[augustinewrites]

just alhaitham realizing he wants a baby with you... cw: pregnancy, children

alhaitham is in the middle of reading, spending his lunch hour tucked away in a quiet corner puspa cafe when he feels a poke at his arm.

he slides his headphones off, looking over to see a child standing next to him, clutching something to her chest. 

“excuse me– mister scribe sir?”  

the scribe sighs, tucking his book away. “just alhaitham is fine.”

the child blushes furiously. “oh, um, mister alhaitham sir, my teacher says that your job is reading. could you read this for me please?” 

that was an incredibly juvenile description of his job, but he doesn't correct her. the girl slides what alhaitham recognizes as the children’s book that tighnari had written (and collei had illustrated) to teach the basics of forest safety. the storytelling was mediocre and the illustrations were average, but he supposed they were sufficient enough for children who had no higher education.

alhaitham glances at the clock. he still has a half hour left of his break, and he was nothing if not an advocate for educating young minds.

—

“the lesson is to always be prepared when traveling through the rainforest,” alhaitham explains, closing the book. “there’s always a high probability that you’ll run into fungi, especially if you're on foot like little cyno was. you’d do well to add a variety of antitoxins to your first aid kit.”

the girl considers this, brows pulled into a furrow as she sips at the sunsettia juice he’d ordered for her. 

“why didn’t little cyno just go around the fungi when he saw them? then he wouldn't have gotten the sports.”

“the spores,” alhaitham corrects. “but your point stands. common sense is perhaps the most effective survival tool.” 

children, with their inquisitive and imaginative minds, were adequate problem solvers. they didn't overthink things, instead utilizing a simple, pragmatic way of thinking. 

he wouldn't mind raising a little scholar of his own with you. 

he’d thought a normal amount about having a child before. typical musings, like when he would have one (after school, after securing a decent job). or what their names would be (esfir for a boy, laila for a girl). who would bear his children (the only person he’d ever considered was you).

but these aren’t idle musings anymore. this time, the idea hits him full force, quickly spiraling into a hope. a dream for the future. 

a boy with his eyes and your smile. a girl with your hair colour and his nose. how you’d raise them together, how they’d grow to be intelligent, inquisitive, creative, and endlessly compassionate.  

“sweetheart, there you are!” a relieved voice exclaims. 

the girl sitting across from him perks up as her mother runs up to the table, her smile widening. “mama! mister alhaitham read me a book!”

“i'm so sorry she interrupted your lunch, sir,” the frantic mother looks sheepish as she apologizes, but alhaitham dismisses it with a wave of his hand. 

“it’s alright. if anything, this experience has been rather enlightening.” 

_____

“that's quite the stack,” you comment mildly when your husband enters the bedroom with an armful of textbooks. “which new topic have you been intrigued with this week?”

alhaitham sets the books down on the nightstand and answers, “conception.”

his answer is spoken simply, casually, like he’s talking about the weather and not one of the most life-altering decisions you could make as a couple. 

“conception,” you repeat slowly. “like…”

“you’re a doctor. you’re aware of the biological process behind it.” 

“of course i am,” you say, suddenly feeling flustered. “i just– we’ve never talked about this before, haitham.”

your husband sighs, walking around to your side of the bed and sitting by your legs. “well…i want to talk about it.” 

seconds pass. seconds that almost feel like a lifetime as you watch each other, looking for any unspoken signs of hesitation.

“it’s up to you,” he finally says, gently placing a hand on your ankle. “it’s your body, you’re the one who would be carrying our baby for nine months. if you’re not ready–”

you don't need to hear the rest, crawling over to cup his face in your hands and press a soft kiss to his lips. “i'm ready. we’re ready.” 

his eyes immediately brighten, and he momentarily leaves your grasp to reach across the bed to grab the topmost book from his stack. “there are certain positions that we can try to increase our chances of conceiving. according to studies conducted in fontaine, this one has an effectiveness of 89.5%. it’s called a mating press…”

you wish you could say it’s the first time he’s propositioned you with educational literature. 

“wait, you didn’t ask me,” you giggle, threading your fingers through his hair and tugging lightly. 

he pauses. “will you try this position with me?”

“no, smartass. ask me to have a baby with you.”

your husband grins, hooking his hands under your ass to pull you into his lap. you gasp as he does so, his head dipping down to the crook of your neck. he says your name, lips brushing the shell of your ear.

“will you let me put a baby in you, dearest?”

[neversetyoufree]

The way Noé Archiviste is written is so good. I'm so obsessed with him.

He's such a protagonist—endlessly hopeful against adversity and filled with kindness and attempted understanding toward everyone he meets. He's a good person! He wants to save everyone! He is genuinely and utterly without any sort of cruelty or unfair bias.

Yet, the more the series goes on, the more he's written as a very obvious parallel to our antagonists.

The most blatant example of this is the Ruthven parallel. Ruthven once happily said that he liked vampires, and in the same way, he liked humans. Noé repeats this exact same line when he has tea with Ruthven.

This parallel doesn't reflect too poorly on Noé, since it's pretty clear that something Happened to Ruthven to change him between his speaking that line and him becoming our antagonist, but it is an interesting way to tie the two of them together. It raises certain questions in readers' minds. In what other ways are Noé and Ruthven still similar, and how might Noé change to become more like him?

Then there's Noé's toxic optimism. The "you should be a little bothered, actually" aspect of him. Noé is the mirror to Vanitas's toxic pessimism. He latches onto the good in the world to a fault, and in this way he detaches from reality and endures an endless series of abuses to his person without even understanding they're abuses.

That is also one of the defining traits of Mikhail. Misha is unsettling in part because he is completely detached from any understanding of severity. Misha happily recounts being abused and watching his mother die not because he's cruel or hateful, but because he doesn't understand what's happened to him or why those things are bad. Misha wants to bring Luna back to life because he's in denial of the reality of their death. He believes he can just resurrect them and everything will be fine, and he'll get to play happy family again.

If Noé went just a little bit more extreme with the over-optimism, he could disconnect from reality just as badly as Misha has.

Finally there's my favorite parallel—the tie between Noé and his Teacher. Noé Archiviste has a tendency to watch others in fascination, trying to figure them out from the sidelines while he fails to understand his own impact on them, and he absolutely loves the Blue Moon. He thinks the Blue Moon is beautiful. Teacher spends his time collecting interestingly damaged children in putting them in awful situations, apparently just for the fun of watching what they'll do next, and he calls The Vampire of the Blue Moon "the most beautiful creature in the world."

Noé's curiosity-driven fascination with Vanitas's trauma and his love of the blue moon—neither of these are necessarily a problem on their own, but when written in direct parallel with The Count of Saint Germain, they become somewhat alarming.

In the same way that Misha is "worse" than Noé because his obliviousness to his trauma leads him to harm others, Noé's teacher is surely a worse person than him because he lets himself harm others in pursuit of his interests. Noé doesn't do that. But what would it take for that to change? He's pushed boundaries before. He learned to hurt Astolfo and Misha in the name of protecting those he cares about. What other strange places could his headstrong nature lead?

What might Noé do when his fascination and his obliviousness intersect? When the parts of him that are Teacher and the parts of him that are Misha overlap? What would he do to see Vanitas again? What might he do without letting himself realize how terrible it was?

Noé is a good person. He's one of the best people. But in his attentiveness and his optimism and his love, there's the seeds of something that could lead him down a very dark road. Each of the above antagonists is a little bit a part of who he is.

Misha wants to bring Luna back to life. Ruthven is working toward some mysterious aim with the dead or dying Faustina. And given how he talks in mémoire 55, I wouldn't be surprised if Teacher also had an interest in bringing back The Vampire of the Blue moon in one form or another.

In all his fascination and love and hope, would/will Noé be able to let Vanitas die when death is preferable to the alternative? This is a story about the inevitability of death, and the denial of that inevitability creates nothing but horror and perversion. Noé is growing and learning to understand both Vanitas and the moral complexities of the world, and we can only hope that he learns enough. We can see through his many reflections in other characters what he might become if he can't accept painful reality.

[naughtyneganjdm]

Love's Second Chance: A Holiday Reunion - Chapter 22

Summary: Heartbroken by her decision to be alone instead of picking Joel or Negan, Y/N is left miserable. It's obvious to anyone that knows and loves her. In the hopes to make things right Elizabeth tries to work with Joel and her mother so they can all all be happy.

Characters: Joel Miller, the reader (OC), Negan Smith, Elizabeth, etc.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60501985/chapters/159409516 Warnings: Swearing, Severe Angst, etc.

Notes: Okay, so this is the last chapter. It's long. It probably could have been separated into two chapters, but I was just eager to get it done. Originally this story had three endings, but I decided to combine them into what I thought was a better one. Thanks to anyone that read this. I appreciate anyone who has. Sorry it took so long to get the whole story up, but I did my best!

She hated to admit it, but over the last twenty-four hours Y/N had spent an incredible amount of time in bed depressed an emotional. This was a position so many people probably would have loved to be in. Between two gorgeous men who both wanted to be with her. Yet for her? She was devastated and heart broken. On Christmas, she made what she thought was the right decision to dump both Negan and Joel so to speak. Especially after the whole marriage thing. Both of them expected answers from her and she wasn’t going to choose. She wasn’t going to break either of their hearts and have to deal with the weight of that. The only problem with that decision? It hurt. And it hurt a lot.

After that night, both Joel and Negan attempted to call her. But she ignored them both. Right now, she needed to make it clear how things were going to be. If they couldn’t figure things out together, then she wasn’t going to be with either one. She was sick of them fighting and she refused to hurt either one by making a decision. Having them talk to her would only confuse her again.

It didn’t stop her from thinking about things though. Letting the thoughts linger in her mind. Constantly comparing both Negan and Joel, weighing out the options if she did decide to make a choice. So many feelings and emotions were flooding through her.

There was Joel. The first man she ever loved. Someone she fell in love with at first sight. From the moment she met him, she knew she was head over heels in love with him. They shared a life together. And while that life may have not been perfect, it was a love she knew she would never feel again. They had two children together. They went through things a lot of people never had to experience in their lives. Joel was everything that she knew. Until Negan, Joel was the only man she had ever slept with. The only man she ever had a relationship with. Joel was her everything growing up. Who was she kidding? Joel was her everything until Negan showed up. But that didn’t mean she didn’t love him. She still loved him. More than she probably should have. Joel had broken her heart many times, but her heart never knew how to let go. And it was obvious that Joel still cared for her. He made a lot of mistakes, but she didn’t doubt that he still loved her. There was just so much history there that it was hard not to think about, but it was also hard to not let go of that either. Joel was the father of her children. They had a connection that she would never have with anyone else.

And then there was Negan. The man that had loved her ever since he was a little boy. For him? It was love at first sight. He was loyal and dedicated to her. Desperate to make her endlessly happy. But she was the one that broke his heart when she picked Joel without even acknowledging their history together. Which thinking back on was a lot of history. Joel showed up into her life when she was ten years old. Negan had always been there but left when she was sixteen years old. For the longest time she thought he abandoned her, but it took years for her to realize what really happened. Did he have a dark past? Yes, and there were many layers to Negan. Ones that she knew she had barely just scratched the surface of, but Negan was perfect. Maybe not for other people, but he was for her. She knew that Negan’s love was pure through and through. And deep down, she knew that he wanted what was best for her. Regardless of what her decisions were, even if he didn’t end up happy at the end of the day, Negan was just desperate to be in her life again and to give her everything she had ever wanted.

There were good and bad qualities to both men. There was no denying that. And she knew she loved both of them.

Another thing that kept circling throughout her mind was the job offer that Negan had given her. It was everything that she would have wanted when she was younger. To be important. To travel and see the world. To take photos and have people be interested in the subject that she was covering. America loved their sports and people seemed to really like Negan. Everywhere they went, she saw that. It was a starting ground, but she knew that she would be gone a lot and she didn’t know if she could do that to the children. Especially considering everything she fought for in order to be there for them always. Maybe she never had a lot, but she was always there for her children through the years. She didn’t want that to change. And she didn’t want Joel to be alone either because she knew that he could self-sabotage too. Everyone counted on her so much, would they be able to survive without her?

Then again, there was the idea that Negan brought forth to them. Offering Joel the chance to travel with them too. It really sounded perfect. But there was such a thing as too perfect, she realized that. And she did hear the things that both Peter and Elizabeth said. They didn’t care what they did because they were happy to go wherever they were needed. They just loved their parents and Negan. They wanted them happy.

That was a word that was said a lot during Christmas. The word happy. But right now? She wasn’t happy. She was miserable.

This would have been an easy choice for a lot of people. She was sure of that. Some people would pick Joel. He was the ex-husband. The father of her children. He was hard working. The thing that she was used to. They were always still in each other’s lives. Joel was handsome, strong and fiercely independent.

Other people would have picked Negan. He was the celebrity. He could offer her the life that she always wanted. Make every one of her dreams come true. And around him? She was happier than she had ever been. No one had fought harder to make her happy. He was accepting of her still loving Joel. And he was incredibly sexy, charismatic and loving. Also very truthful with her about everything.

Yet for her, the choice was hard. If she picked Negan to marry, she’d break Joel’s heart. If she picked Joel, she would break Negan’s heart. It didn’t matter if they were a trio together. If she picked one of them, someone would end up hurt. And that’s the last thing she ever wanted. So it only made sense for her to pick neither one. Regardless of how awful it made her feel.

Negan would land on his feet again. Women would desperately fall at his feet. Joel would also eventually figure something out. When they had gotten divorced, it didn’t take long for him to hook up with Tess. Both Joel and Negan were two men that any woman would be lucky to have. It was better to allow them to find happiness elsewhere than to be hurt being stuck in some kind of relationship with her.

In that moment, the sound of a knock on the door pulled her away from her own thoughts with her laying stretched out on the couch in absolute silence. Looking to the door, she really debated getting up at this point. Everything was dark and she was just giving herself time to be alone. Maybe she could pretend that she wasn’t there to begin with.

There it was again, the knock. By the knocking and the lack of barging in, Y/N immediately knew who it was. Getting up from the couch, she let out an uncomfortable breath and headed for the door. Pulling it open, she clung to the doorknob and stared out at Negan who was standing before her looking uneasy.

“Hey,” Negan spoke softly, his dimples very prominent showing just how uneasy he was standing before her. With her not answering his calls or his texts, he knew that she wanted to be left alone. She wouldn’t be happy with him coming over, but he felt like this was needed. Both of them looked awful so this was certainly effecting them both. “I know you don’t want to see me right now and I understand that, but there is something that I have to tell you.”

Pushing the door open further, she stepped in the doorway and stared out at Negan. Not speaking, she let him rock on his feet before pushing his hands into his pockets. In the past she would have let him into the house to sit with her, but she didn’t think she should. Especially since if she spent that time with Negan, it may persuade her into making a different choice.

“Uhm, Dale called me,” Negan started realizing that she was allowing him to talk to her, but she wasn’t saying anything nor was she going to be bringing the conversation into the house. “If I’m going to take the job as coach, they want me to fly out in a few days to where the owner of the team lives to sign a contract with his lawyers.”

“Okay,” she stammered, simply nodding her head. Hearing that had her throat tensing up at the idea of it coming up so suddenly.

“They told me that they also wanted you to come out there and sign your contract if you decided you wanted to take the job,” Negan alerted her, his hazel eyes full of a sadness that there was no doubting. It hurt her to see him like that. “Dale told me if you had certain stipulations that they would probably be willing to work with you. You can take the original contract. You can do the two weeks on and off. It’s up to you. If you want to do the second one, I can team up with the journalist I told you about.”

Listening to him, she didn’t say anything and that seemed to upset him. Negan was stammering, his words uneasy and broken showing that he was uncomfortable still about everything. Having her be so silent about things had Negan even more ill at ease. Reaching inside of his pocket, Negan pulled something out and held it out for her. “This is for you.”

“What is it?” she asked, realizing that Negan’s hand was trembling with him holding it out to her. Accepting whatever it was, she pulled open the envelope to look at what was inside. Seeing that it was a plane ticket for a few days from now, she dropped her arm down at her side and felt overwhelmed. “You already got me a ticket?”

“I just want you to have it no matter what decision you make,” Negan claimed, shoving his hands back into his jacket pockets. Shrugging his shoulders, his lips parted and he went to say something, but instead a broken sound escaped him. “I’m at a loss here and I haven’t been like this in a very long time Y/N. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do what you want to do Negan,” she stressed to him and it had Negan smiling uncomfortably, forcing himself to look away from her. By the way his jaw flexed, she knew that he was despondent and he shook his head.

“I don’t know what I want to do when it comes to the baseball team Y/N,” Negan informed her, his words trembling with his breathing growing louder. Lifting his head, she saw that his eyes were damp eliciting the ache in her chest to grow stronger. “What I want to do is be with you. If you want me to quit the team today, I would. I would give everything up for you. If you want me to take the job, I would. None of this matters without you.”

“You only feel that way because you’re emotional from everything,” she prompted hating to see him so upset. What she said had him scoffing and rolling his eyes. Being cold toward him was hard, but she felt like it was the right thing to do. “Your job has been and will always be more important than me. You’re feeling the way you do right now because everything was so new and so fresh. I brought back the feelings you had when you were a child. Eventually, you will find someone else like Lucille and…”

“Bullshit,” Negan interrupted her with a furious breath, his hazel eyes lifting to stare out at her angrily. A single tear slid down his face with him grimacing at the idea. “Stop selling me this stupid bullshit Y/N. You know just as much as I do that I have been in love with you my whole life. Not having you in my life is the worst possible thing that could happen to me.”

“Not having me in your life keeps you from being hurt. I will hurt you,” she reasoned with him, her body now shaking. Holding back on her emotions was not going to happen with Negan so upset before her. “I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want to hurt Joel. Choosing to live my life the way I did before Christmas is what is best for everyone. Alone. It gives you and Joel the chance to be happy elsewhere without making things complicated.”

“That is the worst possible decision you could make for all three of us and you know that,” Negan stressed to her, shaking his head and sucking in a sharp breath of air. “Just pick Joel then if this is what you are going to do to us. I can handle it. I told you that I’m happy as long as I’m still in your life. I swear I’m okay with the trio.”

“You say that, but when I turned down your proposal,” she paused, shaking her head and letting out a broken breath, “that feeling that we had? That pure, lighthearted feeling was gone. You were devastated and heart broken. Looking at you? I saw right through that fake smile you put on to make me feel better. I kept breaking you down piece by piece. And I don’t want to do that to you anymore.”

“So shattering my heart by doing this makes more sense to you?” Negan hissed out, throwing his hand up in the air showing that he didn’t agree with her comment. “Listen to me, I don’t care if you pick Joel. I don’t care if you don’t want the job. I don’t care if you want the fucking job, but you don’t want me. Or if you want me but not the fucking job. I need you in my life. Do the thing that your heart wants most.”

“My heart truly believes that this is the best option,” she declared, placing both her hands in over the center of her chest, but the more she said it the more upset it was making Negan. Holding out the ticket he had gotten for her, Negan took one step back and shook his head. “You should just keep this Negan.”

“No, you’re not thinking clearly,” Negan emphasized with a grunt, refusing to take back what he had given her. “I think if you really think this whole thing out, you’re going to realize that you are making a mistake. Joel and I were just emotional. Very emotional. And everything will work itself out because we love you. I love you. I love you so fucking much. You have to see that.”

“I don’t question your love Negan,” she refused to let him believe that she thought he didn’t love her. “I just think you deserve something better. I think you and Joel deserve something more than me.”

“Neither one of us want that and you know that,” Negan let out a pained sound, shaking his head once more. “Call Joel. Okay? Neither one of us have to be married to you. We can just be together as a whole. We can talk about the potential of the job together like we should have from the start.”

“It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?” she wondered with Negan snickering at the thought. “I’m serious Negan.”

“It’s never too late for anything,” Negan contended, biting down on his bottom lip. “As long as you are still alive, nothing is ever too late. Trust me, I’ve learned that more than anyone. Which is why I’m hoping you will give it time to rethink this whole thing. I think together the three of us can come up with something better than whatever it is you are planning right now.”

Lowering her head, she knew that this would be the problem if she spoke to Joel or Negan. It would hurt so incredibly bad to hear something like this, “I won’t take the coaching job if that’s what you want. I just need you to tell me before New Years Day because that’s when the contract has to be signed.”

“Of course it does,” she frowned, a frustrated rumble coming from her throat. Negan didn’t know how to respond to that with her shrugging her shoulders. “I’m just saying, that’s just my luck with everything right now. Needing to have it done so soon.”

Thinking about what he said, she leaned against the doorframe and sighed, “I can’t have you pick me over that job Negan. I saw the way you looked when you were at that stadium. You loved being a baseball player. You’re not ready to give that up. You were sad at the idea.”

“Look at me,” Negan whispered, but she wouldn’t so he stepped in closer to her. “Look at me right now.”

Doing as she was told, she looked at Negan having a lump growing in her throat at the way he looked. His hazel eyes were red, his hair messy and he genuinely looked devastated. Sadder than she had ever seen him.

“When did I look worse?” Negan requested an answer from her, his throat flexing with discomfort. “Then? Or now?”

“Now,” she was honest, a broken breath escaping her throat.

“Throwing me and Joel out of your life is not the way to go. You love both of us too much for that and we love you too much for that,” Negan swore, nodding his head about trying to reason with her with this decision. “I would pick you over anything. Money. Fame. Anything. Because I love you that fucking much. I’d do anything for you. Anything. But asking me to not love you? To not be with you in some fashion? I can’t stop loving you. I never did. And I never will. I’d give up everything for you.”

“I believe you,” she found herself getting emotional about the whole thing with the way that Negan was doing his best not to break down himself. “I can’t ask you to do that though. Because someone who loves you can’t let that happen. You shouldn’t have to give up everything for me.”

“The feeling I have when I’m with you is better than any feeling I’ve had when I walk out there and hear the fans. What I have with you? It’s real. What I have with them? It’s temporary. If I do something wrong, I’m booed. They get pissed at me. I’m their hero as long as I’m winning and doing something right,” Negan described how things were for her to make her understand where he was coming from. 

“Sounds like a toxic relationship,” she teased, reaching up to wipe at her eyes. It made Negan half smile and give her a small nod.

“It is,” Negan agreed with her, exhaling loudly. “I love you. I love your family. I love your kids. I’ve grown attached to them.”

“And they’re attached to you,” she assured him with a wink, feeling her chest aching at the sight of Negan doing his best to hold in his emotions, but failing miserably.

“There are options here Y/N,” Negan alerted her, pointing toward the ticket. “That’s just one of them. The best thing for us is to get Joel and have the three of us sit down together, like adults and talk these things out. And if we’re still confused about the job, let’s get Liz and Peter involved. Just cutting me out completely is destroying me.”

“Negan, you know that I love you and I don’t want to lose you from my life,” she knew that to be true and it was the most honest thing she had said to him.

“Then don’t,” Negan stopped her before she could say anything further. “Don’t push me away. Don’t lock me out. I love you and I made a fucking promise to be around from here on out. I won’t go back on my promise. You’re not going to lose me from your life completely. I won’t abandon you again.”

She let out a small whimper when Negan stepped in closer to her. Extending his hand out, he brushed his fingers in over the side of her face and let out a long sigh, “I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too,” she felt the same way, she knew that deep down she loved him more than she could explain. Lowering down, Negan’s lips hovered over hers for a moment drawing a chill down her spine. She assumed it was him testing to see if she was okay with him kissing her. Bringing their lips together, he let his lips linger in a loving sweep that took her breath away by the time that they separated. Caressing at the side of her face had her leaning into his touch.

“I’m going to give you what you asked of me. Which is time. Because I love and respect you,” Negan peppered a few more faint kisses at her lips. Backstepping slowly, he gave her a weak smile and shrugged his shoulders. “But please think this one out for me. For your family. None of this is the best for anyone.”

“You know there is a lot at stake when it comes to you,” she pointed out, her breathing now tremoring after him kissing her. “If I don’t make my decision in time, you sign that contract and I could lose out on time with you.”

“Then figure out what it is you really want before I have to be on that plane. Because if you don’t talk to me before then, I’m taking the hint that you don’t want me in your life anymore. Which I really hope isn’t the case,” Negan commented with a frown, the vein at his neck slightly bulging when he tensed up. “You know where to find me.”

Stepping back and away from the house, Negan started to make his way back to his car and she wondered if she should have called out to him. Tears were burning at her eyes when she looked down to gaze over the ticket. Negan really was perfect which led her to her final thought she had earlier. She wasn’t good enough for Negan.

Closing the door once Negan pulled out of the driveway, she rest her back against the door. Everything hurt. Every thump of her heart was pronounced and heavy. It felt like the room was spinning around her. Moving back to the couch, she fell on top of it and reached for the throw pillow. Pulling it in over her head she groaned out and wished the world would swallow her whole right now.

----

“Mom?” Elizabeth opened the door to her mother’s home, sticking her head just in enough to look around. It had been a few days since Christmas and she had only really interacted with her mother through text messages. That worried her. After Christmas both her father and her mother weren’t acting normal. So it told her that things didn’t end positively between them. That scared her because her mother wouldn’t usually just let things go like that. At first she couldn’t remember when her mother’s work schedule started back up, so she went there when it was after her mother’s typical work hours. When her eyes finally fell upon her mother, she realized that her mother was wrapped up in blankets sleeping. She looked miserable and like she had been crying, a lot. The television was on, but everything else was entirely black in the home. Moving into the home, she flicked the light on and let out a nervous breath. “Mom!”

Hearing Elizabeth calling out to her had Y/N sitting up swiftly on the couch, pulling her legs in closer to her when she saw Elizabeth moving into the home. Seeing the way her daughter looked at her told her all she needed to know about how she looked. Right now she found herself wishing that Elizabeth would have called her and told her that she was coming over so she could have cleaned herself up a bit, “Hey sweetheart. What are you doing here?”

“I was worried about you,” Elizabeth announced, stepping before the couch that her mother was seated on. Elizabeth looked over her mother before shaking her head. “You look awful mom.”

“I know,” Y/N agreed with her daughter realizing that if anyone else told her that she would have probably been offended by it. But Elizabeth wasn’t wrong. She undoubtedly looked awful and felt worse. Over the last few days she had done everything to avoid both Joel and Negan. No matter how hard they had tried. 

“What’s going on?” Elizabeth demanded an answer, moving around the coffee table to sit down on the couch beside her mother. There was a worry flooding throughout her body with her dark eyes locked on her mother. Y/N shifted, lowering the blankets so that they were just wrapped around her lower half. Something on the table caught Elizabeth’s eyes and she reached out to pick it up. Realizing that it was a plane ticket made her throat go dry. “What’s this?”

“It’s a ticket that Negan left for me in case I want to go with him and sign the contract that he offered me,” Y/N confessed to her daughter who looked to the ticket again. Instead of doing anything with it, she had just let it sit in the same spot for days.

“This is for tomorrow,” Elizabeth pointed out, nodding down toward the ticket evoking a long, exaggerated sound to fall from her mother. Forcing herself to look away from the ticket, Y/N looked to the television and Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. “So what are you doing?”

Avoiding the question, Y/N didn’t want to put the weight of her woes on her daughter’s shoulders. So she was going to choose to stay quiet about things. Lowering her head, Y/N’s breathing was uneven leaving Elizabeth to worry about her mother.

“Mom, I know you’re trying to protect me here, but I’m almost an adult. Let someone listen to you for once,” Elizabeth offered, setting the ticket down. Sliding in beside her mother, Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her mother to comfort her. Elizabeth felt her chest tightening and she felt disappointed in herself that she let her mom suffer like this for a few days alone. “What’s going on mom? Please, tell me.”

“No,” Y/N refused which just upset Elizabeth all the more. “You’re my child, I’m supposed to be strong for you. I can’t do this.”

“Mom,” Elizabeth frowned with Y/N pulling back to wipe at her face. “I’m a big girl. And my whole life you’ve been taking care of me and hiding your feelings. I know that you were miserable after dad divorced you. I heard you crying alone at night. You hid your emotions from me and Peter because you thought you were protecting us and you did. You wanted to keep us still loving dad, but I want you to talk to me because I can tell that you are miserable. So please, just talk to me. What’s going on?”

“Elizabeth,” she went to deny her daughter once more, but Elizabeth gave her a pleading look. “I told both your father and Negan that I didn’t want to be with either of them. And that’s really the best thing I can tell you right now.”

“Why?” Elizabeth was blunt, her face scrunching up in confusion. Going to talk, she stopped and then started again. “Can I please talk to you and have you talk to me like I’m not a baby anymore? Because I’m not stupid mom and I have questions. But in order to talk to you about this, I need you to stop treating me like I’m five. Please.”

Staring out at her daughter, Y/N had a hard time putting down those gates because Elizabeth was her daughter. Her baby. She would always see her as a child, no matter how old she got, “Mom, you three were not very quiet during Christmas. Plus I’m not stupid.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Y/N suggested with Elizabeth rolling her eyes, her jaw flexing much like Joel’s would when he was frustrated. “I don’t.”

“It doesn’t take a genius to see that you are in a love triangle with dad and Negan,” Elizabeth stated with a firm shake of her head letting out a stressed sound. “And I know the three of you did some things that I won’t tell anybody.”

“Excuse me?” Y/N choked back on her words with Elizabeth tipping her head from side to side. “What does that mean?”

“Mom. I’m seventeen. Dad was furious with Negan up until that trip to New York. Dad would rather kill himself than run on a treadmill. There was a reason that dad was in your bedroom with Negan. And then when the three of you were talking about being together, it all was just confirmed for me,” Elizabeth explained to her mother realizing that she was absolutely mortified hearing that. “Don’t. Don’t make that face. I don’t care who you, dad or Negan has sex with. Sex is a very normal thing. I can’t pretend that you and dad don’t have sex. I know you and dad have sex. A lot. Even when you were divorced. There is this chemistry between the two of you and let’s not forget that I walked in on you and Negan. I don’t have the best luck, but it’s also because I’m not blind nor stupid.”

“All I can say to all that is that I’m sorry,” Y/N didn’t know how to respond because nothing felt like a good enough thing to say to settle Elizabeth’s comments. “I don’t even know what to say about the three of us.”

“You like Negan and dad. Dad likes you and Negan. Negan likes dad and you. It’s not that hard to fucking say,” Elizabeth stressed getting a scoff from Y/N whose eyebrows furrowed with how her daughter was being very dramatic in the way that she said things. “I’m not going to dad about it because something tells me dad thinks I will judge him for being attracted to Negan which neither Peter nor I will be. We’re just not stupid mom. And we don’t care if we have two dads and a mom. It’s better than nothing. Trust me, I’ve seen you and dad. I would know what having no parents does to you.”

“I just don’t know how to respond to this because certain aspects of my life, I shouldn’t be talking about them to you,” Y/N looked for the right thing to say, but Elizabeth turned on the couch and shook her head. “Baby…”

“Okay. Let’s try this…why did you dump both dad and Negan?” Elizabeth stopped her mother from locking onto a negative thought for too long. “You have been crying for days and I know that because I’m a girl and I know what happens to your eyes when you do that. It’s not something you want. I kept hearing about this relationship with the three of you. Why is that not working? Peter nor I care if you three are together. We’re already pretty much used to it. We spent all holiday with the three of you.”

“Again, it’s complicated,” Y/N defended what was going on with Elizabeth throwing her hands up waiting for some kind of answer. “Both your dad and Negan were okay with the three of us being together, but they both wanted me to marry them. One of them wanted to be married to me while the other was promised to us.”

“And that’s bad why?” Elizabeth didn’t seem to understand. “I think that’s the smartest way to do something. That way everyone is involved.”

“It’s not that easy. It’s not publicly acceptable to have that kind of relationship,” Y/N educated her daughter on how the general public were and Elizabeth scoffed.

“Who cares what the public thinks? I don’t know if you noticed, but people suck mom. They are assholes. It’s rare to find a good person. People are perpetually miserable and they want to make everyone else the same. Marry one of them and promise yourselves to the other. Boom. Over. Done. Happy,” Elizabeth made it seem so easy which made Y/N smirk in disbelief. “Why is it so hard? Why dump them?”

“Because if I choose one of them, I’m going to break their hearts and I can’t do that,” Y/N emphasized her words, waving her hand about and it had Elizabeth’s head tipping to the side. By the expression, Y/N knew her daughter thought it was stupid. “It makes sense.”

“Not really,” Elizabeth denied, shaking her head profusely after she took time to consider it. “So you’re afraid that if you choose marrying dad, or marrying Negan, you will break their hearts? So the best option is to avoid both of them? Sob your eyes out. Break your heart. Break dad’s heart. And break Negan’s heart all at once. Because that makes more sense to you?”

“Well when you put it like that,” she realized how stupid it sounded when Elizabeth threw together that statement in a very simple way. “I just don’t think I can pick because I love them both too much to make them feel like I don’t love them enough. I might be a horrible person but I love both your father and Negan a lot.”

“No one doubts that,” Elizabeth assured her with a wrinkle of her nose. “I see the way you look at both of them.”

There was a silence that fell over them and Elizabeth let out an extended sigh, “Moving beyond Negan and dad for a minute. Let’s talk about your job offer.”

“Elizabeth, you’re my daughter,” she reminded Elizabeth with a firm shake of her head. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Yes, yes we should,” Elizabeth claimed, brushing her fingers through her long, dark hair. “Both Peter and I told you that we don’t care where we are as long as we are with you. I heard what Negan had to say the other night. Take the job. Do what you always wanted. Allow dad to become a singer like he always wanted. Travel with him. That way, you three get to live your lives together. And on the off seasons, you have your home here.”

“But your lives are here,” she reminded Elizabeth of what she knew to be true.

“Mom, our lives are going to be here regardless. But what do we have here? Really?” Elizabeth rambled off, waving her hand about in the air. “I’m going to be headed to college not far from now. We’ll finish the year here. I’ll be going to college. Peter would love to travel with you guys. Negan could probably hire the best teachers for him if he does the home-schooling route. Peter makes friends everywhere. You know that. You’ve seen that. He’s not going to have any trouble. I’ll be eighteen. I can take care of Peter when you’re not here if you want him to still be in school. And we have Uncle Tommy. Who has always been like a big brother when it came to things. We’re not lost. You and dad have the right to live your dreams. Having us, we’re just an extra added bonus, right? But we want you happy. How does all of that not make sense?”

Staring out at her daughter, Y/N was surprised how easily she came up with all of that, “Here, I can write it down. You can call dad and Negan, you can make it work.”

“Honey,” she hushed Elizabeth who was eager to make everything work itself out. “I hate saying things like this. But I don’t…I don’t feel like I’m good enough for Negan or your father.”

“Now that is fucking stupid,” Elizabeth was straight forward, turning toward her mother with a disappointed expression. “Now I’m not saying you’re dumb, because you’re not. But I am saying that is stupid. That statement. Anyone would be lucky to have you. You’re emotional right now, so you’re not thinking clearly but you are the most supportive person I’ve ever known. And instead of being happy, you’re torturing yourself by letting go of two men you love because you think that their lives would be better without you. Say what you want mom, but I’ve known you my whole life and you’re better than most people I know. So get your shit together.”

Pausing to consider what Elizabeth was saying to her, Y/N couldn’t help but let out a tiny laugh at how straight forward she was being, “I’m sorry mom, but not making is a decision is making a big decision. And I don’t know how you don’t see that.”

Taking a moment to consider her next statement, Elizabeth threw her hands up and shrugged once more, “Mom? Even Peter who is an airhead agrees with me. Don’t make a decision about this job because of us. Any decision you do make? You’re making it for you. Not us. Because we support you. All the way through whatever you decide. But choosing to be miserable because you’re afraid of hurting someone? We won’t be okay with that. And we refuse to take credit for you turning this job away because of us. Because at the end of the day? We said we would do anything to make it work. So please think about that.”

“I think it’s too late for that Elizabeth,” Y/N looked to the time, also considering the last time that she spoke to Negan. “Your father is not talking to me and the last time Negan was here it was really bad. He was really upset. And he asked me to talk to him before he left. I think I’ve already screwed things up enough.”

“Mom, you’re making excuses and I just want you happy,” Elizabeth seemed genuinely upset that her mother wasn’t looking like she was going to make the right decision. “I love you. And I just want you to live the best possible life that you can.”

“You’re so sweet,” Y/N pulled Elizabeth in for a firm hug, appreciating that her daughter turned out to be such a loving person. “If there was one thing me and your dad did right, it was raising you two because you turned out so amazing.”

“Which is why I’m telling you, we want you happy,” Elizabeth repeated her main thought process with her mother, pulling back just enough to look her over. “Mom, I love you. And I’m going to love you whether you’re on the road for work or not. Whether you’re married to dad or married to Negan. I don’t care. As long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters to me.”

“I’m listening,” Y/N appreciated the gesture as it was very sweet. It was everything she would want to hear, but she didn’t know how much it would help as she didn’t know how to feel to begin with. “You and Peter are the best children I could have ever asked for.”

They took a minute to cherish the hug that they shared with Elizabeth’s mind still lingering over that ticket and her mother’s relationship with both Negan and Joel. Pulling back, she considered her next words before speaking up again. 

“I still think this whole not making a decision thing and pushing them both away is stupid,” Elizabeth repeated her earlier thoughts to her mother.

“You don’t know everything when it comes to my relationship with your father and Negan,” Y/N was firm in how she said things, letting her daughter know that she never really would. “I’ve done things…”

“Everyone has done something. We’re human. We’re naturally born to have flaws. That’s the point of life. To make mistakes and to learn from them,” Elizabeth commented, waving her hands about to show that she was expressive in what she was saying. The way that Elizabeth was talking reminded her a lot of Joel when they were younger, but it made sense. Elizabeth had her father’s eyes, hair color and dimples. Joel’s genes were strong and that was very obvious in their children. “Life doesn’t come with a set of rules.”

“Wow, that was really good,” Y/N smirked and it had Elizabeth rolling her eyes considering she felt like her mother was still missing the point. “I’m not trying to downplay what you are saying, I’m just impressed that it came from a seventeen-year old’s mouth.”

“Mom, I can tell that you’ve been crying and you’ve been crying a lot,” Elizabeth declared letting her mother know that she wasn’t hiding anything. “What is it you’re crying the most over? Your lack of a future? Maybe never having Negan in your life again? Upsetting dad?”

“I don’t know,” Y/N wished that she knew the answer to that, but she didn’t have one. And that seemed to upset her daughter even more. And while she wished that she had an answer, she knew at the end of the day she was broken hearted. But she didn’t know why.

----

Sitting alone in his work room, Joel hummed along to the music that was playing in the background. Working on some of his finishing touches on the next acoustic guitar he was making on his own, Joel grumbled to himself with the sound of someone walking into his room. Looking back over his shoulder, Joel saw Elizabeth unhurriedly moving in behind him and he offered her a weak smile.

“Hey kiddo,” Joel breathed out, turning back to his work. Knowing that Elizabeth told him she was going over to Y/N’s home, he was curious how Y/N was. After Y/N had dumped both him and Negan, he had buried himself into his work. This new guitar was the thing that he had been focusing on over the last few days to keep himself busy. “How’s your mother?”

“Miserable,” Elizabeth headed over to one of the other chairs in Joel’s work room, spinning in it slightly. Releasing a long, dramatic sigh, she spun back to face Joel when he set down the guitar on the table that was before him and gave her his full attention. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this upset. She’s been crying for days and she just doesn’t look very good right now.”

Hearing that had Joel’s face scrunching up, a sense of sadness flooding into his dark eyes. A pain grew at the center of his chest with his shoulders slouching forward, “Crying for days? Why?”

“Because she’s not thinking clearly. She’s so upset with the idea of hurting either you or Negan that she’s decided to pick neither of you and be alone. So she’s devastated because she loves both of you,” Elizabeth educated her father on what was going on with her mother. Hearing that had a broken breath escaping Joel. “I’ve never seen mom like this dad. She usually was better at hiding things when we were younger. We’d hear her crying at night when you two were divorced, but…”

The look over Joel’s face hearing about her crying when he left her had him making an expression that had Elizabeth’s words coming to a halt. Clearly, he felt bad hearing that and that wasn’t exactly her intentions, but maybe he needed to hear it.

“But when I went to go see her today, she was a mess. Eyes swollen from crying. Depressed. Wrapped up in blankets watching sad movies. Lost inside of herself,” Elizabeth rambled on about what she saw with Joel’s dark eyes growing bigger with worry. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to her dad.”

“What did she say?” Joel was curious for more information. Considering she wasn’t answering his calls or his texts, Elizabeth was his only option in getting information about Y/N.

“Negan came to her the other day,” Elizabeth began to explain getting a fire to burn through Joel’s veins. After she asked for them both to leave her alone, Joel wasn’t surprised to hear that. “He brought her a plane ticket. Apparently tomorrow he’s leaving because he has to sign that contract and he wanted her to come with him. Negan asked her to contact him before he left or otherwise he felt like she was telling him that she didn’t want him in her life at all.”

“And what decision is she making?” Joel inquired, his heart kick starting inside of his chest at what he was learning.

“She’s not making a decision at all. She told me that she would rather be alone than have to hurt either you or Negan,” Elizabeth told her father what Y/N had said when she asked her the very same question. “I told her that was the worst decision to make because then that meant she was going to hurt both of you and herself.”

“And what did she say after that?” Joel slurred, slouching forward on the seat, bracing his hands on the front of it and balancing his weight on his palms.

“I can’t make her change her mind. She thinks that if she goes back to the way that things were before Christmas, that everyone will be better off,” Elizabeth recalled what Y/N said to her when these same questions were asked. “She thinks she’s not good enough for either one of you. She thinks that you both deserve better than her.”

“That’s not true,” Joel immediately stated, lifting his right hand to place it over the center of his chest. “She’s better than the both of us combined.”

“I told her that it wasn’t true, but she’s really depressed dad and she thinks very poorly of herself,” Elizabeth stressed to her father feeling sad that she left her mother in the state that she was, not being able to get her mother to change her mind. “You need to do something.”

“What can I do? I’m part of the problem,” Joel decided, his deep southern drawl lingering. There was nothing that he could do in his opinion that could make things better because he was part of the issue as to why she was feeling so bad.

“I don’t know dad, but it hurt seeing her like that,” Elizabeth claimed with a bit of a defeated whimper herself. “Mom has always been the strongest person I’ve known and right now? I’m worried about her dad. I’m really worried about her. She’s making a horrible decision.”

Considering what his daughter was saying, Joel grinded his teeth, “Dad, I don’t understand why the three of you can’t work. You’re not doing this because of us, right?”

“Sorry?” Joel breathed out, his head turning to stare out at Elizabeth. “Ellie?”

“I’m going to tell you what I told mom. Dad, we’re not children anymore. Yes, we will always be your children,” she started, holding her hands up before Joel could correct her on that because she knew that he would. “But we’re not little. And I’m almost eighteen. I’m not blind to things. I know things, even though you and mom tried to hide them from me. Dad, I don’t see what the problem is here with the three of you being together. That’s what should happen. All three of you make each other happy. Right?”

“It’s complicated,” Joel didn’t know what to say and it had Elizabeth dramatically rolling her eyes. “It is.”

“Yeah, I know. Mom said the same thing, but it’s really not that complicated,” Elizabeth fought back, sliding in closer to her dad to get him to look at her. “I think people are too worried about what others think. Pete and me? We don’t care dad. We don’t. We love you. We love mom. We love Negan. If we have all three of you? We’ll be happy. If the public judges you, we won’t care. You always taught me to treat people right. Well I do. I’m a very good person. But I’m smart enough to know that people will suck no matter what you’re doing. They’re miserable. But you and mom should not allow yourselves to be miserable.”

Staying silent, Joel didn’t know what to say and Elizabeth was waiting for him. But when he didn’t? She just kept going, “Gosh. Okay. Do you know that when we were on the New York trip, Negan was the first person other than me or Peter that had you really smiling and laughing? I can’t remember the last time I saw you acting like that. Negan made you happy. You think you hate Negan? Well I think Negan is the best thing that happened to you and mom.”

“You do?” Joel breathed out, a lump developing in his throat when he forced himself to look away from Elizabeth.

“Hey, you’re not all that strange dad,” Elizabeth stammered, outstretching her hand to place it in over Joel’s. “For me? There are some pretty hot girls out there in the world too, you know? You don’t think I haven’t noticed them?”

“Ellie,” Joel grumbled under his breath, the lines in his forehead growing with disgust that his daughter was talking to him like that. “I’m not about to throw back the dude talk with you to gush on who is hot or not.”

“I’m just saying dad. I think maybe I’m like you,” Elizabeth confessed, shrugging her shoulders when she spoke with her eyes misting over. “I find beauty in everyone. I don’t understand what the problem is. If I fell in love with a woman, would you not support me?”

“Of course I would support you Ellie,” Joel stressed to her, his fingers hooking loosely with hers. “I love you. And I just want you happy. I wouldn’t care if you wanted to spend your life with a man or woman.”

“Or how about a man and a woman?” Elizabeth threw the idea out there causing Joel to smirk and shake his head. “Dad, it’s okay to love mom and to love Negan.”

“I don’t…” Joel started but it had Elizabeth’s eyes growing bigger at the way he was so quick to deny it. “I don’t know how I feel about Negan.”

“Fair enough, but there is something there,” Elizabeth confirmed, waiting on Joel to answer. When he gave her a weak nod, she squeezed her fingers tighter around his. “Now suddenly it all makes so much sense.”

“What does?” Joel didn’t know what she was hinting at.

“Why I crushed on Negan so fucking hard,” Elizabeth teased with a weak smile drawing Joel to roll his eyes. “Both of my parents were already head over heels in love with him. So it’s in my blood to be drawn to that man. Thank God I got over it fast.”

“Not fast enough,” Joel scoffed drawing the both of them to laugh at the idea of it. “Ellie, you’re just a kid.”

“Who might understand things better than I think you or mom does,” she interrupted her father’s thoughts, swallowing down hard. “I have some ideas that I think could work for you, mom, Negan…all of us. If you would all just sit down and talk it out with me. They’re good ones. I told mom and she liked it, but she is so down on herself, I think she would need to know that both you and Negan were okay with it too. We can bring Pete and Uncle Tommy. Make it a family thing.”

“Oh boy,” Joel shifted on the chair showing that it was already tense enough.

“It’s good stuff,” she halted him from thinking badly of it. “Stuff that would make everyone happy. And I think all together, everyone is the best option with our family. Just right now, I have to figure out why mom is being like this. The crying. What’s bothering her the most? How can we fix this whole thing and make it all work?”

“I don’t know,” Joel confessed, his eyebrows bouncing up trying to avoid getting emotional with his daughter. “I fucked up.”

“I think everyone did in this situation dad. Not just you. But that’s life,” she pointed out, leaning further back in her chair trying to think of how to make this situation better. “But now that you have the support of your children who know things and don’t care, that makes things better, right? And what you do going forward is more important than what you did before.”

“Yeah,” Joel exhaled loudly, giving his daughter a small nod. “I uh, I should go see your mom.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” she agreed with him, moving forward to step before him. Standing up from his chair, Joel wrapped her up in his arms and held her close. “Dad, I love you. And no matter who you love or how many people you love, you are the best dad I could ever ask for. Nothing could stop me from loving you as much as I do.”

“And I am so incredibly lucky to have you as my daughter,” Joel tipped back, his hand palming down in over the side of his daughter’s face. Yeah, the tears were there now but they were good ones. Emotions running high from the things his daughter said. “You’re the best thing I ever did Ellie. I hope you know that.”

----

Sitting alone in the darkness felt like the best option right now. After all the stresses of the world around her, it was best for Y/N to be alone to herself. There were no distractions and she could just focus on her feelings. Not that it was something that was the best for her. In fact, it was probably really awful for her because all she kept thinking about were all the negative things in her life.

After Elizabeth left, she couldn’t stop thinking about the decisions that she had made that led up to this moment. Leaving her all alone to herself. Sad and miserable while likely breaking the hearts of the two men she loved the most.

Sorrow was eating away at her, but most of all regret. If she wouldn’t have been selfish between both Joel and Negan, she would have never ended up in this position. It was addictive having that feeling of being loved by two men. Especially when they were men like Joel and Negan. There were so many things about the both of them that she loved. That’s why this whole thing was so hard. She would rather walk away with nothing than hurt either one of them.

Multiple times throughout the night she had received calls and texts from Negan that she hadn’t answered. After he gave her the option to meet him at the airport, she didn’t know how to tell him that she didn’t think she was coming.

It took the door being pushed open for her to let out a long exhale, her head turning to the side to see in the darkness that a shadowed figure was stumbling into the house. There was a loud thud followed by a slur of curse words which made her involuntarily laugh. Reaching for the blanket, she covered her head to hide the way she looked for when the lights finally did turn on.

“That serves you right for not knocking…again,” she stammered realizing in that moment just how broken her voice sounded. Likely from all the crying that she had done. “Just because you know where the key is doesn’t mean you should be coming in unannounced.”

“I was worried about you,” Joel’s southern drawl grunted from where he was laid out on the floor. Pushing up onto his hands, Joel got to his knees and realized just how dark it actually was in the house. “Why are you in the pitch black?”

Beneath the blankets, she could hear the light switching on. A moment later, Joel was tugging at the material after he closed the door and she tried to fight him from seeing her. Once the material pulled down, Joel let out a disappointed breath when he saw how miserable she looked.

“What are you doing here?” she questioned, reaching up to wipe at her eyes knowing how bad she had to look right now.

“Our daughter came to talk to me,” Joel explained to her with a long sigh, getting the blanket pulled from her body where he tossed it at the end near her feet. “And I realized that the two of us need to have a talk.”

“I don’t feel like talking,” she explained with a shake of her head, her throat tensing up at the thought of going through another conversation with Joel.

“Too bad,” Joel scoffed, holding his hand out for her to grab.

“What?” she didn’t accept his hand and his brow line furrowed. “Joel, I don’t want to do this right now.”

“We don’t always get to do what we want,” Joel reminded her, holding his hand out further toward her. Accepting his hand in hers, she grunted when he pulled her up from the couch. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” she frowned, dragging her feet along with Joel leading her over toward the stairs. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here.”

“I don’t care,” Joel stressed to her, turning to face her. With his expression he looked grumpy, but not an angry grumpy. 

Picking her up in his arms had her gasping out and she hooked her arms around his shoulders when he started to carry her up the stairs, “Joel, what are you doing?”

“I’m making this easier for the both of us,” Joel insisted swiftly getting up the stairs and stopping when he reached the ladder that led to the attic that he had recently finished for her. Setting her back to her feet, Joel tapped the ladder almost demanding her to climb up it. “Don’t make me pick you up again because I will attempt to carry you up this darn thing and we could kill ourselves.”

“Fine,” she huffed starting to move up the ladder in a sluggish fashion. With the lack of sleep, she wasn’t going to be moving very well. After she reached the top, Joel was quick to follow her. Standing near the opening in the floor, she watched as Joel moved over toward the nook and dropped down on top of the cushion that was there. Patting beside him had Y/N sighing loudly. “I don’t think that’s a smart idea.”

“I know you’ve been locked up inside of this house torturing yourself, but tonight is a full moon and the sky is full of stars. So why don’t you get your ass over here, lay down and enjoy the sight of the thing that I worked so hard on for you,” Joel demanded and it made her mutter something under her breath. Thinking it over, she moved across the area and lowered down in beside Joel. When she laid down beside him, they both looked up toward the window that was there so they could look up at the sky. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“You know why,” she suggested with a long sigh, her eyes still locked upwards not wanting to look at him in the moment.

“It’s not worth it,” Joel breathed out, hooking his fingers together where he was resting his hands at his lower abdomen. “Ellie told me that you were dumping both of us because you didn’t think you deserved either one of us. That the best decision was letting the two of us go our own ways away from you.”

“I should have known that Elizabeth would tell you everything,” she admitted knowing that when she told Elizabeth everything and opened up to her, it was probably a bad idea.

“And I’m glad she did because she was right. You’re not normally like this,” Joel recalled their past together and even when he broke her, she never truly looked this miserable about things. “I don’t want you to end up like this because of me.”

“It’s not because of you,” she suggested, but it only made Joel scoff again. “It’s not because of you. This is all my fault Joel. I got too caught up in things and I got greedy. I should have just let you and Negan be. I should have never dragged either one of you along.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Joel countered, his face scrunching up at the idea of what she was trying to sell. Tossing his arms back, he curled them behind his head and took time to think things out. “You were happy before I was starting to cause drama for you and Negan. And I stole that from you. When we went to New York, I could see that the two of you were already close and I knew I didn’t have a chance. So I ruffled some feathers, but I never meant for it to go this far.”

Silence followed. Joel looked to her and she looked lost inside of herself. It took a long time for her to even react, but eventually she just closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, “I don’t know what to say Joel.”

“Say what you feel?” Joel wanted her to be honest with him. This whole thing made him feel guilty and he felt like a real asshole about everything. “Y/N, I’ve been thinking about everything since Negan showed up. I can’t remember the last time that you looked as happy as you did than when you were with Negan. And there is only one thing that I keep thinking.”

Still, she said nothing. Which led him to continue his thought process, “You’re miserable at the idea of having to pick because you don’t want to hurt anyone. But by not picking, you’re going to chase off Negan and your life is going to go back to the way it was before Negan showed up.”

“So?” she didn’t realize where he was headed with this.

“So that means that you are miserable because you’re losing Negan,” Joel deducted, his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat with him letting out an extended sigh. “I’m still going to be here. I’m the father to your children. You aren’t losing me. So it’s not me that you’re miserable and heartbroken about. It’s Negan that you’re heart broken over.”

Once more, she didn’t have an answer. Her eyes just misted over, her throat tensing up and she looked back up at the night sky, “I think you should go to him at the airport tomorrow. I think you should take the job. And I think you should marry him. Everything else? We’ll work out together. The three of us.”

It took a minute for her to react, but when she did she lifted up on her elbow and stared down at Joel, “Come again?”

“It’s what is best for you,” Joel explained lowering his arms and pulling himself up into a seated position. “I think Negan is what is best for you. He makes you happy. He gives you everything that you want in life. And he loves you. So much. The best option here is for you to pick Negan. It’s not like I’m losing out anyways. I still get to be with you and Negan. Most people would love that kind of life.”

“And what about the children?” she wondered knowing that she would be far away from them if she accepted the job.

“Apparently Ellie has ideas that she is willing to explain to all of us,” Joel commented on what his daughter had told him earlier. “You apparently heard it and she said you seemed to like it. So all it takes is us sitting together. You have been putting yourself last for a long time now and I think it’s time that you put yourself first. You deserve that once in a while.”

“And you think that Negan is my way to do that? You think this job is the way to do it?” she was curious as to why he was telling her to go to Negan.

“I do,” Joel admitted with a frown, his shoulders shrugging when he thought about things longer. “I had four years where I could have done the right thing. It took me four years to get my shit together, but by the time I did, I reckon I was too late. Negan, he showed up and in no time he won you over. He was on the right track the whole time. I just kept hurting you. And I’m worried that’s all I’ll keep doing if Negan’s not here. Negan puts me on the straight path, he keeps my head level. Even if he’s a pain in the ass.”

“So you would be okay with me being married to Negan?” she inquired, still having a hard time looking at Joel. But this time she did steal a look and he actually looked pitiful at the idea with his big brown eyes staring out at her. “Joel?”

“I don’t know. I’d love to say yes, but deep down inside of me I’ve always thought you were mine and we were going to spend the rest of our lives together after everything calmed down,” Joel explained and he dropped his head down, his fingers caressing at the back of his neck. “Which makes me an asshole because you should have never had to wait for me to figure my life out. We should have never broken up like we did and that’s on me.”

“Maybe I just wasn’t good enough for you,” she thought aloud and it had Joel groaning out loud in disgust. “Trust me, it’s a thought I’ve had for a long time.”

“You were too good for me and you’re too good for Negan,” Joel stressed that, throwing his hands out in the air. His head bobbed dramatically before he snorted. “Thinking that you’re not good enough for us is a fucking joke and a half.”

“I don’t know Joel, I never felt good enough,” she opened up to him, pulling her legs in closer to her chest. “I never understood why you didn’t like me when we were younger. I tried so hard to get your attention. And then when I had it, I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world because I loved you so much. Then to find out that you really didn’t like me…”

“I loved you,” Joel interrupted her with a firm shake of his head, the lines in his forehead growing at the idea that she didn’t think he cared for her. “I still love you. I love you so fucking much it hurts.”

“Everyone I’ve loved has left me,” she recalled, a broken whimper escaping her lips. “My parents got rid of me the second I decided to keep Elizabeth. When you found something better, you left me. Negan left me when we were younger…”

“It’s not you,” Joel hissed, outstretching his hands to grab a tight hold of hers. “The world around you sucks. Your parents are assholes. I was an asshole and with Negan…”

“I was the asshole,” she finished off for Joel the statement that she felt was true to her heart. “Joel, I don’t deserve Negan. I know that he thinks he loves me and maybe he does. But after what I did to him? I was such a bitch.”

“You were young and blind to your love,” Joel knew that she was talking about how she cheated on him with Joel. “I don’t think you really thought the two of you were dating…”

“But I did,” she thought back on when they were younger. “We did everything together Joel. I knew that he was my boyfriend. And I knew that he loved me so much, but when you came around? I wanted nothing more than to be with you. I saw stars every time you walked into a room. I wanted you so fucking bad that I was willing to break the heart of the person that meant the most to me and took care of me my whole life in order to get you.”

“You were young Y/N. I don’t think you knew what you were doing and I laid it on thick,” Joel tried to give her an excuse, but she let out a broken breath shaking her head slowly. “I knew how you felt about me and I used it to control the situation.”

“But I should have never let it happen,” she noted, thinking back to when they were together as teenagers. “Negan was so romantic with me. And I think he was supposed to be my soulmate. I would have had the perfect life if it was Negan that I hooked up with,” she admitted and it had Joel lowering his head hating to hear that kind of thought process. “But I picked you. I wanted you. When you took me to your bedroom that night, I wanted to have sex with you. I wanted you to be my first. Even if you didn’t lay it on thick, I would have eagerly jumped you. I wanted to please you so bad that you never wanted anyone but me. I of course was a virgin so I didn’t know what I was doing, but…”

“Oh, you knew what you were doing,” Joel interrupted her with a laugh, his nose wrinkling in amusement. “You may have not lost your virginity yet, but what you could do with your mouth and your hands…”

“This always goes south whenever we talk,” she rolled her eyes and shakily brushed her hair back over her shoulders.

“I’m just correcting you on your thought process,” Joel admitted with a laugh, his head shaking from side to side.

“I’m just saying Joel, I’ve been obsessed with you since day one,” she recognized that sounded creepy, but she knew that the moment she met Joel she was hooked. “Negan never had a chance once you were in my life. And what I did to him really was unforgiveable.”

“He met Lucille and he thinks that was the way things were meant to happen,” Joel knew that Negan really never blamed her for that. “You know that.”

“He would say anything to make me feel better about myself because that’s what Negan does,” she realized how things were with her relationship with Negan. “I’ve broken his heart more times than I care to admit and every time he is so willing to forgive me. And I don’t deserve it.”

“Can I ask you something?” Joel replied back, hearing her trembling in her breathing. “Why is it okay that I broke your heart, but it’s not okay that you broke his?”

“What do you mean?” she didn’t have an answer for him because she didn’t understand.

“I mean, you are constantly saying that Negan and I deserve better,” Joel repeated what she had said several times at this point. “I spent years hurting you. I broke your heart so many times that I’ve lost count. But you’re willing to forgive me and put my happiness over yours. But when it comes to you and Negan, you break his heart as a child because you loved me and you’re unforgiveable. Why?”

“I…” she hadn’t thought of it like that. Swallowing down, her lips parted and she dropped her head forward. “I don’t know.”

“You’re a better person than I ever was Y/N,” Joel threw that out there, his voice growing raspier the more he talked showing that he was getting emotional about the whole thing. “At your worst, you don’t even scratch the surface of the things I have done. Yet you think I deserve happiness and you don’t.”

“Because I love you and I want what is best for you,” she admitted, her saddened eyes locking with his. “And I do feel I’m the problem.”

“You’re far from the problem,” Joel slid forward to caress in over the side of her face. “You’re the answer.”

Hearing him say that took her breath away with Joel letting out something that sounded like a whimper, “You are the answer to making things better. You always were. Negan sees it. I see it. Having you in my life? That’s the thing that always made things better. When you love, you love with everything that you are. And the person at the other end of that love? Well, I reckon they are the luckiest person alive because no one loves like you do. So no. You are not the problem. You are the person that solves the problem. You are what makes everything whole again. I’m sorry that I was blinded to that for a little while, but I know that now.”

Again, it changed nothing, but he wished he would have noticed it when his life was falling to shit and he made the worst decision he had ever done in choosing to divorce her, but he couldn’t turn back time, “I love you. Which is why I’m telling you to go to that airport with Negan. We’ll work it out. Negan never made the mistakes that I did. He always knew you were the answer. And he cherished you as such. I think you were right. I think you two were soulmates and I fucked that up.”

“I don’t believe that,” she refused to believe that Joel wasn’t meant to be in her life. “Maybe the three of us were all meant to be soulmates. That’s why I thought the whole poly relationship would work out.”

“It would work out, I just got greedy and wanted to be your primary lover,” Joel took a minute to think about the way he worded that and he laughed. “I realize that sounded stupid, but I don’t mind sharing you with him. I just wanted to be your husband.”

“And you don’t anymore?” she stammered after being quiet. Joel kept his head down and he shrugged his shoulders.

“Trust me, I still want it. I want you to be mine and me to be yours, but I know that when you love something, and I love you,” Joel began, reaching for her hands again to give them a firm squeeze. “Well, then sometimes you have to let it go. I know without question that Negan is better for you. I know that he gives you more happiness than I can. I can never make up for all the mistakes that I made. I’d love to try, but I think the slate is cleaner with Negan.”

“Just like that?” she stammered, her eyes narrowing and Joel gave her a small nod. “Thank you Joel.”

“I just want you happy,” Joel slurred, leaning forward enough to hover his lips in over hers. The warmth of his breath lingered causing a chill down her spine. Bringing their lips together, Joel pressed a loving kiss over her lips. Pulling back with a hum, Joel dragged his thumb in over her bottom lip and gave her a wink. “I’ll always be here for you. To support you and lift you up when you need me. Because you are the love of my life Y/N. And that will never change.”

Getting up carefully, Joel swept his fingers in underneath her jaw and nodded over toward the exit of the attic, “I should get going. I think you might want to pack for tomorrow and clean up. Give yourself a break and get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a big day.”

Watching Joel head for the exit, she felt a lump growing at the center of her throat and she called out to him getting him to stop, “If I asked you to give me a reason not to go to Negan tomorrow, but instead pick you…what would you say?”

“No,” Joel shook his head, pushing his hands into his pockets. Kicking slightly at the floor, Joel grumbled under his breath. “Nothing I could say would be better than anything that Negan could give you. And I do genuinely in my heart believe that you should be with Negan. Not because I don’t love you, but because I love you enough to want you happy. Go to the airport tomorrow Y/N. You know I’m right. You’re not losing me, you’d be losing Negan and that’s what has you so upset.”

Joel was attempting to hold back on his emotions. Giving her a final wink, Joel left the attic leaving her to herself. Hearing him leave the house, she laid back again to look up at the sky like Joel had coached her to do earlier. What he had done was leave her with a whole lot of thoughts and feelings that she had to consider.

----

Pacing, Negan knew that they were loading people onto the airplane and he should have taken his seat. Instead, he was waiting. Even though everything was telling him it was impossible, he was just hoping that Y/N was running late. He should have known better. Since he had given her the ticket, he hadn’t heard from her. Every day he sent her a text message letting her know how much he loved and cared about her. Uplifting messages to try and make her feel better. But he got nothing in return.

“Mr. Smith?” someone called out to him waiting at the entrance of the walkway that led to the plane that he was meant to get on. “You’re going to have to get on soon.”

“Just give me one more minute,” Negan pled, holding his finger up in the air motioning them to wait. The person gave him a firm nod and Negan waited. Staring down at the walkway, he was hoping that Y/N would come, but she wasn’t. No one was headed toward this gate and he knew that he was waiting for nothing.

Dialing her number, Negan put his phone to his ear and waited. With how long it was ringing, he knew that she wasn’t going to answer. And he was right. A severe ache grew at the center of his chest and he let out a tremoring breath.

What was he going to do? Leave her a message? Get on the plane? Stay? What could he really do in this situation? She wasn’t talking to him. She wasn’t answering his calls. Maybe he should have just quit all together. Let his final year go and not sign that contract to become the coach. Afterall, his knee was fucked up. All it was going to take was one more injury and he was done. Everyone knew he was hurt anyways. His knee would be an incredible target to those people that never really liked him. And he was already wearing a brace most days as it was.

When her voicemail came up, Negan felt his throat go dry. It felt like his heart stopped for just a second. Everything felt hot when he cleared his throat, “Hey, this is Negan. Y’know that though. I just uh…I guess you’re not coming. And you didn’t talk to me, so maybe that means that you don’t want me in your life anymore. I just uhm…I just want to let you know that I love you. Getting to spend the short amount of time with you these last few weeks is the first time I’ve felt alive again in years. Truth is…” Negan paused realizing that he was getting emotional talking to her voicemail. “I don’t know what to do. I’m in the middle of the airport and they are telling me that I have to get on the plane, but I don’t want to. No where feels like home anymore for me. Just you. And I love you so fucking much.”

Damn, he was crying. In the middle of an airport. Not dramatically enough to draw attention to himself, but he felt the warmth of a tear sliding down his face, “I guess I should get on the plane because you haven’t called back. I just want to say I’m sorry. My intention was never to hurt you. I just wanted to make you happy and by doing that, I fucking overwhelmed you. I’m sorry. So fucking sorry. I moved too fast and I involved your daughter in this and I know that I shouldn’t have. I know how much Joel means to you, I just…I love you. And I should have fought for you when we were children, but I was hurt and I let that hurt linger. I regret it. If you decide while I’m on that plane that you do want to be with me, you can call me. I’ll check my messages when I land. I’ll quit immediately if that’s what you want from me. I don’t need to play a final year. I don’t need this coaching job. The only thing that matters to me is you. And if you don’t want me in your life, I’ll take the hint. That I’ve complicated things too much for you. And instead of coming back to town, I’ll just go home. I won’t get the home in our hometown and I’ll leave you be. I just…whatever happens know that I love you. I’ll always love you. And thank you for the happiness you brought to my life over the last few weeks. Both you and the children have been the best part about my life over the last few years. You’re perfect in every way Y/N. Never forget that.”

Hanging up the phone, Negan let out a tremoring breath wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand that wasn’t holding the cell phone. Clearing his throat, he was doing his best to get it together. The person was calling out to him again and Negan swallowed down hard. Turning on his heel, he clung to his bag and walked to the gate. Handing over his ticket, he felt awful walking up to the airplane.

The flight attendant there was excited to see that it was him on the plane, doing her best to flirt with him, but he was in so much pain that he didn’t even care. Right now he didn’t want to fake it. He didn’t want to pretend that everything was okay. Because it wasn’t.

Putting his bag in the overhead, Negan dropped down into the seat that was by the window. Beside him was the empty seat that he had gotten for Y/N. At least on the trip he would be alone so that way no one could bother him.

Dropping his head back against the seat, Negan covered his eyes and let out a frustrated grunt. This was the last place he wanted to be right now. Movement in the aisleway was heard and in that sense, maybe it was good he waited because obviously there were other people late besides him.

“Hey, you’re that baseball player, right?” an unknown voice questioned making Negan hiss out. Great. This was the last thing he needed right now. Weight dropped down in beside him into the seat where Y/N was meant to be and he felt a fire flooding his veins. “The one that’s retiring.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Negan exhaled dramatically, keeping his hand over his eyes and rubbing at them.

“You’re known for being kind of an asshole, right?” the voice continued on and Negan felt his jaw flexing in frustration at the man that had clearly taken a seat beside him.

“Listen, I’ve had a horrible fucking day and right now I can’t take this shit,” Negan warned with a sense of venom in his tone, dropping his hand down ready to give the person beside him a verbal lashing. Letting out a confused breath, Negan met the familiar brown eyed stare. An uncomfortable sound fell from his throat and he shook his head. “What the fuck are you doing here? And why the hell were you talking like that?”

“I just wanted to see how you’d react,” the southern drawl returned and Negan felt his heart hammering inside of his chest.

“Joel, I don’t understand,” Negan stressed, his body tense and upset. The flight attendant from earlier was watching them from the front of the plane and Negan shook his head. “So what the fuck are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Joel got comfortable in the seat beside Negan, stretching his legs out and cuddling back into the seat that was behind him.

“I’m flying out to meet the owner of the team to…” Negan began with Joel waving his hand about in the air in an over dramatic manner to get Negan to shut up.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You have to sign a contract if you want to be the coach of the team after this year,” Joel blew off what Negan was saying, acting ridiculous with the way he was responding to Negan. “But I’ll repeat my question. What are you doing on this plane?”

“What am I supposed to be answering here Joel?” Negan snapped, his voice lowering when people started to calm down around him, getting prepared for the flight.

“You should be at Y/N’s home right now, not on this plane,” Joel answered for him having Negan’s hazel eyes getting wide with Negan leaning forward in the seat that he was in. “You should have never gotten on this plane.”

“You have a lot of nerve,” Negan snapped, pointing his finger out at Joel who simply just turned his head to stare out at him much like a child getting in trouble would. “You’re the one that threw the ultimatum out for her. And now that I’m here…”

“She’s broken-hearted Negan,” Joel informed Negan with a frown, his chocolate-colored eyes looking away from Negan in shame. “Ellie went to see her and she told me that she had been crying for days. And then I went to see her. Ellie was right.”

“She made her choice Joel,” Negan suggested, lowering his hands to rub at his knees. Everything hurt. It felt like he was being punched in the gut again and again with how much he was hurting from this whole thing. “I told her if she didn’t want this job, but she still wanted to be with me, to let me know before I left. I gave her the ticket. She hasn’t called me and she isn’t here. So, if I don’t hear anything, I’m not coming back. I’m just going to go home and leave her alone because she obviously…”

“Oh God,” Joel groaned outwardly infuriating Negan with the way that Joel dropped his head forward into his hand. “You’re so smart and good with people and you’re being so fucking stupid right now.”

“What do you expect me to do?” Negan blurt out, a chill running down his spine with the way that Joel was getting him worked up.

“I expect you to be Negan! The guy that has been infuriatingly perfect over the last few weeks. The guy that knows how to make her smile and feel good even when she wants to fall apart,” Joel stammered, lowering his hand to place it over the center of his chest.

“She picked you,” Negan didn’t know what to say to this whole act that Joel was putting on. “Are you here to rub it in my face…or what?”

“She picked me? You think she picked me?” Joel chuckled, immediately shaking his head. “No she didn’t. She didn’t make a choice because she was afraid of hurting someone’s feelings if she made a choice. So instead, she’s not making a choice. She’s letting things go back to the way they were before you showed up because she would rather be alone than hurt anyone. That was her choice, but that choice is destroying her.”

Stammering to find the right words, Negan knew that he was still emotional with his bottom lip trembling, “I don’t want her to be miserable. I just want her happy.”

“I know you do,” Joel confessed with a nod of his head, his jaw flexing with contemplation. “And I realized something. She’s miserable, heart broken. Waiting for things to go back to the way they were before Christmas. Which means she’s not with me, but I’m still in her life because I’m Ellie and Peter’s dad. But she’s gonna be without you. And the idea of not having you in her life has her fucking shattered.”

Lowering his head, Negan’s Adam’s apple bounced in his throat. Something that resembled a whimper fell from Negan’s lips and in that moment Joel felt incredibly guilty. This whole time he thought Negan had some kind of ulterior motive for the things that Joel had done when they were younger, but now? He didn’t question the love that Negan had for Y/N. Negan was broken too.

“I’m sorry sir, but this isn’t your seat,” the flight attendant from earlier stepped forward finally after watching their interaction from afar. “I know where your seat is and it looks like you’re upsetting Mr. Smith here and…”

“He’s staying,” Negan interrupted her, his hand stretching out to place in over Joel’s chest to suggest he wasn’t going anywhere.

“You heard the man,” Joel gave the woman a shit eating grin that had her letting out an offended breath before walking away. Lowering his arm, Negan dropped his head again and Joel could see that Negan was deep in thought. 

“It’s you that she’s broken about because I’m never leaving her life. I’m the father to her children. But if she doesn’t pick, she loses you. And that’s why she’s devastated, locked up on her own and miserable. She loves you. And she didn’t want to hurt me because she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. So instead she hurts herself, thinking she’s doing what’s right because she doesn’t think she’s good enough for either one of us,” Joel explained to Negan, his facial expression softening as Negan’s head lifted and the misery was evident in Negan’s eyes. “When in reality, she’s perfect. I reckon better than both of us put together. She’s pure. She has the biggest heart I’ve ever known. And she’s in love with you. She’s in love with us.”

Lifting his hand again, Negan covered his eyes and Joel knew that he was trying to hide that he was getting emotional, “I broke her. And it took you all but a few weeks to heal her and make her happy again. To make things right between us. I don’t deserve to be married to her. But you? You do.”

“She loves you,” Negan reminded Joel with a tremoring breath.

“And she always will. I’ll always feel the same about her, but you are the one thing she can’t stand to be without Negan,” Joel insisted, giving him a simple shrug. Reaching out, Joel’s hand covered Negan’s getting Negan to gaze over at him. “And me? Well, I get the best part of the deal. I get to be with the both of you. And I can’t fuck up my marriage again if I’m the one wearing a promise ring. Although, I don’t plan to fuck up the relationship.”

Not sure what to say, Negan’s head tipped to the side and his hazel eyes narrowed, “Truth is Negan, you make both of us better. We love each other and we could get re-married. But you not only healed her. You healed me too. She loves you. My kids love you. And I love you. I don’t care how anyone judges me with saying that. I’ll fucking scream it on the plane if I have to prove it to you. I’m okay with this relationship. I’m okay with you being married to her. Because you make all of us better.”

“Bullshit,” Negan frowned, shaking his head slowly. “You will not be okay with this. You think you feel a certain way for me, but you don’t…”

“Oh?” Joel stood up from the seat that he was in, clapping his hands together. “Hey there everyone. Can I have your attention please?”

“Joel?” Negan snapped waving his hand to get Joel to sit down, but Joel immediately shook his head. Considering the plane had gone quiet, Negan knew that the people on the plane were genuinely listening to Joel.

“You see this man right here? This is Negan Smith, the famous baseball player,” Joel informed them all hearing a few sounds of awe with Negan burying his head into his hand. “I know, I reckon it’s pretty cool. You see, I have known this man since I was a child. He’s a cheeky motherfucker and he can be an asshole at times, but? I’m in love with him. Well, not just him, my ex-wife too, but that gets complicated…”

“Joel,” Negan laughed noticing that a few of the flight attendants were getting upset that Joel had the attention on the plane. Swiftly moving forward, Joel’s palm pressed in over the side of Negan’s face leading Negan up to him to bring their lips together for everyone to see surprising Negan at first. Allowing Joel to kiss him, Negan started to kiss him back and he knew that this would be an interesting turn of events considering the plane wasn’t empty. Humming, Negan urged Joel to lower back down into his seat with is forehead pressing to Joel’s when they separated. “You made your point. You got them talking.”

“And I don’t care what they are saying. What I do know,” Joel breathed, his thumb caressing over Negan’s chiseled jawline, “Is that I love you and I love her. And you both make me a better man. And I can’t lose that. I like the person I’m capable of being when you’re here and she’s here. I don’t care about the jobs. I want her happy. If she wants to do it, we’ll do it. My kids love the shit outta you and apparently Ellie has got ideas about how to make all of this work.”

“Oh?” Negan chuckled with a weak smile, nuzzling his nose in against Joel’s appreciating the way that this actually felt. “You do realize that this whole plane is going to think that you’re my lover now, right?”

“I am,” Joel reminded Negan with a tip of his head, his southern drawl growing stronger. “One of them at least. And my kids are okay with it. I’m okay with it.”

“I’m proud of you,” Negan leaned into press another lingering kiss over Joel’s lips getting him to hum when Negan brushed his fingers through Joel’s dark hair. When they separated, Negan gave a firm nod. “And I love you too.”

“So then what are we still waiting for? Let’s get off the fucking plane, go to her and fix things. I’m not gonna be a problem anymore because I want this. I want all of us happy. And you make all of us, every single one of us happier than we have been in a very long time. Even my kids see it. So we need to get out of here.”

“So we just get up and leave?” Negan looked to the front of the plane where they were finishing up with things and were preparing to take off. A few of them were giving them odd expressions since Joel just made a big display of his love for Negan. “We can’t do that.”

“Of course we can. You’re Negan Smith, you can do whatever you want,” Joel grumbled under his breath, throwing his hands about. “The plane isn’t in the air yet. That flight attendant is so far up your ass, you could do whatever you wanted.”

It was like Negan was thinking about everything that Joel was saying and it made Joel scoff, “You love her, right?”

“More than anything,” Negan was quick to respond and it had Joel waving his hand about.

“Then why aren’t you getting your ass out of the seat, grabbing your bag and getting the fuck out of here? You know that they would reschedule this contract signing for you if you asked them to, she’s more important,” Joel rumbled with Negan’s brow line creasing, his breathing growing louder. A moment later, Negan stood up from his seat. His fingers curled around Joel’s jacket to get him to stand up from the seat. Snatching his bag from the overhead container, Negan dragged Joel toward the door of the plane.

“I have to get off,” Negan explained to the flight attendants who looked like they were about to tell him he couldn’t. Realizing where this was headed, Negan cleared his throat uneasily and looked to Joel. “This man is having an asthma attack. He has horrible asthma and he forgot to bring his inhaler from the car. I’m going to go with him to make sure that he gets help.”

“It’s probably from you sucking the life out of him with that kiss,” one of the flight attendants stammered and it made Joel laugh who tried to mask it with him faking having an asthma attack. The flight attendants looked to Joel and suddenly Joel realized that he was meant to put on a performance. Starting to act like he was struggling to breathe, Joel curled his fingers around his throat and nodded desperately. Hooking his arm firmly around Joel, Negan acted like he was keeping Joel up who sank in against Negan.

“See! The man is having an asthma attack. His ex-wife only just dropped him off. If I get him off the plane, I can get her back in time to bring him the inhaler that he left in the car. The longer you keep him on the plane, the more likely he is to die!” Negan insisted having Joel growing heavier and he let out a wince. Even though he was selling it perfectly, Joel was laying it on way too thick making it hard to hold him up. “Too much.”

Realizing that Negan was saying he couldn’t carry him like that, Joel braced himself. One of the flight attendants was quick to open the door. Swiftly getting off the plane, they moved quick enough down the walkway, but not too fast to the point that they knew they were lying. Joel was still acting as if he was having an asthma attack. Stealing a look over his shoulder, Negan saw that they were still watching them and he nodded his head.

“Keep it up, they’re still watching,” Negan whispered once they finally got off the walkway. One of the workers was waiting for them at the gate, but Negan assured him that he would handle it. They kept it up until they were finally outside of the airport where Joel braced himself back against the wall. “You okay?”

“I’m actually lightheaded after that,” Joel groaned, coughing after the performance he put on with hyperventilating. “I have a newfound empathy for those that have asthma because fuck…”

“Catch your breath,” Negan moved forward to caress his hand in over the center of Joel’s chest having Joel’s eyes grow wide when he dropped his head back against the building. “Do you think they knew we were faking?”

“Please, I sold the shit out of that,” Joel defended himself, lowering down to place his hands in over his thighs to catch his breath. “They have no idea that it wasn’t real. You were quick on your feet, I just wish we would have come up with something that didn’t take so much out of me.”

“Can I kiss you again?” Negan wondered, his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat realizing that they were in public with a lot of people showing up at the airport.

“I don’t know, you might suck the life out of me,” Joel teased, biting at his bottom lip when Negan hooked his fingers around his shirt balling it up at the center of his chest. Pulling Joel forward, Negan stole a kiss from his lips that had Joel hooking his arms around him proving to him that he was fully ready to be with him the way that they had talked about. When they parted, Joel’s eyebrows bounced up and Joel shrugged. “Maybe I should have been an actor with that performance, huh?”

“You were good, but not that good,” Negan playfully joked, peppering a few faint kisses over Joel’s lips. At some point, he was certain that there would either be photos of them kissing or a video since they were in public, but Joel didn’t seem to mind that. “Don’t push it Miller.”

Stepping in beside Joel, Negan clung to his bag and looked at the people that were showing up at the airport, “Now what?”

“I have an idea,” Joel explained, reaching out to pat Negan on the stomach giving him a wink. “Although, I do have to ask you for a favor.”

“Anything,” Negan nodded his head realizing that the only reason he wasn’t on that plane was because of Joel. “You name it.”

“So, in order to get on that plane I had to buy a first-class ticket,” Joel claimed, standing up straighter to meet Negan’s stare. “Do you think that I can borrow some money from you to pay off the credit card? At the moment, I didn’t have the money for that with Christmas and all…”

“You’ve got it,” Negan snickered, patting Joel on the chest and giving him a firm nod. “It would be no problem at all.”

----

Heading out of her car, Y/N followed the walkway at the center of town that was lit up by the lights that were still hanging. Their town waited until after the first few weeks of January to take down the decorations and she was thankful in this case. Elizabeth had called her in a panic asking Y/N to come get her. Not even thinking twice about it, she just threw her jacket on and ran out into the snow in her pajamas to go get Elizabeth. Fear was eating away at her, worried why her daughter was out this late anyways desperately needing to be picked up.

By now she expected to see Elizabeth, but the closer she got to the large tree at the center of town, the more she began to realize that no one was there. Reaching for her phone, Y/N pulled it out to see if Elizabeth had called her again or sent her a text to let her know where she was. This was the place that Elizabeth asked her to come.

“Elizabeth?” she called out her daughter’s name, dialing her daughter’s phone number. Panic started to flood her veins when her daughter wasn’t answering her phone. Not only that, but she also couldn’t hear her daughter’s ringtone so that meant she wasn’t here. “Elizabeth?!”

“Calm down,” a voice urged when she made it to the tree and from behind it she saw Joel stepping out in front of her holding his hands up in the air. “She’s not here.”

“Where is she?” Y/N was having trouble calming down, her body shaking from the immediate fear that had flooded her veins at the idea of her daughter not being okay. “Joel! Where is she?”

“She’s at home with Tommy. Both her and Peter are safe,” Joel held his hands up in the air defensively with him stepping in closer to her. His dark eyes were locked with hers and he seemed empathetic to the fact that she was upset. “I just had to find a way to get you out of the house and here to talk to me.”

“You used our daughter to get me out of the house so I would talk to you? We just talked last night! Why didn’t you show up at the house?” she was angry with every muscle in her body tensing up. “Joel! I just almost had a fucking panic attack because I was scared something happened to our daughter. But no, instead her father was using her to get me here.”

“How else was I supposed to get you here?” Joel reasoned with her, shoving his hands into his pockets and giving her a dramatic shrug. “I knew that you wouldn’t come here if you knew it was me here waiting for you, so I had to do what I knew would work. You’re an amazing mother and if you thought there was something wrong with one of our children, you would come here immediately.”

“Dick,” she scoffed eliciting a tiny snicker from Joel. Placing her hand at the center of her chest, she attempted to calm herself down. Everything felt like it was spinning and her heart was still hammering inside of her chest. The worst-case scenario had been swirling in her mind when she got here and to know that it was just a ploy to get her to talk to Joel upset her.

“Why didn’t you go to the airport?” Joel wondered, his hands pushing into his pockets while he stared out at her with his big brown eyes.

“How did you know I didn’t go?” she breathed out, sucking in a sharp breath of air.

“You’re here,” Joel stressed to her when in reality, he had been sitting outside her home earlier today and that’s why he rushed to the airport himself when he realized she wasn’t going. 

“You look like you’ve been crying,” Joel pointed out with a frown. That heartbreak? It was there and it still showed. 

“You’re very observative,” she wiped at her eyes, used to people pointing out she looked like shit. That’s what crying constantly would do to you. She hadn’t showered today which meant her hair was undoubtedly a mess. Not only that, she was wearing her pajamas underneath her jacket. “I take it that’s your way of saying I look like shit.”

“No, of course not,” Joel denied, shaking his head and releasing a long exhale. “You’re beautiful. Always. Whether you’re crying with makeup on or not. You are, you have always been and you will always be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Inside and out.”

A tremoring breath fell from her throat with her head lowering down. Right now she didn’t feel that about herself. Right now she felt heart broken, pathetic and horrible.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t go to the airport,” Joel repeated what was on his mind, his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat. “I told you to go to him.”

“And I told you that he deserved better than me. Both of you do,” she reminded him what she had said, her head shaking slowly. “I thought about it. I really did. But I love him so much and I don’t think I’m good for him. Making no decision is the best for everyone. Going back to the way things were…”

“Not making a decision is a big decision,” Joel repeated exactly what Elizabeth had said the other night. “And breaking everyone’s hearts is not the right way to do things. You’re still too goddamn worried about hurting feelings that you’re willing to break everyone’s heart because you don’t think you’re good enough. Yeah, you slept with me when you were dating Negan as a teen. That was bad. You fell in love with Negan when I wanted you back. Shit happens. But the three of us could make it work.”

“I don’t think that’s what you wanted Joel,” she thought back to the things he said yesterday to her before he left. It was beautiful, it was sweet and she seriously considered going.

“But I was right and you know it. You’re crying so fucking much because you’re losing Negan,” Joel stressed what he knew to be true. Thinking about Negan being on the plane and leaving had started to finally set in for her. It had a whimpering sound falling from her throat. “It’s okay to admit it. He makes us both better. Even if he is an asshole sometimes.”

They both snickered as she shrugged her shoulders and let out a tremoring breath, “He left me a message and he was so fucking sad. It shattered my whole heart. I packed a bag Joel, I was going to go. But then I heard how broken he already was because of me. What I put him through the last few days when he is so…”

“Perfect?” Joel finished for her hearing her crying and it made his eyes burn over seeing her so upset.

“This was the best decision for you and Negan,” she insisted with a firm nod of her head. “You both deserve better than me. You deserve someone that brings out the best in you. Negan deserves someone that does the same thing.”

“And you don’t think that you’re that person?” Joel reached out, sweeping his thumb in over the side of her face getting her to finally look up at him. There was a sadness lingering there and it broke his heart. “That’s my fault. I didn’t tell you how perfect you were as much as you deserved to hear it. Because no one was better for me than you. No one ever cared for me or lifted me up like you did Y/N. No one is better for me. Which is why I’m here. To be better for you.”

A confused half laugh fell from her throat, her eyes narrowing with Joel still caressing over her jawline, “I’m sorry I let it get to this. More than anything I want to be that boy you feel in love with again. The one that made you believe in love. The one that was the perfect husband and father, but I’ve made one too many mistakes and I’ll never be that Joel again. I wish I never made the mistakes I did, but I did. But if you ever listen to me about something, listen to me now. You saved me. Every day. And you still are saving me. You were always the person that was there through the tough times and I was so lucky to have you when I did. I would have never made it without you. Neither would have Tommy. You gave me the best of you. You always gave me the best of you. And I stopped doing that a long time ago. You deserve endless amounts of pampering and love. You deserve to hear every day how beautiful you are. How amazing you are. How life wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t in it. You deserve to smile and be happy.”

A whine escaped her throat with her head lowering down. Sliding his palm in over the side of her face, Joel closed the distance between the two of them and he sighed loudly, “Which is what you are going to get being with both of us. Just a little bit more with Negan as your husband and me as you’re promised one.”

Lifting her stare, she seemed confused with him hushing her before she could speak up again, “I know, you’re worried about me and how it’s going to hurt me, but I’m not blind. You’re heart broken because you were meant to be on that plane with Negan. You were meant to be with him and instead you’re here.”

“Joel…” she released a broken breath that was followed by a sob. Dropping her head had Joel’s fingers caressing in over the side of her neck. “It’s too late. The plane is already gone. I can’t do anything about it. I should have done what Elizabeth said, what Negan said. We should have all sat down and figured something out because I love the both of you. So much.”

Instinctively he wrapped her up in his arms to comfort her. “Why didn’t you tell him? Why didn’t you go with him?”

“Because I was afraid,” she lifted her head to meet Joel’s stare and his eyes were tearing over to which surprised her. “I didn’t want to be the thing that took away Negan’s happiness. I didn’t want to be the thing that ruined your life or his life.”

“Not all of us are your responsibility,” Joel stated with a frown, his features softening with him cupping her face in his hands. “Sure, Elizabeth and Peter are, but they are used to this back-and-forth thing between you and me. And they are good kids. They showed both of us that they don’t care if we have this relationship with Negan. And me? The more I think about it? The more I’m sold on it. To be with the both of you? I can’t think of a better way to have things.”

“It’s sounds perfect Joel, but it’s too late. He asked me to call him if I wanted him to come back and I didn’t. He called me before all of this when he was at the airport and he was upset. I could hear it in his voice. I broke his heart and I don’t know if he’d ever be able to forgive me for it,” she whimpered, closing her eyes at the sensation of Joel’s thumbs caressing at the sides of her face to collect the tears. “I didn’t call him. I should have texted him back. I should have called him and I didn’t because…”

“Because I fucked everything up,” Joel interrupted her thought process, letting out a long exhale. “I love you. I love you so fucking much and I realize the mistake that I made. I wish I never did it, but I did. And I wanted to turn back time to make it the way things used to be, but I can’t. And then Negan shows up and he’s the one person that can make you smile. The one person that can make things feel right between the two of us. Negan was everything the two of us needed and more. I love you enough to realize that Negan is the man you are meant to be married to. Not me. I’m always going to be here. I’m not going anywhere. You’re the mother of my children. You are my best friend. And you are my first true love. The love of my life. But in order for me to grow, I need to let you be happy. And if Negan is not in your life, that’s never going to happen. You need him. And he needs you. And I need both of you. You both make me a better man. The man I want to be.”

“Joel,” she whimpered with Joel leaning forward to press faint kisses at her lips, giving her a weak smile when he pulled away. “I can’t turn back time. As much as I would love to, I fucked up.”

“You won’t do it again,” Joel assured her, slowly releasing her from his arms, but dragging his fingers down her arms to hook his fingers with hers to give them a firm squeeze. “I think he’ll understand that. You love him, right?”

“I do,” she confessed with a shuddering breath.

“And you love me, right?” Joel confirmed with her grunting out.

“Obviously,” she felt like that was a little clear at this point.

“Then we will make it work together,” Joel winked, giving her hands a firm squeeze. “You’re always going to be my girl. Even if you’re married to Negan. We’re always going to be part of each other’s lives. I should have realized that when we were in New York City, but I needed a swift kick to the ass. Elizabeth helped me realize that. I don’t want to be the reason that you lost your smile. I love you that much. Which is why we’re gonna make this trio thing work.”

Sweeping his thumbs over the back of her hands, Joel could tell that tears were burning at his eyes and he shrugged his shoulders, “Would you say yes if he asked you to marry him?”

“I should have told him yes at the roller-skating rink,” she tremored, lifting her hands to caress over the sides of Joel’s face. “I love you Joel. I love you so much and a big part of my heart will always belong to you. There was just something with Negan that made me feel…”

“Whole?” Joel filled in the blanks for her and she nodded slowly, her jaw flexing in upset. “Yeah, he does that for me too. Weird how that fucker is able to fill in the empty spaces and make things feel right. I wish I had that talent.” 

“There is something about you too,” she hushed him, pushing faintly at his shoulder to get him to look down at her. “I have been in love with you my whole life. Obviously you’re doing something right. I just fucked things up with Negan. Twice now. It’s something I’ll never let down. But this is my own fault.”

“No, you can have your dreams. You can have everything you’ve ever wanted,” Joel promised her, stepping forward to give her another quick kiss getting emotional himself. “Everything you deserve. And the children agree with me.”

“How?” she breathed out with Joel reaching into his pocket. Pulling something out, he revealed to her the box that was in his hand. Once she saw the small jewelry box, she gave him an odd expression. “Joel?”

“I love you. I always will. And I’m not going anywhere. I want to promise you that,” Joel nuzzled his nose in against hers before stepping back. “I’m always going to be here to support you. The way I should have. Just not as your husband. And I’m okay with that.”

Sweeping his thumb over the box, Joel took one final look at it before tossing it beyond her. Surprising her with the movement, she turned to see where he had thrown it letting out a trembling exhale when she saw Negan standing behind her holding onto the box.

With a weak smile, Negan stepped forward before her. Unhurriedly lowering down to his knee, Negan gave a wince with his knee starting to hurt him on the hard concrete, but he didn’t care. Seeing him had her crying and Negan could feel himself getting emotional too.

“You’re here,” she trembled, squeezing firmly to Negan’s fingers with him kneeling before her. “I thought you left. I thought…”

“He came to get me to bring me where I belong,” Negan hushed her, bringing her hand to his mouth to deposit a loving kiss over the back of her hand. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw that Joel was standing behind them watching with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. With their eyes connecting, she got the confirmation that indeed Joel was who brought him here from the airport. “Which is with you. I don’t care where I am as long as I’m with you. Y/N, I love you with everything that I am. I don’t care where we are, as long as we are together because your love is enough for me. You are enough for me. The only thing that I can hope for is that I’m enough for you.”

“Just ask her already,” Joel grumbled under his breath getting a grunt to fall from Negan’s throat, but a laugh followed.

“Will you make me the happiest motherfucker on the planet and marry me?” Negan asked with a broken breath having her immediately nod her head. Grunting through the pain, Negan got up from the ground with her jumping into his arms to hug him. Squeezing her in against his chest, Negan spun her in a circle. Peppering kisses against the side of her face, Negan nuzzled his nose in against her neck and let out a happy sound. “I love you so much.”

“And I love you,” she insisted pulling Negan in to kiss her letting it linger. By the time she pulled away she was breathless and she pressed her forehead to his. “So much.”

“Good,” Negan gave her a big cheesy smile, squeezing her in closer to him. Looking beyond them, Negan could see that Joel seemed genuinely happy, but sad at the same time. Waving his fingers, he urged Joel forward. Turning toward him, Negan allowed Joel to come in to hug the both of them. “Thank you. You’re a good man Joel Miller.”

“Now let’s not go that far,” Joel’s nose wrinkled, giving them both a firm hug. “I just know what’s right and wrong. And in this moment, I needed to do what was right. My daughter helped me realize what that was.”

“And you’re okay with this?” she confirmed having Joel step back and hold his hand up in the air showing her a ring that was on his finger already. Bouncing his eyebrows Joel caused her to laugh when she looked between the two of them. “The hell is that?”

“I gave him the ring I was wearing to make sure he knows he’s ours,” Negan lifted his hand to show that the ring he often wore was gone. “It’s just a placement holder until I can get one that he likes better. Maybe one that matches your ring.”

“I deserve the bling too,” Joel teased feeling her shoving into his chest and he laughed. “Although, you might have to deal with some awkward press for a while. I think people might think I’m the one marrying Negan.”

“What does that mean?” she looked between the two of them with the sound of Joel’s voice echoing behind her. Looking over her shoulder she saw that Negan was holding a video up with Joel’s speech on the plane. Immediately a rose color flooded into Joel’s face when the video clearly showed him and Negan kissing. “What is that?”

“Well that was fast,” Joel grumbled under his breath, shoving his hands into his pockets. “These people and their damn cell phones.”

“It’s a good story,” Negan hooked his arm around Y/N’s shoulders, leading her to follow him over toward Joel so he could wrap his arm around Joel’s shoulders with his other arm. “We can talk about it on the way back to Joel’s place.”

“Joel’s place?” she was curious since she would have thought they were headed back to her home.

“Oh, we have a meeting with a seventeen-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy that want to explain their plans to us,” Joel explained to her referring to Peter and Elizabeth who asked to see them both after they got done doing whatever they were. “Apparently our daughter has created a power point for us.”

“Oh tonight is gonna be fun,” Negan suggested, leaning in to press a kiss against Y/N’s temple and then repeated the motion to Joel. “I’ll get the car.”

Leaving the two of them to themselves, Negan was swift to head over toward the car that he had driven back with Joel. Turning to face Joel, she reached out for his hands to squeeze them firmly in hers, “You really are different.”

“Mhmm,” Joel breathed out, stepping forward to close the distance between them. “And I plan to spend the rest of my life proving it to the both of you. I’m wearing the ring so that means this sexy dad bod? Yeah, it belongs to both you and Negan.”

“Dear God,” she tipped on her toes to pepper loving kisses against Joel’s lips who wrapped her loosely in his arms. “And you’re okay with that?”

“Strangely, yes,” Joel responded with a long sigh, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers enjoying the warmth of her near. “All I know is that the both of you make me a better man and I want you both happy. This is the best way. For all of us. Together. Making things work.”

“I love you Joel Miller,” she stressed, resting her head against the center of his chest allowing him to stroke his fingers over the back of her neck while he cuddled his chin down in over the top of her head. “So fucking much.”

“I know,” Joel pressed a lingering kiss over the top of her head as Negan pulled up with the car. Helping her into the car, Joel made sure she was safely in before getting into the back. “After this meeting, I vote we go have a threesome in that nook. I’ve been trying so hard to have sex there. And I think I could use it.”

“We’ll see where the night takes us,” Negan chuckled hearing the sound of the video he played earlier coming from his phone again that was now in Y/N’s hands as she watched it.

“This has a lot of views you know,” Y/N pointed toward the phone holding it up and looking back over her shoulder to stare out at Joel. “There is still time for the two of you to be the couple to get married. I told you, I’m okay with being the third wheel. It really wouldn’t bother me with you two getting married.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” Joel waved his hand about getting a laugh from Y/N as she continued to watch the video. “We’ll figure something out. Together. We’re a team now so whatever happens, happens. But it will happen with the three of us together. Starting something new. I reckon these next few days are going to be interesting to say the least, but I’m ready to take on that challenge with you and Negan at my side.”

----

Tags: @chainsawsangel @fancypeacepersona @violent-darkness @negansbestie @elegantfanficluv

@sanctuaryforthelost @dead-of-niight @dilfsandmartinis @jennydehavilland

[fourleafclovxr]

15: delayed flight

Across from Rhian, two children begin to cry.

Kei’s eyebrows curve in concern beaide him; the children’s mother rushes to soothe them, and he shifts as if he wants to reach out, wants to help, though Rhian can’t think of any way he could. Kei has always had a soft spot for children.

They’re not the only ones in distress. The announcement went something like, this flight is being delayed twelve hours, and now they’re surrounded by clamour and complaints. Rhian pictures himself as an anchor of calm, of silence, in all this noise.

He’s kind of relieved, actually. He hadn’t particularly wanted to go home. He doesn’t, ever.

Neither had Kei, but worry twists at his mouth all the same. Rhian nudges at his shoulder in a silent question, and Kei shrugs.

“My parents will be unhappy,” he says softly. “Though I admit they would be anyway. My sisters— well. I don’t know what they’ll think. Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”

Kei speaks of his sisters often. At Arbed— when they would talk about other schools, more normal ones— they had almost seemed like a point of pride. It’s difficult to tell. For people like them, the problem children, the troubled cases, it is endlessly hard to think well of your family. They won’t ever think well of you. Even Japeth dislikes Rhian, and they’re both in the same boat, so it’s not like he has anything better to show.

But perhaps that’s just them, the Sader family. Kei talks about his sisters from a distance, more like characters than anything else. But he has never quite spoken ill of them. lt’s more that they were never afforded the chance to be close; a forced sort of isolation. Again, very much unlike Rhian and Japeth, who were stuck together, like it or not.

His parents are a different story, a more sensitive one, but so are everyone’s.

“I guess you’re happy,” Kei observes in that same, quiet way.

“Any excuse not to go home,” Rhian says. “Anything at all.” It’s a strange thing to say, in the midst of all these people who want to go home— because no one goes to Foxwood for any other reason, no one thinks of it as anything but a poorer, less exciting version of Camelot or Jaunt Jolie— but it’s the truth.

Rhian does not know what it is, to long for home. Home has always been this: absent father, obsessive mother, crazed twin. Not people Rhian wants to be defined by. Not somewhere he wants to go back to.

And sometimes it was this: inadequacy. Rhian tries— tried?— to be a good kid, to make it work, if only because he knew Japeth wouldn't. It won't ever be enough. There will always be something in him that his mother resents, even if it's only his father’s blood, his father’s face. And there will always be the fact that his father didn’t care for him, for them, that they were only an afterthought. And there will always be this family he cannot fix.

Home is too much work and not enough to gain from it, from trying. Rhian doesn’t really care to try anymore. He’s not scared. He’s not. He’s just— not willing to watch it fail.

Kei lays a hand over his. “You're in your own head again,” he says, not unkindly.

“I always am,” Rhian murmurs. Always dreaming, or, lately, the antithesis of it. Convincing himself of reality. He curls his fingers through Kei’s, and for a moment they just sit like this, holding hands at the boarding gate.

He is blessed, to have Kei, who is perhaps the only person from whom he has nothing left to hide. Rhian could not ever know how to thank him. Could not ever be grateful enough.

Kei squeezes his hand, near-gentle, and lets go. He picks up his phone from where it lies in his lap, starts typing a message. To one of his sisters, most likely. They’re lucky to be sitting next to a charging station, though they’ll probably have to give it up sooner or later. Rhian glances at his own messages— four from his mother, one from his cousin Agatha. He contemplates ignoring them.

“At least reply to Agatha,” Kei says abruptly. Rhian hadn’t realised Kei was looking over at him and his screen, close enough for their shoulders to brush. “I like Agatha.”

“Who I reply to isn’t defined by who you like,” Rhian mutters. But he clicks her message open anyway. Kei’s mouth curves into a slight smile, the only response that Rhian gets.

you’ll be here at seven tomorrow, right? Agatha has texted. my dad is worrying again.

And then there’s that. Rhian tries very hard to avoid family dinners with the previous generation of Sader siblings, which are made even more awkward for him by the fact that their entire branch of the family is technically illegitimate, and also born out of Rhian’s grandfather cheating. Going to school in a different region of the Woods has made that quite easy— for him and Agatha both, as awkward classmates, though she normally does try to go home.

This was supposed to be the first dinner he attended in a year or two. Well, that’s unfortunate. my flight got delayed, he types back. twelve hours. but mom and rj will be there at seven.

you’re KIDDING me, Agatha replies almost instantly. honestly, good for you. but good luck telling your mother. This is followed by a string of pictures of pathetic-looking animals, about ten more than Rhian asked for, or wanted. At least she didn’t say skibidi like she did the last time they texted, or he might have to block her again.

“I almost feel bad,” he mutters. “Throwing her to the wolves.”

“The good Professor will protect her from the worst of it,” Kei says lightly. “Unless your brother brings Aric, in which case there will be blood, probably. I wouldn’t put it past Aric to take a shot at Professor Sader, too. Animal that he is.”

Kei, of all of them— Rhian and his mother and Aric’s own mother and everyone else but Japeth— has always despised Aric the most. It’s been a long-standing grudge, held since Aric nearly killed Kei back in Arbed. Years have passed, now, and the scar still tugs at Kei’s lip when his mouth curls. A constant crooked flaw in his joy.

Kei, Rhian remembers, had been more angry than anything else. It had been Rhian who had worried, hands curled in Kei’s, heart in his mouth.

“If Japeth brings Aric, I’ll throw him out myself,” he says.

Kei laughs— breaks off halfway to say, “Hello, did you need something?”

Rhian stares at the kids standing in front of them. One taller girl, one tiny boy who can’t be more than five. Kei smiles, indulgent.

“Could we share the charging station?” the girl asks shyly. She holds up the phone she’s holding. “Please?”

“Of course,” Kei says, before Rhian has the chance to react. Not that he would have said no. He’s not a terrible person, just… not particularly fond of children. “You can sit there if you want?”

He gestures to the empty seats on their other side. “If your parents are alright with it.”

The two kids are already looking at their mother— and, oh, they were the ones crying. She waves an affirmation at them, exhausted, and Rhian feels a little more sympathetic. Fine. He can tolerate it, for now.

Kei tugs his charger out so that the kids can plug theirs in, chattering happily. They’re playing Candy Crush. Because of course they are. Five minutes later they lean over to ask Kei whether he knows how to play.

Kei is on level eight thousand and counting. Rhian is pretty sure he was playing earlier on. What a question to ask. What a question, indeed.

The kids are on level five hundred. Kei is practically glowing. Well, as long as he’s happy.

Rhian wouldn’t mind staying like this, he thinks, a little wistfully. Twelve hours, four more on the plane. A world to themselves. A little life of their own. A liminal space, a transition, a delay. Rhian and Kei, the way he always wants it to be.

If he’s ever longed for home, he thinks it might look something like this.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2023 Anime Overview: Oshi no Ko

Spoiler free premise: A doctor in a small town is a fan of a sixteen-year-old idol Ai Hoshino. But then Ai shows up with a secret pregnancy. Now he’s going to have to figure out how to deal with her secret and safeguard her from obsessive fans as he helps her give birth…

Spoiler for the entire first super long episode twist premise under the cut:

…that is, until the doctor is murdered by Ai’s stalker and reincarnates as Aqua, one of the twin children Ai gives birth to. The other twin, Ruby, is also a reincarnated soul. She was a former patient of the doctor’s, a twelve-year-old who was a huge fan of Ai before dying of terminal illness. Both twins are unaware of the other’s former identity, but they both enjoy their new lease on life and come to love Ai all the more.

All seems well (I mean well for the twins, that is, not for the viewer who has to grapple with all this bizarre and creepy premise) until the same stalker that murdered the doctor murders Ai herself. Aqua realizes his father/Ai’s secret lover must have leaked Ai’s location to the stalker on purpose. The problem is that Ai never told Aqua and Ruby who their father was. So Aqua vows to track down his father and kill the man for what he did to Ai, whatever the cost. After growing into a teenager, he gets more involved in the entertainment industry and begins his search for his mother’s true killer in earnest.

Yeah, that’s a lot isn’t it? And it probably doesn’t help when I tell you that before he becomes Aqua, the doctor basically admits he, an adult man, wouldn’t turn down a date from the sixteen year old Ai, prompting the nurse to call him a lolicon (because anime will always insist on using that phrase where they should say ‘pedophile/ephebophile'). Or that baby Aqua refuses to breastfeed with Ai, but his twelve-year-old-girl-in-a-past-life twin happily does so with a huge, lascivious grin. (There’s also a discussion where Aqua says ‘he’ll let it slide’ when he learns Ruby was a girl in her past life too, she’s like ‘wow so great I was born a girl so I can enjoy mama's/Ai's breasts” and he’s like “no it’s not okay actually” and you just have to sit back and realize this is a conversation you’re watching on TV. This is where your life has bought you. )

Why did you keep watching, you ask me when I say these things? Well, it was well-made and engrossing. The animation was great, the pace was snappy, and Ai was instantly endearing. Plus everyone was talking about it endlessly on a discord I belong to, and they said after the first episodes the weirdness of the reincarnation angle becomes less important, the horny baby antics go away, and it becomes more of a straightforward murder mystery and a intriguing exploration of the entertainment industry.

And that’s pretty much true. The show goes out of the way to handwave Aqua’s past life by saying going through puberty and infantile amnesia means he now doesn’t know where he starts and the other dude begins anymore, and he essentially feels like a teenager.

Where Oshi no Ko is truly compelling is it’s exploration of the predatory entertainment industry and the twisted misogyny and parasociality of idol fandom.

It makes some basic, but very needed, points. It points out that fans who freak out over 'their' idols having a relationship and blame them for it are gross, and the industry that puts them in a box is gross. This is very basic stuff, but still underdiscussed in anime. A lot of anime pretend all is well for an idol since the anime industry itself makes bank off idols. So it was satisfying to see to see a character scream ‘You all fall in love with idols, it's selfish to say idols can't fall in love! You take out all your anger on women because you don't have a girlfriend!" at the endless twitter comments saying it was "expected" that Ai was killed for ‘betraying’ her fans. It's also clear the author did a lot of research on the entertainment industry and has a lot to share. A lot of what he has to share is really interesting, and I appreciate that in his interviews he wanted to make sure Americans understand that Japanese actors and idols don’t have unions and it leaves them open to even more exploitation.

(Even the bizarre premise of the anime is nod to a gross “joke” idol fans make- a lot of 2channers apparently joke about wanting to “be reborn” as their favorite idol’s child whenever there’s a marriage announcement. However, it feels like the premise is rooted a lot in shock value...)

At the same time, Oshi no Ko doesn’t really go as hard as people act like it does. It’s not Perfect Blue, and it pulls its punches. It still goes for easy answers sometimes, and what’s worse, easy answers that lionize its obnoxious protagonist. Never is this more apparent that the cyberbullying arc.

First, let’s be clear- the cyberbullying arc focuses on a reality show actor, a girl named Akane, being driven to attempt suicide after a bunch of internet detractors harass her over something she did on the show (that the producers pressured her into doing in the first place). However, Aqua saves her at the last minute.

Hana Kimura lost her life in a very similar incident just a few months before this arc in the manga was published and the author’s spoken about it on record. Hana was a pro-wrestler who was on the reality show Terrace House, and what happened to her is the same thing in broad strokes, only she didn’t get a convenient rescue. But nobody bothered to contact Hana’s family about any of this, so Hana’s mother was blindsided when she heard about it, and claims some of the hate messages in the anime are identical to the ones Hana received in real life. She pleaded that "Because it raises important issues, I would like to support a work like Oshi no Ko.  However, I don't think it needs to be done in a way that makes people  who have actually been victimized on social media suffer when they see it.”.

Oshi no Ko fans, having just watched an arc about the serious consequences of internet harassment, were of course respectful to the grieving mother of a harassment victim- nah, they harassed Hana’s mom for criticizing the show. Another example of the incredible media literacy of anime fans.

All of that was already not a great look for the manga and show, and I think the kind thing to do would have been to contact the family before telling this story. But even if that wasn’t a thing, I didn’t like how this arc was handled. After Akane is saved by Aqua, he leaks her attempted suicide to the press. Though there’s a mention that this unethical, he’s never really taken to task or confronted with the fact this violation of her privacy could have led to another (potentially successful!) suicide attempt. Then he talks to the director, reminds him that Akane is a teenager and adults should protect children, the director has a change of heart. Aqua's given permission to release footage of the cast being friends, the harassment dies down and Akane immediately gets better offscreen, because that’s how trauma and depression works!

God, ‘depression is NBD! You recover quickly!’ is one of my biggest fiction pet peeves. Considering how despicable the producers were to Hana IRL, the whole storyline wrapping up like this wasn't just sloppy and lazy, it was insulting.

Rather than explore with the actual messy fallout this would realistically have for Akane, it just had Aqua get to be the edgy savior who was In the Right even though his actions were horrible and could have had catastrophic consequences. Also the ‘adults should protect kids’ moral felt weak when Hana and many other entertainers who hurt themselves after being mistreated by fans and the industry were adults. Did they not deserve to be protected?

And I guess it sums up a lot of my problems with the show. It's painstakingly researched and talks about interesting stuff (though sometimes one character has to become an exposition machine just so we don't miss ANY of the author's research, which can feel awkward). It has some interesting and complex main female characters … but 3/4s of them have some romantic connection to Aqua, which grates. It’s more honest about the idol industry than most anime, but also sometimes pulls its punches when it comes to exploring actual mental illness and industry abuse.

'Aqua is the smartest and all the girls are sooo into him’ gets pretty annoying. Two girls are already in love with him, and even without the really unnecessary ‘was a pedophile in a past life’ baggage, he barely has a personality. Aaaand there’s how we have to listen to him muse about whether he was in love with his mom. Aaaand there's the looming threat that the next girl to fall in love with him will be his sister, since she muses she was in love with the doctor in her past life.

Once sis mentioned that, I started wondering if I should even come back to season 2. Leaning towards ‘no’ right now (definitely not if the manga really does…that). I don’t regret watching ONK- it was interesting, well animated and produced, and the theme song is a certified bop- but it’s also not something I could ever recommend to anyone. It’s the most fraught show I’ve watched in a long time, and in the end, I’m not sure all of its weird parts add up to a satisfying, truly subversive story.  It’s a mess, but time will tell if it’s an intriguing enough mess for me to come back to.

[sweet-star-cookie]

heyo! question time!

i've noticed that in older posts, cassie has family members and friends, can you tell me more? do they know about her thing with the zodiacs? what are their relationships like with her? do they try to help her with her zodiac shenanigans or do they mainly stay out of the way?

Yes indeed! I've been chipping away at updates for the other Earth characters in terms of art, but I have enough to give you the gist at least :)

Funnily enough, I had a feeling you might ask about Cassie's family at some point, so I'd started refining their current designs because it has been a while (I'm not done yet though so here's the halfway done art for now lol)

(and old art from 2020 that I never posted lmao) Here's their ages as well if you need them: Cassie - 14 Nora - 46 Andrew - 43 Demitri - 17

Generally speaking, Cassie's family is pretty tight knit and happy, a kind of stability that becomes more and more necessary as things start to get more intense with all the star stuff! It's important to remember that Cassie was born with her star eye, so on some level her family knew that something unusual was going to happen with it eventually, even if they didn't know what at the time. The details of it were still quite the surprise once they did find out, but they each had their own ways of preparing for it or otherwise expecting it beforehand. Like her friends, they do what they can to help her, even if they're not able to directly deal with the supernatural shenanigans themselves. In many cases though, they turn out to be more useful than even they realize! Nora The pragmatic and no-nonsense mom, in stark contrast to her family of quirky dreamer types. Nora's not without her own quirks though, and despite her low tolerance for the fantastical, that doesn't mean she denies its existence either. In fact, she pays close attention to any information that she's given, even if it seems like she's not paying attention at all. She's a lot less serious than you might think, and she'd absolutely commit to a bit she didn't understand if it made her children or husband happy. She's the more detail oriented thinker between her and Andrew, and helps Cassie look at the most important stuff when trying to work out a problem, even if she herself does not understand how it all works. Or at the very least, she's able to give the most practical advice, as her world-weary attitude doesn't come from nowhere. Nora has a business job, usually something involving project management, and has a personality that one would need to survive that kind of job. She works long hours and is almost always seen with a coffee in her hand, a byproduct of her insomnia. Though the control of her anger is carefully calculated at all times, Nora is a bit of a mama bear as well, and will quite literally punch your lights out if you try to hurt her family! Cassie's moments of dry snark or sarcasm come from her, and so does a lot of her confidence in defending herself when being talked down to.

As things escalate, Nora spends more time at home to make sure that somebody is there with Cassie as much as possible, even if she can't fight the spirits for her. She worries about Cassie's safety like any good mother would, but understands that her daughter's situation is inevitable and tries to instill confidence in her instead, trusting that Cassie can handle it.

Andrew A quirky dad with nerdy interests, which lends itself well to his job as a film studies professor at a community college. If Nora is the detail thinker, Andrew is the big picture dreamer, often thinking up fantastical reasons for things or otherwise enjoying the speculative side. He approaches life with great curiosity, for better or worse! He and Nora work well as a couple for this reason, as he is able to help Nora lighten up and have fun when she needs it, whereas Nora can pull him down from Cloud Nine every so often to think more practically.

He is endlessly optimistic and cheerful, and Cassie takes after him in this regard. He encouraged Cassie's years of speculating about what the Starglass was or what it was for, often doing his own speculating as well, and they bonded over the possibilities. He worries more openly about Cassie than Nora does, but is equally as proud when Cassie shows what she can do during a spirit encounter that he witnesses.

This is him holding Cassie for the first time and, notably, her eyes are still closed here. While he was always fascinated by the implications of her star eye, he always loved Cassie for her, not her eye. He calls her "Starshine" as a nickname.

Demitri (or Demi for short) Cassie's older brother, a fact that he uses often to (playfully) joke around at her expense like most older siblings do. Unlike most siblings, however, they get along quite well. He does much to look out for her, even if the ways he does this are more casual or subtle, like giving her rides or getting her a drink at the coffee shop. When Cassie and her friends start spirit hunting at night, he will often insist on tagging along to not only give them a ride there and back, but to also not let a trio of teenage girls go into a forest or cave on their own, regardless if they find a spirit at all.

He's a laid-back artist with an interest in video games, something he and Cassie play often. His art style is influenced by graffiti and street art, something that comes up during an encounter with Chamaeleon and her gang. Though he'd be largely useless in a fight, he will still drop everything to rescue Cassie if asked, feeling some sense of responsibility as her older sibling to protect her. When cornered, he'll usually try to joke his way out of something on instinct.

-------- And now here's some info about Cassie's friends :) (with more old art lol)

These two are Cassie's closest friends, having met each other when they were 8 and forming a trio since. Here's the three of them at that age as a bonus c':

Ellie The most cowardly of the three, but this does not prevent her from tagging along purely out of care for Cassie and Leena, even if it means she'll be screaming for most of it. Bubbly and innocent in demeanour, this causes some to underestimate her, thinking she's merely airheaded. Though she'd never be able to carry a sword like Cassie does, Ellie can still be surprisingly courageous when the chips are down, even if it's sporadically. She and her family work on a farm, and that knowledge comes in handy when placating the behaviour of some of the corrupted animal spirits. When they first met, Ellie and Cassie got along quickly by virtue of having similar personalities and interests, and Ellie didn't find Cassie's eye to be all that distracting.

Leena Normally an outcast and fairly quiet overall, but bitingly sarcastic when she isn't. She cares very little about the opinions of others, though this is largely as a shield against bullying than anything else, as her interest in anything morbid or creepy made it hard for her to make friends initially. A huge fan of all things supernatural, Leena was initially drawn to Cassie purely because of her star eye, but they quickly bonded over being outcasts, albeit for vastly different reasons. Leena is very much an opposite to both Cassie and Ellie when it comes to most things, but are on the same page for the stuff that matters, at least once they were able to navigate Leena's more unusual ways of showing affection.

Leena insists on tagging along for the spirit hunting purely for the sake of something actually interesting happening in their otherwise sleepy small town, though she does deeply care for her friends in secret. Prior to Cassie's training, she was the most physically adept of the three via her skills in martial arts.

Though ultimately harmless, her friends have learned not to question her evil laughter, as Leena always seems to be plotting something. Even if that something is nothing more than planning to scare Ellie, usually with a scary story. A lot of those stories become surprisingly relevant once the spirits start appearing on Earth, at least when it comes to the rumours of their town being haunted.

[marriedtomymarriage]

February 2nd, Sunday Morning

Context - Money & The Mother of His Children

He’s cut ties with the mother of his children, called her problematic, and asked me to never mention her again. I respected that! I’ve always felt for her. As a woman, I can imagine how tough it must be for her, stuck in Cuba while raising his kids without the real dad (she's married). If I were in her shoes, I’d understand the struggles. He’s not an emotionally present father, despite what he says. So for years I’d check in with her to get a better sense of how the kids were doing, since he tends to focus only on positives. He always talks about how he doesn't want to talk about other people's problems because he can't fix them. His daughter has ADHD, and as someone who suspects I might have it too, I was always curious about how she was coping. He never seemed to show much interest in learning more about her condition or how her therapy was going... Eventually, he asked me to stop checking in, so I did. I wouldn’t want him talking to an ex of mine too often either, so I respected his wish.

When it comes to sending money, I���m the one who usually has to bring it up. If I don’t, it can go months without it being sent. He’s told the kids not to talk about money with him, so it’s up to me to remind him. I’m not sure if he forgets or just doesn’t prioritize it, but I make sure it gets done.

On our way to the Laundry

I asked, “Should we send the money through your son's contact or the mother’s card like before?” That was all it took. He launched into his usual monologue, ranting about how he didn’t want to talk about her, but somehow still doing exactly that. The thing is that he repeats himself endlessly, and I know it’s going nowhere. So I interrupt, because my ears are not a toilet bowl, “If we don’t want to talk about her, we shouldn’t talk about her, babe. I understood the first time you said it. It's okay, and I'm sorry.”

And that’s when he snapped.

“I HAVE to say this. I’ve told you a million times not to bring her up, and yet here we are again!” Then I just went quiet, put my headphones back in, and hummed to my music. Hot Kiss by Juliette Lewis was playing, which made me wish to be kissing instead of... This. Then we just stayed quiet for the following hours. I can't tell him that the way he raised his voice at me while driving really hurt me because it will likely start another argument, which WILL lead to yet more yelling. So we just brushed it under the carpet- which is already quite full.

After the morning incident, we went on with our day. He worked outside on the cars, handling maintenance, cleaning, etc. Meanwhile I put away our fresh clean laundry and tidied the place up- things that calm me down. Then, I started cooking lunch- rice and chicken with onions and a saucy sauce. By the time I finished everything, it was around 3 PM. As I cleaned up our tiny kitchen, he comes in to have some ice cream- he sits down and we casually started talking, as if nothing had happened earlier.

I asked him if he was almost done with his work outside. But he is unable to answer simple questions. One of the reasons why I think I have ADHD- it drives me INSANE that he takes AGES to get the point and sometimes doesn't even do it. It's just vomiting word salad. Instead of saying yes or no, he gave a long response about how he always has stuff to do, like the work is never-ending. How he needs to put away the mess he did outside (naming every thing he did), then he needs to shower, shave his beard, prepare his uniform, etc. I asked AGAIN for a rough estimate of when he’d be finished. He finally said he’d probably be done around 20h (this is the time he literally closes his eyes to sleep). I was annoyed because I know he knew what I meant.

I made sure to not appear annoyed when I clarified, “No, when I asked, I meant when you’ll be done working so we can spend some time together- maybe watch a movie!” He hesitated for a moment and then said, “What time would you like to watch it?” I replied, “Any time that's convenient for you. I know you have a lot to do, so let me know when works best!” I didn’t want to pressure him. He then agreed to 16h (so within an hour).

At 16h he came in from outside, still in his overalls. I asked, “Aren’t you going to shower first? So you can relax and then we can watch the movie!" He said "No it's okay! I'm ready!" He even smiled, but still I could tell he wasn’t really interested. It 100% felt like he was doing it just to please me. Still, we settled on our chairs- I could sense he wasn’t engaged. The movie wasn’t great, so I joked about it, asking if he wanted to fast forward. He replied, “Nah, let’s see if it gets better.”

As we continued, I made more jokes about how bad the movie was, but he just stayed quiet. Usually, when we watch movies, we snack on something, but he didn’t ask for anything, which told me even more that he was not enjoying being there. Eventually, he paused the movie and said, “Let’s take a break. This movie is boring.” I asked if he wanted to watch something else- I prepared 2 other options for us. But he said "No, I don't really want to watch anything else." sounding very tired and almost annoyed.

He had already worked yesterday (Saturday), and now, even a simple movie with me seemed like too much for him. He went back outside to work on the cars some more. I felt completely unseen.

Later that night, we went to bed around 19h30 and as he watched something on his phone, I lay in his arms, and he caressed my scalp for about 30mins. It’s something he knows I like- honestly THE only thing he does that makes me melt. Then, at 20h sharp, we turned our phones off and went to sleep. Finally the "rest from work" he reffered to earlier.

[libraford]

I'm going to give some background here because this is a highly opinionated piece and it will potentially escape containment and be divorced from its context. I'm going to put this under a readmore because there is a lot to discuss and some of it is heavy.

What I have is not solutions. Its insight.

I am not directly involved in the schools. I am not a teacher, I do not have children. I am a school photographer and I see a wide variety of schools in the state where I live for two to three days out of a year. However- my brother was the assistant principal of a middle school, my mother in law was a language teacher. Many of my friends from college are former teachers. I see comments about the local school bullying problems on our town's facebook page. But I think its also important to know that I was bullied relentlessly as a school kid and I still remember what it was like.

This is what typically informs my opinions about schools, behavior, and the current state of education.

Its been difficult to organize my thoughts on this subject because there are so many factors that contribute to bullying, and this is really a whole picture kind of thing.

Children are a reflection of their world. They have limited experiences, so the way that they react to things tells us about the world they're in.

Its rough out there.

Even before Covid, there were discussions about the rise of bad behaviors in schools- it was dangerous to be a teacher in certain cities 2018, which is when most of my friends quit teaching. Covid made this worse. Kids had their lives disrupted, there was so much uncertainty, and they saw adults acting horribly towards each other. It shouldn't be a surprise that someone in that position might not respect an adult.

But what's more, a lot of teachers are hard to respect. There are times when I'm visiting a school and the teacher monitoring the cafeteria where I'm stationed has declared that the entire grade must have a silent lunch because a few kids were acting up. This consists of quietly eating your food, no sharing or trades, no talking, giggling, whispering. The teacher in charge shouts at them endlessly and threatens them with losing recess if they hear any talking. If they lose recess, they will have to be silent and listen to more yelling. When they get back to class, they will be yelled at again because of their behavior. When they get home from school, they might get yelled at again from their parents because of their behavior.

There was a kid in my line today to get his photo taken. He had some glasses glare, so I instructed him to drop his chin a little bit. The teacher misheard me and yells at him that he's supposed to smile. He gets mad at her, says he did. Teacher refuses to listen. Student refuses to comply. He mean mugs me. She yells at him some more. I tell her she's mistaken. She tells me he should be listening.

At a higher level of education, I was previously at a high school where I had no choice but to listen to a teacher lecture a near-adult student for thirty minutes nonstop because he wouldn't fall in line like the rest of his class. When she told him to get his picture taken, he said he didn't want to. I tell him that its required by the state. If he doesn't want to do it today, he will have another chance in October. He tells me he won't be here then. I tell him he doesn't have to smile. He lets me take his photo. The teacher yells at him for not complying perfectly. Its another fifteen minutes of lecture about his future.

The snippets that I see on a day to day basis kind of paint an ugly picture in the specific region I'm working in. Students don't respect the teachers, but the teachers also don't respect the students.

I have worked at jobs where the boss yells at his workers all day, and I know its not the exact same, but I think about schools and workplaces a lot. If you are at a job like that you have a few options: You can endure it and try to do your best and hope that its temporary, you can go to HR and hope your boss gets fired over it, you can leave, or you can lash out. I have been at workplaces where the toxic boss leads to toxic colleagues. I often think of it like wolves in captivity- where wolves create a pecking order out of desperation for control over their environment.

At a school, you don't have the option to just leave. Both the teachers and the students are stuck with each other for the whole year.

If your only experience of adulthood is of adults yelling at you, then it stands to reason that this would create a bullying situation. You've been bullied. It must be alright to focus your attention on something you don't like. Because you're something that the teacher doesn't like.

When you're in that position, bullying someone can often feel like standing up for yourself. Emotions aren't always easy to pin down with words and adults even get the words wrong sometimes. I know a lot of very famous adults who get the words 'mean-spirited' and 'hate crime' confused for 'truth' and 'brutally honest.'

Kids are tiny adults with complex emotions but no idea what to do with them because adults don't remember what its like to be a kid. Its like having the bottom of your foot itch while you're driving- you can't take your shoe off and scratch it so the best you can do is scream down the highway.

But I don't want to make it sound like the teachers are the ones at fault, because they're not. Not always.

Good teachers know what they're worth and they leave for better schools, better jobs, or work their way up into administration where their hopes are crushed like a grape.

But even the ones that are good, or even trying, are victims of a bullshit system. The majority of teachers right now are probably my age and grew up in schools like mine- which was not a good experience for me as previously mentioned. Kids were making fun of me for being fat and I was told that they 'kind of had a point.' Bullying aside, it was a 'sit down, do your work, no time for games' situation, not unlike the 'losing your recess' scenario previously mentioned. Literally, they were preparing us for factories and the military.

Every person my age was shaped by the 'No Child Left Behind' bullshit that was so riddled with loopholes and abelist, racist shit that its any wonder we're not all suffering from PTSD (most of us are.)

And the schools have not changed much since.

In fact, it seems like we've doubled down.

The pressure of testing is high. They have to teach everything expected to be on the test by the date of the test and no they are not allowed to know what's on the test. Testing is a constant factor in teacher pressures.

Kids misbehaving adds more pressure. They're not trained to be child psychologists, even if that's what the kids need. No teacher can be everything to everyone, but they're expected to do just that.

Today I listen to a teacher complain about the needs of her kids and she is very heartful about it. She has two kids who only speak Spanish and one kid who only speaks French, but there is no translator. Surely, there must be some way to teach under this condition without learning two languages.

For a different school, I have to learn how to say 'smile' in Spanish, French, Pashto, Nepali, Urdu, and Ukranian. The city I live in is uniquely diverse and I love it, but the teachers can't keep up and I sympathize. I get by with hand gestures, mostly, because language is not one of my strong suits. They don't have that luxury.

The school counselor is overburdened and underpaid. The social workers are a revolving cast. Administration is a mess, not organized, always fighting.

The common reactions for burnout are leave, coast, and lash out.

So you can see where this becomes a monster that feeds itself.

We're back to wolves in captivity, but one of the wolves has authority and a mission with deadlines to carry out with sometimes over 30 traumatized wolf pups.

But there's even more to this.

It seems hopeless to say it this way, but its a mess out there in the world. Kids take in more than you think they do. They see violence. They see hate. They see suffering. They see poverty. They see war. They take all that with them. They internalize everything. Whatever their unique normal is, that is their normal. These kids are going to be unraveling a lot of trauma as they grow and we are going to be in for a very weird time in about a decade.

So I am going to talk a little about the schools in the country. Lord knows they're not perfect. They have lots and lots of troubles. They are critically underfunded- we just saw three elementary schools close this year. And I know they're not immune to bullying problems. A lot of them are not equipped for special needs students and that makes me worried. The kid who speaks Spanish might fall behind because the nearest advocate lives half an hour away.

But.

I see some differences. Classes are smaller, teachers can give the kids more individual attention. Teachers know all of the kids parents because the community is smaller- like they do yoga together or they see each other in church. Less transfers in, transfers out- the kids have a sense of stability in their school life. The routines are strong and structured, but they also are flexible.

I think that their sense of community is a very important factor in making sure the kids are being attended to when there's a problem. Its like... one school per region. You go to school with your neighbors.

Our city teachers did go on strike for smaller classrooms and they did win that condition. I have seen some improvement there. Half-step improvements. But I think that the sense that the school is a place where community is built plays a part in creating a sense of belonging- which is missing somewhat in urban schools. I don't know how to fix that.

Here are some opinions that might relieve some pressure:

Teachers need to be paid more. Flat out. Pay them more. We need to be paying attention to school board elections because teachers need paid more.

Social workers, councilors, advocates- paid more. And more than one staffed per school because the burnout is real.

Students do need to be empowered to look after each other and I do not mean like a 'zero tolerance' thing- thats so abusable. I mean we need to put a lot more applied funding towards early childhood development because if that's where you first learn to stand up for yourself and others then we need to make sure they're doing that.

Clubs. I know you can't make kids join clubs, but when I'm doing yearbook groups its really clear to me that the kids that are involved in clubs are making connections. And it does give kids a place to go if home is not safe for any reason. Do they still do the Big Brothers and Sisters clubs? They were a big deal where I was growing up. Even if its not school related, just having a network of support makes a world of difference.

'Eliminating poverty' is a tall order, but if the problem is at home then poverty is probably a factor. This may sound indirect, but donating money, time, or items to organizations that fight poverty in your area is likely to help a struggling family with school children.

We have GOT to be paying attention to local school board elections. So many of the candidates go uncontested. I know I already said that but this is important.

If you are a teacher and a kid comes up to you and says that they're being bullied for any reason, do not under any circumstances imply that the bully is right to treat them that way. And you should actually address the problem because it WILL happen again.

I was kind of half joking this afternoon that school age children should form a union, but I'm also starting to think that that's not a bad idea. If your teacher is acting like a bad boss, then you should treat them like a bad boss and be able to make demands via collective bargaining.

I just realized I've been typing for 2 hours and I have to be up at 3 am tomorrow. I'm sure I'm wrong about some things. I'm sure there are plenty of solutions that I didn't think of. But this is what goes through my mind literally every time I see bullying at a school I visit.

God, sometimes I think about anti-bullying campaigns and how functionally useless they are against the root of the problem, and how sometimes they make things worse.

[eccentric-nucleus]

so back in the day i read HPMOR, right? like many people. and as it went on (& yudkowsky kept talking about his writing process on tumblr) it became more and more clear that this was fiction approached from an angle i had never really considered before. i had been vaguely aware of places like the spacebattles forum or the dark lord potter forum, where apparently people wrote stories that were mostly just a long-form way to debate "would the USS Enterprise win against a star trek star destroyer", or whatever. yudkowsky kept saying wild things like "the point of this scene is to vicariously enjoy somebody solving a problem" or "all characters should always do smart things so the reader doesn't get frustrated with them" or "i wanted to add a short arc where this character doesn't instantly solve all his problems but i was worried it would alienate the reader". (see also.) just like, expressing this conceptualization that the point of fiction was to... write a character stomping through a little fake world going from victory to victory so that the reader could enjoy the vicarious glow of having a hard problem presented to them and then immediately resolved. how smart you are for following the line of thought of the main character, who did this smart thing!!

so that was very weird, but it was mostly a singular kind of weirdness. another weird, out-of-touch artifact from the rationalists, like roko's basilisk but harry potter fanfiction instead.

anyway a while back i stumbled across "Mother of Learning", and i think my initial response to it was 'this is less a story with a plot and more a series of obstacles that are presented to the main character to be sequentially overcome'. there was a furry webcomic years ago that was a calvin & hobbes knockoff -- small child, stuffed animal companion who became alive when they were alone, whimsy, etc -- only where calvin & hobbes left the premise unstated, this comic, roughly 30 strips in, had a whole plot explaining: okay so these are a special kind of magical creature that bonds with children. in this metaphor susie's mr. bun is also a magical creature. eventually they start going on adventures together. my overall thought was like, oh i guess i was assuming this was a narrative framing device structured around the themes of the work, but actually this was all meant to be fully diagetic and fully explained as part of the work's "worldbuilding".

anyway mother of learning is like that but for groundhog day. the time loop isn't an unexplained device used to inspect a character through a lens, it's a dragon ball-style training chamber. there are "plot developments" as more information is revealed, but all of that takes a back seat to extensively and exhaustively describing every ability and technique that the main character learns and how they use them to be more powerful. mother of learning is 800,000 words long. the time loop is because they're actually duplicates of the 'real people', in a pocket universe constructed inside of an eldrich monstrosity that was designed to be used every x years by some kind of fated hero to keep it sealed. the main character has to escape partly to make sure some evil cultists don't unseal some stuff, but mostly so he doesn't lose all his experience gains.

anyway so reading that brought me to royal road. (i've always found the name very funny since my main familiarity with the term is the phrase "there is no royal road to geometry - euclid", aka there is no shortcut to learning something; you always have to put in the hard struggle of comprehension. it's actually named after... something from a light novel or something? it used to be a fan forum for a specific work before branching out into a publishing platform.) anyway it's a place to post stuff, like fanfiction.net or fictionpress or whatever. there is a strong genre constraint: they mostly want to hear about their protagonists getting endlessly more and more powerful, and sometimes collecting a harem of sexy women. it's for that kind of fiction. reading a few stories there was very illuminating, in that finally i could place HPMOR in a genre: that of the 'progression fantasy', a profoundly self-indulgent and formulaic genre that's mostly just an action story with a lot of the bits stripped away so they can describe how much more powerful the protagonist is getting. a subgenre of this is the 'litrpg', which are stories with a diagetic video-game-mechanics layer. people are checking their stats and getting experience from killing monsters and leveling up and all that. a lot of them read like text LPs of videogames that don't exist. where the author is, of course, executing a min-maxed run.

(there's a lot of overlap here between progression fantasies and like, xianxia stories? cultivation stories are generally all progression fantasies, and so there's a lot of overlap thematically.)

anyway so that was kind of a grim awareness of a dark corner of the literary world. this stuff is popular. royal road is pretty aggressively farmed by publishers wanting to license stuff so they can make ebooks or w/e; there are author patreons there that make like, thousands of dollars a month for writing chapter 1394 of "my character with a cool spear levels up more". i've read a bunch of progression fantasies but i wouldn't say i really enjoyed any of them, partly because a lot of them are really bad at like... constructing a narrative with any kind of stakes. it's all gonna be jettisoned away in favor of talking more about level ups. it is actually almost exactly the experience of grinding for levels in an RPG: it's not really fun, but it can be engaging in the moment, and also you get to see a number go up, so that's like a reward.

(i started writing one of my own as a writing exercise b/c i wanted to try some short-paced serial work that wasn't porn, and it shot up to uh #40 top-rated on the entire site. it was in the top 10 for a few days. i have some complicated feelings about that.)

recently, i've been reading a lot of, uh, gay incest teenage mutant ninja turtles fanfiction. a lot of it is incredibly overwrought. 200k words of characters pining guiltily over each other! soap opera antics with miscommunications and secrets! genre cliches piled up in a big heap and remixed! and like, fanfic as a genre can be real formulaic too, right? a lot of people who read&write fanfic don't read much else, and there's absolutely a 'house style' for most fanfic. but when i read fanfic i get the sense that the authors are, you know, aware of some literary conventions, of the various aspects that make up a story, and they're struggling to convey concepts and themes. apparently i'm responsible for inspiring somebody to write what i think is the only sincere donkey/shrek porn fanfic in existence, and personally i think that porn fanfic has a million times the literary and artistic merit as chapter 1400 of randitly fucking ghosthound, because porn, overwrought incest soap opera dramas, is at least saying something about the nature of human desire, whereas most progression fantasy stuff is an utterly self-absorbed thesis on "writing somebody cool and powerful is escapism so i can feel cool & powerful", stretched out to a million words.

like i guess 'i want to feel powerful' is an expression of human desire but it's a particularly flat one. i think a lot about that bit in dead zones of the imagination:

Violence’s capacity to allow arbitrary decisions, and thus to avoid the kind of debate, clarification, and renegotiation typical of more egalitarian social relations, is obviously what allows its victims to see procedures created on the basis of violence as stupid or unreasonable. One might say, those relying on the fear of force are not obliged to engage in a lot of interpretative labor, and thus, generally speaking, do not.

[...]

To be more precise: violence may well be the only form of human action by which it is possible to have relatively predictable effects on the actions of a person about whom you understand nothing. Pretty much any other way one might try to influence another’s actions, one at least has to have some idea who they think they are, who they think you are, what they might want out of the situation, and what their aversions and proclivities are. Hit them over the head hard enough and all of this becomes irrelevant.

a fantasy of having power is, i think, fundamentally a fantasy of never having to know anything you don't want to, of never having to deal with the consequences of your actions. i feel it's a particularly grim thing to enshrine into a millon-word epic.

anyway, hi, i'm back on tumblr, i guess. who can say if this will last. i'm still not happy about the porn ban! for reasons hopefully partially explained by the whole bit about porn above. also the increasing sidelining of custom layouts in favor of a uniform interface. sadly even with that it seems like tumblr is basically the only well-travelled social media site that's not a total algorithmic nightmare, although the first thing i did when i remade this account was to go into the settings and turn off like a dozen algorithmic switches that were all defaulted to 'yes'.

i ended up moving cross-country during the peak of covid b/c my former housemate started having screaming panic attacks literally any time somebody stepped outside the house (literally literally, not emphatically literally). i would not recommend it. now i live somewhere where 'fire' is a season, which is introducing new complications to my life. we'll see how things go from here.

oh yeah, also my icon has more points now. i leveled up V:

[furiousgoldfish]

Tactics of narcissistic abuse

Love Bombing & Mirroring are tactics to gain your favour. These will come from a narcissist you’re just getting to know and they’re trying to convince you they’re your perfect partner, soulmate, best friend, ideal lover. Love bombing is showering you with over-the-top affection and support, they’re likely to see what works best on you, then give you just that. They’ll convince you that you’re special and make you feel special, whether it’s with attention, gifts, promises, love phrases, or making you look and feel very good in front of other people. If they can spin this as fate or destiny, they will. You have one lucky coincidence? It’s destiny that you met. They’ll create the image of ‘it’s us against the world’ and convince you that they’re all you need to never be alone, unappreciated or unhappy again. They will say phrases like 'We were born to be together’ or 'You’re the only one who understands’ and make you feel like you’re in a romance film.  Mirroring is the way to convince you that they are just like you, your perfect match. They do this by pretending they want the same things as you. All of your opinions will be shared, your desires will be their desires too, however you want to live, that’s now their ideal life too. If you want children, so do they, if you want to live in a cottage, so do they.

These will be repeated until you feel like you finally got something perfect from life, you commit to them and trust them completely. You will become lenient with your boundaries and disregard minor red flags, because hey, you finally found love, or someone like yourself who makes your life better. These are crucial to keep you around for a long time; the illusion of happiness and perfect companionship you always wanted will keep you holding onto them in hope that things could once again, be this perfect for you. You will not want to let go of them even after the love bombing and mirroring is long gone. Love bombing and mirroring are not indicative of how they’re planning to treat you once you’re committed to them; as soon as they feel you are ready to fight for a life with them, roles will change and you will have to endure escalating abuse from this person, endlessly.

Scapegoats and people badly damaged by trauma will often not get the full love bombing or mirroring, narcissists will be able to win our devotion by acts of basic decency, small thoughtfulness and acting tolerant of our trauma symptoms, this will feel like everything to us, and once we decide this is a good, special person who makes us feel safe and we’d do anything for them, they’ll turn and exploit us endlessly.

Only way to spot this on time is: there will be a little voice of suspicion in your head going ’Isn’t this actually a little too perfect to be real? A little too convenient and ideal?’ and you will not want to listen to that voice. You should listen to it. It’s your instinct, trying to tell you something is off. I won’t blame you if you don’t. Most people won’t just walk away from their ideal partner because things seem 'too perfect’. But, get suspicious at least. Alert to red flags.

Enablers and Flying Monkeys

Narcissists can’t abuse if they’re on their own; they will work hard to build a reputation and charm people who they can later use for purposes of enabling, triangulating, controlling, scapegoating and smear campaigns. Enablers, or Flying Monkeys, are people who are either admiring the narcissists, want to be in narcissists good favour, are trauma bond and scared of the narcissists, are emotionally manipulated or simply too cowardly to point out that the narcissists is wrong and cruel. Most people will fall under the influence and want to be on narcissists side because it’s easier, tempting, feels safer, and doesn’t require much thinking. Narcissist will sometimes emotionally manipulate people to go do their dirty work; they will cry about how they miss their runaway children so flying monkeys would harass and judge children for running away, they will invent stories of abuse and insanity of their spouse so people would shame and judge the spouse who the narcissist is abusing. They create environment in which they can keep abusing and other people will jump to defend, justify, victim-blame and further confuse the victim. “They had a hard life”, “They’re your mother/father/uncle, you have to forgive them” or “He’s not that bad” are the phrases you’ll hear from enablers and flying monkeys. The term “Flying Monkey” is taken from the Wizard of Oz, because the Wicked Witch owned an army of brainless flying monkeys who would do her bidding – much how narcissists do with their enablers.

What enablers are doing is absolutely wrong. They should not be ready to defend abuse, or excuse and justify it, or believe and act on smear campaigns, not for any reason. They are hurting and isolating the victim, and regardless of how much they suck up to the narcissist, they will eventually become the targets too. Victims are right to cut out enablers just how they’re right to cut out abusers. You do not have to suffer for their cowardice or stupidity.

Triangulation is a form of abuse where narcissist brings another person into the relationship in order to bypass your boundary. For instance, you refuse to speak to the narcissist, so they send your family members, friends, or their friends, to talk to you about how much you’re hurting the narcissist and how cruel and unfair you’re being. Or, you’re trying to set a boundary in your marriage, and suddenly a friend or a relative comes talking to you about how unreasonable it is to set such awful boundary and to think of your spouse’s feelings and how bad they have it. Narcissist may try to use you for triangulation too, for example, they might tell you 'Go tell your sister she should do xyz and she’s making a mistake, she’ll listen to you’. It’s implied you agree with the narcissist, and that both of you are doing it for the sister’s good, when it’s more likely the narcissist is trying to force this person to do something they’re deeply set against and would only serve the narcissist. Narcissists will use their children to triangulate a marriage, they will often 'gang up’ other family members on their spouse, or one of the children. If you’re the victim, you’ll find yourself cornered, isolated, and in doubt whether you’re doing the right thing, trying to establish a boundary. Narcissists will also often show affection, compassion or even love to a third person simply to make you jealous and worried that something is wrong with you since you don’t get the same treatment. It’s what creates an illusion that the entire world is agreeing with the narcissist and no matter what you do, you look unreasonable for fighting them.

Narcissists will sometimes invent completely boogus scenarios and try to terrify people into doing their bidding and believing they’re right. As if the world will fall if narcissists don’t get what they want.

Society at large will often enable abusers; you can call out abuse and be rendered a 'killjoy’ because people prefer to enjoy cruelty together with the narcissist than to oppose them. Narcissists are capable of rousing a whole gang of people to turn against the victim and to aid in their abuse; this is scapegoating.

Gaslighting is a form of abuse where the abuser attacks your sense of reality. They will usually do this to obscure and deny acts of abuse. “I never said that” “That didn’t happen” “That’s not how I remember it” “You imagined it” or “You’re crazy, I would never do that!” are common gaslighting phrases abusers use for events that absolutely happened, and they absolutely remember. It’s even more powerful if they get other people to agree that you’re insane for remembering a past event of abuse. They can sometimes try to convince you that something didn’t occur while it’s still happening. This renders your intention of calling out abuse impossible; you’re now debating whether the event even happened and your sanity is questioned.

The point of this is to drive you into insanity; prolonged gaslighting will make you doubt your own memories and senses, and you will no longer be secure in your own point of view or version of reality. You will not be able to fight abuse, because you will get stuck on wondering if it’s even real, or if you’re making it up. Narcissist wants not only to abuse you, but to control your perception of it, reaction of it, and to disable you from telling anyone and being taken seriously. Smear campaign and gaslighting ensures that everyone thinks you’re lying to make problems, even you.

You can attempt to block gaslighting with phrases like 'That was not my experience’ 'I know the truth and I am not debating it with you’ ’ Don’t tell me what happened, I was there’ or ridiculing them for thinking it would work, but sometimes abuse will escalate if you refuse to play along, so be very careful with them.

Baiting, Projection and Scapegoating

Baiting is the way narcissist finds out which triggers will work on you. Types of baits are: Scaremongering, Accusations, False Claims, Guilt-tripping, Victim-playing, False Hope, or Intrigue. They will use these to elicit either fear&anxiety, or guilt&responsibility. You are likely to get pulled in and respond emotionally to these, and thus the narcissist will discover which one of these is most triggering and they can use it to either control you, or to affirm that they can still get you riled up, scared, guilty – they feed on being able to provoke these, it makes them feel powerful. They can later use the same trigger to push you into guilt and fear if you try to resist their control. If they continue doing this to you for a long time, you are likely to develop self-doubt and anxiety about your own persona. Way to counter this is to grey rock them.

Projection is a primitive defense-mechanism, where a person feels uncomfortable with their behaviour or thinking, so they accuse someone else of it to deflect the bad feelings from themselves. This can feel the same as baiting, but narcissists do it without realizing they’re giving you the information about what they’re actually feeling and doing. For instance, a narcissist will accuse you of being self-absorbed after they start feeling uncomfortable with how self-absorbed they are, they will start to call you selfish when it comes to their mind how selfish they are. They will accuse you of the exact shit they’ve been doing whether it’s lying, manipulating, faking for attention, cheating, exploiting, lacking compassion, stealing. These claims will feel like they’re coming out of nowhere at first, but eventually you will wonder if you’re really like that, and accept their projection on yourself, believing to really be as bad, or worse than they are. Even though they’ve done 100% of these things, while you have done none of it. This can also be countered by being aware what is going on and grey-rocking them. Deflecting the blame back to them will not work because they’ll either deflect it back, or throw a tantrum and insult you.

Scapegoating is the most vicious abuse narcissist can inflict on their victims and is designed to completely break a person’s spirit while creating power out of terror. Scapegoating doesn’t only serve to terrify and control the victim; it shows everyone what the narcissist is capable of, causing them to go very far to avoid becoming the next scapegoat. This creates enablers, flying monkeys and other benefits for narcissist to enjoy, while the scapegoat is isolated, not believed, and often shunned by the community to show loyalty to the narcissist.

Scapegoat will be blamed for every narcissists flaw, accused of provocation and creating trouble, shamed for their likes and interests, humiliated for their appearance or needs, their work will be rendered worthless and any pain and injury will be treated as if the scapegoat deserved it, or wanted it. Nothing is out of bounds to criticize or belittle in the scapegoat; flying monkeys will do it too, to either affirm themselves with the narcissist, or because they too crave power by stepping on someone defenseless. If a narcissistic parent decides to scapegoat a child, the other parent might stop caring for the child, and agree that the child deserves only to be neglected and shunned. The illusion narcissists create, of entire society agreeing that a person is irredeemable, deserving only of pain and ridicule, has turned people to suicide.

Scapegoat absorbs all of the narcissist’s malice, cruelty, sadism, baiting, projection, guilt and tantrums, so other people in the environment can get some relief and can use the scapegoat as their shield. You can be chosen to be a scapegoat for challenging the narcissist and standing up to them, for refusing to scapegoat someone else, for seeing thru them and showing any potential for undermining their authority, if narcissist is jealous of you, if narcissist feels threatened by your intellect, compassion and emotional depth they lack. And often, you’ll just be chosen because they’re in position of power and you’re unprotected. If you’re their child, a lonely classmate, employee with no high reputation or lots of friends, a minority, different in the way of sexuality or behaviour, anything that is easily used to sway a group of people against you. Narcissists will make sure to spread a smear campaign filled with lies against you, so that nobody would align with you, or believe you if you try to counter their word.

This type of treatment is beyond anything a human being could deserve, and devastating for the victim’s self esteem and sense of reality. After surviving a scapegoating situation, people might not want to find themselves in any social setting anymore. They might start believing themselves to be unlovable and defective. There is usually no way to counter it or fight your way out, unless there’s a higher authority who could side with you, or there’s a way to physically remove yourself from this environment.

Grey Rock, Hoovering and No Contact

Grey rock is a way to counter baiting and projection; narcissists learn and thrive on our emotional responses, it gives them a thrill to be able to send us into rage, terror, disbelief, shock or panic. Grey rocking means you give zero emotional response, and thus prove yourself very boring and a bad source of narcissistic supply. So, regardless of what egregious threat, accusation, claim or insult they make, you just reply with 'mhmm’ and look completely disinterested. You reply with one-word sentences, say 'sure’ or 'yup’ if they accuse you of something or try to fearmonger, answer questions with 'maybe’ or 'I don’t know’, agree with whatever bs they’re pulling out of their ass without caring, refuse to get pulled in or baited, give them no significance in the conversation until they leave. It is very hard to do, because they will up their game and even fly into rage to get a response, if they feel entitled to it. In some cases they might resort to violence. Often, they’ll keep changing the tactics until something works, and if nothing does, they’ll feel dejected and go find another source of supply. If they feel like they can’t get to you, this undermines their imagined power over you.

No contact is the only way to truly win against a narcissist; if they can’t reach you, they can’t manipulate or hurt you. This means no responding to messages, no letting them know where you live, blocking them on every service, and in most situations, even the enablers have to be no contact, because the narcissist is likely to send them into triangulation and use them to get to you. If you’re unable to go no-contact with a narcissist, a lot of people opt for 'low contact’, which means you only hear from them once a year, or once every 6 months, insufficient for them to gain control over you, and you grey-rock them all the way, and never share any personal info that might be used against you. Hoovering is something a narcissist will do to you after you’ve left them. They might leave you alone for a long time, then suddenly send a message saying they miss you, or they’re thinking about you and wishing you could do xyz together. They might also influence another person to tell you 'x misses you, they wish to see you again, they’re doing bad without you’. This is done to remind you of the 'good times’ and an attempt to draw you back in, as you’re supposed to have forgotten all the abuse already and be ready to take them back. It might come as outrageous expectation or denial of everything bad that happened – that’s because it is. All you have to do is grey-rock this, not respond, and enjoy in knowledge that even if you can’t ensure revenge, you can take yourself away from them, and they will never have you back.

Sources: Baiting, Scapegoating, LoveBombing, Gaslighting(video), Projection(video), Triangulation, Mirroring(video),  FlyingMonkeys (video), Hoovering, Grey Rock

[travelling-on-the-octopath]

Saw a now-deceased post about young Dimitri, and I have some real beef with one aspect of his writing.

Who are these fucking friends he lost in the Tragedy?

It's what fucks with me! Because from a certain point of view, I can understand why some people don't really jive with the closeness of the Faerghus Four; they're messy, very traumatized, and the distance between their home territories means some shenanigans would have had to happen to make them Close-Close™. Not impossible, great fodder for fic, but as far as canon goes, they're old friends, devoted in obscure ways (Felix failing to feel grounded after Dimitri dies in non-AM routes, Sylvain wanting to be rid of the Empire to appease Dimitri's memory/ghost, etc), but they're only good friends if you get their supports/experience their dynamics with each other on Azure Moon.

Which takes me back to: Dimitri always talks about losing his dearest friends in the Tragedy (I'll edit this post to have more citations when I get on my laptop), and I have the same problem with this that I do with the way Edelgard's siblings are written.

They essentially don't exist.

Who are they? Why were they in the castle? Were they the children of staff? Were they knights he'd befriended? Sylvain, Ingrid, and Felix don't seem to think much/know much about these friends, aside from one comment made by Sylvain before the war broke out. I'm not saying what happened to Dimitri isn't fucking tragic, because it is. But we have a face and a name and a story for Lambert; Rodrigue talks about skipping classes together, Gilbert was agonizingly devoted to him/the family as a knight. We have a name and a kindness and an intrigue to Patricia/Anselma; Dimitri was endlessly fond of her, to the point of learning how to stitch/sew from Mercedes as a sort of tribute to ger--and was her intention more cunning, or was she complacent in the Tragedy as nothing more than a desperate mother? We have a name and people gouged in the heart for Glenn; Felix is a prick because of how much he hurts, Ingrid warped her memories of him so his death would sting less.

I'm just. I want to feel something at the loss of these friends, because he keeps mentioning them, but like. I can't, beyond a small "Damn, that sucks." Because I know nothing about them. The Tragedy was fucking sad enough; why add in these friends if you're not going to expand on their existence and presence in Dimitri's life?

[morgs-the-cat-backup]

Under the cut-

#adira - the tag goes for both the story as a whole and the main character. in summary my beloved girl discovers the Bible (dystopia which has wiped out Christianity in that location and no internet so very localised an controlled) and has a crisis of faith while working everything out. that's the first book. it develops, but yeah. most of these characters start out in their early/mid teens. may be referencing later events because this series is likely to end up covering at minimum a decade of their lives to a greater or lesser degree.

Adira - has a temper (classic redhead), passionate and intense about many things, somewhat arrogant, very determined to figure out the truth of the world, somewhat a self insert (has ended up completely accidentally very visually similar to me xD ) . I don't know her theme song. She's the main character. I love her so much. I can talk endlessly about her but also I'm kinda mixed up atm with reading over past drafts and how she was portrayed then and how that'll change.

Tom - ALSO has a temper (ends up with significant anger issues/tendency to violence that require a lot of work to get over and nearly destroys his marriage), physically disabled (details to be worked out), has a bunch of health issues, significant self-hatred and attendant mental problems, tendency towards obsession, side B bi. Dunno if he has a theme song as I've found yet. He's a supporting/secondaryish/main character. Becomes one of Adira's closest friends and has a significant role in the first book. Has a nasty history that honestly has ended up more like grooming than anything else (he the victim). Is driven by determination and an iron will that will carry him almost beyond the point of endurance. I love this dude sm. Also he's possibly half Indian? Not certain yet tho. But yeah, I got a lot to figure out about his character. Incidentally he and Adira end up married (and yeah their relationship tips into toxic territory for a while before he gets pulled up short and forced to rebuild it; not entirely his fault but definitely mostly). Obviously I need to work on that bit too but since that's plenty beyond the first book I'm more working on setting up foreshadowing and his character so that he'll develop into that sort. (I love him but he Sure Has Issues.)

Emily - uhhhh she's not particularly fleshed out yet xD She's Adira's adopted sister, but they're not especially close anymore (they grow closer over the course of the books, and were friends as small children). I had an idea for her and then I kinda a) realised it didn't fit with the rest of it and b) yoinked the best bits of her character for a different story which I'll expand on once I've done with these ones xD Anyway, she is good and kind and sweet and gentle and I love her. Her only real faults are rather Jane-Bennet-ish at present, and also that she's too ready to agree unquestioningly with those she trusts. In later books she goes through a crisis of faith and quite literally nearly dies as a result (there's a fun bit in there where the other characters on the scene realise that they don't know if the danger she ended up in was accidental or deliberate (it was accidental) and others go through Many Emotions as a result; they're all in a hard spot at that point with varying mental challenges). I found a theme song for her once but I can't remember what it was. She's a side/secondary character.

Dorothy - Adira and Emily's mother. She's somewhat similar to her daughter, but without some of the emotion to drive her. Pretty cool and calculating, but with a great warmth underneath. She's repressed her emotion for years and years in a mildly abusive family situation (her husband Theo is horrible and I despise him). She helps Adira to figure things out, with the help of a friend she introduces Adira to (Mr Saunders). I feel like I don't have a great handle on her character specifically, just Vibes.

Mr Saunders - he's ended up being a main character of the short story collection I call on here #suh, because two of the five stories (including the longest, at 23k) deal with him as a main character. (That short story collection is to be self-published in ??? once I finish editing it. his stories are tagged #story:wcb and #story:preacher (tho I'm not sure the latter has anything tagged as yet.) Anyway I've got it professionally edited I just need to go through that and then one more round of edits and then it's formatting and printing timeee.) Anyway, he's old and slow and very very gentle and kind. Like Dorothy, there are depths to him. But he loves deeply and has been hurt and yet those hurts slip off him like water. I love him so much and wish I could meet him in real life. He's the only one at the start of the story who is already currently Christian (in secret tho, and his ending is... I have Thoughts on that), though he's introduced mid-story. He's v important to Adira's development.

Neil - this dude has been severely depressed for YEARS okay he's my darling even tho it's mostly his own fault. Originally heavily inspired by Loukanos from S. J. Knight's A Time To series (fantastic 10000/10 would recommend, especially the first book). He's a doctor. He's Emily's biological uncle, her only remaining biological family. He has terrible hurt in his past, and he dwells on it and grows rancid over it. Incredibly bitter and lashes out. Not sure when he's gonna be introduced in-story, I know by what time I need him in the book but I dunno when he'll be introduced. He also has trauma/resentment around Christianity that he has to work through. I need to flesh him out better.

Giselle - we only learn her name closer to the end, when she and the story part ways. Her tag is #the evil spychologist. Not a typo, and for a good reason. Anyway, I adore writing her scenes and interactions with Adira. Shows how much I love writing stories where the main character is aware that they're being manipulated. Her character as herself isn't particularly apparent (she may show up later in the books or she may not) she's more a front for the evil government.

Those are the only main characters I can think of at this instant, but other side characters include Rosalind (kind of love interest for Tom at one point, it's complicated), Elton (can i punch his face can i PLEASE punch his face), Merry (either Adira or Emily's friend from <extracurricular>), Sandra (Dorothy's friend w a family), Rick (the resident Good Atheist), [name] (I forgot her name rn but she was Adira's friend from IMI, becomes an archivist like Dorothy and later meets Adira again. looked conservative and quiet and happy and whatnot in school and when she meets her again she's sporting a smart blue haircut, incredible heels and long sleeves...), and not to forget the twins Adira and Tom unexpectedly adopt with zero notice in like the fifth book xD their names are Faith and Hope. There's also another Faith (hehe spoilers but I love her sm).

oh crumbs I forgot Tom's entire family. Anyway there are a bunch of them. Alison (mother), can't remember his dad's name, and the kidlings are in no particular order Norah, Elizabeth, Katy, Rufus, Andy (he's importanter), Rufus's twin uhhhh can't remember his name, I think that's all the kiddos. I named each of the girls after a character I love lol.

ANYWAY I think that's all the summary of that particular series. moving on to the other which has a much smaller cast and is very character-driven

#vaniah - this tag goes for both the focal character and the story. Basically a story of healing from trauma, partly using the vehicle of an arranged marriage to handle it. It's very strongly Christian, both main characters are Christians and their faith is the only thing that holds them through everything, especially Vaniah.

Vaniah - my boy is Traumatised. Partly this is his own fault/perceived as his fault bc he was pressured into things and feels later that he should've said no, and he deals with incredible guilt and self-hatred. It's an extremely dark story with a lot of dark themes (graphic on-page self harm at least once as well as description of scarring, lots of discussion of suicidal ideation, potential suicide attempt, mentions of alcoholism and a couple of instances of my boy being Quite Drunk, some level of mentions of adult themes and slightly suggestive content, though that especially I will handle as carefully as I'm able). However! there is light hearted stuff in there too and ultimately it's a story of hope and rising from rock bottom. Vaniah loves butterflies and will infodump for as long as anyone wants about them (and other things). I dont really know how to talk about his character because for most of it he's SO consumed with self hatred to a greater or lesser extent. I don't know, I'm not selling this very well xD Alexandra has done fanart of a scene from this story and I'm still obsessed with it.

Emily - I know she has the same name as in Adira's story. These were originally connected, and now she's different. I'm still using this name but that will change in time (possibly to Amelie? idk). She deals with an eating disorder which Vaniah also helps her with. She's sweet and very gentle but has strong feelings. Vaniah perceives her as very pure and innocent, though this in fact is not quite true. She's been through somewhat herself, and her hope and faith are more out of determination than come easy.

I could ramble on about these two forever but I have somewhat done so before probably (you could check the tags. the tag #emily does cover both Emilies tho)

Side characters include: Ben (Emily's brother), Camilla (his wife), [name] (Vaniah's sister), uhhhhh there are probbably more I'm forgetting rn

Please ask me for any details or clarification or ask about anything to do with anything! :D

hello i want to send some of those drawing prompts in but i know nothing about your ocs. would you mind telling me a little about them? general personality traits, theme song (if they had one), role, and whatever else you'd like :>

owo!!!!!! :D okay SO i have multiple different stories (many many many) but I'll elaborate on the two that are currently most in my mind (apart from the animal-centric one, #taira, which wouldn't work with those drawing prompts)

Um. Putting this under a read more because it's getting long. Gonna copy-paste the under-the-cut stuff into a reblog to my backup sideblog, tho, just in case. Trigger tags are for the second story, and only because they're mentioned as part of it but definitely not in detail.

#adira - the tag goes for both the story as a whole and the main character. in summary my beloved girl discovers the Bible (dystopia which has wiped out Christianity in that location and no internet so very localised an controlled) and has a crisis of faith while working everything out. that's the first book. it develops, but yeah. most of these characters start out in their early/mid teens. may be referencing later events because this series is likely to end up covering at minimum a decade of their lives to a greater or lesser degree.

Adira - has a temper (classic redhead), passionate and intense about many things, somewhat arrogant, very determined to figure out the truth of the world, somewhat a self insert (has ended up completely accidentally very visually similar to me xD ) . I don't know her theme song. She's the main character. I love her so much. I can talk endlessly about her but also I'm kinda mixed up atm with reading over past drafts and how she was portrayed then and how that'll change.

Tom - ALSO has a temper (ends up with significant anger issues/tendency to violence that require a lot of work to get over and nearly destroys his marriage), physically disabled (details to be worked out), has a bunch of health issues, significant self-hatred and attendant mental problems, tendency towards obsession, side B bi. Dunno if he has a theme song as I've found yet. He's a supporting/secondaryish/main character. Becomes one of Adira's closest friends and has a significant role in the first book. Has a nasty history that honestly has ended up more like grooming than anything else (he the victim). Is driven by determination and an iron will that will carry him almost beyond the point of endurance. I love this dude sm. Also he's possibly half Indian? Not certain yet tho. But yeah, I got a lot to figure out about his character. Incidentally he and Adira end up married (and yeah their relationship tips into toxic territory for a while before he gets pulled up short and forced to rebuild it; not entirely his fault but definitely mostly). Obviously I need to work on that bit too but since that's plenty beyond the first book I'm more working on setting up foreshadowing and his character so that he'll develop into that sort. (I love him but he Sure Has Issues.)

Emily - uhhhh she's not particularly fleshed out yet xD She's Adira's adopted sister, but they're not especially close anymore (they grow closer over the course of the books, and were friends as small children). I had an idea for her and then I kinda a) realised it didn't fit with the rest of it and b) yoinked the best bits of her character for a different story which I'll expand on once I've done with these ones xD Anyway, she is good and kind and sweet and gentle and I love her. Her only real faults are rather Jane-Bennet-ish at present, and also that she's too ready to agree unquestioningly with those she trusts. In later books she goes through a crisis of faith and quite literally nearly dies as a result (there's a fun bit in there where the other characters on the scene realise that they don't know if the danger she ended up in was accidental or deliberate (it was accidental) and others go through Many Emotions as a result; they're all in a hard spot at that point with varying mental challenges). I found a theme song for her once but I can't remember what it was. She's a side/secondary character.

Dorothy - Adira and Emily's mother. She's somewhat similar to her daughter, but without some of the emotion to drive her. Pretty cool and calculating, but with a great warmth underneath. She's repressed her emotion for years and years in a mildly abusive family situation (her husband Theo is horrible and I despise him). She helps Adira to figure things out, with the help of a friend she introduces Adira to (Mr Saunders). I feel like I don't have a great handle on her character specifically, just Vibes.

Mr Saunders - he's ended up being a main character of the short story collection I call on here #suh, because two of the five stories (including the longest, at 23k) deal with him as a main character. (That short story collection is to be self-published in ??? once I finish editing it. his stories are tagged #story:wcb and #story:preacher (tho I'm not sure the latter has anything tagged as yet.) Anyway I've got it professionally edited I just need to go through that and then one more round of edits and then it's formatting and printing timeee.) Anyway, he's old and slow and very very gentle and kind. Like Dorothy, there are depths to him. But he loves deeply and has been hurt and yet those hurts slip off him like water. I love him so much and wish I could meet him in real life. He's the only one at the start of the story who is already currently Christian (in secret tho, and his ending is... I have Thoughts on that), though he's introduced mid-story. He's v important to Adira's development.

Neil - this dude has been severely depressed for YEARS okay he's my darling even tho it's mostly his own fault. Originally heavily inspired by Loukanos from S. J. Knight's A Time To series (fantastic 10000/10 would recommend, especially the first book). He's a doctor. He's Emily's biological uncle, her only remaining biological family. He has terrible hurt in his past, and he dwells on it and grows rancid over it. Incredibly bitter and lashes out. Not sure when he's gonna be introduced in-story, I know by what time I need him in the book but I dunno when he'll be introduced. He also has trauma/resentment around Christianity that he has to work through. I need to flesh him out better.

Giselle - we only learn her name closer to the end, when she and the story part ways. Her tag is #the evil spychologist. Not a typo, and for a good reason. Anyway, I adore writing her scenes and interactions with Adira. Shows how much I love writing stories where the main character is aware that they're being manipulated. Her character as herself isn't particularly apparent (she may show up later in the books or she may not) she's more a front for the evil government.

Those are the only main characters I can think of at this instant, but other side characters include Rosalind (kind of love interest for Tom at one point, it's complicated), Elton (can i punch his face can i PLEASE punch his face), Merry (either Adira or Emily's friend from <extracurricular>), Sandra (Dorothy's friend w a family), Rick (the resident Good Atheist), [name] (I forgot her name rn but she was Adira's friend from IMI, becomes an archivist like Dorothy and later meets Adira again. looked conservative and quiet and happy and whatnot in school and when she meets her again she's sporting a smart blue haircut, incredible heels and long sleeves...), and not to forget the twins Adira and Tom unexpectedly adopt with zero notice in like the fifth book xD their names are Faith and Hope. There's also another Faith (hehe spoilers but I love her sm).

oh crumbs I forgot Tom's entire family. Anyway there are a bunch of them. Alison (mother), can't remember his dad's name, and the kidlings are in no particular order Norah, Elizabeth, Katy, Rufus, Andy (he's importanter), Rufus's twin uhhhh can't remember his name, I think that's all the kiddos. I named each of the girls after a character I love lol.

ANYWAY I think that's all the summary of that particular series. moving on to the other which has a much smaller cast and is very character-driven

#vaniah - this tag goes for both the focal character and the story. Basically a story of healing from trauma, partly using the vehicle of an arranged marriage to handle it. It's very strongly Christian, both main characters are Christians and their faith is the only thing that holds them through everything, especially Vaniah.

Vaniah - my boy is Traumatised. Partly this is his own fault/perceived as his fault bc he was pressured into things and feels later that he should've said no, and he deals with incredible guilt and self-hatred. It's an extremely dark story with a lot of dark themes (graphic on-page self harm at least once as well as description of scarring, lots of discussion of suicidal ideation, potential suicide attempt, mentions of alcoholism and a couple of instances of my boy being Quite Drunk, some level of mentions of adult themes and slightly suggestive content, though that especially I will handle as carefully as I'm able). However! there is light hearted stuff in there too and ultimately it's a story of hope and rising from rock bottom. Vaniah loves butterflies and will infodump for as long as anyone wants about them (and other things). I dont really know how to talk about his character because for most of it he's SO consumed with self hatred to a greater or lesser extent. I don't know, I'm not selling this very well xD Alexandra has done fanart of a scene from this story and I'm still obsessed with it.

Emily - I know she has the same name as in Adira's story. These were originally connected, and now she's different. I'm still using this name but that will change in time (possibly to Amelie? idk). She deals with an eating disorder which Vaniah also helps her with. She's sweet and very gentle but has strong feelings. Vaniah perceives her as very pure and innocent, though this in fact is not quite true. She's been through somewhat herself, and her hope and faith are more out of determination than come easy.

I could ramble on about these two forever but I have somewhat done so before probably (you could check the tags. the tag #emily does cover both Emilies tho)

Side characters include: Ben (Emily's brother), Camilla (his wife), [name] (Vaniah's sister), uhhhhh there are probbably more I'm forgetting rn

Please ask me for any details or clarification or ask about anything to do with anything! :D

[missmentelle]

What makes a codependent relationship? Is it healthy for someone to rely on you as a constant source for support, talking all the time? Getting seperation anxiety and experiencing extreme stress when they are without you? Is it selfish to not necessarily reciprocate that stress?

Let's start by defining what a codependent relationship is.

In a codependent relationship, one person (the codependent) consistently enables the dysfunction of another person, often assuming a "caretaker" or "protector" role. The dysfunctional person usually struggles with a serious issue that may make it difficult for them to function on their own - often addiction, mental illness, or serious underachievement/irresponsibility - and the codependent partner will make extreme personal sacrifices to take care of this person and shield them from the consequences of their actions.

Codependent relationships aren't always romantic relationships - they can be found between friends, parents/children, coworkers, other family members, or any other type of relationship. Wherever they exist, are very unhealthy for both of the people involved in them. The codependent person focuses so heavily on the dependent person's needs that they entirely neglect their own, while the dysfunctional person is enabled to continue being dysfunctional and is often prevented from making any kind of progress toward recovery.

Common traits of codependent people include:

a fear of being alone. They often seek out relationships with people who will depend on them and encourage that dependency to ensure that the other person will not leave them.

extreme fixation on the feelings and needs of others. They often view their own needs as unimportant or secondary and prioritize the needs of others, even when this has not been asked of them.

a compulsive need to "fix" the problems of others. when they see a person who is struggling, they feel the overwhelming need to step in and start "fixing" the situation, even if doing so is not their responsibility.

low self-esteem. They often have chronic issues with self-esteem, and don't feel that they "deserve" to have their own needs prioritized. Their self-esteem is often tied to their ability to maintain their caretaking role at all costs, even when it is incredibly harmful to them.

controlling and perfectionist tendencies. Codependent people often struggle to cope when they don't have high amounts of control in their relationships, or when things aren't done "just so". They gravitate towards caretaking roles where they have high amounts of control, and struggle to let go.

external locus of control. They often feel powerless in their lives, and feel that they simply have to accept their circumstances and the way that others treat them.

high capacity for denial. They often cannot or will not see problems that are right in front of them, and refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of a situation - the house will be burning down around them and they'll refuse to even admit that it's getting a little warm.

a history of interpersonal trauma or abuse. Codependency is often a learned behaviour - many people who fall into these patterns experienced codependency from their parents, or witnessed their parents' codependent relationship at a young age. Many have also experienced extreme emotional abuse, from their parents or a past partner.

a strong need for approval. Codependents need to be liked. They need approval. Doing things for others and letting others walk on them is the best way they know how to gain that.

boundary issues. They often cannot and do not set personal boundaries - they take a "Giving Tree" approach to helping others, endlessly giving even when it seriously hurts them. At the same time, they may overstep boundaries to try to fix others' issues, even when it is not their responsibility to get involved.

a lack of personal identity. The codependent relationship often becomes the focus of their whole life. They invest so much time and energy into it that without it, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves.

a tendency to be drawn to close relationships with substance addicts, alcoholics, people with personality disorders, or other codependents. Codependent relationships are usually not a one-off thing - they tend to be a recurring pattern in a person's life. In particular, people with untreated BPD often seek out relationships with codependent people, as they tend to prefer relationships with people who don't set personal boundaries and are willing to provide the extreme amounts of reassurance and caretaking that they need. People with BPD also tend to be codependent themselves, further complicating things.

an appearance of being "addicted to chaos". Codependent people often appear to gravitate toward drama, dysfunction and chaos. Having relationships with people who have healthy boundaries, autonomy and stable personal lives often holds little interest for them - they prefer relationships where they feel needed and depended upon.

Codependent people often have a "martyr" or "victim" complex - they often feel that it is their lot in life to suffer for others, that self-sacrifice is a key part of their identity, or that suffering is simply a part of loving someone. The idea that they should set expectations in a relationship, leave a relationship where they aren't treated well or have an identity of their own outside a relationship is something they struggle with. They often hop from codependent relationship to codependent relationship, becoming steadily more beaten down and burnt out in the process - breaking free from codependent tendencies can be a long process, and often requires professional help.

There is a lot of variety in what codependent relationships look like. Some examples of codependency in action would include:

A mother allows her chronically unemployed and irresponsible 38-year-old son to live with her, and does everything for him. She never confronts her son about the fact that he doesn't contribute financially or help out around the house, even though it's placing a great financial and personal strain on her. When other family members ask why her adult son isn't taking steps to get his life together, the mother becomes highly defensive, and may make up lies about the progress he's made, or insist that he's still young and that this is normal for his age.

A woman assumes the role of "caregiver" for her unstable and very mentally ill partner. She bends over backwards to keep her partner happy, and doesn't seem to notice or mind that her partner never does the same thing in return. Her partner constantly burns bridges with their own family or friends with their explosive anger, and she rushes in to make excuses and try to fix the situation. When friends raise concerns about the relationship, she brushes them off, insisting that she's happy and everything is fine.

The parent of an autistic teenager infantilizes their autistic child, and insists that the child needs much more care than they actually do. Being an "autism parent" is a huge part of their identity. The child has never been allowed to attend an overnight camp, go for sleepovers or stay at home with a babysitter, as the parent is highly fearful and believes that other people will not look after their child properly. The parent strongly resists all of their child's attempts to gain more independence, insisting that it's too dangerous or that the child cannot handle it.

The US version of the television show Shameless is almost entirely centered around codependent relationships. The main characters are all in codependent relationships with their alcoholic and dysfunctional father, Frank. Although the main characters are often angry with their father, they constantly allow him back into their lives no matter how horribly he treats them - at times, they give him money, provide him with alcohol, let him move back into their house, visit him in the hospital and cover him with a blanket when he passes out on the floor. The boundaries they set with him never last long, and they always resume having a relationship with him, even after he does things that most people would find unforgivable.

So with that said: is it healthy for someone to rely on you as a constant source of support?

It sort of depends.

Relationships are supposed to be a reliable source of support for both of the people in them. That's sort of what they're for. I worry sometimes that the internet is making us too transactional in our relationships, and too quick to think that someone is taking advantage of us if they constantly turn to us for support. It's normal to find comfort in your relationships, and to turn to your loved ones whenever you need someone to talk to. I talk to my partner, my parents and my closest friends every day - that often means mentioning things that we’re stressed or anxious about, or venting about problems in our lives. Sometimes people are going through something and need extra support for a while - that’s just a normal part of close relationships. 

With that said, there are times when someone leans on you too hard. If helping someone is starting to take a serious toll on your own life, that’s a problem. Every relationship needs boundaries; if your boundaries are consistently pushed or broken in the name of supporting that person, it may be time for a serious talk. Staying up until 4am to talk someone through a crisis is fine if this is a rare occurrence. Staying up until 4am to talk someone through a crisis multiple times per week, every single week, is an issue - that’s you sacrificing your own need for sleep, and something needs to change. Are you willing to set boundaries and balance your own needs with your friends’ needs? Is the other person willing to respect boundaries, or do they lash out with anger, guilt-trips, accusations of not caring for them or threats to harm themselves? 

If you and a friend are both willing to communicate and work on establishing boundaries, I think it’s fine for one person to need a lot of support. If the relationship is damaging for you and one or both of you just isn’t able or willing to discuss boundaries, that’s a sign there could be some codependence going on. 

A person experiencing separation anxiety and extreme stress when you aren’t around could be an issue - but again, it depends on how it’s being handled. Is your friend able to cope with this anxiety on their own, or are they constantly putting this anxiety on you? Are they blowing up your phone and getting anxious if you’re 10 minutes late answering a text? Do they ever try to guilt-trip you or blame you for triggering their separation anxiety? Do they accuse you of not caring about them if you try to take time for yourself? Are they jealous of your other relationships? Is their extreme stress taking a toll on your life and preventing you from having other relationships or having personal boundaries and space? If your friend is willing to work on boundaries and find healthy coping mechanisms for their stress, this might be something you can overcome. If your friend is burning you out and one or both of you is unable to set boundaries, this might be a very unhealthy situation. 

Not feeling the same stress and anxiety, however, is definitely not selfish. It’s not healthy for someone to feel that level of extreme stress and separation anxiety - it’s not your friend’s fault that they experience that, but it’s still very unhealthy. The fact that someone feels an unhealthy attachment to you does not mean that you should feel an unhealthy attachment right back. No one benefits from that. In any healthy relationship, both people have a life and identity outside the relationship. This is, fundamentally, the issue at the core of many different unhealthy relationships - whether they are codependent, enmeshed, or abusive.

 Being so attached to someone that you can’t handle them needing friends, hobbies, space and independence isn’t a compliment or something to aspire to - it’s just unhealthy.

Hope this answers your question! MM

[queenshelby]

My Friend’s Father (Part Nine)

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Warning: Age Gap, Smut, Domestic Violence, Angst

Words: 3,064

Please comment and interact...it's what keeps this blog going

***************************

Almost a week had passed since you stayed with Cillian at his unit in Galway and, despite the fact that he was away, things had further developed between you as emotions grew with every day.

He was different to any man you had ever been involved with and, whilst your involvement with each other stemmed from purely sexual lust and hunger, you had evolved from this to something different entirely within a matter of days.

Of course, you knew each other for years and, whilst you had a crush on Cillian for as long as you could remember, you never thought that it would be like this and, for Cillian, this feeling had never been mutual.

Whilst he always considered you to be attractive and very intelligent and kind, he never felt any emotional connection or sexual attraction towards you, at least not until that weekend when you visited Denise, which was also the first time he saw you again after six months had passed.

On that night during which you slept with each other, he let his sexual hunger take over his reasonable thinking mind after he saw you, in his kitchen, making pancakes and you had since, quite openly, talked about it. He saw sleeping with you as a mistake but, ever since that night, he couldn’t get you out of his head.

For you, things weren’t just sexual anymore and you began to feel strongly for Cillian which worried you especially since he was open about the fact that he didn’t know where things were heading with you. The fact that you are his daughter’s friend and much younger than him clearly bothered him and he sometimes admitted to you that he felt strange about building such a strong connection with you. A relationship was not what he wanted but he liked you, a lot.

As such, during the past week, Cillian called you every day after he finished filming and you were talking to him more frequently than you were talking to Denise.

During his breaks, he would also text you and check in on you as you were in the middle of exams. He always remembered when you had a test and asked you how it went and, when you told him that you didn’t feel confident with your results, he reassured you that you probably did well and, even if you didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. According to him, a pass is a pass and you needed to lower your expectations of yourself just a little.

To your surprise, he also remembered appointments you had scheduled and things that bothered you which meant that, unlike other men you had been with, he was actually listening and was interested in what you had to say.

Some nights, you had spent hours on the phone or Skype, joking about things you had encountered that day or talking about books, literature and music, which is something you both enjoyed.

Politics and social issues were other matters you could discuss endlessly and, even when you were of different opinions, you would be able to argue in the most satisfying way. Cillian always treated you as an equal and even opened up to you about his divorce from Denise’s mother recently.

Another thing you learned from Cillian was that Denise was brining along her friend Amalie to Manchester to stay at his apartment and, when you gave him a warning about her and her intentions, he reminded you that he only had eyes for you. In fact, he always showered you with compliments and all of his compliments were genuine and came natural to him, helping you immensely with your self-consciousness.

Unfortunately, whilst you enjoyed how engaging Cillian was with you every day, like a teenager in love, with the constant text messages and calls, your father soon got suspicious and confronted you about.

****

“Dad, I am almost 22, you don’t need to be spying on me” you said somewhat frustrated as he asked you who you were talking to every day.

“You live under my roof and you answer me young lady” he said harshly and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes just as your mother stepped in, trying to calm him down. Your father was much older, approaching sixty and fairly old school in the way he expected you and your sister to behave.

“A friend…I am talking to a friend” you explained and your father asked again, telling you not to lie to him because he would know.

“And this friend of yours, you can’t meet him…you just text and talk? You can’t bring him to our house and introduce him?” your father asked along with a million other questions.

“No, I can’t. he lives in Dublin and I, most certainly, wouldn’t bring him into this…” you said somewhat irritated by the interrogation.

“Dublin, huh? So, you met him when you visited Denise?” he asked and you nodded.

“It’s not her brother, is it? Because I really don’t want you to get involved with him. I don’t like this family and their views” your father said harshly, causing you to chuckle.

“Their views?” you asked somewhat surprised and your father nodded.

“Yes, their views on what’s right and wrong. If I recall correctly, this girl you call your friend was going out with someone of the same gender for a while. God didn’t tell us to do this but her parents obviously didn’t have an issue with it which, apparently is called new age parenting. Everything is pro choice and lets their children decide what is best for them even if they lack experience” your father went on to say and you couldn’t help but shake your head at his absurd commentary but, he continued and you soon learned what had happened between your parents and Denise’s parents many years ago, before which your mother had called Denise’s mother her friend as well.

According to your father, Cillian had voiced his opinion to your father when it was found out that your sister was pregnant following a short affair with a man she had met through university.

Cillian’s ex wife had told your sister that she had options, causing your father to get rather angry with her, which is when Cillian stepped in, supporting what Denise’s mother had said.

She had offered your sister help but your father considered this to be a betrayal and, whilst your mother maintained contact with Denise’s mother for a while, your father refused to get involved with Denise’s family thereafter.

Cillian’s often all so public views angered him and he made this very clear. He didn’t want you to be involved with his children and you couldn’t help but laugh about the irony of it all when you found out about this incident.

“Jesus Dad, that was years ago and not everyone has to have the same views as you” you said before confirming that you weren’t seeing Denise’s brother.

“No, they don’t, but I am just looking out for you and, instead of acting the way you do, throwing yourself at guys with new age ideas, I would much prefer if you met a nice young catholic man” your father explained, causing your mother to fume in anger with him.

“Throwing myself at guys? Listen, I am not sure what slut you think I am but it’s nice to know that you think so little of me” you said before storming upstairs and into your room.

Having to deal with this crap bothered you and you knew that, when this semester came to an end, you could be moving out now that you saved enough money for a bond and rent.

*****

As the evening went on, you spent all of your time in your room, reading a book until, finally, at around 9 o’clock you saw a notification on Skype.

‘Hey Beautiful’ Cillian said as you picked up and popped in your headphones.

Cillian apologised for calling through so late and informed you that he was finally able to speak to Laura, the woman he was seeing before you.

He knew that you wanted to know about it and he had no problem telling you what you needed to hear while telling you that you had absolutely nothing to worry about.

It was Laura’s first day back on set after a week-long break and Cillian told you that she wasn’t exactly impressed when he stood her down.

‘She probably likes you…I can understand that’ you said calmly but Cillian told you that he was pretty clear with her about what this was between them.

‘Well, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have gotten involved with her’ he went on and you were quite happy to change the topic by this point and told him that you were aching for him.

‘Well, I am not sure that I can help you with that’ Cillian chuckled.

‘We could have Skype sex I suppose’ you giggled.

‘Skype Sex?’ Cillian laughed before telling you that he didn’t think that this would be a good idea since you were at home with your parents and you had previously complained about the thin walls of the house.

‘Oh Jesus Cillian, my father already thinks I am a slut, so I personally don’t care if anyone hears me getting myself off. I’ve got my earphones in and am the only one who can hear you and my door is locked’ you chuckled.

‘Your father thinks that you are a slut? Do you want to talk about that?’ Cillian asked concerned but you shook your head.

‘I rather not. You met him and know what he is like’ you explained.

‘I do. He takes God very seriously’ Cillian said before continuing on. ‘But, if you have problems at home you need to tell me please. You can stay at my apartment. I can get my house keeper to meet you there with the key’ he offered.

‘You said you were going to stay out of stuff between me and my parents just as I would stay out of matters between you and Denise’ you then said, reminding him on the conversation about your respective roles which you had three days ago.

‘Yes I did, but I can’t if I have to worry about you’ Cillian said firmly.

‘There is no need to worry Cillian. I promise’ you reassured him. ‘Well, actually, I need you to worry about my sexual needs right now’ you then went on to say with sly grin.

‘Through Skype?’ Cillian asked again somewhat concerned.

‘Yes’ you said with a cheeky smile as you settled more into your bed with your laptop.

‘Alright then, show me what you are wearing” Cillian said as he cut straight to the point.

‘Can you see?’ you asked as you adjusted the cam and showed Cillian your dark blue lingerie.

‘Very nice…but…I think you would look even better if you were naked, don’t you think?’ Cillian said somewhat nervously and you nodded in agreement.

‘Well, I suppose I should strip for you and you should strip for me’ you giggled as you seductively took off your bra slowly, showing Cillian your perky breasts through the camera.

You heard him inhale sharply as he watched you and took his t-shirt off at the same time, leaving him in nothing but his CK briefs.

Without words you then scooted back on the bed and removed your undies, allowing him to watch before you sat down on the bed, spread eagle and naked, giving him a good view of your mound.

‘Jesus Y/N, you are so fucking beautiful and sexy…touch yourself for me, nice and slow’ Cillian breathed out and you let his soothing voice wash over you, knowing what he was trying to do and happily helping him succeed.

‘Like this?’ you moaned as you began to run circles over your clit with your fingers.

‘Yes, just like that babe’ Cillian groaned as he shuffled down his briefs and you were finally getting a good look of his hard cock.

‘Oh god, I want to stroke your cock so badly’ you moaned as you seductively opened your pussy lips with your fingers, opening yourself up before reaching for the black vibrator you kept in your bedside table.

‘Well, someone's particularly horny tonight’ Cillian chuckled as he watched you play with your pussy, and you could hear the smirk in his voice.

You mumbled a small "mhm," and he laughed.

‘Good, that's exactly how I like you, so naughty and needy’ Cillian said as he slowly began to stroke his hard member.

You barely registered his words enough to answer with another "mhm," but your subconscious managed it. Your weak answer elicited another delicious chuckle from the other end of the line.

"Why don't you show me how this little toy of yours works?” Cillian then asked as he watched you eagerly.

“I was just waiting for you to ask” you giggled as you began to run your fingers along your stomach and back up to your chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps their wake before reaching for the vibrator and turning it on.

“Put into your sweet pussy babe, let me see it” Cillian groaned and you moan in response, barely processing his words but still understanding enough to answer and do what he asked.

"I bet your pussy is already dripping” he said as you slid the vibrator into you slowly. He was right, you could feel your wetness pooling.

“I am so fucking wet and I wish it would be your cock inside me” you moaned as you began to stroke the toy in and out of you.

Cillian was groaning on the other side, his eyes full of lust and desire for you and you let out a quiet moan as you watched him with the same desire and hunger while you were pleasuring yourself.

“Good girl, keep going…” Cillian tells you and you moan again hearing it.

“Tell me how much you are aching for my cock” he then said you moaned again.

“I want your cock so badly, fuck…I want your cum inside me, dripping out of my wet little pussy” you moaned, eliciting a groan from Cillian as he began to stroke his cock harder and faster.

“Such a naughty needy girl, aren’t you? I can’t wait to be inside you again and make you cum over and over again” Cillian said with a laboured breath and you are barely listening at this point.

“I want you to cum for me and show me this dripping pussy when you do…I fucking love hearing your moans, so fucking sexy…common babe….let go” Cillian said, knowing that you were close and your orgasm rolled over you as soon as the word 'cum' left his lips, and although your sensitive clit was screaming at your hand to stop, you couldn't.

‘Oh god fuck, yes…’ you moaned as you came hard and fast.

“That’s it babe, don’t stop” he instructed as your moans continuously spilled from your mouth, and you were not even sure what you were saying or if you were forming words at all. The only thing in your head is a deliciously heavy fog and Cillian’s voice guiding you to do what he wanted.

“Don’t stop, keep fucking your sweet little pussy babe” Cillian ordered as he knew you weren’t done and, just as he did, you let out a high-pitched moan, bordering on a scream, as an even stronger orgasm washed over your body.

‘Cum for me babe…I want to see all this cum’ you moaned in return, focusing on the delicious image in front of you as Cillian was stroking his cock and, just when you finally come back down you heard Cillian groan loudly.

“Fuck” he groaned as he stroked his cock hard and fast you watched rope after rope of cum spurt onto his stomach.

‘Oh god, what a waste, I want to lick your cum off your skin so badly” you breathed out as Cillian came down from his high slowly and used a tissue to clean himself up.

‘Stop saying those things or you have to stay on the line for another twenty minutes at least’ Cillian chuckled as he could feel his manhood stir again.

‘Well, I think you shouldn’t cum again until you come to visit me in Galway the weekend after next…I want you to save it all for me’ you said, causing Cillian to cock an eyebrow as he pulled his briefs back up.

‘Fat chance babe’ he chuckled, knowing that going without an orgasm for nine days would be rather difficult for him.

Eventually, after a lot of begging, he agreed to try but he wouldn’t be able to make you any promises to this effect.

***

The following day, you went to work and then university thereafter but, when you eventually returned home, your father was in a worse mood than ever before.

‘Can you explain this to me?’ he asked angrily as soon as you walked through the door and you couldn’t help but gulp when he pointed to a white box which he had placed on the living room table.

‘You went through my personal belongings’ you huffed out as the box contained some lingerie and intimate items, including toys, that you were hiding in the bottom of your dresser.

‘Again Y/N, this is my house, my rules and I don’t want my daughter to own filth like this’ he said, after having heard small pieces of your conversation with Cillian on Skype the evening before.

It was obvious to you that your father was appalled and you were outraged that he had been snooping through your room and, as you would later learn, had even tried to access your computer.

‘I can’t fucking believe you dad. These are my personal belongings and you have no right to go through them’ you huffed out and, just as you did, you could feel a sharp strike across your face.

‘Get this shit out of my house and talk to me with some respect’ he said harshly, leaving you speechless and in tears as he walked away, leaving your cheek burning red.

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[linkspooky]

What Eren Wants

After all the mystery surrounding Eren’s true intentions, what Eren really wants in the final arc, this chapter lays it out quite clearly. Eren wants his friends to kill him. Not because he thinks it’s going to achieve some grand objective in a secret plan he’s had all along that requires he sacrifice his own life. I think Eren just wants to die. Suicidal ideation, is a symptom of a much bigger underlying problem, it’s a passive longing to die. More on this, and more on Eren under the cut. 

1. No Future

Eren is committing metaphorical suicide in his final act with the rumbling. It’s a pretty thinly veiled metaphor too, considering Eren just tells his friends that they have to kill him. Consider the two characters who Eren is paralleled against the most with this arc: Zeke and Reiner. 

Zeke’s wish has always been the opposite of Eren’s. Eren believes he was free because he was born in this world. Zeke, who was born as a part of some great plan, not as a child to be loved, but a child to be made into a soldier a tool for his parents wishes he wasn’t born. He thinks all suffering can be avoiding if only he never existed in the first place. 

This wish, to stop existing, because it’s the only way to end suffering is plain and simple suicidal ideation. Xander even tells Zeke as much when recounting the story of his family, that he became a warrior candidate because he wanted to die in the worst way possible. 

Consider Zeke’s view of his own life. HIs family never loved him. He was born without love, therefore there’s no love in his life, and no future. Not only is there no future for him, but there’s no future for all Eldians in general. From that point forward what Zeke seeks is not to heal, but rather to alleviate pain. They’re the thoughts of a suicidal person. 

Reiner who is compared to Eren endlessly, who committed the same sin that Eren did, deciding to knock down the walls and destroy everybody inside is shown with this same hopelessness in regards to his own life. 

Once again there’s the repettition for the wish for it all to end. Reiner who is a child soldier just like Eren. Reiner who once believed he was doing something good, that he was fighting for a cause. Reiner’s wish to die is even more thinly veiled then Eren’s. 

In this scene Reiner is exposed to Eren’s desire to be like him and Mikasa, to be someone he perceives as strong, and also his fear deep down that he’s going to die a worthless death. He’s going to die having achieved nothing. This is important for later, because Eren’s suicide isn’t just killing himself, he’s also staging it so he’s dying for a cause, for an idea like freedom, he’s trying desperately to give his death meaning. 

Reiner tells Eren that the only thing the both of them can do is to keep moving forward. However, what Eren and Reiner do is they continually throw themselves into more conflict again and again, unnecessary conflicts. That’s why this is paralleled with what happened to Marco because, Marco tried to give them a chance to talk things out but Reiner made it a fight. 

Reiner and Eren’s tendency to throw themselves into conflict again and again is, self-harming behavior. They’re intentionally risking their lives because it’s the only way they can try to find meaning in their lives and try to fight against their own feelings of worthlessness. 

They are trying to prove something to themselves by putting their lives on the line, they are trying to find meaning in the conflict that has dominated their entire lives (remember they are child soldiers, they were raised not by parents, but by the war around them and it’s practically all they know by this point). Reiner and Eren’s dream to destroy the devils of Paradis, to Eliminate all the Titans has always, always, been paralleled with their wish to die. 

Immediately after he says this it cuts to Reiner with a gun in his mouth. It’s not really subtle imagery. Eren also says, something incredibly similiar to Reiner’s series of flashbacks here. 

Eren says to Falco there are those like him and Reiner who choose to throw themselves into hell again and again, because they’re hoping to get something out of it. This is willfully self-harming, self-endangering behavior, Eren and Reiner throw themselves into conflict again, and again, and again hoping to try to get some meaning out of that conflict but they won’t because war is hell bla bla bla. 

Falco even repeats the line that Eren said to Reiner, because that’s what Eren believes deep down, and what Eren is desperately trying to avoid, that he is weak, that he is powerless, that there is no hope for someone like him. Better to sacrifice his life for some cause, then die a worthless death. And like I said, these feelings have been inside Eren for a long time he even casually thinks about it before kissing HIstoria’s hand. He even begged Historia to kill him in the Uprising Arc. Eren and Reiner have been fighting against these feelings for a long time, and eventually, they grew tired of the fighting. 

2. Child Soldiers

The diffference between Reiner and Eren, is Reiner is still able to see some kind of future that Eren himself has given up on. 

Falco is what stops Reiner’s suicide. The idea that Falco still needs him. Reiner, Zeke, Eren, the three of them are all child soldiers who need to grow up, but find themselves unable to because they’ve been raised by war not family. Eren’s reckless regard for the lives of children is meant to be compared to Reiner’s protectiveness over Falco and Gabi. 

Eren’s suicidal feelings are always connected towards this reckless violence towards children because, for the same reason as Zeke ends up gravitating towards euthenasia, neither Eren nor Zeke can even imagine any kind of future for themselves. 

Eren’s fear has always been that he hasn’t grown up. That not a single thing has changed since the day his mother died. That deep down he’s still that useless brat that watched her die. That’s how Eren perceives himself, a child, a brat, that’s how he always has. 

We never really saw him get over this self perception either, at best he’s been made aware of this. When Hanji sees Eren acting out, they make constant jokes about Eren just being in his rebellious phase and growing up. 

Floch even says, deep down inside, Eren believes he’s always right, therefore he doens’t really ever change his beliefs or give them up when he’s challenged. He acts like an unreasonable child. IE. Someone who cannot be reasoned with. 

He even calls Mikasa the grown up for being able to let go and change her beliefs. It makes sense that Eren is this way, he’s been coping terribly with the loss of everything, and constant insecurity since childhood. Child soldiers are, stunted and not well adjusted. None of the characters are in the story, a lot of them still cling onto ideas they’ve held since childhood. Armin still sees himself as the weak one even though he currently has the storngest titan, and is in a position of power and responsibility in the army. Mikasa still sees herself as needing Eren to come home, and needing Eren to be there to have a family even though she’s always been stronger than him. Even though she’s capable of moving on. Annie still wants to run away back to her father, because that’s what he told her to do when he was a little girl. 

This is a story where all of the characters are child soldiers struggling to grow up. Even Erwin himself, clings to the dream his father gave him when he was a child. This is the how much the military, and the continual conflict has destroyed the lives of the children it eats up. That’s what Magath realizes in the end, that they were all just normal children, before he got his hands on them. 

Eren is just, the worst of this. IN a story where they are all struggling to grow, Eren has given up. Which is why we see both him and Ymir pictured now as eternal children. 

Eren is stunted, not only that he’s given up on the possibility that he might ever be better. It’s the way he refers to his own life now. This was always going to happen. He was just born this way. Eren remembers the scene where he gave Mikasa the strength to live, but he only remembers the fighting, only remembers the cruelty where he killed two men in order to save a little girl, and insists that it’s always going to be this way the only way he can keep going is to kill and struggle and kill some more. 

3. Live

Eren has all but forgotten the moment where he wrapped the scarf around Mikasa’s face, because the true importance of that scene is now lost on him. What he gave Mikasa was not a reason to fight, but a reason to live. It’s not something Eren gave her by picking up a weapon or telling her to fight, but by being by her side all this time. 

Eren who only sees the fighting and not the future after forgets what he was trying to do in that moment, which was save a little girl’s life and tell her to live. 

Eren thinks what got Mikasa attached to him was the violence he showed in that moment, the fact that he killed her captors, and not the comfort he showed her afterwards, not the home, because Eren ever since his mother died cannot move past that fact and believes there’s no home in this world for him, no family for a boy who cannot even protect his own mother. 

The world is cruel for making them fight to survive, but it’s not just cruel. That’s the idea that Mikasa has always represented. If Falco and Gabi are the children that Reiner protects because they are his last connection to the wrold, then Mikasa is Eren’s most important connection. She represents his desire to do more than just fight, to live in a world th’at scruel, to live together with her. 

And Eren is doing his best to turn his back away from her. 

Mikasa remembers the connection of that moment, and Eren only remembers the violence, Mikasa a little girl brutally killing two of her captors. Of course they both remember it wrong, Mikasa ignored Eren’s violence and only saw his kindness. Which led her to become codependent on that connection for so long like it was the only one that existed for her, like she could not connect to anybody besides Eren because he was kind to her in that moment. Whereas, Eren has always seen Mikasa’s strength as a barrier to their relationship. He has a complex about Mikasa, she’s stronger than him, when she tries to get close to him and protect him he sees that as her looking down on him. 

Eren can’t possibly see why Mikasa would want to be with somebody as weak as him, because he just doesn’t see what’s so lovably about himself. Eren only sees violence, MIkasa only sees love, and because of that they both can’t see each other. 

This chapter, it’s Armin who does most of the pleading, but Mikasa is literally always in the center of the frame. She puts her desire most simply. Eren doesn’t have to do this. He doesn’t have to choose death. They could still have a life together.

What Mikasa wants is to live. That’s what her arc has always been about, a little girl who wants to live on in a world that’s cruel.  She also wants to be what Eren was to her so long ago. She wants to tell him he can live. 

Mikasa is the first one to run to Eren.  She’s the one who flashes back to the child Eren because she’s the one who knows him the longest. 

When Reiner says that Eren is probably wants it all to end by someone else’s hand. It’s Mikasa who the focus suddenly falls on. 

Mikasa will always be Eren’s strongest connection to his own lifeline, his desire to live together and have a future with her, represented by the red scarf wrapped around both of their necks. 

When Eren was about to give up on living, Mikasa reminded him that just him being there next to her side all that time was enough for her. 

The promise to wrap the scarf around her neck, is simply a process to live with her. 

But, Eren doesn’t want that anymore.  He just wants to die.