#anyway there both temporal ghosts

[shegeekery]

Splintered — Chapter 2

Chapters: 2/5 Fandom: Doctor Who, Loki TV series (crossover) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: N/A, but I plan to keep it as friendly to both Lokius and Sylkie as I can. Characters: The Doctor, Ruby Sunday, Mobius, Ouroboros, B-15, Casey (Sylvie coming in later) Summary: The Doctor and Ruby find themselves in a strange universe where the timelines are controlled by the God of Mischief. Is it any surprise that the TVA needs help from a Time Lord?

Chapter Index: Chapter 1: I Have a Bad Feeling About This — Length: 2906 words Chapter 2: Ghost Squirrel (this post) — Length: 2738 words Chapter 3: Splintered — Length: 2852 words Chapter 4: Getting the Band Back Together — Length: 2496 words Chapter 5: Intervention — Length: 2496 words

“So, you knew Loki too, then?”

Ruby leaned on the promenade wall, gazing out over the futuristic city.

“Yeah,” Casey answered. “I liked him. Except, when he first got here, he threatened to ‘gut me like a fish’, only I didn’t know what a fish was.”

“How do you not know what a fish is?” Ruby asked in surprise.

“That’s exactly what he said!” Casey shrugged. “We don’t have fish at the TVA, so I had to look it up later. It turned out okay, though. At any rate, he settled down after he found out what he wanted was just junk here anyway.”

“And you’ve never been anywhere outside the TVA?”

Casey stood up a little straighter. “They gave me a promotion after I helped O.B. with all the science stuff and now they let me do a bit of field work once in a while, but before that, no. Well, I guess I did have a life on the timeline before they brought me here and wiped my memory ages ago, but I got a look at my file and…” He grimaced. “I think I like who I am here better.”

Ruby nodded, remembering what the Doctor had said about ‘Frank’. “Well, you seem like a lovely bloke to me.”

“Thanks,” he replied, with an embarrassed grin.

“So, do you have any idea what might be going on with the tree…what’s it called again?”

“Yggdrasil. I dunno. I don’t really know anything about magic. It doesn’t work at the TVA — well, unless they turn off the dampeners.”

“How did the timelines work before Loki created Yggdrasil?”

“We had this really big machine called the Loom, but it couldn’t support all the timelines after we stopped pruning them. We were about to try upgrading it, but then Loki just suddenly went out there on his own, wrecked the Loom, and replaced it.” Casey shook his head. “It was really weird. I can’t help feeling like I missed something.”

“So that wasn’t planned, then?”

“No. I mean, Loki must have had a reason, but I can’t understand why he didn’t let us try the upgrade first. He was totally on-board with the idea, and then…boom. Yggdrasil.”

Ruby considered this. “Loki’s a god, right? Can he time-travel?”

“Not that I — no, wait, he did have a problem for a while. O.B. called it timeslipping. He was just randomly appearing and disappearing in different moments in time. Nearly gave me a heart attack a couple of times. But O.B. built a temporal aura extractor and Mobius used it to stop Loki from timeslipping, and that was the end of it.”

“Is there any chance it happened again? Maybe Loki went out there because he already knew the upgrade wouldn’t work?”

“I…guess that’s possible. Makes about as much sense as anything else.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned traveling with the Doctor, it’s that time is a lot trickier than I ever thought.”

“You can say that ag—”

Casey was interrupted by screams from nearby pedestrians. Ruby whirled around just in time to see a ghostly squirrel, roughly the size of a Cocker Spaniel, running along the promenade wall and carrying a file folder in its teeth. As she watched, it swung its head and tossed the folder over the edge, papers flying out as the contents drifted down to the surface far below. The squirrel, glowing with an eerie green light, chittered to itself and ran along the wall past Ruby and Casey before it jumped onto a passing flying vehicle and disappeared from their sight.

“What was that?” Ruby exclaimed.

Casey shook his head, equally bewildered. “It looked like magic of some sort, but that’s impossible here. Well, unless the dampeners are malfunctioning. I think I��d better go talk to O.B.”

——————————————————————————————

“Casey! Good to see you. And Ruby! Sorry we were interrupted earlier.”

“Hey O.B.,” Casey said. “We just saw something really weird out on the promenade. Are the magic dampeners having problems, by any chance?”

O.B. shook his head. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“We just saw this weird looking creature. Kind of like a big rat, but with a bushy tail. Glowing.“ Casey began.

“A squirrel. A giant ghost squirrel,” Ruby clarified. She turned back to Casey. “You’ve never seen a squirrel either?”

Casey shook his head. “I guess I probably should get out more now that we’re not worried about creating branches.”

O.B. turned to his computer console. “Miss Minutes, can you run a diagnostic on the magic dampeners for me?”

A tangerine-colored holographic clock with a cartoonish face appeared above the counter. “Sure, boss! Is there anything in particular you want me to look for?”

Ruby smiled, amused by the clock’s American Southern belle accent.

O.B. paused for a moment, thinking. “Anything that might allow magic in the TVA, I suppose.”

“On it, boss!” The clock gave a little salute and disappeared with a cartoon flourish.

“What was that?” Ruby asked.

“Miss Minutes,” Casey said. “She’s the AI that helps keep this place running — but we’re not sure how much to trust her after she, well…”

“Tried to kill us all,” O.B. finished for him. “I reset her programming, so…fingers crossed.”

“Okay? Why did she want to kill you?”

Casey answered. “She was working for the guy who built this place originally. We were working for him, too, but we didn’t know it. After we found out and stopped doing his dirty work, she disappeared and we caught her helping him. Well, it was more complicated than that, but…”

“But now she’s working for you?”

“In theory,” O.B. answered, with a shrug.

Casey leaned in and stage-whispered, “Just between you and me, I think she has a crush on O.B. now. She always answers instantly when he calls for her. She makes the rest of us wait a bit.”

“A love-struck AI. Sounds dangerous,” Ruby said doubtfully.

Casey and O.B. both nodded vigorously.

Miss Minutes appeared again. “Hey boss, I finished the diagnostic. No problems with the dampeners. Is there anything else you need?”

“Is there any way magic could work in the TVA with the dampeners on?” Casey asked.

Miss Minutes turned to Casey, and Ruby thought she detected a bit of annoyance on the part of the AI — or maybe it was just her imagination.

“Well, it’s impossible to initiate magic inside the TVA, but I suppose, if the source was powerful enough, it could be created outside and sent in. It would have to be really powerful, though.”

“Really powerful…like a god, maybe?” The Doctor asked from behind them. B-15 was at his side.

“Yes, possibly,” Miss Minutes answered.

“We’ve been getting reports of some sort of ghost squirrel terrorizing people all over the TVA,” B-15 explained.

“I know,” Casey said. “Ruby and I saw it too.”

“I need to look into this…whatever it is,” B-15 went on. “In the meantime, O.B., I need you to help the Doctor here with whatever he needs to fix his ship. He’s going to try to get close to Yggdrasil and see what’s happening there. I’ve called Mobius in to help — he should be here shortly.”

“Almost like old times!” O.B. replied cheerfully.

B-15 smiled. “Almost, minus a couple of unruly gods. Okay, Ruby, you’re with me. The Doctor tells me you have some experience with this type of investigation.”

Ruby looked to the Doctor, who nodded reassuringly. “You have your phone on you?”

“Always,” she said. “Right, let’s get cracking. You boys stay out of trouble!”

The Doctor grinned. “Like that’s ever going to happen.”

——————————————————————————————

“Wow. Trans-dimensional engineering! I thought that was only science fiction!”

The Doctor watched as O.B. turned slowly around inside the Tardis. He never tired of seeing others’ reactions to it, but it was particularly fun when the visitor had at least a theoretical understanding of the science instead of assuming “magic”.

“Say,” O.B. went on. “If you can do this, you should be able to time-travel as well. Same principle, just applied to the time part of spacetime instead of the space part.”

“Way ahead of you,” the Doctor replied with a wink.

“No way! I mean, we have time-travel technology at the TVA of course, but it’s of a more limited kind. Time-doors and that sort of thing.”

“Yes way. But I wouldn’t try it just now. With the stabilizers on the blink and the whole different universe, different rules thing, we could wind up in serious trouble.”

They made their way to the console, and O.B. skipped and hopped around it, examining the controls and inspecting the underside. “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. These fluid links don’t look so good. They’re a little different from what we use, but I should be able to cobble something together that would work for you and help with moving around in this universe.”

The Doctor nodded approvingly while surreptitiously scanning O.B. with the sonic screwdriver. Human. But clearly beyond genius-level. This fellow could out-engineer quite a few Time Lords I knew. I should probably get him out of here before he absorbs enough information to build his own Tardis.

O.B. disconnected one of the fluid links and stood up. “If it’s okay, I’ll just take this back to my workroom and see what I can do for you.”

“Sounds lovely,” the Doctor said with some relief. “I’ll stay here and do some recalibration on the sensors so I can get better data on Yggdrasil.”

There was a knock on the Tardis door. A middle-aged gentleman with silver hair and a mustache, dressed in swim shorts and a wetsuit top, stepped in hesitantly. “O.B.? They told me I might find you in this shed — holy mackerel!”

The man stared at the vast interior as if he couldn’t quite process what he was seeing. O.B. waved to him on his way out. “Mobius! Welcome back! Doctor, this is Mobius. Mobius, this is the Doctor.”

“Hey, O.B.” Mobius made his way up to the console and held out his hand. “Hi, nice to meet you, Doctor…uh?”

“Just the Doctor,” the Doctor replied, shaking his hand. “A pleasure. So you’re the ‘Loki-whisperer’ they were telling me about?”

“Well, I dunno about that, but I guess I do know him pretty well. As well as anyone can, anyway,” Mobius answered distractedly while continuing to gaze around the console room. Turning back to the Doctor, he added sheepishly, “Please excuse my attire. I was jet-skiing when they called me in.”

The Doctor gave him a cocky grin. “No worries, mate, Love a bloke in swim trunks.” He turned back to the readout on the console viewscreen and began typing commands. “B-15 told me that Loki wouldn’t damage the timelines. Do you agree with that?”

Mobius nodded. “Yeah. I still don’t really understand why he did all this instead of just letting us upgrade the Loom, but he wouldn’t have gone out there all by himself unless he thought he had to.”

“Did he say anything at all before he did it?”

“He just said something about knowing what kind of god he needed to be, then he forced open the blast doors,” Mobius answered, then shrugged. “He’s always been a bit of a drama queen.”

The Doctor turned away from the viewscreen, studying Mobius carefully. “You really miss him, don’t you?”

The other man paused, seemingly reluctant to admit it. Finally, he responded, “Yeah. Don’t get me wrong. He was…a lot, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I felt more like a babysitter than an analyst — and I think we spent more time arguing than anything else — but…yeah, I miss him. And despite the cosmic crisis we were dealing with, I think he was actually kind of happy here, which if you knew him — well, he always used to say that contentment wasn’t in his nature.”

“I know the feeling. So what else can you tell me about him?”

While the Doctor worked, Mobius very briefly went over the highlights — and lowlights — of Loki’s career as the God of Mischief, up through his attack on New York and subsequent arrival at the TVA and metamorphosis from unwilling collaborator to valued team member and friend.

When Mobius finished, the Doctor smiled softly. “So where everyone else saw a villain, a monster, you saw potential? Someone who needed help?”

“Well, yes,” the other man answered, a bit defensively. “But—“

The Doctor turned away from the console. “I like you, Mobius. Okay — all finished here. Let’s see how O.B. is doing with those fluid links.”

Mobius followed the Doctor out of the Tardis and down the hallway to Repairs and Advancement. O.B. wasn’t there, but Casey was behind the counter, fiddling with a device that looked a bit like a smart phone, what the TVA Handbook called a TemPad. “Oh, hey there! O.B.’s up in the loft.” He pointed to an opening in the ceiling. “He said he’s almost finished with your fluid links.”

“Problems with your TemPad?” the Doctor asked.

Casey shook his head. “Not mine — just helping out. Fixing these isn’t really in my job description, but I like to keep in practice, and they really keep O.B. hopping with these repair jobs.”

As they were talking, O.B. lowered himself down to the ground level in a harness chair.  He was holding a cardboard box.

“Awesome!” the Doctor said admiringly. “I used to have one of those chairs in the Tardis.”

“I’ve got your fluid links right here.” O.B. set the box on the counter. “These should fit the sockets. They’ll work like your old ones, but they can also compensate for the time variations at the TVA and they should be more tolerant of spacetime variabilities.”

“Perfect. Thank you, O.B.”

“Don’t mention it. Do you need any help installing them?”

The Doctor picked up one of the devices and examined it. “No, I think I can take it from here. Great work. I’ll just—”

A ghostly green squirrel ran into the room, hopped up on the counter, and snatched the fluid link from the Doctor’s hand. The Doctor reached for his sonic screwdriver, but the squirrel jumped onto one of the cables holding the harness chair, then clambered up it and into the loft before the Doctor could scan it. They heard the sound of breaking glass.

“I guess it’s a good thing I made a few extras.” O.B. said.

“What the heck was that?” Mobius asked.

“Ghost squirrel,” Casey informed him.

“Well, yeah, I can see that. But why is it here?”

“B-15 and Ruby — that’s the Doctor’s friend — are trying to find out,” Casey said. “Oh, that reminds me. Ruby had a theory about why Loki didn’t let us try to upgrade the Loom. She thinks maybe he started timeslipping again and knew the upgrade wouldn’t work. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes.”

Mobius nodded slowly. “Well, that would explain it. But I don’t remember him timeslipping again.”

Casey shook his head. “But you wouldn’t remember, would you? None of us would. And if the upgrade failed, we would all have been dead when the Loom overloaded, so he couldn’t come to us for help.” He shrugged. “Maybe he just learned to control it.”

“Right!” O.B. exclaimed. “That would explain how he was able to handle the timelines the way he did. If he was dislodged from time and space, and had control over it…yes, of course! That explains everything.”

“So you’re saying that he could travel through time and space, at will, without the need for a TemPad, or something like the Tardis?” the Doctor asked.

O.B. nodded.

Mobius blew out a breath. “I guess it’s a good thing he was on our side. He could have caused a lot of mischief with that kind of power.”

“Assuming there was anything left after the Loom exploded,” Casey added.

“Yeah,” O.B. and the Doctor replied in unison.

The Doctor picked up the box of fluid links and headed through the archway. “Mobius? You coming? Your insights might be helpful when we get there.”

“In the — what did you call it? The Tardis? Is it safe?”

The Doctor gestured with the box. “Guess we’ll find out!”

Mobius looked to O.B. and Casey. Both shrugged, and he sighed, following the Doctor. “As long as I don’t have to wear one of those bulky core suits again.” Go to the next chapter

[solipsistful]

director’s cut on automatisms? 👀👀

this took a while to figure out what to even say, but i think i'll go chapter by chapter and say something interesting about each of them

but i'll first say that the very first unfinished draft of Automatisms was actually a NaNo project by Serpent, which i (ace) then took over and rewrote into its current form. so i'll be making this post and seeing if he wants to chime in (not that anyone except me has been particularly talkative lately rip)

XX01: Re-entry

i love that the fic starts (after the pretentious epigraph, im sorry) with a canon line. not only does it temporally set Automatisms as essentially an alternate Acceptance, but i think highlights how it really does follow from Control's canon experiences. like, i could absolutely see an argument that Control canonically just has a dissociative disorder (Authority begins with a dissociative episode, his guides…).

funnily, it wasn't actually any of our idea to go "what if him plural". that was a friend lol.

XX02: Breaching

Finally, a conclusion. Denouement. Control let out the breath he hadn’t intended to hold.

my desire to copy canon's style means hooray narrative (and ghost) metaphors.

XX03: Returning

this chapter has the big freaking problem of being extremely important in canon but not at all changed by Control getting some Lowry commentary. i know one answer would be to just… not follow canon so closely, but shh.

what this means is that it's basically best to read this fic with a very good memory for what happens in Acceptance, which probably isn't great. (i fall into the exact same problem with Doubled)

XX04: Waking

ive mentioned this before, but isn't it fun that Lowry's first time fronting alone occurs off-screen and is never really discussed explicitly? something with Narrative there. (it's also fun how canonically that's just Control having a freeze reaction to the biologist anyway, "playing dead to keep his head")

XX05: The lighthouse

god we had the HARDEST TIME deciding what person and tense Lowry's sections should be in. there's several version of this chapter trying to figure out first vs second vs maybe just third? and present vs past. first person present eventually won out as Special enough, even if i struggle to write it (even more than second person). it also leaves second person for the voice of Area X-as-narrator later, which is probably better.

and then Absolution is just gonna be plain old third person past, boo.

XX06: Somewhere else

just some Control reckoning with wtf is Lowry even doing in his head. i mean, it's an important question, like the most important thing in the world for Control right now, but it's sorta hard coming up with scenes where he can both think/talk about that without just going in circles about how unanswerable it is.

XX07: The tower

i hope this chapter feels as Significant as i intend it to be. this is, after all, the real moment of divergence from canon: Control never goes down the tower!

there are, like chapter 5, versions of this chapter where the "beckoning" is in the first person vs second person, italicized or different fonts or right-aligned or not set apart from the rest of the text at all, etccc. i Care about this formatting stuff okay. (had to go digging into how AO3 work skins work at all in order to get the chapter numbers right, for instance, lol)

XX08: The border

it really strikes me, given what we've seen of Absolution, that Lowry should be way more over-the-top in his reactions here lol. he's not a quiet shut down type like Control; he's over the top and angry and should have, i dunno, punched a tree or something. oh well. maybe he's just relying on not being in the body to give him some distance from basically the worst thing imaginable that could happen to him in this moment.

XX09: The teeth

ok i told myself i wouldn't say this about all the chapters, but i think this chapter in particular should've been longer lol. i mean, it's a Good Chapter, but that's why it should've been longer! there's a lot of implications of things that probably should've been explored more. i'm thinking in particular of Lowry wanting to go retrieve the videos. this is the guy who retrieved the videos from the first expedition, as awful as that must have been. he's abandoning all that and the first expedition overall by leaving the SR building.

ah well.

XX10: The throat

i think im so clever for the "are you real" repeat

XX11: Humanity

after all that kerfuffle over whether Lowry would be in the first/second/third person, we actually hadn't considered what that would look like when Lowry and Control were blurring, whoops. so, good thing that we decided on the first person, because that makes blurring into "we" instead of like. "yall" lmao.

XX12: Exorcism

how do you write hypnosis (especially from the point of view of the hypnotized)

i mean the real point of this chapter is just "look at my theory/interpretation that Lowry's hypnosis is linked to Area X's narrative control and isn't that fun"

XX13: Memory

i don't know what to say about this one. character discussions!

XX14: Disposition

this is simultaneously a filler chapter and also i should've spent longer dealing with things like Lowry having food issues (which is something i had sorta drawn from Acceptance but here is influenced by all the Absolution tidbits in which he's obsessing over eating animals in Area X lol).

but mostly it's a filler chapter because by this point, i knew that the second half of the fic would use all the same chapter titles in reverse, and i have Disposition2 already written so Disposition1 has to exist.

Bonus Sneak Preview: XX15: Escape

obviously a lot of my fic-writing efforts have been spent towards WOE.BEGONE lately, but i think another reason why Automatisms has been going slowly is that this next chapter includes a large change in time and context. so, i'm sorta wanting to think through whether there's anything in the old context that I still want to do before i decide on A Change. but really i should probably just go ahead and do the Change. as hinted above, i have a lot of post-Change stuff written. :>

- ace and no Serpent as it turns out whoops

[kadavernagh]

TIMING: Current-ish LOCATION: The Bread Cemetery PARTIES: @kadavernagh & @longislandcharm SUMMARY: Regan wants to know about "ghosts" and Winter will give her some answers... but not for free. Driven by curiosity about each other and the supernatural, they engage in some conversational intercourse. (Sorry Ballards; they don't actually buy anything)

“And I think you’re pissing off my ghost, so knock it off.” 

Regan couldn’t shake the way everything about Ray – his voice, his mannerisms, his demeanor – changed in the blink of an eye. The insistence that he was someone else, someone dead. It was insane. Or temporal lobe epilepsy. One of the two. But… there was the death on him, that strangeness she’d felt. And then the details from the report. Ghosts. Could it really be possible that when people spoke of ghosts, they were describing precisely this? Or even the visions Regan experienced countless times? Some of the other banshees called them macallaí. She called them hallucinations.

How appropriate Winter had suggested the Bread Cemetery, where Jonas had insisted he could see ghosts the last time Regan came here. No bagel ventriloquism today. She tensed her forehead in her hand as she settled at one of the tables and waited for Winter. The woman had questions for her, and that seemed like a good opportunity for Regan to ask some of her own. As private as Regan was, she could respect a request for equity. Knowledge for knowledge. 

She could try and get a better read on Winter herself now that their circumstances had improved. Winter wasn't another banshee, or fae at all, but she was more than she seemed -- whatever "medium" meant to her -- Regan was sure. And despite the flicker of antagonism, she actually liked Winter. Anyone motivated by curiosity was worth knowing more about, even if Regan was reticent to reveal anything about herself, too. Given that she positioned herself to face the door, she immediately recognized Winter when she walked in. It was almost funny how different the woman looked now that she wasn’t petrified by her own fear, in the midst of a panic attack. She actually struck Regan as exceptionally composed.

“Hello. I don’t think either of us are the sort for pleasantries. Do we need to purchase something first to occupy this space, or should we go straight to burning curiosity? I propose we alternate our questions.” 

-------

The suggestion to meet so that they could exchange information was a surprise but Winter wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity. She always wanted to learn more, especially when it came to the supernaturally inclined, so she’d agreed on the condition that they met in a place she was comfortable with. The Bread Cemetery had almost become a sanctuary with Lil teaching her how to hone her medium abilities and there was no other location that she could think of to meet someone who also had an inclination towards the dead.

It wasn’t often that Winter was the last to show to a meeting so she was pleasantly surprised when Regan was already sitting at a table. Even more so with the suggestion to jump right into this meeting instead of pretending they weren’t here for specifics. Niceties were not her specialty anyway, especially with someone she had a lot of reservations about. What kind of person hated Tinkerbell? “I don’t think the Ballards will mind unless they get too busy. I’m here often these days. That sounds fair to me. I appreciate getting down to business.” 

She also had no problem being the one to start it off. Last time she had seen Regan they’d both been incapacitated and their talk online had fallen flat because of Winter. She wasn’t great at keeping up with conversation over a screen. She took a seat and leaned back in her chair, Henry sitting in one at a table next to them. He was curious to hear this as well. “What do they call you? Someone who’s connected to death but isn’t exactly a medium…I assume you have a title.” And she did have a feeling about what that title was. She knew Parker, after all, and had done a lot of research on different types of fae so far. She wanted to hear it from the doctor though and not risk looking stupid if she turned out to be wrong.

-------

Winter really did get straight to the point, didn’t she? Regan was going to make her work a little harder if she wanted an answer to that particular question. “A Medical Examiner. Or forensic pathologist. Whichever term you prefer. Doctor is also fine.” Was she being intentionally obtuse? Maybe. But what did Winter expect in asking for a title? She didn’t walk around introducing herself as Regan Kavanagh, Banshee. Did Winter walk around introducing herself as Winter, Medium? Besides, would Winter even believe her? Even your average human sometimes believed in ghosts, but no one really thought fairies existed.

Regan did not get comfortable in her chair – she was forward, poised, ready for a question of her own. Better to start with the easy ones, right? Warm Winter up like climate change. “Why the Bread Cemetery? Do you know the Ballards well? Is there a connection there?” Technically that was three questions, but none of them seemed especially difficult. And Regan was curious. Jonas claimed to be a medium himself, and though Lil hadn’t boasted that to her (yet), it wouldn’t surprise her if both siblings were somehow wrapped up in this. Was Winter similar to them? 

-------

Tilting her head, Winter didn’t let her smile falter. She knew that the medium was aware of her professional title and knew that wasn’t what she meant with the question. So, Regan wanted to play games? Well, she was good at those and the doctor was about to find out that she would fight tooth and nail to win. It wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go, she could play all day if need be. “Technically I only have to answer your first question and it’s because the pastries are oh so good.” Never mind that she didn’t have one in front of her. The pointed look at the other woman was a clear indication that she was also intentionally not answering the questions the way Regan wanted her to. 

“We can try this again, if you want. Tell me what they call you and I’ll give you the answer to all three of your burning questions.” Winter glanced at Henry who was sitting back to watch the interaction but the medium was surprised that he wasn’t chiming in like usual. He just sat there, looking between them like this was a game of tennis. She looked back at Regan and smiled again. “What do you say, Doc? Think we could do this the right way?”

-------

I don’t want, Regan almost cut in, an automatic response to the phrase. But answers would still be nice, wouldn’t they? She could be curious even if she could not want. And as Jade entered her thoughts for probably the twentieth time today, she tried to pop that mental bubble, and the notion of wanting anything along with it. 

It really was strange phrasing, wasn’t it? What you’re called. Did that mean Winter knew about fae? (Unlikely.) Knew about banshees? (Even more unlikely.) Or was this nothing more than an aimless fishing expedition?

Regan looked at her flatly. “No. If you want me to answer that, then you will need to answer more for me, first. Those questions are not particularly burning, only warming up. Tell me what you just looked at a moment ago.” It appeared to be an empty space by the side of their table, but empty spaces did not cause a shiver to roll down her arms. “And tell me about the onset of your… condition. Was it sudden? Facilitated by something?” She asked, thinking of her own abilities. But then, Jade was different. Lil, who was probably an even closer proxy to Winter, also seemed to have had a long history with whatever condition this was.

-------

She could go back and forth with this woman all day if Regan really wanted to do that, Winter had no qualms about wasting time playing around with her. She was about to say as such until Henry cut into her thoughts. “Maybe you should give her something. If you two keep going like this you’re never going to get any answers. Aren’t answers the whole reason you’re here?” When had Henry become her voice of reason? The medium shot another glance his way, her gaze lingering for a moment before she turned to look at Regan again. She started to tap her finger against the table in front of her, keeping up a steady rhythm while she weighed the options in her mind. “Fine. I’ll give you one.”

If Regan decided to keep up these antics after then she would get nothing else from Winter. She wasn’t about to give away everything and walk away with nothing. Fighting the voice in her head telling herself to keep up the little games, she pressed on. “I was looking at Henry. He’s a ghost who’s attached to me and he’s sitting in the chair between us. And his meddling is the only reason I’m even giving you this information right now.” If she was going to get anything from this woman she knew she was going to have to give more so she sighed and kept on. “He showed up when I did some sort of ritual from my grandmother’s journal and I haven’t been able to get rid of him since. I’m not answering the other question until I get something from you.”

-------

Even the banshees couldn’t stop Regan from being the youngest of four. And the real or imagined victory over Winter in this game of chicken they were playing was sweeter than any answer Winter could actually give her. Regan managed to look self-satisfied without actually smiling, her arms folding over each other as she leaned back slightly in her chair. Now she could settle in (not, she reminded herself, get comfortable). 

“Why’s he attached to you?” she asked, bemused, “Are they like ticks? Clinging on? Do multiple follow you around, or is it just Henry?” Not the most flattering comparison, maybe, but it sounded absurd. It also, she knew, was verifiable now. If Regan could see the same thing, the same Henry sitting between them, that meant that both Regan and Winter were referring to the same phenomenon. Plus, Winter would appreciate the admission of what she was going to try, even if it still did not directly answer her question. 

“I think I’ll look for myself, if that suits you,” Regan said, quickly peering around the bakery to make sure no one else was nearby or paying attention. She trusted that Winter would not scream (though her scream was probably nothing to write home about anyway). The seat between them was certainly empty and her flesh was certainly crawling. She let her eyes fill in with black, beckoning the fís bháis to show her what no one else could see.

Her stomach dropped as a shadowy figure filled the previously-empty space – more because of what it meant about Winter than the actual man. He was far from the first oddity she’d seen. His eyes – stunned and peeking out from a messy mop hair fashioned a few decades before Regan’s time – met hers. He knew she could see him now. Or had just never seen a banshee before. Probably both. He was casually dressed and Regan’s eyes were quickly drawn to the most notable thing about him – his entire left arm was missing, and not just missing, but had the appearance of a fresh accident, grisly and leaving his white shirt sprayed with his own blood. Regan edged out of her seat, she couldn’t help it. The sight didn’t disturb her, but she was a doctor, damn it, and there was someone who looked like his arm had just been torn off. But she smelled no blood and heard no complaints and knew, on some level, it was in the past. Her eyes flickered as she tested herself, making sure that when she looked there with her normal vision, there was once more thing but an empty seat. And of course, it was empty. So why was her heart thudding so loudly? 

Regan’s eyes, blue again, ticked over to Winter, communicating that this was only getting started. As outlandish as this was, she could appreciate the idea of corroboration. “I believe I just gave you something. Now tell me about this Henry’s arms,” she challenged. 

-------

“You know, Regan, if you keep asking for more than you’re willing to give you’re going to end up with nothing else.” She was getting annoyed now, the emotion spurred on by that damned satisfaction the other had gotten from getting what she wanted out of Winter. If she had lost this whole thing and wouldn’t be getting much there was no telling how pissed the medium would be. Her disdain for this woman grew with every new question thrown at her, along with Henry’s noise of objection when he was compared to a parasite. Even if he was in some way, that didn’t mean he liked it. “And I think you’re pissing off my ghost, so knock it off.” 

Her annoyance ebbed slightly when Regan spoke up again, eyes flitting up with curiosity burning through the hazel iris’. What did she mean ‘look for herself’? She had mentioned that she could see the ghosts on occasion, did that mean that Regan was like another friend of hers? Choosing to see what was always right in front of them? 

But no, this was nothing like Felix. As Regan’s eyes turned a deep onyx color, Winter felt herself press back into her seat as if her body was trying to scurry away from the woman in front of her. It was unsettling at best but she still kept as much composure as she could. No need to alert the Ballard’s when the medium was sure she wasn’t in any danger…right? 

Watching the exchange between Regan and Henry gave Winter one tidbit of information though. The doctor cared. As composed as she always was, as weird as her beliefs in odd things could be, it was clear that Regan had a heart underneath it all when she flinched at the sight of Henry’s form. It was understandable, Winter having been terrified of the torn flesh herself, but somehow she knew that Regan held no fear, only concern. 

She almost laughed when the doctor spoke again, humorless as it would have been. “What exactly did you give me? You already told me that you could see them occasionally online, remember? And your eyes told me nothing, only gave me more questions. I still know nothing about you and you’re not getting anything else from me until I do.” Winter was done with letting Regan have control here. It was her turn or she was walking out of that door with all of the information that the other wanted from her.

-------

Nothing? How was that nothing? Anyone ought to be grateful for it. Regan scowled, but she knew when she was up against an immovable wall, and Winter was no longer willing to spend her time doing this unless she got actual, spoken information. The others never imparted knowledge about how to best communicate about the existence of fae and banshees to humans. You weren’t supposed to, usually. And while Regan had made two exceptions with Wynne and Elias, everyone else she told already knew about one or the other. The woman who spoke of her ghost had better not call her insane. 

Regan took another cautious glance around. Still no one in earshot. “You’ve been accommodating. So I will tell you because of that, and because I am generous, not because I have to, or require anything else from you.” She crossed her arms, looking at the empty, Henry-filled space even though she could not see him just now. Back to Winter. “He had better take secrets to the grave. I am a banshee. A bean sí, if you prefer the Irish,” she said, giving the title the slight accent it probably deserved. “I am not sure what that means to you, if anything, but it is the answer to your earlier question. I assume you have others. Now, I am asking you about his arms because I seek corroboration, to know that my observations have been replicated. It may offer an explanation to both of us.”

-------

Her eyes cut to Henry, a warning to the ghost that he needed to keep his mouth shut about anything that was said at this table as if he didn’t already know that. He did. He wasn’t an idiot, but a reminder was always a nice thing. “He can be trusted. He hasn’t spilled any of the secrets we’ve learned yet.” Secrets that were building in her world. Winter briefly wondered if she could use any of this for her gain, a fleeting thought but something to think about in the future. She wasn’t always a malicious person but the power secrets gave was always enticing, at least for a little bit. At least until she came to her senses and allowed the idea to die in the back of her mind. Because secrets could also get a person killed.

Banshee. She had expected it in some way but it was still so gratifying to hear it out loud. Winter was no expert on fae but being friends with a Warden had its benefits and the internet could be a beautiful thing, especially the deeper a person went. Her eyes scanned the doctor as if her true form would reveal itself now that the truth was out but, as expected, nothing had changed. She was still Regan. “Now I definitely know to watch my words around you.” 

Corroboration made sense. She couldn’t blame the doctor for wanting hard proof that Winter could actually see the ghost sitting between them and now that she had the main question she wanted answered out of the way she was feeling much more generous with her answers. “His left arm was ripped off during a work accident. You see, he worked in a factory in the seventies, one located in New Jersey, and one day his arm got caught in the machinery. He bled out in the factory.” Her gaze drifted back to the ghost who now looked uncomfortable. She remembered having to drag this story out of him, deciding to move on and give Regan something further; Another answer just because she was feeling generous. 

“When I visited this factory for a client on my show, I was trying to call on someone else but the…ritual I used brought Henry to me instead. He’s attached to me now and I don’t know how to break that ritual. So, no, I don’t have a lot of them following me around like him. They’re still annoying as hell when they realize you can see them though.” Winter paused before asking her next question. “What does your true form look like? Is that too personal? I don’t know if that's sacred to you guys or something.”

-------

Regan now had a second person here – if Henry could be called that – that trust would be extended to. She didn't like it. But she also had her flight on the horizon, so if this was the cost of satisfying her curiosity, she wouldn’t have to pay it for very long. She rolled her eyes at the words comment, but it probably was prudent. Most people were poor at doing that. “You and me both.” Regan had to start watching her words more in general. While humans around here couldn’t bind her with a thank you, the banshees back in Saol Eile certainly could. “You don’t sound incredulous. In fact, it seems like you know a thing or two.” She raised a brow, waiting for an answer to fall on her lap, but knowing it wouldn’t.

She tried to conceal her surprise behind her eyes as Winter talked about Henry’s bloodied left arm. The accident. Not conjured out of nowhere – Regan believed it. If necessary, she could probably even see the death herself. “Yes…” she leaned back a little in her seat. “That is what I saw, too.” She wasn’t expecting more from Winter – guarded Winter – but something did fall on her lap after all. “I know nothing of your rituals, but I think I understand the rest. He can’t be separated from you. How long has it been? And you can see him, always?”

She was asking more about banshees, really? Regan’s brow furrowed. At least Winter was not so demanding now. Perhaps she’d been humbled in some small way, or just felt she already got what she came here for.

“Not sacred, but we appreciate our privacy, which I'm sure you can understand.” A quick glance toward the space Henry occupied. “But you did tell me about… so…” Winter didn't have to tell her more about the accident, how Henry became tethered to her. Regan respected reciprocity. It was one of the best things that could be said about fae, even if there was always an attempt to snatch the upper hand. But other banshees were certainly self-conscious about looking more human than some other fae, and she was taught that talking about these things put all banshees – the duty – in danger, it was not only about her. She could be vague. This was surface level only. “We are fae, with the expected ornamentation.” She shrugged, “there isn't much to tell you. No third leg and no tail. My grandmother has wings like a wasp, orange and sleek.” The only things on this earth she was proud of, Regan thought bitterly. Then for no reason at all, that precipitated a question. Unrelated. “Do you dislike Henry? Resent him?”

-------

That was the thing about being a nosy busybody; Winter was bound to know a thing or two about everything. She stuck her nose in everything she could like a bloodhound, sniffing out answers to all of her own questions until she could understand enough to let the subject go. Regan didn’t need to know that about her if she hadn’t already guessed the medium’s nature so she just shrugged a shoulder at the question that sounded like a statement. Besides, if she told her anything about how she knew of fae that might put Parker in some kind of danger. She wasn’t about to do that. 

A breath of amusement threatened to escape but she held it in, not wanting Regan to question what she found so funny. ‘I know nothing of your rituals.’ Neither did she. They were supposed to be stupid words that meant nothing but they opened a world that had been hidden from Winter in the past, a world that she was trying to pretend she was a part of. But she still knew nothing as far as she was concerned. “It’s been almost a year now.” Another fact that had her biting down feelings of aggravation. A year and she was no closer to finding things out than she had been before. “Yes…most of the time. He’s able to go about twenty feet away so sometimes he can disappear in a crowd or another room.”

She too glanced where Regan’s gaze had wondered, seeing Henry tilting his head as he studied the banshee. “Actually, I have my own television show that tells the world that I can see ghosts. Or I used to. We’re on a hiatus now.” She wondered if Regan would hold that against her, feeling uncomfortable in sharing more information with her because of it. Her interest peaked again so Winter hoped not. “What about you? What ornamentation do you have?” She’d seen a spriggan before, something that was ingrained in her mind, but never a banshee. The wings sounded intriguing but it wasn’t like she could ask Regan to show her in the middle of the Bread Cemetery so she was stuck with a description. At least she got to see the eyes.

The next question took her by surprise though it shouldn’t have. When she thought about it, Winter wasn’t always the nicest when she spoke of the ghost who was now grinning like a Cheshire cat as he looked back at her. She could lie, say what was expected, but this was a fae after all and she wasn’t really sure if she was bound at the moment or not. They had struck a deal. Clearly uncomfortable, she sighed before she answered. “No, I don’t hate him or resent him. He’s…” She glanced at him again, hating the way he was eating this up. “He’s actually been very useful to have around.” Was she going to admit that she cared about him? Never. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “Why do you ask that?”

-------

A year seemed a long time to have an uninvited shadow, and if Regan didn’t know any better, that way Winter tensed her jaw might have indicated she agreed. But maybe she was reading into it too much. Winter was more skilled than most humans at hiding her intentions and feelings, but she was given to perspicacity and that could be a strength and vulnerability in equal measures. Hearing that she had a television show made sense of some of it. She was the smiling news anchor who reached for the bourbon as soon as the camera was off, the preening reality star trying to suppress their past from being dredged up on air, the “it girl” with the hawkish publicist.

If this had been enough to force her show into a hiatus, there was something Regan was not being told or did not grasp. “A hiatus? Why? You can still see… them.” She wouldn’t call them ghosts out loud. “So what demands the break?” It was interesting she spoke so freely of what she could do, but then again, there was a rather large fringe of people who believed in what was being purported, wasn’t there? Where was the line for Winter? She would speak of ghosts in front of the camera, but what else? No, the vague descriptor of ornamentation would stay right where it was. “Things that I don’t tell people about,” Regan said, hopefully killing the matter. Winter could use her imagination for what a banshee looked like. It would probably be more dramatic than the real thing.

Regan had asked if Winter disliked Henry. She said she didn’t hate him. It was a subtle difference but one that caught her attention. “It’s a lot of time together, is all. For you, mostly; not him. One mistake and your life has changed so drastically. It would be easy to blame him, but you don’t.” The way she’d looked at him was interesting, though, as if watching for a reaction or judgement. Regan looked there, too, but once again she could see only an empty space, and she would not give Winter the satisfaction of seeing Regan’s eyes go black a second time. “I have one more question, then I suppose I should buy something from the Ballards in appreciation for the use of their space.” Not a bagel. “Why do you call them… what you do? Why not something else?”

-------

The next question was the one that she had been dreading since walking through the door. It wasn’t something she felt like she could answer, not with both her and her mother’s reputation in the industry on the line. They’d done such a good job of hiding their lack of ‘the sight’ over the years that Winter was certain that the only people who knew for sure about their lies was her dad and certain industry execs that had signed confidentiality contracts. No, it wasn’t a lie for her anymore, but that wouldn’t matter if it got out that she had been defrauding half of America and some of Europe for three years. She wouldn’t even think of what would happen to her mother. 

But again, she had no clue what she could refuse anymore now that the fae confirmation had been made. It didn’t mean she couldn’t try to answer in a truthful manner without revealing too much. “The night Henry showed up wasn’t the best on set and the crew got worried. We’re on hiatus because they’re worried about me when they shouldn’t be because I’m perfectly fine as anyone could see.” Except now she kept staring at things that weren’t there for other people, Winter worrying more than the crew members of her show. Maybe it was another reason Wicked’s Rest was starting to feel more like home because most around here didn’t look at her like something was wrong.

Well, that was a depressing thought.

So, it was personal after all, or Regan thought that she couldn’t be trusted anymore. Either way, she knew that she wouldn’t be getting that answer anytime soon. There was a soft roll of her eyes to accompany the smirk forming but she wouldn’t press the issue. She would let it go even with how fascinating it all sounded. “Fine, I’ll ask something else then. If you can see them, why are you suddenly so interested in ghosts? I would think you’d know more about them than me.”

The smirk started to fall as Regan spoke again, Henry’s eyes cutting between the two women as if he’d just realized the weight his presence carried for Winter. “I don’t see it that way.” Maybe she had at first. Maybe she’d blamed him for the show going on hiatus and the frustration of being deemed a little nuts by most of her peers in that world but now she almost wanted to thank him for it. It had opened her eyes to things she’d been blinded to, not just ghosts but to the manipulations of her own parents as well. In a lot of ways he had even given the medium her best friend back. How could she resent him for that? 

Raising an eyebrow at Regan’s final question, she glanced back at Henry. He looked confused as well and Winter had to wonder whether she was missing something or not. “Why do I call them ghosts? Isn’t that what everyone calls them?” Specters, spirits, phantoms, there were many names for it all but ghosts had stuck for most people. Even Lil used the term. “What do you think they should be called?”

-------

“Right, perfectly fine, aren’t you?” If Regan were someone who smiled, she just about would. The first time they had met, Winter was the opposite of fine. But then, so was she. Glass houses, bones, something something. She let her smugness settle, and sink. “I am sorry that happened. It sounds like a big adjustment, regardless of the cause.” Did this mean that Winter was acting differently now than she used to? What was concerning the crew? She doubted Winter was willing to elaborate more, so the answer to that one was probably going to be relegated to the unknown. It was a favor returned; a dropped subject for a dropped subject.

“They kept coming up in conversation, and… from people I know.” She thought of the way Ray was no longer Ray, right before her eyes. “I was curious why intelligent humans kept talking about them as if they were real, and figured there was at least something they were seeing, even if we may not share terminology. It’s nothing more complex than that.”

Speaking of. “Well, it’s not a very scientifically respected term, is it?” She cut in, “and I know what you’re about to say; there is no need.” Banshees were not subject to the same scrutiny, in her mind. It had taken about a year for that particular wall to crumble. “My grandmother used the term macallaí, but she spoke of them infrequently. They were rare, where I lived before coming here.” And where she would soon live again. “We’re quite concerned with ourselves, you see. Why should I need to know about anything else? Not cadaveric torpor, or phenomena such as Henry, or even all that much about individuals who would like to murder us.” It balanced on a knife’s edge of a lie; even Regan couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic, if this was frustration. Why else would she have told Winter, even given her that little kernel of information about Saol Eile?

This was why she had to return there. Her senses, her judgement, were rolling over. Regan rose from her seat, shooting a glance toward the register. Best to buy something; she was not ungrateful for the use of space. “I think you know enough.” She hesitated, measuring the truth. “It was acceptable enough, engaging you in conversation. I appreciate what you’ve told me. Oh, and, um… I’d suggest avoiding purchasing the bagels here. They harass.”

-------

She tilted her head at the words, her smile turning thin but still remaining even as her gaze hardened. What was Regan getting at? She’d said she was fine and that meant that she was fine. Winter wasn’t sure why the banshee was so smug at that moment and again she had to wonder if she was missing something. But she wouldn’t push the issue, the girl breezing past the smug look crossing over the other since she didn’t really want to talk about a lot of the problems she possessed nowadays. Hell, she hadn’t even told Mack most of them. The apology was a nice surprise though, the medium nodding as if she were satisfied now that she had gotten one no matter if Regan had owed it or not (she had not). “If anything, I’m adaptable. Always have been.” 

 Curiosity. She could definitely relate to that. Probably more than most. Winter always had a question for somebody even before she came to Wicked’s Rest. For some reason she’d always wanted to understand how everything worked no matter how scary the topic may have been. She still did. So, Regan’s simple explanation was enough for her and it seemed yet another thing that the two could have in common. In another life, they might have even done well as friends. 

Brows knitted together as she continued to listen to Regan go off into some sort of…tangent wasn’t the right word, was it? Or maybe it was. All she knew was something was bothering the doctor no matter how much she tried to hide it and if she had cared more she would have pushed the subject. Still, she spoke up, making an offhand comment that she didn’t expect would mean much. “I know I would have hated that, being so secluded. Especially if somebody was out to murder me. I need the information, the details…the why of it all.” Which was something she still didn’t understand. She knew why hunters were trained to get rid of those who were murdering humans but when someone was just trying to get by without harming others what was the point?

She shouldn’t have been surprised when Regan decided this was over, and she mostly wasn’t. The abrupt movement of the medical examiner standing didn’t startle her but the ending of the conversation did. Winter felt like she hadn’t gotten much out of the other, even if the girl revealed a secret she probably didn’t tell many people, and that didn’t sit right with her. She wanted to know more. It was the finality to Regan’s tone that stopped her ‘but’ from slipping through her lips, not to mention the genuine thrill that came with the small compliment. Or at least that’s how she chose to take it. “It was nice talking to you too, Regan.” She smirked, looking up through her lashes and ignoring the bagel comment. What the hell could a bagel do anyway?

[howlingaround]

Transtemporal Theory 101

Time Travel Stuff. NOT related to Doctor Who per se, but it could be applied to any time travel fiction

As far as I can tell, there really are only two main* types of temporal paradox

*(Not counting Time Stop and Time Reversal and such)

CHAPTER 1 - the Destructive Type Aka the Grandfather Paradox (not the one with the axe)

You have a time machine. You decide to test it out. Suddenly a future version of the time machine appears and falls on your current time machine, with a very embarrassed future version of you stepping out of it.

This is a logical contradiction, because if your time machine is broken, you cant go travel back in time and smash the time machine of your past self into bits. But if isnt broken, you could go back and time and become the future version of you, accidently landing your time machine on a past version of the time machine. And so on and forth…

Here are some versions of different works of fiction attempting to resolve the paradox:

The future version of you and their time machine vanish from existence, but your time machine stays broken (which implies that causality function over multiple timelines)

The future version of you stays around and cant return to their respective timeline, which means you will have share a bed, but doesnt actually resolve the logical contradiction

You and your future version of you have to fix your broken time machine and "close the loop", or the secret third option (see Chapter 3)

The universe explodes

The universe implodes

And many more, depending on which story the author wants to tell (time ghosts go boooo).

CHAPTER 2 - the Constructive Type Aka the Bootstraps Paradox (or common time loop)

You dont have a time machine. Suddenly a time machine appears in front of you, with a very excited future version of you stepping out. You want to try it for yourself and borrow the time machine, going back in time. You step out of the machine and see yourself, from one minute in the past. However, the selfish past version of you decides to steal your time machine and disappears in the past. You no longer have a time machine.

The paradox of a time loop comes in many flavours:

Where did the time machine originally come from? From the perspective of the machine it has existed forever and will exist for all eternity, as the loop doesnt have a starting point or an end point (with Eternity being "Infinity in Both Directions").

What colour is the time machine? If it has no beginning and no end, there is no point of origin determing what the machine looks like, or what material it is made of. Essentially new matter has been introduced to the universe.

Is the time machine indestrucible? Does it not wear down over (infinite) time? What about entropy?

Its not about the matter anyway, because if a digital blueprint of a time machine arrives to you in an email, there is still the paradox, as the information about building a time machine capable of sending emails has no point of origin.

Here are some examples of how to resolve the paradox in a fictional setting:

The time machine is a fourth dimensional object, and as such, the common rules of physics do not apply.

The method of time travel somehow balances out the errors using multiple timelines.

The loop collapses to an infintely short length and simply disappears, which means it never happened at all from your perspective.

Time ghosts.

And Chapter 3, of course.

CHAPTER 3 - Combining both Types

The following is complete nonsense, but I always liked it, so Im gonna write a damn post about it.

The idea being that the two types of paradoxa cancel each other out.

If Type 1 is a hole in the fabric of reality, then Type 2 could be a patchwork sewing the fabric together again (this metaphor is almost neat prose, but hardly suitable for a justification of temporal theory).

The clever reader will already have figured out where I am heading, but lets go through the hypothetical scenario one last time.

You have a time machine. You have build it yourself. Suddenly a future version of the time machine appears, destroying your version of the time machine. An excited and embarrassed version of you steps out of the new time machine, explaining how the test flight was a success, as well as a failure (for you). You rightfully get upset, but less about your time machine being destroyed and more about the whole paradox Type 1 situation you and your future self have found temselves in.

The only way to resolve the paradox is another paradox - in this case, a time loop. Your future version lets you take their time machine and you go back in time and crash into your past versions time machine. You explain that this was neccessary (although, when you think about it, it seems really silly) and the past version of you agrees to go back in time, using your time machine, and smash the time machine of their relative past version.

And alls well that ends swell.

Except it clearly isnt.

This is just the Type 1 paradox changed into a Type 2 paradox. This doesnt resolve anything at all, it just changes one problem into another.

But it still answers at least some of the questions:

There is no logical contradiction, if you allow thinking about causality acting upon multiple timelines, even those that at one point existed and later didnt.

Where did the time machine come from? You built it. It has an origin. There is a reason for the machine being blue and not red. The machine is smashed into pieces, yes, but the looped version of your time machine acts as a temporal duplicate, and as such, at least had a point of origin - in the first iteration of the timeline.

What happens to the duplicate time machine? No idea. As it is stuck in an eternal time loop its still an Type 2 paradox, but in less flavours.

As long as time travel is possible in a fictional framework, there are always going to be paradoxa and broken laws of nature. The very act of time travel breaks the universe, after all. But its still fun to think about the rules and the relationship between different kinds of paradox.

Maybe theres something i missed? Maybe a Type 2 can be resolved by a Type 1 if you get really clever about it. Maybe theres a Type 3 paradox that i havent figured out yet? Maybe its time ghosts.

[catcrazies-midnight]

ghosts momence

[kawaiijohn]

Rewind, Rinse, Repeat Chapter 1

For Invisobang Minibang 2021

Ao3 Link

Chapters: 3 finished, 12 total Rating: T+ Warnings: Major and Minor Character Death- all temporary, Implied Child Abuse/Neglect, Strong Language, Mild Body Horror, Mild Injury. Other warnings listed by chapter Characters: Clockwork, Danny Fenton, Pariah Dark, Levi | Leviathan (OC), Mal (OC), Observants, Mentions of other characters Ships: Lost Time, Dark Ages, CW & OC child, CW & Levi | Leviathan (OC) Genre/Tropes: Human AU, Magic AU, Found Family, Character Origin, Hurt/Comfort, Original Magic System and Lore Additional Tags: Existentialism & Existential Angst, Memory Loss & Amnesia, Corruption, Clockwork Centric, They/Them Pronouns for Clockwork, The Fenton's A+ Parenting, Obersvant Bashing

Summary

“Clockwork can I ask you something? How did you become a ghost?”

The tale surrounding the mystery of Clockwork's existence; a world where magic is common and ghosts are not. A world where one lonely, average mage tries with all their might to save what means most to them. A world where things need to be remade into something better.

Shout out to my betas @bibliophilea and @moonlights-shadow-warrior for keeping me sane, @13thdoodle for letting me use their OC, Levi, @dailudannos and @sailor-toni for providing art for later chapters, and all the folks over at @invisobang for being awesome!!!!

Chapter One below the Cut. The rest is available on my Ao3 account because tumblr linking/posting is hella broken.

Chapter 1: An Inquiry

“Hey, Clockwork? Can I ask you something?”

Clockwork looks over from the mirror they were watching intently.  “You already have, Daniel,” they reply, offering the other a smirk.

“Oh, ha ha.  You've never said that to me before.”  The reply is filled to the brim with sarcasm, as per usual.  Danny rolls his eyes, but a small smile gracing his lips betrays the fact he isn't annoyed in the least.  “Seriously, though.  It’s something that's been on my mind like... every day for the last two weeks!!"  He raises his hands towards the sky, flopping back in the air dramatically.  "But... it's kinda, y'know.  Personal-”  Danny trails off, slightly embarrassed.

Of course.  Clockwork finds themself smiling fondly- Danny thought he’d said something he shouldn't have- an inquiry that could make his guardian upset (as if it's even possible to upset Clockwork like that).  A question is a question, and this is a worrying habit of his that the Time Master is trying to help break, even if it's still somewhat endearing to them.

“I uh, I mean... it’s personal about- to you, not to me. That’s what I meant!!” Danny continued.

Clockwork stares at him, unblinking.  An idea (or thousands) of what he may ask flashes through their mind’s eye.  With a single, calming pulse to their Core, Clockwork pushes the involuntary slideshow of timelines aside as if they're no more than curtains.  They need to focus on the window in front of them; the here and now, not the temporal drapery.

It's a habit they are trying to overcome for Daniel’s sake.  To ensure their ward's growth, they need to stop peering into the near future as often- not discourage his asking of questions.  After all, what is a child if not but a well of endless curiosity?  Cutting Danny off is also sure to disallow the development of any trust or patience Clockwork needs to build within their young ward.  They wouldn’t receive either of those things if they assume what he wanted to ask.

It's common decency to not assume, lest it ‘make an ass out of you and me’, according to Daniel.

It is going to be a tough habit to break, but by the (other) Ancients, they're trying their best.  Their ward deserves the infinitesimal choices all other children have when asking things of their guardians, so even if they do glimpse to the future, they will not mention it to him.  Clockwork refuses and will continue to refuse to take their ward’s agency away; to not have a choice in things is a fate worse than fading.

The boy has been quiet, stuck deep within his own thoughts even after an impressive five minutes and thirty-seven and a half seconds of silence (uncharacteristic of the boy, Clockwork notes).

Now that just won't do- he must have lost his train of thought.  Clockwork gestures at the ghost boy, motioning for him to continue.  It works- Danny adverting his eyes and clearing his throat, "Well, it’s just like- you know so much about me- like, how I died, the whole Ghost Zone Prince business, that entire disaster doomed timeline with Dan... I just keep thinking- no- realizing, that I barely know anything about you!!”  He throws his arms up in thinly veiled frustration.

Clockwork smirks. “You had another question, did you not?”  They place a hand along the edge of the closest Temporal Mirror, turning to face the mirror- still halfway facing Danny.  They can see his inner debate clearly written on the boy's face- the mirror reflecting as if it were an ordinary object (for now).  They turn towards it fully and watch Daniel's reaction from behind them, acting as if they aren't finding joy in their ward's hesitation.  It's always adorable when he tries not to offend Clockwork. "I may be able to work with time, but that doesn't mean I wish to float here waiting for an answer all day."

Danny blinks a few times, rolling his eyes again in response.  Clockwork is certain that if they weren’t secured to his skull by human musculature they’d fall out and roll away.  “Well, I’m sorry for trying not to be rude and like, asking outright... but since it’s you I have to always be super direct!!  Jeeze you’re frustrating sometimes!”  He floats towards his mentor, crossing his arms.

Danny often forgets Clockwork isn't easily upset over trivial things such as questions.  Most questions are about things they already know the answers to, anyways.  And the few things that they don’t know when asked, they figure out soon after.  Such is the duty of the Master of Time- to be a step ahead of everyone and everything else always.  Besides, in most timelines (68.3% of them, to round up) the question Daniel wishes to ask is along the lines of ‘What was your past like?’ Another small fraction (a little under 20%) the question is ‘How did you get so strong?’ .  And even in the remaining timelines, the question would be along the lines of ‘How do your time powers work?’

They are each things Clockwork expects Daniel to ask them at some point or other, as it were.  There isn’t really anything Daniel can ask that could be too shockin-

“Clockwork, I was wondering… how exactly did you become a ghost?”

They... did not see that coming… in any of the timelines they’d glimpsed.  Clockwork stills for only a fraction of a moment, but it’s long enough for Danny to flinch, feeling as if he’s crossed a line.  They hear more than see Daniel shrinking in on himself as they look off into nothing, buried memories waking slowly in their mind.

Clockwork is brought from their introspection by a mumbled curse.  “Shit!  I mean... uh crap??"   They just stare at Danny as they are brought back to the present.  "Never mind just... sorry for asking...  Oh man!  Did I offend you somehow?  Ancients dammit, this is what I was worried about!!”  They watch him curiously, soft whirring coming from their ward's anxious core.  “We can just forget about it if-”  Daniel’s hands wring together nervously, shoulders tense with worry and face full of guilt.

Right- facial expressions are also important for a young ghost's emotional communication and development.  Sometimes the Time Master wonders if their isolation in Long Now affected their social behavior (it did).  Their face is carefully blank most times, so they set to fix it- they offer a small grin, hand coming to rest on Daniel’s shoulder.  “It is more than fine, Daniel.  You asked if you could ask a question- which is in fact, two questions, I should note- but I gave you consent to ask it of me.”  They squeeze his shoulder to placate the worry.

“It’s about time I told you this story, as it were.  I just did not foresee it being told at this very moment."  Clockwork floats slowly, turning away from their Mirrors.  "Come along- it’s best we sit for this.  I’ll have one of your friends bring us some tea.”

Danny floats after his mentor, looking around the room the two normally use to study history of the Realms.  “So, uh… is it a long story or...?”

“Oh, it is very long, indeed.”  They fly through an ornate door and over to their favored 'chair'- a stack of comfortable cushions in violets and blues, both impossibly cool and warm at the same time.  They recall Daniel discovering the room, eyes full of wonder and posture relaxed.  Clockwork chuckles- the first time their boy had wandered in here he'd decided to take a running dive into the pile, jumping up in surprise when it was cold as ice, yet warm as fresh laundry.  The expression on their ward’s face is one of their fondest memories; a happy moment amongst all the tedium of watching time.

“It may take a while to tell this tale proper. But, it is a story that ought to be told.”  Daniel makes himself comfortable on his chair of choice- an unholy combination of 'borrowed' pillows and what appears to be a more modern gaming chair- complete with an obnoxiously bright green-black color scheme.  Clockwork has to hide another smile as Danny wiggles himself deep into the pile.  “So, Daniel- what do you know of the phrase ‘Totems of Power’?”

“I thought I was getting a story, not a pop quiz!  Unfair!!”  His disdain for schooling makes Clockwork laugh fondly before the boy continues.  “But they’re like… hmm how do I explain this?  Well, there’s the universe right?  Like every timeline and every result of every timeline all at the same time kind of ties into the main universe thingy- but there's still a main timeline, and that's kinda like... Main Street, and the other possible timelines are uh... like side streets with dead ends?  But there's other forces that like, aren't time and… uhhh...”

He hums, crossing his arms deep in thought.  Clockwork takes the time to purr-sing-hum at one of the many blobs floating in and out of their lair; Daniel had asked them to keep some around as pets and the Time Master was happy to oblige.  They were unable to deny something so beneficial to the young Prince, after all.  The one deemed ‘Mr. Pants’ by one of Daniel’s friends answers their call.  Clockwork buzzes to it a quiet request- ‘bring Daniel's favorite tea and mugs for two, please.’  The little thing chirrups and zips off through the walls- eager to serve the Lair’s owner and be (potentially) rewarded with pats (from Daniel).

The Time Master brings their undivided attention back toward a grumbling ghost boy, lost in thought.  “Daniel if you need to ask for help I’m glad to-”

Danny snaps his fingers, coming to a realization before his mentor can finish.  “I got it!!  The best way to explain it is ‘The Universe needs to run smoothly, so there’s certain forces- like Time or Space- that are upheld by a powerful entity, like a person or like… the avatar of that concept?  Yeah, something like that, but they ensure the aspect they represent is properly cared for so the universe doesn’t completely like, die.’”  Danny nods to himself.  "It's why you stepped in to stop Dan, to make sure the world didn't end like that."

“That is correct- it is my job to ensure this universe of ghosts and reality doesn't crumble prematurely.  Now, do you have a recollection of any other Totems you may have encountered?”

“Well, yeah!  We call them ‘Ancients’, though- so like… Pandora is the one for war and history, and Nocturn is for like… dreams?  The Void or something, maybe?  And then there’s old man Pariah who isn’t one, but he said there’s a Leadership Ancient somewhere, and then-”  Danny pauses, blinking at Clockwork in realization.  “Wait, you asked that for a reason, didn’t you?”

“That I did.  Becoming the Totem, or Ancient of Time is where this story starts.”  Clockwork hums, seeing Mr. Pants fly back towards the two- nearly spilling scalding tea all over the ground.  “Now then.  We have drinks.  We are sitting comfortably.  I believe it’s time I spin my tale for you.”  They take a sip, closing their eyes in bliss.

They open them once more and see Daniel sitting, eyes full of stars and eager- Eager to hear, eager to fire off a question a minute.  It makes a chuckle bubble up in their throat, to see their favorite person so excited to learn.

“Once upon a time, there was a human; average in most ways, a simple person living a simple life.  They would get up in the morning, perform their daily tasks, and go to sleep at night.  Day in, and day out- a boring, but fulfilling existence.

“However, where this story differs from what we recognize as reality, is that in this realm, humans who could control magic were the norm.  Think as if it were like one of those fantasy games you and Tucker play together- mages, healers… all of those and more were commonplace when I was alive.  Yes, humans can wield magic now, but it is nowhere near as frequent as they could in our tale.”

They pause, seeing that Danny was about to interrupt.  “Wait wait- this realm?  Like- this is a completely different reality?? And people can wield magic now???  Are you messing with me?  Like… I thought it was all just-”  The boy stops, his train of thought drifting off the tracks as it tends to now and then.

“Yes, first, this is a completely different realm from either the Mortal Plane or the Ghost Zone.  Second, Daniel- tell me... have you not noticed the magic of those you have encountered?  Blood blossoms… a reality warping gauntlet?  The existence that is ‘Freakshow’ in general should be a red flag, seeing as his talents were… strangely non-ghostly in origin.  Not to mention objects such as the Infi-map...”

“Man, I wish I could forget about Freakshow… who mind controls ghosts???  He was the worst!” Their young ward crossed his arms and grumbles.

“If you’re done sulking about your past misadventures and former foes, I was in the middle of telling a story, if I recall correctly.  One you asked I tell you…”  Clockwork simply stares, unblinking as steam wafts from their slowly cooling tea.

All is well, they knew Danny would only take approximately 4.85 seconds to snap his attention back to their story.  Clockwork sips their tea, waiting.

Danny snaps out of his thoughts only a millisecond off of Clockwork's prediction. “Sorry... it’s just super weird to think that magic actually… still exists?  Like ghosts are real and all but magic being a thing feels a bit far fetched, don’t ya think?”  He pouts, brow furrowed.

The Master of Time finally closes their eyes, removing the hood from their head.  White hair floats gracefully behind them, settling just past their shoulders.   Clockwork opens their eyes again- a serious, yet warm expression directed at their ward.  “Magic is simply defined as reality altering acts using both energy and the willpower of a sentient being, if that helps.”  Another sip.  Mr. Pants made a wonderful batch of tea, as always.  They smile wider when they notice Danny’s expression- the boy has never seen them without a hood, and they know doing this will (in 99.78% of all possible timelines) convince the boy to take what they said seriously.   ”Just as ghosts can be defined as ‘ectoplasm given form and consciousness’, forces beyond humanity and the physical realm can be explained with scientific terminology if you know where to look.”

“So like... what all did magic have to do with this ‘simple human’ version of you?  Did you ever have the power to shoot lightning??  Could I shoot lightning if I tried?  Like were you some sorta time wizard?  Is that why you’re all… timey-wimey and powerful?”  Danny wiggles his fingers with a look of confusion on his face.

Clockwork always finds their Core warming when their boy acts his age.  He's abnormally prone to shoulder the destiny of the world on himself and often forgets he's just a kid.  “You could continue asking questions one at a time, or you could allow me to tell my story.  The choice is yours, Daniel.”  They smirk, watching as Danny purses his lips, his steady flow of questions stopping short.  The best answer.  “Perfect- all is as I thought it would be.”

They close their eyes and reminisce as they continue.  “Now- to answer your last question… Yes.  You could say magic is how I came to be the Master of Time in both the Infinite Realms and the mortal plane, but there is much more to the story than that.  Other players, situations, and pure circumstances.  The universe in its infinite chances and possibilities brought myself, as well as many others to the situations they face here and now.”  Clockwork pauses, taking the moment to stare straight through Danny’s soul.  “Even yourself.”

The boy shudders, an appropriate response.  “Wait... me?  Did you… do something in the past to like… a past version of someone we know??  Can that even happen???”  Danny is already enraptured by the story, eyes twinkling as his mentor opens up about themself.  The boy is obviously thinking about everything that has happened, everything that could possibly have happened, and everything that Clockwork could possibly drop on him.

They feel Daniel cautiously tug on loose strands of time to see if he could possibly scope out what is about to be said, quickly failing to do much else beside give himself a small headache.  “Time stuff is still really confusing, Clockwork…”

“You could say that.  You could even say that trying to mess with time in the inner sanctum of Long Now is the most confusing ‘time stuff’ one could do if they were not myself.”  They grin- a Temporal Mirror appearing behind them with a thought.

“What’s the mirror for?”  Danny catches sight of himself and looks away, embarrassed that he’s been literally glowing with power after trying to do something so simple with his developing powers.  The glow is something he’s been working on suppressing recently.  After all, it would be a shame if other ghosts could see the boy powering up by aura alone.

The Master of Time smirks, bringing tea to their lips again.  “I thought it would be fun to attempt braiding my hair and doing my makeup for once.  It has been an awfully long time since I’ve done either.”

They stare at Danny who just bursts into laughter.  “Did you just use sarcasm???  Man, I didn’t know you could lighten up, Clockwork!”  The boy laughs harder, sinking deeper into his nest of pillows.  After a few minutes he was finally wiping tears from his eyes.  “But no.  Seriously… what’s the mirror for??”

“Why, what they are always for, Daniel- seeing through time and space.”  Clockwork waves their hand.  The mirrors show an image of a human with dark hair and burgundy eyes.  They have a large, hooked nose and medium brown skin- and Danny finds himself having a hard time guessing their gender.  The human sits at a desk, paused in time with the delicate gears of a clock sprawled along the desk surface, tools in hand.

Behind Clockwork, the image changes, showing the human living through an average day- images play in small spurts, never showing the whole story.  “Do you understand what’s being seen?”  The young boy nods, grabbing Mr. Pants out of the air as the blob drifts between the two.  Good, he will probably need the companionship, especially towards the end.

This isn’t the easiest story to tell, nor is it easy to listen to, but with a sip of their tea, Clockwork continues.

[five-rivers]

Pennywort and Swallowtails

For @phantomphangphucker :)

Prompt:  Flynn, due to being Phantom’s aka the Ghost King’s family and part of the Zone’s society, receives a Prince title and is now getting crowned.

.

Flynn couldn’t put his finger on exactly why, but the Ghost Zone seemed different lately.  There was something in the atmosphere, almost.  It felt… lighter, maybe?  

He didn’t like it.  

After all these years in the Ghost Zone, he’d come to regard any change from the norm with suspicion.  The tendency had saved his life multiple times.  Usually, such changes were caused by a nearby and powerful ghost.  Or, on rare and terrifying occasions, a not so nearby and obscenely powerful ghost.

For example, that Pariah Dark guy he’d heard about from some of the ghosts he traded with.  Flynn sure was glad someone else had taken care of him.  Not that Flynn was much good in a fight against any ghost more powerful than that annoying one in overalls that showed up whenever Flynn so much as thought of making anything even vaguely box-shaped.

Which wasn’t that often.  Flynn had never really nailed the whole carpentry thing. Ha.  He’d never been super great at the whole square thing either. Because he wasn’t one.  Skipped school and everything.  The whole high school experience.  Ha.  

Sometimes he really cracked himself up, but only in the most depressing of ways.  

He sighed, heavily.  Maybe he should think about spending more time in his hideaway cave, under his cottage (aka his shack, it was a shack, who was he kidding).  Stock up on supplies.  Get ready to weather a storm.  Literal or metaphorical.  

But hiding out in the cave was so boring.  There wasn’t anything to do down there. Except try to design better grass shoes and to patch his increasingly ragged clothing with limited amounts of thread. He preferred being outside greatly. Even if it was just on his little floating island, messing around in his little garden, growing potatoes and blood blossoms, digging for those crystals ghosts seemed to fear and desire in equal measure.

Flynn was peripherally aware that he was supplying the ghosts he traded with the equivalent of ghost uranium (one of the few human-world things he’d picked up was a middle school science textbook), but…

Yeah.  Guy had to eat, and the Ghost Zone didn’t exactly have cops running all over the place, or the United Nations, or… yeah.  Honestly, the Ghost Zone didn’t have much of anything, at least not in these parts.  It was pretty empty around here.  

Just like Flynn’s heart.  

Ha.  

Yeah.  That was a good one.  

Eh.  Life wasn’t so bad.  He was sort-of-kind-of friends with half a dozen undead monsters of questionable morality, had his own house, most of his teeth, and copious free time.  Plus, it had been a while since the ‘rocks from nowhere’ decided to trash his roof.  Which was bad for the sport he had invented (Chucking Rocks into the Misty Void), but good for roof integrity.  And not having a concussion.  Or losing any more teeth.  

But, back to his original topic.  

Flynn glared absently at the Zone at large. Okay, yeah, something was going on. Was it Flynn’s problem? Maybe.  Was it directly Flynn’s problem?  No.  The day was otherwise clear and ‘normal’ (the term being used loosely in the Ghost Zone), so he might as well go about his day—

The sky tore open in front of him.  

Flynn recognized that.  Before he knew what he was doing, he threw himself away from the portal. The last time he’d stepped through one of those—

The thought crossed his mind that this portal might lead back to Earth, back home, back to Mom.  But he knew from his ghostly friends how unlikely it was that the portal would put him anywhere near his home physically, not to mention temporally. It might not even lead back to Earth for that matter.  

He took cover behind a boulder, cursing his blasé dismissal of potential danger.  Who knew what could come out of a portal?  At least according to the ghosts he talked to.  Hopefully, nothing came out that he couldn’t beat into submission with his ectoranium staff.  

This was going to suck so much.  

The portal disgorged three floating eyeball ghosts in voluminous robes.

(One of the other books Flynn had gotten his hands on was a dictionary.  Which he had read.  Twice. Living on a tiny floating island was boring when it wasn’t terrifying.)

Ah, heck.  He could take one ghost.  Three? Yeah.  Not a chance.  

Maybe they’d leave?  They couldn’t know for sure he was here.  With how unpredictable portals were, and all.

“Flynn Walker,” intoned the central eyeball ghost with a great deal of gravitas.  

Flynn’s body did something between a cringe and a blanch.  

He was never trusting Globithar the Lapidarist’s tall tales ever again.  He wasn’t going to give him any more discounts for them, either.  No way to control a portal his scarred left butt cheek.  

“Flynn Walker,” repeated the eyeball ghost, now with a touch of annoyance.  

“In accordance with the laws of the Infinite Realms,” said the leftmost ghost, in a higher-pitched voice, “we call you to take up your position in the Court of the King of All Ghosts as a member of his family.”

Ah, that ectocontamination Aunt Maddie had sometimes talked about had finally caught up with him, and he was hallucinating something fierce. Either that, or these ghosts thought unbelievable jokes were good bait.  They weren’t.  Flynn would know.  He’d made many unbelievable jokes.  They’d never attracted anything but groans.  

Ha.  

“This is ridiculous,” hissed the third ghost.  “He isn’t even a real ghost.”

“He’s more ghostly than Phantom’s sister,” said the second.  

“We don’t have any choice about her, though.  Can’t we simply… not tell Phantom about this Flynn? Especially if this cousin of his is so craven as to hide at a moment like this.”

Rude, but accurate.  

“He’ll find out,” said the first eyeball, tiredly. “He always finds out.  Damn Clockwork.”

This was officially too weird for Flynn.  Why were they cursing out clocks?

“Because they’re petty and don’t have anything better to do.”

Flynn may or may not have shrieked like a little girl at the voice behind him.  The uncertainty was mostly because Flynn hadn’t seen or heard a little girl since he was in the vicinity of his cousin, Jazz, which was years ago.  At least a decade.  

But he did scream.  Loudly.  Which he really should know better than to do, living in the Ghost Zone and all.  He brought his staff up defensively, too, though, so his self-preservation skills hadn’t completely shorted out.

“Clockwork!” chorused the eyeball ghosts.  

“Yes, yes,” said the ghost who’d snuck up on Flynn, flicking imaginary dust off his robe as he smoothly, and dizzyingly, shifted between ages.  “I’m sure you’re all very shocked that I’m here, after you just finished complaining about how much I know.”  He examined his fingernails.  “Now, Mr. Walker—”

“Walker?” shrieked one of the eyeballs.  

“Yes, he is related to our illustrious sheriff. As I was saying, I am here to bring you to your cousins, who have risen quite a bit in this world.”

“What.”

“It is, indeed, rather surprising,” said Clockwork. “To those who cannot see the twists and turns of fate.  Or those who are willfully blind to those twists and turns.”  He eyed the eyeballs.  

“What,” repeated Flynn, more forcefully.  

“Clockwork,” growled the lead eyeball.  

“Allow me to explain,” said Clockwork.  “Do you recall your youngest cousin, Daniel?”

“Uh,” said Flynn.  He adjusted his grip on his staff.  “Vaguely?”

“He was crowned King of All Ghosts a few weeks ago. As a member of his family and an active participant in ghost society, you are automatically a member of the court. Assuming you wish to be, of course.”

“You- You’re saying I have family here.”

“Indeed.”

“Like, Aunt Maddie?”

Something odd passed over Clockwork’s face.  “No.  Your cousins. Daniel, specifically.”

“Wait, wait, he was a baby.  Wouldn’t he only be, like, ten or something?”

“Fifteen,” corrected Clockwork.  

“How did he die?”

“You will have to ask him that,” said Clockwork.  He raised an eyebrow.  “If you would like, you can sleep on this and I will return tomorrow.”

Flynn bit his lip.  Hard.  Okay. He wasn’t dreaming.  And- And this ghost didn’t seem to be lying. What would the point of that even be, anyway?  Flynn was nothing.  He didn’t have anything they could possibly gain by lying like this.  

“I’ll go with you,” said Flynn.  

“Excellent,” said Clockwork, clapping his hands.  “Then let us away to the castle.”

.

Well.  That was certainly a castle.  Or a palace? Flynn wasn’t sure of the difference. The ghosts hadn’t lied about that, at least.  

It was a big step up from Flynn’s house.  Which, honestly, more deserved the title of hovel. Or perhaps shack.  

Or even hole, when compared to all this.  Dear god, this place was fancy.  

Flynn hunched his shoulders, feeling out of place even as Clockwork led him deeper into the massive edifice.  

Come on, Flynn, he thought furiously at himself. Some of these people aren’t even wearing skin.  You are not underdressed.  

Clockwork brought him to a normally sized (which was, incidentally, not a given in this place, which contained both huge and tiny doors) door with understated but elegant carvings.  “Here are your rooms,” said the ghost.  “You will find a selection of clothing in your size in the wardrobe, and the bathroom is fully stocked and human safe.”

“Human safe?”

“Human safe.”

That was ominous.  

“There is a bell in the room that will summon a servant should you need one.  I will collect you for dinner in three hours.  Long enough for you to relax, I should hope.”

Or long enough for him to worry himself into pieces and chew on their curtains.  

… There would be curtains, right?  This place had to be fancy enough to rate curtains.  

He opened the door.  

Lots of curtains.  Lovely.

No, really.  It had been so, so long since he’d seen curtains.  He might be crying.  

Oh, gosh, that bed looked so nice and soft.  He wanted to—

Wait, no, he was filthy.  Filthy.  Covered in years’ worth of grime.  He hadn’t had a proper bath since he’d still been living with his mom.  

Pathetic, right?

There was a human-safe bathroom in here somewhere. Beyond the snark, he was looking forward to having a human-safe bath.  He was craving a human-safe bath.  With clean water and soap.  

Could the bathroom also have toothbrushes?  Toothpaste?  Unrestrained luxury.  

The bathroom door was in the same style as the outer door, but the handle was different, lighter.  The inside was tiled and surprisingly modern.  

There was a sink.  

He played with the sink faucet for several long minutes before remembering that he’d come in to take a bath.  

He spent several minutes playing with the bathtub faucet.  

Then he got into the bathtub and experienced a half hour of combined panic (he didn’t really know how baths worked anymore, and the sensations were weird) and nirvana (the sensations were also good).

He had to keep cycling the water.  Because he made it so, so dirty.  He sank into the water, up to his chin.  

When he got out of the water, he decided his hair was a lost cause.  Because it was always a lost cause.  Only, it was even more of a lost cause now, because it was also wet and had been stripped of its usual protective layer of oils.  

There was a variety of toothbrushes and toothpastes available.  He tested them out and discovered that he would probably need the services of a dentist. A good one.  Were there ghost dentists?  There had to be ghost dentists.  They had a lot of teeth.  A lot of teeth.  Sharp, scary, teeth.  

Ugh.  His baby cousin was a ghost.  He’d probably have teeth like a shark.  When he’d last seen him, he’d hardly even had any teeth at all.  Because.  Baby. Little, tiny, baby.  

Who Flynn barely knew.  

Why did he even want Flynn?  Or was it just some weird ghost tradition thing?  

Ghosts were weird.  Anything could be possible.  

He flopped face-first onto the bed.  His bed?  His temporary and maybe permanent bed.  If he was allowed to stay here.  

Oh, gosh.  Clockwork and the eyeballs seemed to know how to make portals.  Could they make a portal back to the human world? To Earth?  

To Flynn’s proper time?

To Mom?  

He missed Mom so much, even after all this time.  

(Dad?  Not so much. He hardly remembered the man.)

He wouldn’t know until he asked, he supposed.  But asking maybe-royalty would be scary. Talking to all these powerful ghosts was scary enough by itself.  

Ehhhh, he thought he’d gotten rid of his more cowardly side by now.  He was living in the scariest place out of the world.  

Ha.  

Yeah.  

He crawled out of the bed, dragging his nice, clean self to the wardrobe.  Oh, boy. Many clothes.  He hadn’t even seen so many clothes since the last time he’d been in department store.  Incredible.  

They were so fancy, too.  He didn’t know how to choose.  

He didn’t even know how to wear half of these things. At least half of them.  

He began to tease lengths of fabric from the wardrobe and lay them on his bed.  Some of them looked cool.  And also the kind of thing that he’d destroy just by touching it.  

Except he had already touched them, and they hadn’t been destroyed yet.  Yet.

Oh, cool, there was underwear.  Wow.  It had been a while.  

.

Okay.  The bed was incredibly nice, but somehow too nice.  Like, no nap nice.  

He wanted to take a nap.  

But no nap was occurring.  

The bed was too soft.  Ugh.  This was like the thing in that one war novel he’d read when he was probably way too young to read it.  

He groaned.  He hadn’t thought that was real.  He’d thought it was an exaggeration, or just drama.  Or something.  

He crawled off onto the floor and the wonderfully plush carpet.  

Maybe he could sleep here.  

.

He woke up to a faint knocking sound and rolled sideways under cover.  What cover? Oh.  Bed.  That was the bed.  He was in the room.  In the castle.  The ghost king’s castle.  

His baby cousin’s castle.  

He was going to cry.  This was so weird.  

Embarrassed, he rolled back out from under the bed and threw on the first clothes that came to hand.  Which.  Might not have been the best of ideas.  But, hey, he was dressed now.  

He stumbled over to the door and spent several long, embarrassing seconds sleepily remembering how to open doors with this type of handle.  Eventually, though, he managed it.

Clockwork was standing there.  One of his eyebrows went up.  “Interesting choice.”

Flynn looked down.  Orange and green went fine together.  What was he talking about?  

Forget it, he wasn’t about to develop a sense of social shame after living in a hut for a decade or so.  

“Come, now.  Your cousins are expecting you.”

Flynn briefly considered ducking out, phasing through the floor and out of the castle using a tangibility trick he’d picked up a couple of years back.  At least, that would spare him from this ‘diner’ he was rapidly approaching.  

He decided not to do that.  Running away wasn’t his style.  

(Who was he kidding?  That was definitely his style.  He would have run away so, so much if he had anywhere to run to.)

(It wasn’t like he could exactly fight ghosts on even footing.  Each and every one of them had Martian Manhunter’s powerset.)

“Don’t be afraid, Flynn,” said Clockwork, looking back over his shoulder.  

“Do you, like, read minds?”

Clockwork chuckled.  “Only the future.”  He swung the large, gilded door open.  

Inside, there was a long table, set with silvery plates.  There were a small group of children beyond it.  One of them waved at him.  Was that Danny?

Flynn took a deep breath and walked forward, back to his family.  

[sttngfashion]

5.26 and 6.1 - Time’s Arrow

Oh my god. Y’all. It’s a new Fashion It So post. In the year of our Picard 2020. Yes.

For literal years, Charlie and I have been like UGH WE NEED TO DO TIME’S ARROW PARTS 1 AND 2 BUT IT’S JUST SUCH A MONSTER.

Well, I’m doing a complete rewatch of the series with my partner and we just got to these two, so IT IS TIME. 

We open in a cave in San Francisco, where Data and Picard are checking something out:

Rent for the cave is $6,000 per month

Showing them around is this guy in a Science Outfit:

He’s ready to go night biking

We’ve seen this look before in both Silicon Avatar and Devil’s Due, and it’s functional, yet cute. Basically a windbreaker in jumpsuit form. 

They find a couple of items in the cave, including a pocket watch from 1889 and also:

I left my head in San Francisco

IT’S DATA’S HEAD!!! And it’s been there for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS. What could have caused this? And why is Data’s head so absolutely terrifying?

Is that fondant

This head is, in a word, haunting. The 2020 of heads. 

Data and Geordi chat in Ten-Forward about what the presence of Data’s head in the cave means. Data says it means he’s mortal; that someday he will die, and that’s comforting. Spoiler alert: that’s not what it means. But it’s a nice conversation.

Also, Guinan is here!!!

Merlot My God!! 

Or maybe: Burgundy-lightful!! Or perhaps: De-Crimson-alize Sex Work!! Okay that last one was a stretch but I really think I missed my calling as a nail polish shade namer. 

Anyway, she’s here in her classic look of a pizza-sized hat and a flowing gown/coat/top/robe. The collar here is a little too close to a mock turtleneck for my liking and honestly - this is a little staid for our friend Guinan. I want a TEXTURE or a SWEEP or some WIDE RIBBING or some PLEATS. Don’t worry, though...she will get plenty more later.

Then there’s some plot which frankly we DO NOT HAVE TIME to get into but let’s just say: the away team goes to a planet, there’s a temporal disturbance, and Data ends up here:

Huge mood

Where are we? Or should I say WHEN are we??

Well that old-timey font is a good clue...also the horse

Are we in the Old West land of an off-brand Disneyworld? Are we going to ride something called Large Lightning Mesa Train Tracks? What colorful characters will we meet here?

Winner of 1893’s Mustache Medal

This type of ‘stache is called a Fu Manchu, after the character Dr. Fu Manchu. It’s not...a great look? But it is memorable, which is sometimes enough. He’s also wearing a simple black cap, probably made of silk. He’s keeping it cazh.

So where are we?

SAN FRANCISCO, OPEN YOUR GOLDEN GATE / YOU’LL LET NOBODY WAIT / OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR

Yes, it’s San Francisco. And it’s *eyes popping out of head like a cartoon wolf seeing a busty babe* 1893!!!! That temporal disturbance was...disturbing.

So who else do we have hanging out?

Please check out our Vaudeville act, Knit Cap ‘n’ Bowly

These dudes understand those famous Bay Area MICROCLIMATES, amirite? We’ve got a Henley. We’ve got a buttondown. We’ve got a vest. We’ve got a coat. No matter which way the thermometer decides to go, THEY ARE READY. Also loving the pop of forest green on Knit Cap’s knit cap. 

We also have a 49er:

No, it’s not Steve Young. I googled “famous 49ers” to complete this joke so if there is a more famous 49er please let me know

It’s a literal 49er. Since it’s 1893, this guy’s been hanging around in town for a while, and he’s also familiar with the layering techniques one must master if one is to conquer the Bay Area’s climate. He also has a kicky Colonel Sanders-type tie. He asks Data for money and gives him a few panhandling tips. He’s chill. We like him. But don’t get too attached if you know what I mean!!!!

Data decides he needs somewhere to stay, so he finds a hotel:

Brian.

Why is this so funny to me. Brian. Why would you name your hotel Brian. Brian!!!! I know it’s a last name but like...Brian. HOTEL BRIAN. 

This bellhop’s name is not Brian:

Where’s your hat, bro

He’s giving us a classic bellhop look, complete with too many buttons. He gives Data the very important information that there’s a poker game happening in the back of the hotel, which means: Data is about to be RICH rich. 

The poker game includes a few good looks:

Louie Anderson IS Wolverine IN a Lands’ End barn coat

Two plaids? Sir...I salute you

Colonel Sanders Goes to Carnaval

Data, of course, wipes the floor with them so hard that he wins their clothes:

Didn’t get that barn coat tho

Yes, that’s the actual vest and the actual hat of those guys from the previous scene. Oh, I love it. I love Data in a vest over his uniform and I love Data with a feather in his cap. Let’s call it macaroni.

Meanwhile, out on the street, the plot is happening:

Beige: inescapable

This is our first taste of the decadent 1890’s sleeves that appear in this episode, and these aren’t even the best sleeves!! These are an amuse-bouche of sleeves. An armuse-bouche, if you will. 

Anyway, these two are aliens disguised as humans who are here to steal the 49er’s life energy. 

Pew pew pew

I told you not to get attached!!!

Back on the Enterprise, Guinan is doing mixology:

She would never call it something as stupid as mixology though

She tells Picard that he needs to go check out the temporal disturbance, too, even though captains don’t normally go on away missions, and then she gives him this look:

It’s that serious

When Guinan looks at you like this, you do what she says. 

Now this outfit is much better than the earlier one. We have some pleated sleeves, which I didn’t even think was a thing you could DO. We have some sort of functional(?) strap(??) across the front. We even have matching fingerless gloves which always make a look A LOOK. And if Picard wasn’t sure whether he needed to go on this away mission, she then gives him THIS look:

Okay now it’s REALLY serious

Back in 1893, Data is making something:

It’s actually just a really complicated and large music box that plays “I Left My Head in San Francisco”

He’s gotten his hands on some more period-appropriate clothing, including a bow tie and a vest. Since he’s not wearing arm garters and his sleeves appear to be the correct length for his arms, we can conclude that the shirt was custom-made, not ready-made, because Data is now a baller due to his poker earnings. 

Then, Data sees this in the paper:

I know her!! From work!!!!

Yes, it’s Guinan. In 1893. In a hat!!!!

We cut to the literary reception, which is honestly not as well-attended as I thought it would be, considering it got a GIANT photo of Guinan on page THREE of the paper, but okay. And who should we spy there but:

You’ll love my secret blend of 11 herbs and spices

No, it’s not Colonel Sanders. (Sorry, I really have Colonel Sanders on the brain because of that Lifetime movie.) It’s Samuel Clements, AKA Mark Twain. I had an English teacher in high school who explained the origin of his pseudonym (it indicates a mark of two fathoms, aka twelve feet, on a steamboat) and for some reason she shouted MAAAARK TWAAAAAIN when she told us that story so now her delivery of that line is in my head until I die I guess.

Anyway, it’s Mark Twain.

He’s wearing his iconic white linen suit with a black bow tie, and he’s also wearing a lot of prosthetics, because the actor playing him (Jerry Hardin, AKA Deep Throat from The X-Files AKA Melora Hardin AKA Jan Levinson-Gould’s dad) (was that too many AKAs) (you get it, right?) didn’t look enough like Mark Twain, I guess? In conclusion: what if eyebrow wigs were a thing?

Twain is having a chit chat with “Madame Guinan,” who is wearing what can only be called a sumptuous gown:

It’s 11:30 and the gown is sumptin’ sumptin’

There are so many ELEMENTS to this look! First of all: the color. Royal purple. Fit for a queen. Appropriate. 

Then: those sleeves! These sleeves are known as “leg of mutton sleeves” because they KIND OF look like a leg of mutton. Have you ever seen a leg of mutton? I haven’t. I’ve only seen these sleeves. Plus they have a stripe?? No, I don’t know why, but I LOVE IT.

The cuffs and the cravat bring this from “dress” to “lewk.” Top it all off with this hat and you have a true 1893 mood.

What bird is that feather even from

We get a few good extra looks in this scene as well:

Pink Lady is NOT wearing a corset

Look, sometimes you don’t have enough period-appropriate undergarments for all the background people and that’s fine. But I WILL notice.

Is that Loretta Lynn

I am loving all of this! That purple dress is fantastic, those stripes? I die. Military man has some fun flair on his shoulder, and there is a dude in a beautiful turban back there. Plus, another Black lady in addition to Guinan and That One Ensign Who Is On The Bridge Sometimes.

Data rolls in to the literary event in a different suit with a CRAVAT:

Craving a cravat

Data is like “we serve together on the same starship in the 24th century” and Guinan is like “huh” but then she’s like “okay” which...I’m not sure if I would believe that? But let’s just say it’s fine. 

Over in the 24th century, the literal entire bridge crew is checking out the temporal disturbance and I DON’T LIKE THIS AT ALL:

Blue Man Group...on ACID

These beings are like ghosts but also like Dr. Manhattan but also like pure energy. 

Then everyone goes through the temporal disturbance AND THE SEASON ENDS. 

Fortunately for you, this post will continue...right now.

Okay, so we’re back in San Francisco in 1893. You can tell by the horses:

Also the fruit carts

Samuel Clemens is strolling around with a reporter, telling him that he has a great story for him that involves time travelers and, like, protecting the nation.

Here’s the thing about this episode’s version of Mark Twain: he’s kind of a dick. Was the real Mark Twain kind of a dick? I just feel like Mark Twain should be JAZZED about meeting time travelers and not acting like a fuckin’ time cop* and trying to put the Enterprise crew on blast. 

Anyway I love his double-breasted vest.

See my vest

The reporter’s hat is technically period-accurate, but that style is SO associated with the 1930s-1950s that I would have gone with something else. He looks cute though.

Meanwhile, Data is wearing a three-piece suit:

My positronic olfactory synapses are interpreting something as...a fart

I hate brown, but this is fine.

Additionally, the beige baddies from before are back and this time, they’ve got a SNAKE CANE:

Love the snake cane, hate how they suck the life out of people

But we are not here for them, we are here to see our faves in period clothing. Our first look is at Riker, who is dressed as an actual cop, not a time cop like Mark Twain:

The past just had...so many buttons

I guess if you’re a time-traveling white man there are worse disguises than a cop. But WHERE DID HE GET THIS UNIFORM? I choose to believe that he found a cop with a similar large handsome body to his own and beat the shit out of him and stole his clothes. Now we can all enjoy imagining a cop being beat up.

The badge that Riker is wearing is a great historical detail; the SFPD started wearing them in 1886 and are reportedly the first law enforcement agency to have worn the seven-pointed star, which is now a common shape among sheriff’s departments across the United States.

But let’s move on to a better look: Dr. Beverly Crusher:

Curlz MT

Okay, now I have more questions. Beverly obviously wouldn’t beat someone up for their clothes, so where did SHE get HER outfit? And who did her hair? Did she do her OWN hair? Where did she get a curling iron? Does she know how to use a curling iron? Was it one of those ones that’s actually made of iron that you have to heat up in a fireplace? 

We will get answers to zero (0) of these questions.

We actually get a much better look at her dress later, so let’s focus on that cloak!!! I love it and I also love her hat. Okay, I guess I had less to say about those than I thought.

Bev and Will, along with the rest of the officers, have somehow procured a room/apartment in some lady’s lodging house. It’s cute!

They gave it 5 stars on AirBnB

This also raises questions. How did they get this room? How many bedrooms does it have? Are they sharing one large bed? If so, who has to sleep crossways at the foot of the bed and why is it Geordi? We will get zero answers to these questions as well, so let’s move on to arguably the hottest costume in this two-parter:

I’ll be in Holodeck 4

Whewwwwwww. He’s giving us a rolled sleeve. He’s giving us a casual tweed vest. The pants? They’re perfect. And he KNOWS how that slouch is working. It’s working VERY well. But the Irish landlady? She’s having NONE OF IT.

Absolutely NO nonsense

She needs the rent, but Picard charms her and she leaves. So I guess that’s how they got the room. Her look is knitwear-forward:

Eileen Fisher does sound like an Irish name

She’s got a shawl AND a cardigan! The cozy factor is OFF THE CHARTS. She also has a brooch, because a touch of fancy is always welcome. I will say that her hair is a little more fashion-forward than I’d expect for a woman of her age and station. This is straight up 1890s hair, and she would probably still be rocking an 1860s look, which isn’t as sweepy and would likely involve more braids. Still, she looks lovely. 

Geordi is also here looking dapper:

Make the collar as high as you can. I want to be sliced open by my own collar

You CAN go wrong with a three-piece suit, but it’s difficult to. He can’t wear his visor, so he has some kicky shades which we’ll get a better look at in a sec.

Back at the Hotel Brian (lol), the bellboy (who we learn in this scene is Jack London, inspired to be a writer by Mark Twain [citation needed]) lets Mark Twain into Data’s room and allows him to look around unsupervised. This is very bad hotel management. 

Great Scott

Then Data and Guinan show back up, and Mark Twain hides in an armoire.

One short day in the emerald brocade

I think one reason I love Guinan’s looks so much, both in the 24th and the 19th century, is that our color palette is very similar. We’re both winters. Bold jewel tones are the vibe. This one is in a beautiful deep green fabric with what looks like a velvet flocking pattern on it. The collar is also velvet, and I love that sleeve with a flounce on top like there wasn’t already enough fucking fabric on the sleeve so they just added a random piece to be like “yes, bitch. I’m a sleeve.”

Naturally, the hat is also jaunty af:

San Francisco’s hottest milliner is: Madame Guinan

This hat has everything: feathers, netting, a brim, an angle that makes you think it’s going to fall off but it doesn’t. We stan.

Meanwhile, Picard is setting up a sensor in a hospital while wearing a hat:

I’m bowled over

We haven’t even asked where Picard got these clothes, but I would like to point out that he’s dressed as a lower-class guy, while Riker is a cop, and Geordi looks like a gentleman. Was there even a discussion they all had about how they would disguise themselves? Was Picard like “I just really want to wear a beat-up bowler hat” and since he’s the captain, they extrapolated from there? This episode is NOT CONCERNED about any of this. They all have clothes, end of story. 

Bev even has TWO outfits!!

Hello nurse!!!!

I love this look. She still has her unlikely hairstyle happening, which means her nurse’s cap is sitting atop her voluminous hairstyle. (Not very practical, but realistic!) She’s sporting a simple striped dress and a button-on apron. (Look closely and you can see the two buttons holding the apron to the dress.) The fabric underneath might be cotton seersucker, but it’s likely a lightweight cotton or linen twill. You can see how closely her look matches these nurses from a similar time period:

Hello nurses!!!!

Deanna is also in this scene and this episode, but you wouldn’t know it from what she’s given to do. HUGE SHOCKER: TROI NOT GIVEN ENOUGH TO DO IN AN EPISODE. 🙃

She still looks beautiful:

Why aren’t capelets more popular

We never get a really GREAT look at her whole outfit, but I can tell you that it has a capelet, it’s in the red family, and the hat has a lot of business going on. For those reasons: approved. It has a flounce in the back too:

More fabric = more wealth

Sometimes I think about just how much fabric it took to make these old-timey dresses and I’m like...how did anyone get anything done?? It takes me like 4 weeks to finish a pair of leggings and those have like 5 seams and I own a serger. These historical bitches were sewing whole ass dresses in no time at all. 

Okay, so Bev is in this hospital and here come some more energy-stealing aliens, disguised as healthcare professionals this time:

I cannot take a medical professional wearing a LIGHT BROWN TOP HAT seriously, sorry

Bev AND this energy-stealing alien have BOTH managed to get their hands on the SAME nurse’s uniform?? I guess in the case of the alien, she is a shape-shifter, so she got her clothes from...that. And her hair. 

I hate this light brown top hat. If you’re going to wear a top hat, don’t DISRESPECT IT by making it BROWN, but if you’re going to make it brown, make it a good brown, like chocolate. Stupid energy-stealing aliens.

There’s a skirmish, the energy-stealing aliens disappear, and the real cops show up:

MOUSTACHE

Of course, the cops showing up is bad, because when has a cop showing up ever made a bad situation better? Never. Defund the police, but don’t defund handlebar mustaches. Those can stay.

Fortunately, Data has gotten a ping on that machine he was building before and shows up on a motherfucking HORSE:

Brent just wanted to show off

He’s back in his brown striped suit and red tie. Okay.

Everyone returns to the boarding house to suss out the situation, and we get a look at what Riker is rocking underneath his cop jacket:

Suspend me daddy

You can see very clearly here how the collar is not actually attached to the shirt. This was a thing people in the olden days did so they could wear their shirt for multiple days in a row and just switch out the collar and cuffs so they looked clean. As someone who is wearing the same sweatshirt for the third day in a row, I support this method. (If you’re interested on more info about collars, here is a very enjoyable article about them.)

We are also blessed with a better look at Deanna’s sleeves and bodice:

Black lace cuffs? Decadent!!!

You can also see Geordi’s shades, which suit him really nicely. One thing I’ve been enjoying on this rewatch is just how well LeVar Burton can act without having his eyes visible. He’s great. Let’s just all think about how great LeVar Burton is for a second

And also Bev’s dress:

I legitimately want this dress

I don’t think those buttons are functional. Can you imagine how annoying THAT would be? But I am absolutely in love with this dress. Two paisleys, Beverly???? A goddess. I’m also dying for that brooch with the chain. A+ look all around, great work.

Finally, FINALLY, Guinan meets the rest of the crew:

When you meet someone you won’t actually know for 500 years

She is wearing a hat that looks like a toilet paper cozy. Did your grandma have one of these? They’re so stupid and I love them so much. 

Picard and Guinan meet for what is the first time for her, but not the first time for him, and honestly it is...sensual?????

If I got a m’lady from P. Stew I wouldn’t even mind

Patrick and Whoopi truly do some nice work in this ep. But we are here to yell about clothes, so: LOOK AT THIS DRESS ON AN EXTRA:

Gimme dat dress

I just want that dress to wear around my house. I legitimately bought an 18th century costume dress to do just that, so don’t think I won’t literally do this.

OKAY, WE ARE ALMOST TO THE END. 

The crew, plus Guinan, go back to the cave where this all started:

Cave Club, the only club that meets in a cave

We get a nice look at the bodice of Guinan’s dress here and guess what: MORE BUTTONS. Buttons on the lapels, and also buttons on the front panel with the pointy top. I wonder if she has multiple front panels for that dress in different colors, like a Swatch watch. 

Unbeknownst to them, Mark Twain followed them!! Then there’s a scuffle with the energy-stealing aliens during which a few things happen:

Data’s head flies off

Mark Twain gets sucked into the temporal disturbance

Guinan gets hurt

Picard stays behind to make sure Guinan is okay

So we end up with Mark Twain on the Enterprise, where he sees Worf, and he’s like:

Buh-WHAT

Worf is also confused:

This is...extremely perplexing

We have a few more looks back on the Enterprise, including Regular Guinan:

ShoulderSpreads™: The Bed Spread for Your Shoulders

I love love LOVE this outfit. The color is perfect, the shoulderspreads are perfect, the front draping is perfect. It looks like a velvet housedress from the 1960s except FANCY which is kind of my ideal aesthetic. And it’s red (my fave). 

We get a quick glimpse at the barber uniform:

Bitch let me pass, idc if you wrote Huck Finn

This barber does. not. give. a. fuck!!!! 

Geordi reattaches Data’s head, the one they already had, which means this whole thing was a ding dang closed loop. The reattachment also kind of diminishes the whole conversation they had earlier about how Data’s head in the cave meant that Data could die someday, because...he didn’t. He still might, but his head is back and he’s fine now.

Meanwhile, Picard is still back in 1893 and they have to go get him, but only one person can come back through the temporal disturbance, so Mark Twain is like “duh I’ll go get him.” 

And finally Guinan and Picard can talk about how their friendship spans 500 years!!!!

Hey girl

Hey

YOU’RE WELCOME

*abolish the police

[the-names-names]

A very internet poem

I've followed a blog for a while

I don't know why I followed it, maybe because

I liked some of their fandom posts from way back when

Through many of my formative years, it was always there

And as I grew out of it, it felt like it was halfway there

A little like a ghost companion you want to see but need it only possess a new form

I never bothered to unfollow it, because there was no need

And that went on for years after

Until they suddenly stopped posting.

It was then I realized that I had thought it would go on forever...

And it was then

I noticed the mortality of even the things that I wasn't even aware of

And just how much of it is in this world-

How much just comes and goes as I look blindly out there, limited in my own perspective.

The animals I never got to lock eyes with for that fleeting moment of regard that we're both alive with our own vague destinies laid out before us

The people I never got to meet by chance on a street after getting lost in a town and simply wanting someone to show me they cared enough to help

The small artifacts I never got to hold in my hand and find the heart to call them important because of the circumstances in which we found each other

And yes, the people I never found in the world called the Internet because their words, images, or humor attracted me.

Anyway, I hope the person who ran the blog is well-

The person I never knew but knew of-

I hope they know that the temporality was, at least to me, such a lovely grief

And no less important

[words-writ-in-starlight]

for the ship headcanon meme: star trek pairing of choice, #16-#20?

Bet you thought I forgot about this ask meme, fuckers!  And you’re right, I did, but the beauty of forgetting is that sometimes you remember.  Anyway, as always, it’s Michael/Saru Hours, lads.

16) When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together?

This is not a headcanon, but I have this fragment of a fic idea in my head based on this question, and that fragment of a fic idea is like...some kind of case fic where Discovery finds a planet being ravaged by Basically A Zombie Apocalypse and Michael and Saru get stranded there.  Ideally, for my personal enjoyment, I would want to slot it into the plot of s1 as early as possible, because the best/worst dynamic there would be Michael choking with guilt and yet still one of the finest scientific minds in Star Fleet, and Saru unable to keep himself from pressing on the fresh bruise of loss, unable to trust her, and the two of them still working together flawlessly.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it?  Even when they can’t stand each other, they argue like a choreographed dance, and when the chips are down and they have to think on their feet, they still move like Georgiou’s trusted right and left hands.

Anyway.  That, but make it zombies.

17) When they find a time machine, where do they go?

If Michael came into possession of a time machine that actually allowed her to reliably control where she went and let her come back, I think she would sit down and try to do the temporal math to figure out how to avert the war.  I do not, however, believe that Michael and Saru, survivors of a fair amount of timeline hopping already, would actually risk going back in time.  I think they would both talk about wanting to go back, specifically because they know the other will talk them out of it, but I don’t think they would do it.

That being said, I would love a lotus eater prison AU where Michael and Saru are trapped in an idyllic dream of a world where the Shenzhou was never destroyed, Michael was being prepared to be promoted off the ship as a captain, and Saru was preparing to take her place, ft a lot of sadness about Georgiou and Michael and Saru working together to find a way to wake up.

18) When they fight, how do they make up?

Michael wears Raised On Vulcan tattooed on her face, sometimes, and especially when she defensive or guilty--if she’s angry with Saru, she’ll tell him exactly what she thinks he’s doing wrong, to his face, and it takes her a long time to learn that she should pull that punch a little more with people she cares about.  On the upside, that means that, when she feels like she’s been out of line and unnecessarily harsh, she’ll walk right up to Saru and tell him, blunt as anything, what she did, why she thinks it was wrong, and that she understands if he’s angry with her.  

This was initially…a weird experience for Saru on several levels, if he’s being honest.  A lot of his experience with people is colored heavily by the fact that very few people know how to deal with Kelpiens, and that means that he’s either handled like glass or he puts in the work to be treated like any of the other crew members. He’s not really sure how to deal with someone who handles him with exactly the same unemotional ruthlessness as everyone else, and it’s disorienting, and it makes him angry that it’s disorienting, because that’s what he wants, but also, Michael is sometimes an asshole.  She’s the first person that he’s ever argued with on the regular—really argued, a push and counterpush, shoving each other away from the science console and pulling out ad hominem attacks in a way that visibly infuriates Michael’s Vulcan training.  But quite frankly, they never felt like they needed to apologize for those early fights, under Georgiou.  It was part of the ship dynamic, to have Burnham and Saru trying to take strips off each other in a very professional and scientific manner.  As long as Saru never took a cheap shot over Michael’s upbringing and Michael resisted the impulse to go full xenoanthropologist on Saru’s species, they were very good at fighting.

(Personally I am of the belief that Michael only tried to pull the I understand where you’re coming from because of what your species makes you after the mutiny, after she was trying to be nice.  Before then, she expected Saru to perform to her standards and fuck the details.  Half the reason he’s so coldly furious with her over it is because he knows she’s trying to manipulate him, because if she wasn’t, she would never play that card, because no matter how nasty their fights were, she always fought with him as a person, not as a Kelpien.)

19) Where do they go on their first date?

There’s a fic that bounces around my brain every time I watch Discovery, and it’s about Michael and Saru having a first date (sort of) very late at night, when they’re both having trouble sleeping.  It’s not an arranged date, they’re not even really friends even though they’ve gotten past the stage of Michael letting Saru flay her alive for her guilt, but Michael is having trouble sleeping and she’s not a prisoner anymore, so she wanders, and Saru, frankly, sleeps like hypervigilant garbage since the Binary Stars, so he has a preferred hiding spot on one of Discovery’s few observation decks.  As Lorca likes to point out, they’re not a goddamn pleasure cruiser, but Star Fleet never built a ship without at least one view panel, not even their top-secret war machine.

Michael is avoiding people—she hates being asked why she’s awake, gets tangled up in her automatic shame over not being able to control her emotions.  It’s the middle of the “night” by ship standards, but Discovery seethes with activity around the clock, especially since Stamets pulls regular all-nighters when he gets really entranced and often has to be peeled away from his work by Local Exasperated Doctor Hugh Culber.  So she ducks into the parts of the ship that she usually doesn’t go, the places that are more for socializing and are empty at this hour, the places that aren’t often used, the places that are quiet.

She finds the observation deck dim and blessedly silent, with the stars spreading infinitely outside.  The room is faintly lit by the nebula off to the starboard bow, the one they’re using to hide their signature while they run some necessary repairs.  It’s a practical use, but it’s also beautiful, every window in the ship glowing with warm reds and golds, and Michael still finds the stars soothing after all this time, and so she drifts up to the glass with the vague plan of sitting down and spending an hour or two there in an attempt at meditation.  She only sees Saru, leaning back against the edge of the viewing window, when she’s close enough to nearly trip over one of his long legs, stretched out in front of him.

Michael, of course, apologizes, and turns to leave.  Saru never really does have a good answer, as to why he stops her.  But he doesn’t ask any questions about why she’s awake and she doesn’t ask any questions about what he’s doing here, and instead they sit in relative quiet for a while before Saru sits up straighter and offers Michael, again, a small bowl of fruit. It’s not familiar to her, this time, but he says it won’t hurt her, that it’s sort of like a lychee, and she believes him.  It leaves a bit of thin red juice on her fingers when she bites into the first one, and he recommends eating them whole to avoid it while she ruefully sucks the juice off her thumb.  It’s good—less sweet than she expected.  Saru settles next to her in the middle of the window and sets the bowl between them, and she asks how he always manages to have fresh fruit, and he admits that he can wring a lot more out of the replicators since he never gets meat. Somehow it turns into—talking.

Michael is startled to realize, around the hour mark of murmured conversation, that she might have literally never just talked to Saru before. It’s—nice.

(Because I’m physiologically incapable of letting things be nice, if I wrote this fic there would be an immediate sequel of Observation Deck Chats Redux, featuring them doing basically the same thing but after Michael gets back from the Mirrorverse.  Michael leans against Saru’s shoulder in a way that she would never, if she hadn’t been awake with nightmares and grief for pushing three days, and she tells him about the Empire like she’s confessing her sins, and they talk quietly about the ghost haunting their ship in the shape of Empress Philippa Georgiou. It’s not nice, but not for lack of kindness.)

20) Where do they go on holiday?

I think Saru and Michael would have two very distinct kinds of “holiday” and they have two destinations accordingly.

The first kind of holiday is Nerd Holiday, in which they find an unexplored planet and appoint themselves to the away team—everyone else on the away team is wryly aware that they are, essentially, third-wheeling a date, but Discovery has watched this whole situation unfold and honestly the popular opinion is that it would actually be easier to deal with a little bit of PDA than the current Very Professional Mutual Adoration Show.  Local Red Shirt Absolutely Agonized By The Very Correct Ten Inches Of Space Between Her Captain And First Officer, Reports As They Come.  Michael and Saru are pleasantly unaware of this and are having a great time arguing over whether they need another sample of that plant if it’s just a different color.

The second kind of holiday is actual fucking shore leave.  They both prefer planets or stations with a large variety of species—Saru is uneasy with being the center of attention among strangers, and since he stands head and shoulders above a decent percentage of the Federation, it’s hard to avoid unless they’re in mixed company; Michael never quite recovered from the perpetual sense of disjoint when it comes to being around all humans or all Vulcans, so being in a place where everyone is different makes her feel less out of place.  Neither of them like big crowds, so they’re the tourists who immediately leave the usual Tourist Area and find somewhere else to be, which has its ups and downs.  The first time they get into trouble on a totally safe colony planet because they decided to go exploring, there’s a beat of them looking at each other and silently agreeing that they won’t be telling the crew about this, because there’s already a running ship joke about what trouble magnets they are and they do NOT need to feed anyone more material.

[bioticgoddess]

Summary: "Never said the plan wasn't complex, only that it'd work." - Nymue, a warlock, as she works on some paint touch ups to her ghost Merlin's shell.

Warlock Nymue, her Fire Team, and their friends within the Tower are several flavors of done with watching the slow and painfully awkward waltz that is Saint-14 and Osiris in a post-Sagira world. What else is there to do but hatch a plan...or several...to convince these (very) Old Men to do something other than continue on with their stumbling.

Pairings: Osiris/Saint-14 (O14) [Canon]

--

I. Outside the City, Mid-Afternoon:

She ambushed him. Dragging the senior Warlock out beyond the wall to a cliff overlook not far from the protection of the wall. It had served as an escape route for the then-lightless Guardians and civilians during the Red War. Despite being relatively unsheltered, it was- thanks to the patrol of her fire team - a safe place for now. Her ghost floated close enough that they could have rested on her shoulder. Voice filled with the smile it couldn't give, the ghost spoke, "Nymue, the others confirm, coast is clear."

"Thank you Merlin," she hadn't taken her glowing green eyes off the older Warlock. “Give Iothane and Verity my thanks.” The ghost bobbed like it was nodding at her. Iothane was a broad shoulder but bookish Awoken Titan. Their Hunter, Verity, had a penchant for getting into trouble - the kind that earned accolades and titles and an obscene amount of glimmer. Both had agreed without a second thought when the Warlock relayed her plan.

In his typically composed and regal way, the older Guardian didn’t balk beneath the younger woman’s glare. Behind the scarf that served as a facemask, he returns his own piercing glare. Golden-brown eyes locked with her own and were only visible beneath his Phoenix helm because of their height difference.

Her ghost dissolved away with the kind of groan that accompanied rolled eyes, disappearing for the time. Though they were likely gone to find Glint and Crow aboard the HELM. To warn them that one of the quiet Hunter’s favored Warlocks was going to be in a foul mood.

"I am going back to the City," Osiris snapped, breaking the tense silence that had fallen over them. He didn’t move or even pretend like he was going to. He remained rooted in place, challenging the younger Warlock to further explain herself. A challenge she’d expected.

“No, you’re going to hear what I have to say first,” she countered, arms folded over the black and violet of her robes. “Or I can get Iothane to come and set up a barrier until my persistence wears you down old man.” It wasn’t a threat, the gentle jibe at the end as glaring as the sunbeams that reflected off his helm.

Snorting he continued to glare, jaw tense. Nymue was certain that, if she squinted, she could see him grind his teeth. “Fine.”

“We’re worried about you. Saint, Zavala, Ikora, Crow, Amanda, our ghosts, all of us. Everyone whose lives you’ve touched is worried about you. None of us can even begin to imagine what you’re going through without,” she caught the narrowing of his gaze and the straightening of his shoulders before Sagira’s name left her lips but said it anyway. “Sagira. She was a part of you and there with you in a way that maybe Crow and Glint comprehend. But...you also broke every rule of temporal mechanics that I can think of in order to save Saint. I didn’t get to see you two together before losing her but...the way Verity describes it...well, she is fond of saying that she wants a partner who looks at her the way you and Saint looked at each other when no one was watching. Or at least when you thought no one would see.”

He swallowed and hung his head. Nymue persisted. “It’s not going to be easy, but...you can’t shut everyone out. It’s only going to hurt more in the long term. At least...don’t shut out Saint. No one can deny what and how deeply you feel for one another.”

The silence returned with the sun’s continued trek towards the horizon.

The Great Osiris stared down at his feet, presumably mulling over how to respond and if making good on his threat to storm off back to the Tower was the right plan all along. There was nothing she could do to stop him, not really, and the both knew it. Yet he stayed there, the focus of the younger Warlocks’ gaze while he (hopefully) thought further on what he could or would say and where to even begin.

Raptors called in the distance, hunting some rodent or warning other birds to stay out of their territory. He’d been doing that for months - posture and snapping at some of the other guardians in the tower. The Old Man’s way of pushing back those closest to him, keeping them away. Nymue had had enough after overhearing the conversation between Saint-14 and Osiris about the corruption that had seeped into the Trials. Sure, Saint had insisted that it wasn’t anything to be worried about but the way the Exo had shifted on his feet told another story. He was more upset, more concerned, than he dared share - with any of them.

Voice heavy and shaky enough that it sounded like he was crying or was about to cry, “I’m going to die Nymue. One day, I will die a final death and leave him alone. There is no Ghost in all the system who can bring me back when that day comes.” He toed the ground with his boot, “Saint is my everything. The only person who understood me half so well was Sagira. She kept me from despair during my exile and again when I did not think he could be saved and now…” He trailed off, hands floating up to hide his shaded face.

“Osiris,” this time the younger Awoken’s voice was gentle, “Talk to him. You know Saint better than any of us.” She rested a hand on one of his forearms, careful not to get caught in any of the wires on his gauntlets. “Let him be there for you. The both of you deserve the chance, no matter what the end may be.”

Head and eyes tilted up to her face. “When did you become so wise,” Osiris wondered. His brows relaxed and eyes, through red with tears that threatened to spill forth, no longer contained the storm that had been brewing for the last several months. It even looked as though he might have let a smile cross part way over his features behind that scarf of his.

“I had a good teacher.”

---

II. The Hangar Bay

He’d nodded. He’d agreed to be less closed off. Every time he looked in the hanger and saw Saint, however, his throat closed and heart hammered in his chest. It threatened to break free of his breast bone and ribs. How had Nymue convinced him to unburden himself out in the wilds? How? What damn fool sorcerery did the girl know that he’d missed in all his centuries!? Oh but she’d been right, damn her. He needed to talk to Saint, he owed him that much and more. No matter how long he had, he needed the Titan in his life. He always had. Then he caught his gaze, cheeks turning a deeper shade of brownish-red when his husband looked up in his general direction. Not for the last time was he thankful for the cover of his scarf.

Like a child caught in Ikora’s severe gaze, he gave a stiff about face and marched off back towards the market and his now Vanguard former pupil.

--

“Third time today; you owe me glimmer,” Verity grumbled from her perch atop her drop ship, watching Osiris scurry away regally. If he’d had a Hunter’s cloak to billow behind him it could have been comical. Instead his retreats bordered on depressing.

Turning her head up and to the left to see her team-leader, legs stretched out along the wing of the drop ship, the warlock grinned wryly, “Not yet. Crow and I have a plan.” Her Awoken skin sparkled with her air of confidence.

“You need to take your own advice when it comes to him,” the hunter rolled her eyes.

Iothane chuckled, raking a hand through his short cropped navy-blue hair, “She’s got a point. Talk to him.” The Titan was laid out on a work lift beneath the same wing serving as their Warlock’s chaise, fidgeting with a wiring harness.

Snorting and rolling her eyes, she glared, “First, shut up both of you. Second, I’ll think about it, after we fix this.” She waved her hand between where they could see Saint-14 and where Osiris had been.

Their ghosts floated overhead, looking between one another, shifting in what resembled shaking heads.

--

Crow and Nymue leaned conspiratorially against Amanda Holliday’s work station in the Hangar. The Hunter occasionally looked over his Warlock companion’s shoulder to see if Saint-14 had moved or if Osiris had returned to the Hanger Bay. “You sure this will work,” he asked the blonde shipwright.

She shook a hand dismissively, not looking up from the interface, “I don’t tell you how to fight, you don’t tell me how to reprogram the Transmat System. Alright?” Her tone was slightly indignant, offended even.

“Yes ma’am,” he stammered, elbowing Nymue when she laughed behind her hands.

After a few minutes of tapping and swiping her fingers across the screen, Amanda warned, “You two don’t want to be anywhere near the City when they get out of there y’know.”

“Got that covered,” the Warlock grinned. “We will be running a recon mission on Nessus with my Fire Team.” Crow nodded, straightening as he kept a vigil watch out for the two senior Guardians.

“And you’re sure Ikora and Zavala are okay with this,” the woman turned finally, rolling her shoulders several times to stretch back out from her stooped position over the console. A confirmation request screen glaring up at her, the work her co-conspirators had tasked her to complete not yet finished.

The Awoken woman rattled, hands waving as she recounted her last interaction with the Vanguard Warlock. “Zavala? No clue. Ikora, well, she said something about turning a blind eye before winking at me, which was weird, and going off to her Library with both Ophiucus and Geppetto.”

“Well, alright then,” Amanda chuckled, her attention returning to the screen. With a few final taps of the console, she finished her work. “We’re good to go. Good luck.”

--

III. The Tower Library: A Private Study

Saint-14 Pushed on the door again. It wouldn’t budge. His ghost Geppetto was nowhere to be found, he’d called for her several times in the hope that she could help them - Osiris and himself - find their way out of the room. To maybe go fetch Zavala or Ikora or anyone of the others and see if they could open it from the other side.

“It’s no use Saint, this room is like Ikora’s library - only one way in or out. Transmat,” Osiris sat with a huff in one of the plush chairs.

“Yes, Yes, but then surely we should be able to Transmat out of here,” the Titan countered. Then the it hit him, like an arc-grenade to the face, that was the problem. They couldn’t Transmat. “Oh no,” he whispered softly, raising one of his big hands to his face. Someone had set a trap and the two of them had walked right into it. He let silence fill the room, occasionally punctuated by a pensive huff or hum coming from his husband’s seat next to the tall skinny window - their primary source of light. It was, upon further assessment as he finally turned around, too skinner for either of them to hope to squeeze through.

Feet hitting the throw-rug laden floor heavily, Saint strode from the sealed mockery of a door to the chair opposite Osiris. Pulling off his helmet as he sat, the Exo asked, “So how were you lured into this trap?”

“Nymue,” The man groaned, his own helm perched like a bird on a stack of books to his left. Saint’s came to rest on the sad little window sill, half balanced on the table between them. “There was some text she and her Ghost were having difficulty with. One day,” he shook his head and sighed, “I’ll learn just how crafty my students can be.” It was applicable to Ikora as well, and every other warlock or Guardian he had mentored over the years.

“Her Titan friend Iothane,” he chuckled, recalling how the stocky Awoken man had come to him earlier in the day with a research request of great importance, or he speculated as such, to the City’s Titan. One that could only be filled by Saint, or so the younger Guardian had said before taking off at what was - in hindsight - a suspiciously brisk pace. How gullible he’d been, letting himself be pulled into such an obvious trap. “The boy has a silver tongue, convincing enough that I believed there to be something of great importance to Titans here.” He snorted.

Osiris laughed. It was a light laugh, not as sharp and dark as it had been of late. “I’m having a hard time picturing that,” he shook his head, “That boy is clever but he is not, as you said, silver-tongued.”

“He must have practiced then,” he was stroking his chin in thought, keeping his eyes on Osiris who sat at an angle that kept them from looking at one another. Some of the lines that had developed over the last many months were fading, thinning. He’d been furrowing his brow less and he seemed, from the other Old Man’s voice, that he wasn’t clenching his jaw so much. “Ay, not that it matters. We are still stuck here, the two of us.” Tentatively, his left hand slid across the table top, closing enough distance that if Osiris put his hand on the table they could meet half-way.

Nodding, his husband added, “Yes, I suspect we have to bide ourtime before the “children” are content to let us out.”

“You don’t think they did this on purpose do you?”

“Absolutely. Nymue ambushed me the -,” he stopped, voice knotting in his throat and body going rigid. Saint had felt the change in him before the Warlock’s shoulders squared and he knotted his hands in his lap.

To hell with this. If they were stuck in here then he was going to make the best of it.

The Titan stood, pivoting around the table so he could stand before Osiris. His shadow loomed over him, even without the cut of his helmet’s fin, he could be more imposing than Shaxx, Zavala, and Saladin combined. Despite his kindness, Saint-14 had earned a reputation on the battlefield. Shaxx’s nervousness over a decades old glint-debt hadn’t been without cause. His hands came to rest on the feathered pauldrons of the Warlock. “I should have been there,” voice soft, “Perhaps Sagira would still be with us.”

“It’s not your fault,” he repeated the well-worn refrain, “If you had been there it was just as likely we would have lost them both,” he spoke of Geppetto. Swallowing he shifted anxiously, pulling down the scarf so his closely shaven silver-white beard was visible. Brown eyes flitting up to meet Saint’s luminescent ones, “I told you, I am not willing to let time take you again.”

Giving a shrug of a nod he continued, “Very well, but you do not need to be an island my love. Is that not what you said to me once?” His head tilted to the left as he studied the other man’s face, making one of a hundred-thousand mental imprints of him. The sag of his face as grief that had been left to marinate pulled his lips into a sharp frown and attempted to drag his whole head so that he wasn’t able to meet the Exo’s intense gaze.

Still rigid, Osis nodded. The tightness of his body found its way into his voice, “But what if I do? What if I already am?”

“Then I will be the sea that surrounds and defends you and you will not be alone,” the Titan countered. Brows raised as he shook his head with a loving smile. In the time before Sagira’s loss, it would have made him laugh and earned the Titan a kiss from his husband. The kind that would have had both their Ghosts teasing them in the way that only they could. This time, all he caught was the briefest smile. It quickly disappeared and, voice sad but still kind, he implored, “Osiris, please, look at me.”

The Warlock slowly tilted his head up so his eyes were no longer locked on Saint-14’s chest. As if the movement had been his cue, the Exo’s palms skated across his shoulders and up his neck until they cupped Osiris’ cheeks and lower jaw. “You are not alone. How many times must I remind you of that? Or that I will always support you hmm? No matter how much time we have, you taught me that my Phoenix. And together, there is no obstacle we cannot overcome.”

Voice cracking, the tears he’d held back finally spilling over, Osiris asked, “Even when time takes it’s payment and I…”

“Especially then,” Saint was kneeling now, no matter what anyone ever said he was graceful when he wanted to be. Wedging himself between his husband’s knees so their foreheads could rest against one another he continued, “You will not lose me to time and I will not let you seal yourself away for grief. Sagira would never forgive us.” His nose bumped Osiris’ affectionately. “Besides, we should take advantage of what time is given to us.” He smiled broadly when the other guardians’ hands came to rest over the backs of his own.

The tears trailed down Osiris’ cheeks. His smile shaking as he spoke, “Then we do that. I will endeavor to be as strong a support to you as you have always been to me.”

“You do that every day,” Saint pressed a kiss to his nose, “We do this together then, hmm?”

“Together, habibi.”

[kkintle]

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch ; Quotes

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can me inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.

There will be time and motive enough to prose on about my life when I shall have generated as it were a sufficient cloud of reflection. I am still almost shy of my emotions, shy of the terrible strength of certain memories.

I always felt that we were in the same boat, adventuring along together (…) We enjoyed and craved for each other’s company. What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.

Is it true however? Well, it is not totally misleading, but it is far too short and ‘smart’. How can one describe real people?

Did I face it well? I think I did. Forgiveness and money were so ready as soon as I knew that she was doomed. That sounds cynical. I always loved her; and we were rewarded. At the very end we were both perfect. Poor Clement. That is a dreadful land, old age. I shall soon be entering it myself.

The image of Hartley changed in my mind from fiery pain to sadness, but never became blank. And in a way, I did keep searching for her, only it was a different and quite involuntary kind of search, a sort of dream-search.

Oh Hartley, Hartley, how timeless, how absolute love is. My love for you is unaware that I am old and you perhaps are dead.

‘I could have told you that country is the least peaceful and private place to live. The most peaceful and secluded place in the world is a flat in Kensington.’

I confess that I went to Peregrine not only for a drinking bout and a chat with and cold friend, but for male company, sheer complicit male company: the complicity of males which is like, indeed is, a kind of complicity in crime, in chauvinism, in getting away with things, in just gluttonously enjoying the present even if hell is all around.

‘We are such inward creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. But we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. Most of what we think we know are pseudo-knowledge. We are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value. (…) People lie so, even we old men do. Though in aa way, if there is art enough it doesn’t matter, since there is another kind of truth in the art’.

‘And if there is art enough a lie can enlighten us as well as the truth. What is the truth anyway, that truth? As we know ourselves we are fake objects, fakes, bundles of illusions. Can you determine exactly what you felt or thought or did? We have to pretend in law courts that such things can be done, but that is just a matter of convenience. Well, well, it doesn’t signify. (…)’

‘(…) Do you know what marriage is like? You say she’s unhappy, most people are. A long marriage is very unifying, even if it’s not ideal, and those old structures must be respected. You may not think much of her husband, but he may suit her, however impressed she is by meeting you again. Has she said she wants to be rescued?

How very convenient these cliché phrases are, how soothing to the pained mind, and how misleading, how concealing.

It is an interesting fact about jealousy (…) that although it is in so many respects a totally irrational as well as totally irresistible emotion, it does show a certain limited reasonableness where temporal priority is concerned.

I love her, I thought, just as if I have been married to her all those years and have seen her gradually grow old and lose her beauty.

You’ve lived in a hedonistic dream all your life, and you’ve got away with behaving like a cad because you always picked on women who could look after themselves. And my God you told us the score, you never committed yourself, you never said you loved us even when you did! A cold fish with clear hands! But it was just luck really if the girls survived.

She summoned up my whole being, and I wanted to hold her and to overwhelm her an to lie with her forever, jusqu’a la fin du monde, and yes, to amaze her humility with the forces of my love, but also to be humble myself and to let her, in the end, console me and give me back my own best self.

After looking at the bright candles I could at first see nothing, and it struck me in an odd way that while I was talking to Hartley I had forgotten about the sea, forgotten it was there and now felt confounded and at a loss to find myself half blind among those terrible rocks.

The formation of my love for Clement, had been one of the main tasks and achievements of my life: that love which so often almost failed but never quite failed.

Being in love, that’s another slavery, stupid when you come to think of it, mad really. You make another person into God. That can’t be right (…) Real love, is free and sane. (…) Real love is like in a marriage when the glamour is gone. (…) Love. God, how often we uttered that word in the theatre and how little we even thought about it.

‘Yes, it’s strange, but in a way I do know you, and there isn’t anyone else who’s near me like that. I support it’s just because we were young, and later you cant know people, or I couldn’t.’

‘It’s happened fast because it’s right, it’s easy because it’s right.’

‘I wish I was dead, I think I’m going to die soon, I feel it. Sometimes I felt I would die by wishing it when I went to sleep but I always woke up again and found I was still there. Every morning finding I’m still me, that’s hell.’ ‘Well, get out of hell then! The gate’s open and I’m holding it!’ ‘I cant. I’m hell, myself.’

‘You just want someone to remember things with.’

It ceased at last, as everything dreadful has to cease, even if it ceases only by death. My presence, my cries, had no effect on her, I doubt if, in a sense, she knew I was there, although also, in a sense, the performance was for me, its violence directed at me.

I remembered, as I now did whenever I awoke, with a pang of anguish and love and fear, that Hartley was in the house.

(…) and although, with her disordered grey hair she looked old and mad, she seemed in that arrested moment like a queen.

‘And you are using this thing from the far past as a guide to important and irrevocable moves which you propose to make in the future. You are making a dangerous induction, and induction is shaky at the best of times, consider Russell’s chicken –‘ ‘Russell’s chicken?’ ‘The farmer’s wife comes out every day and feeds the chicken, but one day she comes out and wrings its neck.’

‘Not to worry. Sic biscuits disintegrat.’ ‘What?’ ‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles.’

We did not dare to say much to each other. By now I wanted the whole thing to be over. I could scarcely endure the idea that she might even now say ‘I don’t think I want to go after all.’; and the impulse to cry out ‘Stop!’ was a pain which I urgently wanted to be without. Perhaps she felt much the same.

James said, ‘I hope you don’t feel that I’ve influenced you in any way against your better judgement?’ ‘No.’ I was not going to argue that point. Of course he had influenced me. But what was my judgement, let alone better judgement?

‘Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is us who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.’

‘I’m not calling her a ghost. She is real, as human creatures are, but what reality she has is elsewhere. She does not coincide with your dream figure. You were not able to transform her. You must admit you tried and failed.’

‘(…) It is a mental charade, a necessary one perhaps, it has its own necessity, but not like what you think. Of course you can’t get over it at once. But in a few weeks or a few months you’ll have run through it all, looked at it all again and felt it all again and got rid of it. It’s not an eternal thing, nothing human is eternal. For us, eternity is an illusion. It’s like in a fairy tale. When the clock strikes twelve it will all crumble to pieces and vanish. And you’ll find you are free of her, free of her forever and you can let the poor ghost go. What will remain will be ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. And you’ll feel relief, you’ll feel free. At present, you’re just obsessed, hynotised.’

‘(…) When you’ve known someone from childhood, when you can’t remember when they weren’t there, that’s not an illusion. She’s woven into me. Don’t you understand how one can be so absolutely connected with somebody like that?’

‘(…) I gave her the meaning of my life long ago, I gave it to her and she still has it. Even if she doesn’t know she has it, she has it.’

‘Just like even if she’s ugly she’s beautiful and even if she doesn’t love you she loves you – ‘ ‘But she does –‘ ‘Charles, either this is very fine, very noble, or else you’re mad.’

‘(…) You mustn’t interfere in other people’s lives, especially married people. That’s in a way why marriage is so awful, I can’t think how anyone dares to do it. You’ve got to leave them alone. They’ve got their own way of hating each other and hurting each other, they enjoy it.’

‘”For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.”(…)’

Some kinds of obsession, of which being in love is one, paralyses the ordinary free-wheeling of the mind, its natural open interested curious mode of being, which is sometimes persuasively defined as rationality. I was sane enough to know that I was in a state of total obsession and that I could onlythink, over and over again, certain agonising thoughts, could only run continually along the same rat-paths of fantasy and intent. But I was not sane enough to interrupt this mechanical movement or even to desire to do so.

‘(…) And perhaps I was pleased to see you. We sometimes like to see people whom we hate and despise so that we can stir them up to further demonstrations of how odious they are.’

‘Jealousy is born with love, but does not always die with love.’

‘(…) Ordinary mediocre people think that if they confess one tenth of the truth they’re in the clear. You’ve made all your words into lies, you’ve devalued your speech and – in a moment you’ve spoiled the past – and there’s nothing to rely on any more.’

There were a few clouds, big lazy chryselephantine clouds that loafed around over the water exuding light. I gazed at them and wondered at myself for being too obsessed to be able to admire the marvels that surrounded me. But knowing how blind I was did not make me see.

(…) people can be light sources, without ever knowing, for years in the lives of others, while their own lives take different and hidden courses. Equally, one can be, and I recalled Peregrine’s words, a monster, a cancer, in the mind of someone whom one has half forgotten or even never met.

As James said, ‘If even a dog’s tooth is truly worshipped it glows with light.’

‘Can you hear the sea?’

‘I think you’re nearly through out of it. You’ve built a cage of needs and installed here in an empty space in the middle. The strong feelings are all around her – vanity, jealousy, revenge, your love for your youth – they aren’t focused on her, they don’t touch her. She seems to be their prisoner, but really you don’t harm her at all. You are using her image, a doll, a simulacrum, it’s an exorcism. Soon you will start seeing her as a wicked enchantress. Then you will have nothing to do except forgive here and that will be within your capacity.’

‘The sea is clean. The mountains are high. I think I am becoming drunk.’ ‘The sea is not all that clean,’ said James. ‘Did you know that dolphins sometimes commit suicide by leaping onto the land because they are so tormented by parasites?’ ‘I wish you hadn’t told me that. Dolphins are such good beasts. So even they have their attendant demons.’

‘What after all is superstition?’ said James, pouring some more wine into both glasses. ‘What is religion? Where does the one end and the other begin? How could one answer that question about Christianity?’

‘(…) But this power is dreadful stuff. Our lusts and attachments compose our god. And when one attachment is cast off another arrived by way of consolation. We never give up pleasure absolutely, we only barter it for another.’ (…)

What was my role in this play? I felt myself being relaxed and smiling like a man in a dream who cannot remember his lines but knows he can manage impromptu.

If there’s any fruitless mental torment which is greater than that of jealousy it is perhaps remorse. Even the pains of loss may be less searching; and often of course these agonies combine, as now they did for me. I say remorse not repentance. I doubt if I have ever experienced repentance in a pure form; perhaps it does not exist in a pure form. Remorse contains guilt, but helpless hopeless guilt which knows of no cure for the painful bite.

However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously even after (…)

Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summing up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.

But am I so exceptional? We must live by the light of our self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason. Thus we must live unless we are saints, and are there any? There are spiritual beings, perhaps James was one, but there are no saints.

There may be no saints, but there is at least one proof that the light of self-satisfaction can illuminate the whole world.

Of course this chattering diary is a façade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward savages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure. Yet such pretences are not only consolations but may even be productive of a little ersatz courage.

That time of attentive mourning for her death was quite unlike the black blank horror of the thing itself. We had mourned together, trying to soothe each other’s pain. But that shared pain was so much less than the torment of her vanishing, the terrible lived time of her eternal absence. How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see that worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.

There were no trains going where she was.

I cannot now remember the exact sequence of events in those prehistoric years. That we cannot remember such things, that our memory, which is ourself, is tiny, limited and fallible, is also one of the important things about us, like our inwardness and our reason. Indeed it is the very essence of both.

The only fault which I can at all measure is my own.

Anything can be tarnished by association, and if you have enough associations you can blacken the world. (…) In hell or in purgatory there would be no need of other or more elaborate tortures.

My love for you is quiet at last. I don’t want it to become a roaring furnace. If I could have suffered more I would have suffered more. Receive us now as if we were your children. Tenderness and absolute trust and communication and truth matter more and more as one grows older. Somehow let us not waste love, it is rare. Can we not love each other at last in freedom, without awful possessiveness and violence and fear? Love matters, not ‘in love’. Let there be no more partings now. Let there be peace between us now forever, we are no longer young. Love me, Charles, love me enough.

I suppose that is right, though there is a kind of impiety involved in letting any of James’s stuff go away. Do I then suppose he is likely to come back at any moment?

It is strange to think that when I went to the sea I imagined that I was giving up the world. But one surrenders power in one form, and grasps it in another.

[confusedgoldenflower]

There is No Glorious Purpose Chap. 2

Hello, you beautiful Tesseract-loving bastards!

I've been meaning for a long time to update but I've been having a really bad time with the whole motivation thing, and what I had first thought of doing with this fic got thrown in a wood-chipper and sunk with the Titanic... so, I'm trying to pick up the pieces and decide where I want to go with this. I also wanted to do it episodically: Chapter One aligned with Episode One and so on. That has not worked partly due to the issues of the above so, well, I guess we'll find out together!

So sorry for any grammar issues, I did my best to look it over but got too sick of staring at it over and over again in my drafts.

Small Thor cameo!

Chapter Two: You Oafs

“Yeah, well, you’re a mischievous scamp--or at least, the other you is. Been killing our minutemen and stealing our reset charges. Been happening for quite a long time….” Mobius whistled lowly. Loki nodded slowly.

“If you know me or us as well as you say, what need have you of my help?”

“Like I said, mischievous scamp. And I know what makes a Loki tick, sure, but even Sherlock needed Watson sometimes--you do know about them, right? Really fun stories with a super smart detective and his below average side-kick--.”

Loki ignored the rambling, “I agree.” Perhaps then… after… peace? “Just tell me, please… is it true that I directly led to my mother’s death?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, definitely. Thor was pissed and then he dragged you along to Svart--Svartle… anyway, the planet of the Dark Elves with Jane because she absorbed the Aether. Then you faked your death, again . There’s that ‘doing a horrible thing then getting away,’ again. But Thor totally gets you back on Sakaar with those Obedience Disks. Yeah, yeah… oh, right, you don’t know--and won’t. He slaps one of ‘em on you when you betray him again, then dials it up all the way while he returns to Asguard. For a god, you get put down a lot .” Mobius chuckled.

Loki sucked in a shuddering breath, reverently laid the Tesseract down and stood, “let us catch this scoundrel then.” He faked a smile for the agent.

“Ok,” Mobius clapped and rubbed his hands together, “what a therapy session!”

Loki had a fleeting thought of, “he must be some Midguardian fool, possibly in some relation to Thor,” before he remembered that the all powerful Time Keepers had created the oaf in front of him.

“Ya know, for the record, maybe ‘undying fidelity,’ wasn’t the right thing to say to Thanos. Just saying. But this is good! We’re gonna be a great team.”

~~~@%*^*%@~~~

“Loki,” the orange clock whined on his ‘gifted’ desk. Though still somewhat transparent, Miss Minutes was a fairly good illusion.

“Yes?” He replied pleasantly, blue hand turning the page of a magazine. His slack-clad legs were propped on the desk, fine business shoes not too far from where she stood on a rather large book. The suit replacement of the prison wear wasn’t bad, he, of course, would have done better had he access to his seidr. But it was fine for the time being.

“Are you paying attention?” The angry little clock motioned to the old Midguardian computer screen which read in that same horrible orange color:

LET’S SEE WHAT YA KNOW!

Q2. Thanos has two apples. He eats both but realizes he wants more. He goes back in time 20 minutes and eats the apples again. Does this mean the apples will not have existed in the timeline he left?

No, because time is constantly happening

The question doesn’t matter because a branch cannot change another time branch

Thanos would’ve been hungry prior because the Grandfather paradox already accounted for the change in matter before it’s move.

TVA FILE EDIT VIEW MODE HELP

Of course he was paying attention, and of course he chose not to amuse them! One order after another; feeding off of each other even. He may have bowed to Thanos but he had never kneeled. Not truly. And he clung to that remaining dignity.

“Naturally,” he returned pleasantly. She sighed.

“What happens when a nexus event branches past red line?”

“Ragnarok.”

“Come on, Loki. What is it?... Loki!”

“It is when the TVA can no longer reset a nexus event. Are you satisfied?’

“Right. And that would lead to the destruction of the timeline and the collapse of reality as we know it.” He lowered the magazine lower into his lap and took his feet off the desk.

“Yes, indeed. Are you alive or a recording? Clearly, you can hear me.”

Her big cartoonish eyes moved around, “uh… sorta both?”

“So not an illusion or projection?” He swiped at her with the rolled up magazine.

“Ah!” A small smirk ghosted his face and he went after her again.

“Watch it! Where are your manners? Oh! Hey! Quit it! That is not nice, ya jerk!” She floated and then fazed back into the computer. He gave that ugly thing a few whacks as well. She pouted on the other side of the screen.

“Trainin’ going wel--is that my jet ski magazine? Put it down, Blue-Raz.” Mobius ripped the magazine from him, swivelled to his desk then swiveled again to flop a jacket in front of Loki.

“Gear up, there’s been an attack. Let’s go.” The agent commanded. Loki picked up the jacket. It unfolded from the collar, back facing him. “VARIANT” was emblazoned across it.

“Ah,” was all he commented as he moved to slip it on before his handler got any ideas while he was led down hallways. Norns knew the agent would have plenty of examples in his own life up to that point, much less his future or other variants.

“Good. Yeah. Smart.” Mobius commented with his fists in a move reminiscent of excited warriors as said human stopped to look back at his charge and the newly bestowed article of clothing. B-15 gave her usual droll stare. Her minutemen stood around her in a group.

“ C-20 and her team went dark shortly after they jumped into the 1985 branch. All signs point to another ambush. We've grabbed enough temporal aura to know it's our Loki Variant.”

The “actually dangerous” sort, Loki groused silently. Then Mobius opened his mouth.

“Here's the deal. When we get out on the branch, we're not just looking for a Time Criminal. We're looking for a Loki. A variation of this guy. A type we should all be very familiar with, because the TVA has pruned a lotta these guys, almost more than any other Variant. And no two are alike. Slight differences in appearances, or not so slight. Different powers, although, powers generally include shape-shifting, illusion-projection, and my favorite... Duplication-casting. Illusion-Projection.”

Mobius gestured to him when applicable in his little speech, also projecting other variations of Loki with his TemPad--all assumedly pruned likewise. Variation 8: L6792 looked exactly like he would now had he’d been afforded the luxury of keeping his clothes, but also with slight differences that led Loki to think that that variant must have been favored royally in some way he was rejected.

Variation 8: L1247 looked like a Midguardian sportsman happily holding a trophy of some kind. Variation 8: L6792 was an atrocity of him and the Hulk combined. Variation 8: L8914 was more strongly built with more prominent hair curls in their longer hair. They stood like dignitary with their hands behind them. Variation 8: L7803 looked like an oaf. A full, half-face helmet emblazoned with the horns in the wrong direction and even a piece of turf over the shoulder like a cape. Oh, dear….

“No.”

“...Huh?”

“Those two powers are completely different, although, I am unsurprised you cannot comprehend it.”

“Loki, what are you talking about--look, I’ve dealt with more of you than you’ve dealt with yourself.”

“The truth remains that those powers are not the same.”

“Then, please, Loki, tell me.”

Loki smiled easily and supplicatingly at the contempt and patronization, just like talking to anyone in Asguard.

“ Illusion-projection involves depicting a detailed image from outside oneself, which is perceptible in the external world, whereas duplication-casting entails recreating an exact facsimile of one's own body in its present circumstance, which acts as a true holographic mirror of its molecular structure.”

“Ok, take a breath. Noted. We’re gonna break into two teams, including myself and Professor Loki here”

B-15 still looked unamused and dubious.

“Whoever the Variant is, we haven’t been able to find them so I’m the Sherlock and he’s my Watson. Look, this’ll work.” Mobius said to her. She side-eyed Loki, Loki who had nothing but a branded jacket to protect himself with.

“And so my agency in this is to… tell you how brilliant you are.”

“Go outside, maybe touch some grass.” Mobius returned with a tilted smile under his twisted nose.

“Ah. I shall protect myself with your wit, then, should this superior being choose me as a next target.”

Mobius chuckled and mimed “talky-talky” again.

He passed through the portal B-15 had summoned, closed in on both ends by TVA agents. Immediately, he could feel his seidr swell within him again and redonned his Aesir glamor. The choker chafed as he glanced around, and he found himself much preferring the biting metal of the chains he was usually imprisoned in. The place they passed into was a celebration of old Midguardian times, further back than what the TVA modeled itself after, in direct juxtaposition of the modern technology with the humans held in their hands, and had used to both get to the location and create their sometimes elaborate costumes.

“Apex of nexus signature located, ma'am,” a minuteman said as they walked.

“Allow me to ask you this, why do we not travel to the moments prior to the Variant’s attack, to when they arrive.” Loki asked as the tent grew ever nearer.

“Nexus events destabilize the time flow. This branch is still changing and growing, so you gotta show up in real time. Did you watch any of the training videos you were supposed to?”

The minutemen twisted their batons, the ends glowing a shade that seemed to haunt the TVA as they neared.

Loki chuckled a laugh that was never and would never be heartfelt, “my dear Sherlock, you should know I am quite the scholar. But these ‘reset charges,’ they ‘prune’ a branched timeline which ‘allows time to heal all wounds.’”

Mobius made an odd gesture towards him, “he’s on it.”

Within the dark, torch-lit tent, limp minutemen laid about the displays which held real weapons and a large, stepped seating construct. Their bodies were splayed out in obvious struggle. Unactivated batons laid around as well, a few clenched in hands. A helmet bearing “C-20” laid, discarded within the scene. Loki hovered a hand over one display as he passed and they grouped around the scene.

“So he's taking hostages now?” B-15 spat.

“The Variant's never taken a hostage before,” Mobus returned.

“Maybe he's upping his game.”

“Or he pruned her,” a minuteman remarked.

“A Loki couldn't have gotten the jump on C-20.” B-15 returned.

“Fan out and search for her. And hurry up, we're at three units until red line.” B-15 ordered, her minutemen immediately moving to obey.

“Let's go. She's right.” A peon echoed.

Mobius concurred, “Come on.”

“Wait….” Loki said, brow knit as he studied the scene.

“What do you see?” Mobius asked as he stepped away from the entrance.

“I see wolf’s teeth.”

“Yeah, ok,” Mobius motioned for him to hurry and Loki got brief satisfaction that the human had no idea what he was talking about.

“‘Where there are wolf’s ears, there are wolf’s teeth,’” Loki echoed one of many sayings he heard during his childhood, especially before bed. He swallowed down the thought of a certain story about blue, darkly lined and vicious monsters.

“Ridiculous, really,” he laughed hallowly, “my people are gullible fools by nature. You remind me of them; the Time Variance Authority and the great gods of Asgard. One and the same. Drunk with power, blinded to the truth. Those you underestimate will devour you, and we’ve just walked into a wolf’s mouth.” He raked his eyes across his audience as he spoke, kneeling down in front of the helmet and stroking his hand in the grassy turf. The minutemen seemed to falter ever so slightly, B-15 rolled her eyes, and Mobius stared.

A TemPad beeped, “two units, he’s wasting our time.”

“No, step outside this tent and my other Variant will devour you,” Loki stated plainly. It was easy, nearly in a terrifying way, how he fell into the usual routine he had had with his oaf of a brother and his lackeys, who, similarly, never headed his words.

“We need to look for C-20.” B-15 repeated.

“Come on, Loki, we don’t have time for your lies.”

“Oh, I am not lying, and out of curiosity, when you find them, will you prune us both seeing as you will not have any need of me?”

Mobius sighed and gesticulated like a frustrated middle-aged Midguardian, “he’s lying.”

Loki’s head turned to the side minutely, in a ghost of a head shake. His stomach turned the way it usually did when he knew things were about to--.

“Aghr!” A minuteman had exited and had been consequently slaughtered. A brawl broke out just outside the small entrance. Innocent event-goers made exclamations outside as well. Batons revved, and B-15 and Mobius stalked to the opening. Loki walked behind them.

“The charge!” Someone yelled. The fight continued. A cloaked figure with amazing skill in combat fought them all while a crowd of civilians formed around them. There were a few smiles and jeers, no doubt thinking it was all a show.

“On behalf of t-... the Time Va-...Variance Authority, I hereby-... arrest you for-... for crimes against the… Sacred Timeline, V-… Variant!” B-15 huffed between blows.

“Ergh!” A minuteman got pruned. Loki’s cloaked variant said nothing, only continued fighting. He backed back into the tent, took aloft a jousting lance, broke it half and reemerged. For all their combined ability, the TVA was losing. The glow of pruning swung around arbitrarily. He dipped into the fight and caught his counterpart’s cutlass in the cross the two ends of the lance made.

“Pardon me, I mean no intrusion,” he said calmly to his other self, noticing a similar collar of metal that had adorned his own garments. He could feel the other’s tension as they reclaimed their sword and focused solely on him. It proved more of a poor decision than anticipated and he found himself holding his breath in pain more than he’d wanted. The wood was also useless and even though both it and he put up a valiant fight, his other self had taken hold of a baton along the line. His weapons were useless as they continued to share blows. He lowered the stubs of wood and opened his arms. The glowing end came close.

Then it wasn’t.

The grunting that followed was B-15 and Mobius disarming the variant of the baton and nearly restraining them.

“About to redline!” A remaining minuteman nearly yelled. B-15 and Mobius shared a look. A door was opened and Loki found the cloaked figure disappearing into a flurry of gold.

“What in the Rolling Stones was that, Blue-Raz?!” Mobius had him hard by the shoulder of both his jacket and dress shirt.

Loki blinked once then made eye contact with Mobius, “what ever do you mean?”

“He was about to kill you!”

“Prune,” Loki politely corrected. Mobius gawked.

“I kno--what were you thinking?!”

“Your only use of me is to capture me, I was assisting in that.”

“By letting you be killed by yourself?!”

“A mere distraction to the larger goal, Mobius.”

“And it almost worked,” B-15 piped from somewhere beside them. Her voice had dropped a tone or two.

“Yeah… almost had ‘im too.” Mobius admitted, letting Loki go. “But seriously, man, what was that?”

“Nearly fulfilling my role, as you yourself stated.” Loki replied pleasantly.

“We also barely pruned it in time and got outta there with our lives.” B-15 stated.

“Yeah…” Mobius rubbed the back of his head with his other hand on his hip as he stared at the floor. I was not lying, Loki wanted to say. To push. To scream. But he instead focused on the ache in his back. It should be fine in a matter of a few more hours given the time he had for recovery before the Tesseract opened the portal in New York and he was knocked from the Mind Stone’s, and thus Thanos’, direct influence.

~~~@%*^*%@~~~

Loki subconsciously touched his hideously blue palm as he waited outside of the judge’s office for his handler. The doors were decorated with sandglasses. How quaint .

Mobius finally emerged, stalking right past him. Loki fell in step behind him. He realized such only after he’d done it.

An angry finger wagged in front of him as they walked, “one thing, Loki, that’s all I asked.”

“The ‘talk’ from earlier.”

“No! Catching the superior version of yourself. We lost guys out there today-- good guys!” Good, yes, ‘good guys’ who also happened to have erased who knows how many people from existence.

“There would have been a lot more had I not been there and, likewise, a lot less had I been heeded.”

“And there you go again. That narcissism! Do you ever stop? Get tired of yourself?”

Loki didn’t respond as Mobius stopped and whirled on him, only gave him his schooled expression.

“I’m on thin ice ‘cause of you. I saved you, remember that? Didn’t that mean anything to your Asguardian standards or personal morals or anything?”

“If you recall, I was about to meet that fate regardless as I helped you bring in my Variant. I also have little doubt you will delete me if I survive assisting you in their arrest either way.”

“Oh, so I’m the bad guy? Ok. Well that other you is worse, remember that. He’s killed a lot of people--more than you. You’re just a little blue ice runt, crying in the cold.”

Loki chuckled and didn’t even need to bite back the urge to correct this “Loki expert.”

“Ever get tired of playing this same old part?” Mobius continued bitterly, “I’m getting sick of your constant need for sympathy, Loki!”

“Mobius?” He asked after allowing a few minutes to pass.

“What?” Mobius mumbled.

“This other Variant is after reset charges, why not supervise another ‘pruning’ in case we find the correct branch they target. How many happen in a day, usually?”

~~~@%*^*%@~~~

Loki almost choked when they entered into an Aguardian hall. The was beautiful and towering and held stones and architecture he could rewrite the books about. For one blissful second, he closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of his homeland--or the place he was raised. His glamor fell over him unconsciously.

Then he had to play follow-the-leader with the TVA peons. He rounded a large corner and immediately knew how many steps it would take to get to his room, his mother’s and Thor’s.

“Loki?” A familiar voice boomed. Loki tensed. Mobius cast him a “good luck” glance and mumbled, “I’ll be back for ya, Blue-Raz”

Loki had the urge to run him through followed by his brother who should not—it didn’t matter, the timeline would be reset. The Thor bounding up behind him would be pruned with everything else… why did that hurt? He turned to face his adopted sibling.

“Loki, it is you? Isn’t it? I mean you look horrendous in that getup, but it’s you!” Thor held his hands out in what could only be described as reverence. But the esteemed Asguardian Prince was wearing dirty Midguardian clothes and had a beer gut to match. How? Barely any time had elapsed between that moment and when they were facing down in New York.

“It is me but what happened to you, brother?”

A shadow came over Thor’s face. His hands lowered and he reached out to Loki.

“Tell me the truth,” he whispered, “did you just escape the dungeons?”

Loki held his gaze for a few long moments. The timeline will be reset. There is no harm in it.

“No, Thor, I never—this me never went to the dungeons. Never came back to Asguard.”

Thor hissed an inhalation of breath as his eyes widened.

“Thor what happened to you? Why do you have mismatched eyes? Where is your armor? Or Mjolnir?”

“Oh, Loki! Loki. Loki. Loki.” Thor’s voice trembled with false laughter and an emotion Loki didn’t know, “what--you look horrendous. What in the Nine Realms are you wearing?”

“Thor, it is good to see you, but I’m afraid I don’t have the time for a chat.” Loki returned, clipped. Redline grew ever nearer.

Thor’s face fell again, “Loki… just tell me you’re alive. That I didn’t fail you on the Statesmen--Thanos is dead now, I-I killed him! I-... I killed him… I avenged you.”

“Oh, Thor,” Loki found himself saying as Thor’s eyes shined and tears spilled onto his cheeks. He allowed himself to be squeezed in the other’s arms… and found it to be the best hug he’d ever received… or the only hug….

“Thor… Thor, are you listening?” Thor only sobbed into his shoulder, holding Loki up against his beer gut and off of the actual floor.

“Y-yes?”

“Very soon, this timeline will be reset which means you will have never seen me here. So tell me, what happened to you?”

Thor whined in the back of his throat and plopped Loki back down, it was just hard enough to make pain spike up his nearly healed spine.

“I--You--Thanos--.”

Loki laid his arms on Thor’s biceps, squeezing gently, Thor shuttered then took a breath and smiled fondly at him. Fondly. Thor never did that. What sort of--how is he not the Variation?

“So after Ragnarok, Thanos… had all the Stones and killed half of what was left of Asguard including you. I wasn’t able to--I’m sorry.”

“Just tell me, Thor, I am right here.”

“Then I was found by the space morons and went to Nidevelir to forge Storm Breaker because Hela broke Mjolnir before Sakaar--Ragnarok happened because of her. Then we battled with the Avengers in Wakanda and… I didn’t go for the head! How could I have not gone for the head?! Thanos snapped and…. It was horrible, brother. Absolutely horrible. The whole universe. And so many extinctions followed and more tragedies. I-....” He hung his head. “I tried to drown my worries like the ‘oaf’ I am….”

“I thought your annoying little group was the ‘Avengers’ not the ‘Alcoholics.’”

“... Ha!” Thor slapped him on the back. The statement seemed to have brought about the intended reaction.

“Yes! Of course! So five years later, we found him and I slayed him! But Tony and Scott found a way to move through time to get the stones to undo it all, and so we did, and we succeeded! But still, Thanos haunted us and we had a final battle--which we won!” Thor seemed to have noticed himself that he was about to go into one of his long winded stories of victory, and cut it short.

Then his smile abated and his beard fell, “Loki, Steve and Tony lost the Tesseract in 2012 to you…?”

“Yes, yes, that would be me, brother.”

A gasp of breath as Thor readied himself for the most bone crushing hug in the universe was all that was afforded to Loki.

“Thor,” he wheezed slightly, “I know I was not kindest to you but must you kill me prematurely?”

“Oh, Loki! I never threw you off the Bifrost, and I-!”

“Charge is set, we gotta boogie!” Mobius interrupted, jogging over.

Thor allowed the interruption if only to interrogate him, “and who are you? How and why do you command my brother? If you are with Tha-!”

To Loki’s astonishment, a few electrical charges emanate off of his brother.

“No, time to talk. Put Loki down We gotta get outta Dodge.”

Thor’s grip tightened, “Thor, just do it!” Loki groused. Thor did. Mobius opened the portal.

“Sorry, big guy, big fan but I need your Buddy. You ever think of trying Old Spice?”

“Ah--I just--Loki just returned to me as he always does and you expect me to just give up?!”

“Thor, do not follow us, I would rather not see you get deleted.”

Heavy feet crossed through the yellow threshold and left 2023 Thor in 2014 with a gaping mouth and tear stained cheeks.

“So no Loki!” Mobius announced as he clapped his hands together, “that means we gotta get to work!” He went on to walk at a brisk pace. Loki trailed after, blinking back the stinging in his now red eyes.

“I was of the understanding that is what we were doing,” he put a hand over his throat while he cleared it.

“I need you to go over each and every one of this Variant's case files, and then, give me your... How do I put it?... Your unique Loki perspective. And who knows? Maybe there's something that we missed.”

Seeing as how you are so hypocritical, I would be surprised if you had not missed anything. Honestly, “all you Lokis are the same” yet in the same breath, “no Loki variant is exactly alike.” I think as I do.

“You are the expert, I trust your judgement” Loki said instead.

“That's why I'm lucky I got ya for a little bit longer. Let me park ya at this desk. And don't be afraid to really lean into this work. Here's a good trick for you: pretend your life depends on it. I'm gonna get a snack.”

For all his countless hours spent in not only the Grand Library, but others around Asguard and the other Realms, he found himself having little interest in sifting through all the instances in which that other version of him overcame the great TVA and triggered more animosity against themselves--and all other Lokis.

“Any motive, Sherlock?” He asked dryly.

“That’s what you’re for!” The agent chuckled, poked at his chest and walked away.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the agent walk away then turned his attention to the paperwork. The pattern was known to begin with but became… inane the more pages he flipped through: nexus event, dispensed TVA agents, the team goes silent, they’re found dead and without the reset charge, Mobius, the expert, is called in for investigation and then the branch is reset before redline.

One Loki… only one to best their happy little teams. I was bested, but I also have extenuating circumstances of the past year. Without Thanos’ interruption, could I have?... Yes, I fought alongside Thor and his foolish troup of warriors, I would have been able to exact my own damage. For a ‘timeline protection force,’ how are they schooled in combat?

“Pardon me,” he tapped the librarian’s bell. She turned to him with a nonplussed expression.

“Could you show me to the combat regimens of our dear agents?”

“No.”

“Infographics?”

“No.”

“Battle end-games?”

“No.”

“Well, you have been very helpful, thank you.” It was still a library after all and he more than knew his way around one seidr or not; his mind was still intact--somewhat intact and that had always been his greatest weapon.

So he sat back down at the table to form a plan of action, so to speak, of how he could find the files he wanted in the fastest and most assured way. But, he still had all the paperwork of this other Loki, dripping in red. Oozing. Gushing. Like Thor’s cape as yet more enemies were put to ruin under his brother’s sheer might. He never envied that red; never thought he could own it or have it become him… yet this other version had jumped--leapt into that pool of blood and ended all who stood in their way. Incapacitation would have sufficed. Has sufficed in innumerable cases. He’d both saved lives of his comrades and stupid brother, and saw the end goal in such a way.

He gasped and leapt up, running along the railing of the library.

“Mobius--.”

“No, I said, ‘don’t bother me until you’ve read all the files,’ and I know you don’t read that fast.” Mobius set his Js\osta down with a hard thonk .

“I have, but unimportant--.” Loki slid into the seat across from the agent in the cafeteria.

“No, read every file pertaining to the Variant.”

“The answer does not lie in the files, it lies on the timeline!” Mobius gave him a dangerous look at the slight raising of his voice. Loki took a breath.

“Look,” Loki began again with his arms fanning over the table, “they’re hiding in apocalypses.”

“Which one? There’s, like, a million?”

“Take Ragnarok, I assume you are familiar?”

“Yeah, total destruction of your weird coin planet and most of its people because of your sister Hela. I’m sorry.”

Sister? Hela? Thor mentioned her--unimportant now.

“Yes, well, that recent visit with Thor got me thinking…?”

Mobius regarded him but eventually sighed and sat back, making a small gesture, “yeah, sure, ok.”

“Nexus events happen when someone does something that is not meant to happen--.”

“A bit more complicated but yeah.”

“These can culminate into entire other timelines--.”

“Chaotic alterations of a predetermined outcome.” Loki did his best to ignore the interruptions. He forced animation into his movements as if trying to explain it to Thor. That was best, pretend he was explaining something that now seemed so basic to the warrior.

“Alright! So this is Asgard,” he plundered the agent’s salad bowl. Said agent gave sad push back. Loki continued.

“I could travel back to Asgard preceding Ragnarok and do whatever I wished; switch crowns, resoil linens, topple some columns. I could destroy the Rainbow Bridge.” He grabbed the small salt shaker and started pouring some in. Mobius mourned his food. Loki was not fed.

“None of this would matter. Not if I set fire to the courtyard. Or even killed the Allfather!”

“Why--Lo--God, Loki!”

“Excuse me,” Loki greeted Casey kindly at an adjacent table, “are you finished with this?”

Casey, who had his bunched napkin thrown on his plate in clear sign of being finished looked from his crumpled juice box to Loki, “you!”

“Yes, very nice to see you again,” Loki took the drink container and poured it into the salad, secretly relishing how the agent utterly deflated.

“Due to Surtur!” Loki finished.

Mobius rubbed his hand down his face, “what am I lookin’ at?”

“Apocalypses, Holmes.”

“Loki, you just apocalypse my lunch, I wanted to eat that!”

“You want my other Variant.”

Mobius leaned onto the table, “cut to the chase.”

“That is how they have escaped you for so long; no matter what happens, an apocalypse negates anything that would otherwise summon the TVA.”

“Oh, not bad. Not Bad. Hey, so, how do you weigh over five hundred pounds?”

That was a “jackknife”--as Midgaurdians may say--that he did not expect.

Mobius raised his hands, “hey, I’m not judging, just curious.”

“Focus, Mobius, please.”

“Ok, ok. My salad. Destroyed.” Another despondent hand waved at the bowl.

“I can show you my theory is true.”

Mobius laughed, “I’m not letting you go.”

“You come with me, naturally,” Loki pushed.

“Well, I’ve had enough of your troublemaking for one day.”

“No one has to know unless I am correct--which I am.”

“TVA agents can’t just go running around anyway. Waltzing into the White House would be a Nexus event.”

You are not listening!

“Pompeii, for instance, you Midguardians like talking about that catastrophe, we could go there!”

“Pompeii?”

“Pompeii. Everyone died and that town was not even the worst hit of the eruption of Vesuvius.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk, talk, talk. Oh, you’re so smart!” Mobius sneered and wiped his mouth with his napkin despite not having spilled anything much less eaten enough to make a mess of his face. No food for either of them it seemed.

“If I go along with this and you stab me in the back, you’re getting erased. Capische?”

“Understood,” I am fully expecting that regardless.

[cynicalclassicist]

TURN BACK

Written by Chris Newton

This isn’t mine but was done by another of the Lockdown writers who very kindly sent it to me.

There it was again: that fluttering, rattling, scuttling noise. It sounded like grasping pincers, snapping mandibles and probing antennae. It felt like something was on her back. For some reason, it was an oddly familiar sensation. 

Donna Temple-Noble knew that things had not been right for a while. 

Things were fine in her life. After a decade of marriage, both she and Shaun were still very happy and very much in love. They had been determined that their big lottery win wouldn’t change them and, for the most part, it hadn’t. They lived in a ten bedroom mansion Highgate with two acres of land, owned a holiday villa in Spain, and had been able to afford to send Joshua and Ella to an incredibly expensive private school – but otherwise, they still went to watch West Ham every Saturday (albeit in their own executive box), still kept in touch with all their old friends (even Nerys), and eschewed fancy restaurants and glitzy parties in favour of Friday nights in on the sofa watching Love Island and eating Pringles. 

But something was wrong with the world. Her high school boyfriend, Mathew Richards, had always been going on about global warming back in the 90s, but as far as Donna had been concerned somebody was always banging on about the end of the world, whether it was the Millennium Bug, or Mayan calendars or Hadron Colliders… But what did that have to do with her life? She could hardly see which type of milk she put in her tea affected the wider world. 

But things began to get so bad that even Donna noticed. On her eighty-inch TV, she saw bush fires in Australia, David Attenborough showing the ice caps melting and an ocean filled with plastic. And then the Sontaran virus came – the lockdowns, the curfews, and the restrictions. But not even a global pandemic could prevent the USA from imploding in a civil war. The Zygon president had attempted to form a dictatorship when he lost the election and all hell had broken loose. 

Donna knew they were lucky, they were far away from the fighting and they could afford regular deliveries of fresh food, and had a huge garden with their own private swimming pool to occupy them in quarantine. The first lockdown had almost been like a holiday for the Temple-Nobles; the kids cannon balling into the water, Donna and Shaun sunning themselves on loungers, barbeques, cocktails. Their autumn lockdown consisted of bonfires and marshmallows, thick jumpers and flasks of hot chocolate as they told ghost stories on Halloween and twirled sparklers on Bonfire Night. It was almost perfect.

Almost… But not. Because for all the comfort their money could buy them, there was one problem wealth could not solve. 

Donna’s Grandfather, Wilf, was now ninety-one. A few years ago, after a fall, had moved into a care home. Donna made sure he received the best care possible, and paid for him to go to a lovely facility just near Hampstead Heath, that way they were practically neighbours. Before the virus, she had visited him every day without fail. His memory had been growing steadily worse; sometimes he called her Sylvia, and occasionally Louise, for some reason, but he never forgot that she was his granddaughter, and more than not greeted her by saying ‘Wahey, here she is! The Little General!’ which had been his nickname for her when she was little. 

But since lockdown, she had been unable to visit him. She knew it was for the best, for the safety of her grandfather and for the other residents in the home, but it didn’t change the fact that it felt as though a huge part of her had been ripped away. His dementia had worsened, the staff had told her over the phone, and he had been repeatedly talking about a spaceman in a flying blue box. 

She had managed to arrange a videocall with her grandfather, a favour from one of the nurses at the home. She sat waiting for him to answer, full of fear and trepidation. Always wondering which visit would be the one where he failed to recognise her entirely. 

“Wahey, here she is! The Little General!” Wilf’s face filled the screen of her phone. 

“Hiya Gramps!” Donna’s eyes welled with tears of joy at the sight of her grandfather. 

“Blimey, how’d you get inside this little tablet thingy?” he chuckled.  “Must be bigger on the inside,” he muttered with a strange, faraway look in his rheumy eyes, as though he were trying to remember something. 

“You don’t half come out with some rubbish!” she laughed. “We had a bonfire in the garden on the 5th. You know, jacket potatoes in tin foil, passing round a thermos of tea. Reminded me of the old days, up the hill at your allotment, remember?”

“Mmmm,” he smiled distantly, before his face crumpled in confusion. “’Ere, where’s the Doctor?”

“You’ve already seen the doctor, Gramps. Remember? He put you on those new pills.”

“No, not him. The skinny one. Isn’t he with you? He usually is.”

“Why would he be with me you daft old thing? I’m fit and healthy, thank you very much. Touch wood,” she tapped her head. “Don’t need a doctor.”

“I think you do,” Wilf mumbled. “I think we all do. He’d sort out this bleedin’ virus.”

“They’ll have a vaccine before you know it, Gramps. You’ll be round ours for Christmas dinner, just you wait and see.”

“That’ll be nice,” he grinned. “How’s Lance, then? He alright?”

“Shaun, granddad, I’m married to Shaun. Lance… had to go away.”

“Oh. Well, it’s probably for the best. I never did like him much.” 

Donna couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“The kids want these flippin’ animatronic Baby Yoda dolls for Christmas,” she changed the subject. “Honestly, it’s Star Wars this, Star Trek that… and that other one. You know, the time travel one? No idea where they get it from, I was never into any of that sci-fi rubbish.” 

“Donna…” Wilf cried, a sudden urgency in his voice.

“Yes, Gramps?” she swallowed nervously, it had been a long time since he had called her by her name. “What is it?”

“There’s something on your back.”

The words chilled her, although she had no idea what they meant. She felt her right hand darting involuntarily over her shoulder expecting to feel… what, exactly? Something creeping, crawling, insectoid… she shivered. 

“There’s nothing there. Honestly, what are you on about?”

“He was only trying to help, but it’s gone wrong again. It wasn’t a fixed point, you see? It was one of those… Temporal wotsits.”

Donna took a deep breath.

“I think you’re getting mixed up again, Gramps.”

“Hmm?” he looked at her, his eyes full of warmth, kindness and confusion. “So how’s Lance, then? He alright?”

“Yes, Gramps. Lance is fine.”

“Oh, that’s good. I always liked him. Oh, I’ve got to go. The nurse wants her tablet back. When are you coming to see me?”

“As soon as I can, Gramps. I promise. As soon as I can.”

“Well, I’ll look forward to it. Ta-da sweetheart.”

“Bye,” she stifled a tear as the screen became blurry, before Wilf’s face was replaced by a blonde-haired woman.

“Donna Noble!” the stranger grinned irrepressibly 

“Oh, hi,” Donna swiftly composed herself. “Are you the nurse? Thanks so much for letting me speak to him…”

“Yeah. Well, I’m a Doctor, actually. Although a lot of people assume I’m a nurse these days. Bit annoying, really. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nurse, mind! If it’s good enough for Rory Pond, it’s good enough for me.”

The blonde woman was still grinning.

“Oh my god,” Donna’s mouth fell open. “I know you!”

“No! No – that’s not possible!” The Doctor’s face paled.

“I knew I recognised you.”

“Listen to me – you cannot know who I am…”

“You’re Leanne Battersby. From Corrie!”

“What?”

“Ha! Just wait ’til I tell Nerys, she’ll be well jealous.” Donna snorted.

The Doctor harrumphed. 

“Leane Batt… Actually, you know what? If it stops your neural receptors from combusting then fine. Fine! Yeah. Leanne Battersby at your service. If you think I’m just an actress from Coronation Street then it’s safe for us to talk. Well, I say safe… safe-ish. By which I mean not very dangerous. Okay, maybe it’s a little bit dangerous. Put it this way: your mind won’t burn, but you might end up forgetting your old mate Susie Mair.”

“Susie Who?”

“Exactly. Anyway, we don’t have long… I need to get back in Wilf’s wardrobe before the Sontarans triangulate my signal. I’m telling you, this has been a long eight months. But your grandfather’s right: there is something on your back. Again. Or maybe for the first time – it all gets a bit wibbley with alternate dimensions. But there’s something on your back, and I’m really sorry, but it hitched a ride on a lottery ticket.”

“What on Earth are you on about?”

“Not on Earth, actually, Shan Shen,” the Doctor said, and then winced. “Oops! Shouldn’t have said that. Might have deleted another scene. Remember that time you were one the phone to Veena in the kitchen and you heard that strange wheezing, groaning sound coming from outside?”

“No?”

“Probably for the best.”

“What’s going on? And why are you in my Granddad’s wardrobe? Do I need to call social services, ’cause don’t think I won’t, blondie!”

“I need you to trust me. What was the name of that TV show where the kid in the blindfold had to be guided through the dungeon by their mates?”

“Knightmare?” 

“Yes! That’s the one. I need you to be my Dungoneer. I don’t have a Helmet of Justice so you’ll just have to close your eyes.”

“Close my eyes??” 

“I know I’m asking a lot, Donna, but Wilf trusts me, and that’s all I can tell you. But be honest – you know something’s wrong, don’t you? You can feel something digging into your shoulders, can’t you?”

Donna nodded. There was no denying it, and for some inexplicable reason, she felt she could trust this woman, even though the reason seemed distant and out of reach. Donna closed her eyes. 

The strange woman on the phone guided her out of the house, past a row of trees and to the telephone box at the end of the road. Funny, Donna thought, she didn’t remember there being a telephone box there. She hadn’t seen a proper one for years. 

Following the Doctor’s instructions, Donna pulled the handle and the door creaked open as she stepped inside. Instinctively, she reached out for the mounted payphone, but her fingers met only empty air. Perhaps it wasn’t an operating phone box anymore? It probably housed a defibrillator instead. She was tempted to have a peek and find out.

“Don’t even think about opening your eyes,” the Doctor snapped, somehow reading her thoughts, “if you open your eyes, your brain will hyperpodulate.”

“Hyer-what-you-what? I want you to know I’m taking a lot on faith here, Battersby! And if this is a wind-up, then so help me god...” 

Donna’s threat was drowned out the VROOP-VROOPING of ancient engines that at once sounded utterly alien and distantly familiar to her, like hearing a half-remembered nursery rhyme from childhood. 

She heard the telephone box door creak open again, and a rush of cold air from outside. Strange, it didn’t feel like the smoky air of the November street she had come from. It felt crisper, fresher. She could hear the merry peal of church bells. There isn’t a church that close to my house, she thought, puzzled.

“You can come out now. Walk forwards but keep your eyes closed for a moment.”

Donna did as she was told. She felt grass beneath her feet as the VROOP-VROOPING resumed and then faded, drowned out by the sound of the bells. 

“You can open you eyes now,” the woman on the phone was now stood in front of her, but that was the least surprising thing to Donna. 

“But, how…” Donna looked down at herself. “I’m in my wedding dress. I don’t understand?” The two of them were stood by an old lychgate. Donna looked ahead – there was the church where she had married Shaun. Discarded confetti swirled about her ankles. There were guests milling about ahead – there was her grandfather’s friend Minnie Hooper. Minnie the Menace he used to call her! Although Donna was sure she’d heard that Minnie had died recently. Nevertheless, there she was, full of joy and life. And there was Nerys in her hideous peach dress! 

“What year is this?” asked Donna.

“2010,” said the Doctor.

“This is my wedding day. How is this even possible?”

“The time differential’s trying to reconcile there being two of you here at the same time. Hence the dress. It’s tricky with parallel universes. Anyway, ‘how’ isn’t important right now. What’s important is that somebody just gave you a lottery ticket as a wedding present.”

“I know, cheapskate.” 

“You’re about to win a triple rollover.” 

“Yeah, well…” 

“The thing is, Donna – the man gave you that ticket – he meant well, but he was meddling with things that shouldn’t have been meddled with. He was young – still in his Time Lord Victorious phase.”

“I don’t understand a single word you’re saying.”

“You know that theory that a butterfly fluttering its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world? Well, time’s like that. Small, trivial things can cause ripples which alter the course of history. The truth is: you didn’t win that money. At least, not originally. You took one look at that ticket and ripped it up. Remember? The first dance at your wedding reception was Can’t Buy Me Love.”

“No… that’s not right,” said Donna. It couldn’t be. She knew that hadn’t happened. Their first dance had been 2 Become 1 by Spice Girls. So why could she remember dancing to The Beatles with Shaun?

“Nobody won the lottery that week – and the next week it was a quadruple rollover! A boy called Michael Finch won it. He was only sixteen. Imagine that! First time he’d ever played. Great kid. A friend of mine met his dad once. Long story. Anyway, I’m sorry Donna, but Michael didn’t spend it on cars and holiday homes and private pools. He invested in the future: green initiatives, healthcare, education… When the Sontarans released their virus, Earth was ready for it. Plus, the United States didn’t have a Zygon for a president. Well, they did actually, but she’s one of the nice ones. But shh, don’t tell anyone.”

“You know what,” said Donna. “I don’t think you really are Leanne Battersby, are you?”

“No.”

“But I do know you, don’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s… bad? My head hurts…” Donna cupped her forehead in her palm.

“Yes. It’s very bad,” said the Doctor. “But it’s okay. Because if you tear up that lottery ticket and let Michael Finch win it instead, then you’ll change the future and we’ll never have met. Well, not like this anyway.” 

“This is crazy. How is any of this possible?”

“My fault, I’m afraid. A long time ago, you had an encounter with a Time Beetle – and this is the gross part, sorry – Time Beetles can lay eggs beneath the hosts’ skin. They lie dormant, sometimes indefinitely, until the host encounters a significant temporal junction – in your case a lottery win that could change the course of human history. You were never supposed to have this life, Donna. You were supposed to tear up the ticket.”

More non-memories were flooding Donna’s mind – the years of living on the breadline in Chiswick, living with the regret of their lost fortune. A bank holiday weekend in Blackpool with the kids, having her fortune told by the strange little woman in the kiosk on the pier… Voicing her regret aloud and wishing she could go back to the day of her wedding and keep that winning ticket. 

That couldn’t be right… They never took the kids to Blackpool. Their holidays had been in Cyprus and Malaga, they’d splashed out on luxury round-the-world cruises. But she remembered it so vividly: the rattle of the trams, the glare of the illuminations, the taste of the chips, the seagulls crying overhead. 

“But we’ll have nothing. I can’t go back to the way we used to live: hand to mouth, never knowing where next month’s rent is coming from. What about Ella and Josh? They’ll be born with nothing.”

“Donna Temple-Noble, listen to me,” the Doctor gazed at her sternly. “You’ll have everything. You’ll have each other.” 

Donna looked back over to the church – there was Wilf! – still spry at eighty and fighting off Minnie’s advances as ever. And there was Shaun – so handsome in his wedding suit! She couldn’t believe how young he looked. 

The Doctor was right. Donna thought of how happy they had been during lockdown, not because they were comfortable, but because they had each other. The tweet-a-longs, the virtual gigs, the walks in the woods, the disastrous attempts at baking, standing on their doorstep and clapping for U.N.I.T…. She hadn’t put two and two together until she’d been speaking to her grandfather: but it had been the first time in her married life – the first time as a mother – that she had somehow recaptured that magic of sitting in her grandfather’s allotment with a flask of tea and gazing at the stars. 

At the time Donna had felt as though she were longing for adventure, as though the stars held some inexplicable magic, but now she knew that the magic had been right there in the allotment all along. She no longer yearned for adventure, but longed instead to return to those simple days. She never could, of course. Wilf’s star was fading, but her own was rising. She thought back to the old world of financial hardship: rented flats, being plunged into darkness when the electricity meter ran out, payday loans and minimum wage temp jobs. There would be struggles but there would also be magic. There would be stories by candlelight, cartoons and warm milk before bed in the precious few years before Joshua and Ella became moody teenagers. There would be games in the park. There would be home cooked meals, and there would be telly and Pringles on the sofa on Friday nights. 

There would be family. 

Donna turned to speak to the blonde woman, but the stranger was gone, so she hitched up her wedding dress and hurried over to her husband. 

“Who were you talking to?” he asked.

“A friend,” Donna smiled.

“What’s her name?”

“I can’t remember,” she said. It was strange, the name was on the tip of her tongue, but it had gone. She decided it didn’t matter.

“Give us that lottery ticket, will you?” Donna asked. (She had entrusted it into Shaun’s safe keeping. There were still no pockets in wedding dresses.)

“Why, you got a good feeling about it?” he asked, taking it from his pocket and handing it to his bride.

“Yeah. As a matter of fact, I have,” said Donna Temple-Noble as she tore up the ticket, and a great weight lifted from her shoulders.

[elgaberino-mcoc]

Remember when in October 2020, in the Battlerealm, Cosmic Ghost Rider (Frank) messed with Kang’s stuff in his absence, and Norman Osborn acted like Frank had just doomed the entire Battlerealm? And that was never explained?

Then remember in the Champions are Forever video released December 2020, when a mysterious new purple-blue-green villain emerged and wiped out old Kang? And that was never explained?

And now we find out that [SPOILERS] the Marvel multiverse has been protected from Kang by one version of “a dude named Nathaniel” holed up in Temporal Limbo, boss of the TVA? And [SPOILERS] he warned that killing him would unleash any number of variants of him who would go to war with one another and create havoc across the multiverse? And then [SPOILERS] Sylvie killed him anyway?

And remember how both the Battlerealm and the Marvel cinematic timeline(s) are parts of the greater Marvel multiverse he was supposedly protecting from various versions of Kang doing war with other versions? 

We might have our explanation why this new flashy Superior Kang is apparently coming to attack and replace the classic Kang we have already had in the Battlerealm.

[teawithkpop]

[M] - PhysCom - Pt 2

pt 1 - pt 2 - pt 3 - bc 1 - pt 4 - pt 5 - pt 6

Pairing: BTS - OT7 x Reader

Rating: Mature [18+]

Length: 9.7k words

Genre: PhysCom AU - smut with dashes of angst, and a shitload of romance and complicated feelings,, uhuhu (porn with plot??)

Warnings: swearing, anal play (male receiving), praise kink, degradation, mentions of cross dressing, brief orgasm denial, oral sex (female receiving), mentions of birth control, dirty talk, pet play, cum play (kinda?), voyeurism, group sex, anal sex, pheww I think that’s it

this one is,,, twice as long as pt 1 eye-

anyways thank you for all the love for physcom! I’ll do my best to make this series ruin everyone’s lives hehehe  the best it can be! ^^ <3

-------

“...What are you two doing?”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, shit-

Emergency sirens are all you can hear in your brain and sheer panic floods your veins, leaving you frozen with fear. You know you shut the door, you had to have shut it, right? Why the fuck wouldn’t you have shut the door?

Surely this is the end. You’ll be exposed and all the reasons that you gave Taehyung not to do the thing you just did come flooding back to you now, echoing in your head like ghosts and mocking you in your own voice. Contract terminated… stigmatized… left with nothing... shadow of disgrace...

“What does it look like?” Taehyung answers without hesitation, drawing you back into the present moment. One of his eyebrows lifts minutely, as if he’s only mildly irritated by the witness to your transgression. If he’s nervous, you can’t tell.

Jimin’s eyes narrow suspiciously at Taehyung’s sarcasm. “It looks like you were-”

“Our lovely PhysCom was just helping me get off.” Tae interrupts him, his tone implying the obvious.

It’s then that you realize, Jimin only saw what you two were doing, not the reason behind it, or what you were feeling... this lie might actually work.

“Then why were you just kissing her? Why wasn’t she touching you, or something?” Jimin is not so easily fooled, and he peers around to confirm that neither yours nor Tae’s genitals are exposed.

Taehyung gives a shrug. "Kissing is my new kink."  His eyes sparkle with the private joke, and he sends you a wink. “See you later, jagiya.” With that, he ruffles his hair back into place and heads out of the room, leaving you alone with a skeptical Jimin.

You're a little ticked that he left you to glue all the pieces of your cover story back into place, but you turn to Jimin regardless. "Sorry about that. Master Kim has been… experimenting,” you supply, trying to fill in any holes in the story, but sounding uncertain even to your own ears.

"I don't like that he calls you that." Jimin says, a frown on his lips as he stares after the direction Tae went.

You furrow your brows. "What?"

"Jagiya.” His gaze shifts back to you. “You know what that means, right?"

It’s rare for the boys use a word or phrase in their native language that you don’t understand. You don’t speak Korean, but the chip in your brain does. It’s hooked up to an audio-translation app in your ComGear, and automatically translates what you hear, so your brain perceives it in your native tongue.

Conversely, the chip also tracks your thoughts, so as you go to speak, it overrides the synapses in your Temporal Lobe and Korean comes out of your mouth instead. Such a device is considered standard among newly licensed PhysComs.

It didn’t used to be that way, and often PhysComs that were hired from foreign countries had no way to speak to their clients except through body language and learned commands. But the industry quickly realized that full communication is key to avoiding issues with consent, not to mention it's much more convenient, and so the best PhysCom networks provide their employees with proper translation equipment. Though there are still some smaller networks that can’t afford the technology and therefore, they usually only hire trainees who speak the same language as their potential clients.

On occasion, there will still be a word which has no exact equivalent in your language, such as hyung or jagiya, so the app doesn’t attempt to translate it. But usually you can pick up the gist of it through context, and Namjoon has been very helpful in providing you with articulate definitions before. You still remember the funny look on his face when you asked him about jagiya - the term of endearment Tae calls you.

"It's used between lovers, isn't it?” You ask, recalling Namjoon’s definition to be an approximation of darling or sweetheart. “Technically, I am his lover."

Jimin’s frown creases his brow. "Yeah, but you're a lover for all of us,” he says, a pout forming on his lips. “He shouldn't get to act like you're just his."

Normally you would tease him for sounding jealous, but his concern in this case is… founded, and another pang of guilt hits your gut. You don't know if you'll even be able to eat the dinner you made at this rate.

You try to change the subject. "Anyway, how can I help you, Master Park?"

"Oh, right.” His concern seems to melt away to embarrassment, and he rubs the back of his neck. “I sent you a message this morning. I don't know if you got it… then I messaged you about ten minutes ago, asking if we could… have a quick session."

Right. You haven’t looked at your ComGear since the incident with Taehyung, and you feel even guiltier. First you were lying to your client, and now you’ve accidentally ghosted him. Thankfully Jimin doesn’t hold a grudge, especially not with you. All he needs is a little personal attention and validation, and he’ll be purring.

Time to get back to work.

"Sorry, master.” You assume your persona and saunter over to him, running your hand up his arm. “I was so excited to hear from you, I forgot to reply,” you chuckle, your fingers dancing up his neck and combing through the hair at his nape. He visibly relaxes under your touch, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment as you card through his silky locks.

“It’s okay…” he mumbles, shyly avoiding your gaze. Honestly, Jimin can be too cute for his own good. He and Taehyung are the same age, but they're like opposites in a way. They both exude the same level of charm, but one is effortlessly seductive while the other is effortlessly endearing. You have witnessed those roles reverse in them before, but no matter which way you look at it, they’re still two of the sexiest people on the planet.

“I did get your message this morning, master. Quite a scandalous outfit…" You click your tongue and raise a well groomed eyebrow at him. Jimin loves to be teased, and chastisement really puts him over the edge. “Why did a good boy like you send me such a naughty picture, hm?”

He looks away, a blush rising to his cheeks. "I was wondering if… if you could…"

You don’t try to finish his sentence for him, and lift one polished fingernail beneath his chin, coaxing him to look at you. "Yes?"

"If you could make me wear it?"

Oh. Another surprise. Jimin is a hell of a flirt on stage, and anyone would think he’s dominant in the bedroom, even just judging from how often he sticks out his tongue while dancing, or how he thrusts his hips to the encouraging screams of thousands. But that’s on the stage, when he’s in his element. By himself, in private, it’s a much different story. Jimin’s not exactly sure what he wants from you.

You had read up about all this in his file, and you’ve been working with Jimin to help him explore his sexuality in a way that’s comfortable for him. You’ve tried a myriad of things so far, and recently, he’s been enjoying more submissive pleasures. During your most recent session, he even asked you to penetrate him.

You had complied of course, but the experience seems to have inspired him to go further, to a kink you didn’t even know he had. Cross-dressing and the usual praise-filled humiliation? Oh, this will be fun.

“Chim?” Your tone is scandalized as you use the name he prefers when being submissive, and his cheeks turn scarlet. “You want to be dressed up in that outfit?”

He nods, turning his face to nuzzle his cheek into your hand. “Is... is that okay?”

Your heart melts, and you smile at him, brushing your thumb along his soft cheek. “Of course it’s okay, baby.”

He grins, his eyes turning to crescents, and you suddenly feel compelled to give him the entire world if he so desires.

You click your tongue once more and ruffle his hair affectionately. “We’ll have to order it first, okay? Then we can dress you up, Chim.”

“Okay,” he says, and you swear his smile could light up the night sky. “Until then… could you, uh… play with my butt again?”

You chuckle and nod. “Yes, I most definitely can. We still have some time before dinner.” You grab your ComGear, take his hand, and lead him out of the room, being sure to shut the door this time. “Come along, baby.”

As the two of you head off to his room, you’re almost able to forget the situation with Taehyung. That is, until you open your ComGear to pull up the picture of Jimin’s outfit and see all the missed messages from him.

I’m really sorry. My feelings got away from me. Please don’t ignore me, jagiya. I don’t want to lose you. Jagiya? I’m coming upstairs.

Shit. Feelings? A sinking feeling claws at your heart and you have to wonder just how serious Taehyung is about you. How deep do these feelings of his go?

“Everything okay?” Jimin’s voice clears your mind and you slide your ComGear back into its holster. His eyes are full of concern at your probably tense expression, and you have to push the guilt away again.

“Everything’s fine.” You aren’t sure that’s true, but maybe if you say it enough, it’ll manifest. Regardless, you don’t have time to worry about Taehyung right now. Your client needs you.

“Come on, baby boy. Let’s go make you feel good.”

-------

Jimin’s room always smells good, like fresh linen. You aren’t sure how that’s possible, when 80 percent of the time, the place is a mess. But you aren’t complaining. He keeps his bed made neatly, and that’s all that matters for your job.

"Take off your pants for me, Chim." Your voice is gentle as you start the scene and lock the door behind the both of you. Jimin wastes no time in following your orders, and strips his lower half down to his underwear. He’s about to take off his top too, but you stop him. “You should leave that on. It’s cute.”

He looks down at the oversized shirt, the long sleeves covering most of his hands, and the rest of the soft blue fabric hangs loosely around his torso. He smiles shyly and gets onto the bed, assuming position and laying on his back as he had for your previous sessions.

"What a good boy. Oh, look how hard you are already,” you purr, undoing the belt of your robe and slipping it off, leaving your body bare save for your utility belt. It feels good to put aside your worries and focus on work for a while.

Before you begin, you change a setting on your ComGear to let the other boys know you’re currently in a session. If you’re busy and they want to fuck, they have the option of joining in - if your current client allows it - scheduling you for directly after, or fucking one of the secondary PhysComs their company employs and keeps on call.

You’re their Primary Physcom. The secondaries are alternate fuck toys for when you’re unavailable, if you get sick, on your days off, while you’re sleeping, etc. For as long as you’ve worked for Bangtan, not once have they called a secondary PhysCom.

It does boost your pride a bit, but to be fair, you’re the only one who knows them so well.

Sure, they could go call another PhysCom to play with if they get super horny at three in the morning, but the secondaries are practically strangers to them. They’ve all expressed that they’d much rather wait, if it means they can get their hands on you instead of some random substitute, which is just the way you like it.

You’re their girl, and you know, better than anyone, how they like to fuck. Besides, if anything, them having to wait for you builds up the anticipation and makes them even hornier. In a way, you view their favoritism as job security. It’s only practical to stay in their good graces and develop trust and build connections with them.

You see the lust and excitement glittering in Jimin’s eyes as you climb onto the bed, facing him and sitting beside his legs. Your hand runs up along his inner thigh to tease him, and the bulge in his underwear grows a little more prominent.

“Now then. Have you been thinking about our last session, Chim?” You make your voice calm and soothing as your fingers skim up and down his thighs, giving an occasional squeeze to his soft skin. God, his thighs are thick… perfect for riding.

He nods. “Yes.”

You flick the thought away. He didn’t ask you to ride his thighs. Your fantasies are not relevant. “Good. And how do you feel about it? Did you like it when I played with your pretty little hole?” Your nails graze over his length, and he bites his lower lip. You like to do regular check-ins with your clients, in case they want to experiment, or something isn’t working for them. But with Jimin, everything so far has been an experiment, so you’ve been checking in more frequently. In a way, you’re kind of like a sexual therapist to all of them.

“Yes. I loved it,” he replies, gripping the sheets below him to avoid moving too much. “It felt so good.”

You hum in delight, happy that you two seem to have found a path to follow to pursue his pleasure. “Excellent. And if something doesn’t feel good, what do we say?”

“Calico.” Jimin murmurs, one sleeved hand coming up to cover his face. God, he’s a natural. His shyness is going to kill you. You set up safe words with all your clients, just in case. It shows your professionalism. You even have one, though you’ve never had to use it.

“Good boy. Always tell me how you’re feeling, okay?” You can feel his cock twitch at the praise, and you love being able to make him so happy.

He nods, a blush already rising to his cheeks. “Please touch me.”

How can you deny such a request? You hook your fingers in the waistband of his (no doubt very expensive) boxer briefs, peeling the fabric down his legs and off his body, to be discarded at the foot of the bed.

“Oh my…” You shift positions, spreading his legs apart and perching yourself between them. “What a pretty little cock. Look at that.” You would make a show of it even if it wasn’t pretty, but fuck, in this case, the praise is well deserved. Jimin’s cock is smooth and pink and perfect, just like his lips. Frankly, you think putting your mouth on either one would be just as pleasurable. The only fib about his cock would be the ‘little’ part - Jimin sports a fair five or six inches - but it’s all a part of the fantasy, for his benefit.

You hum to yourself as you snap on a pair of plastic gloves, as much for safety reasons as for his pleasure. Even though you all get checked frequently for any sort of sexual diseases and infections, you’re still having sex with multiple men every single day, and there are certain precautions one should take.

Hygiene is one of the many intricacies of your job and you follow your hygienic routine religiously. For anal and vaginal sex, PhysComs have various cleansers that can be inserted nightly to prevent anything nasty from taking root overnight. For Oral sex, there are specialized mouth washes that can be swallowed if needed.

But hands are a little trickier. Nails and cuticles aren’t as easily to clean thoroughly, and can trap all sorts of bacteria, so with something like fingering your clients, it’s safest to use a barrier to significantly decrease the risk of infection or contamination.

Now fully protected, your fingertips start to trace over his beautiful cock, skimming along his inner thighs, and teasing his precious little hole, building up his anticipation. He gives a small whimper, looking away as you tease him just enough to make his hips buck up into your capable hands.

Eventually, you take his length and slowly pump it in your hand, catching his gaze whenever he looks to you. “Does Chim want to be filled up? You want me to play with your ass?”

He nods emphatically, still hiding his face.

“Use your words, baby.”

“Yes! Please p-play with my ass.” His face is positively scarlet, and you smile with satisfaction.

You let go of him, and reach beneath his bed to pull out his little chest of treasures. Anal beads, plugs, vibrators, nearly everything can be found inside. You think he might have even added to the collection since last time.

You select a small ribbed plug with a jewel decorating the base and grab the lube from your belt. You spread a generous amount over his hole, gently massaging it in. As you carefully push your forefinger past his puckered rim, he moans. You slide your finger gently in and out, stroking his silken walls, and he writhes beneath your touch, already overcome with pleasure.

“Are you ready, baby?”

He nods again, then remembers to speak. “Yes. I’m ready.”

You ease the tip of the plug past his rim, and soon the whole thing is nestled comfortably inside him. He lets out a whine, his thighs clenching as you slowly work the toy in and out of his hole. “Good boy… such a pretty cock.” You pet his thigh soothingly, then start to squeeze his cock, pumping it slowly in time with the plug.

It doesn’t take long before Jimin is moaning and squirming, his length rock hard and leaking precum. His moans get whinier, his breath more shallow, and you can tell he’s on the edge.

With a kiss to his hardened dick, you ease the plug out of his ass and cease all contact. Orgasm denial is something he’d brought up last time, and now seems like the perfect opportunity to test the waters. "I think such a good boy can hold his cum in until dinner…"

"No! Please! I-I can't." He covers his face with both hands, writhing desperately for some friction to his aching cock, his pink hole puckering cutely at the sudden emptiness.

So freaking cute.

"Oh? You want to cum now?" You chuckle, teasing the toy around his rim. "But then how will you fuck me along with the others at dinner if your little cock is all sad and empty?" You trace your fingernail up along his length, barely touching him.

He whimpers in reply, his member twitching in pleasure.

"Can you cum again for me tonight, baby boy? Promise me. Otherwise this little cock is going to stay hard." You grip him by the base of his shaft, tortuously brushing your forefinger over the leaking head of his cock.

"I promise I can! I'll cum for you at dinner, I-I swear it…"

You grin. You don’t expect to hold it to him, but you know it’s the looming threat of punishment that’s what’s most effective here. "I have your word, baby boy."

Your hand pumps his length to completion while you grab the toy and fuck it back inside of him, and he cries out in ecstasy, quickly cumming in spurts all over your hand, a few drops landing on his shirt while his body trembles from his climax.

"Good boy,” you coo, milking him through his high.

-------

It doesn’t take you long to clean Jimin up, as well as cleaning the toy for next time, and then you pack everything away. He’s still breathless by the time you’re finished, laying on the bed as he recovers from his orgasm.

You’re about to get up and grab your robe from the floor when Jimin finds his voice.

"Why were you really kissing Taehyung?"

Your stomach sinks at the question. You’d been hoping he’d forgotten - as you were trying to do - about your little bend of will earlier. How the hell are you supposed to answer that? Honesty. Always go for honesty.

Well, as honest as you can be without losing your job. "He commanded me."

"Is that all it takes?" Jimin’s eyebrows shoot up and he props up eagerly onto his elbows. "Kiss me, too."

You curse the flutter in your stomach. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

You know for a fact that it's a bad idea, and out of the question, but damn if Park Jimin doesn't have the most luscious lips you've ever seen. The temptation is there, for sure...

"Just a little kiss?” He clasps his hands together, his eyes pleading. “It's only fair. You were practically making out with him."

Well, shit. Now what? Technically, not kissing clients is only a self-imposed rule on your part, plenty of PhysComs divulge in the act. You chose to restrict it for your own sanity. But, what now? Do you lie to yourself and stick to the book, even when you've already broken a cardinal rule? Or do you… see what's beyond the confines of its cover?

Fuck. You need to stop talking yourself into these things.

But to be fair, nothing bad happened last time, apart from Jimin walking in on you. You glance at the door, which is shut tight and locked, as is standard during a session. No risk of being interrupted.

Jimin’s eyes dart down to your lips as he chews on his own, waiting for your decision. Seeing his teeth tug at the plump pink skin has your heart skipping a beat despite your best effort to deny his effect on you.

Fuck it. Park Jimin is begging to kiss you.

"Okay, fine. One - very small - kiss." You pinch your fingers together to demonstrate.

“Yes!” He smiles brightly, and suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. He sits up fully, scooting closer to you.

Why is your heart beating so goddamn fast? Why are you nervous about this? "But, look, you can't tell anyone, okay? I’m making an exception since this isn't really in my job description."

He nods eagerly and seems happy to agree to any stipulations. “Just this once, I promise. It’ll be our secret.”

That makes it sound even more condemning somehow, but you don’t have time to second guess it as he cups your cheek and pulls you in, pressing his lips to yours.

His kiss is like some sort of paradise, it leaves your mind feeling fuzzy... his lips… how are they so thick and soft? He’s hypnotic, sweet, addictive… like nothing you’ve ever experienced.

Before you know it, he's laying you out on the bed, moaning as he licks into your mouth, his tongue breaching through the kiss while he gropes your breast. Fuck, you shouldn’t have agreed to do this naked. But he tastes so sweet, you can’t think of a reason to object, too intoxicated by his lips. He breaks away from your mouth and starts trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down your body, and pretty soon he's mouthing at your inner thighs, his fingers skimming the base of your pussy plug.

Oh, shit. Wait, no, how did this happen?

"Master Park." You start to say, but then he's twisting the plug free, and you gasp at the unexpected stretch as it pulls out. "J-Jimin!"

He stops, his eyes wide at the use of his first name as he looks up at you from his lewd position.

"What the hell are you doing?" You ask, too flustered to rely on your usual formalities.

"Saying thank you." He replies simply. Then he leans down to kiss your clit, and begins mouthing at it devotedly.

You nearly jump out of your skin at the electric contact. Fuck, no one's gone down on you in a year at least, not since your training. Your body is screaming to let him continue, but you know it’ll lead to nowhere as he laves over your sensitive and neglected bud with his tongue, and you find yourself scooting up the bed and away from his blissful mouth. "Jimin, no. Stop."

You grab the plug from him and insert it again before anything can leak out, distress making your fingers tremble.

His face scrunches with concern. "Did I do it wrong?"

Damn it, why does he have to look like a heartbroken little puppy?

"No. No, it felt really good,” You assure him distractedly, trying to contain the frustration bubbling up inside you.

"Then why can't I-"

"Because!" You don’t mean to lash out, but your temper bursts before you can help it. "God, first Taehyung and now you, why is everyone trying to fuck with me today?"

His face falls, and he looks hurt. "I wasn't fucking with you."

"No, Jimin…” This day just keeps getting better and better. “I know you weren't. I'm sorry." You extend a hand, giving his shoulder a squeeze. It’s not his fault that you can’t seem to follow your own fucking rules. "But please don’t go down on me, not ever, okay?"

"Why not?” He frowns, and you feel even worse for letting this happen. “You deserve it. You do so much for us."

You pause, wondering whether you should lie. Always going for honesty hasn’t worked out too well so far... But looking at Jimin’s eyes, full of concern and confusion, you can’t bring yourself to lie to him. "Because I can't orgasm."

His brow furrows. "Just because it’s not a part of your job, doesn’t mean-"

"No, Jimin." You draw your knees up to your chest, feeling uncomfortably vulnerable for letting your guard down so easily around him. "I literally can't. I'm incapable."

"What do you mean?"

You sigh. This is not something you expected to have to talk about. "Do you know anything about modern birth control?"

He cocks his head to the side, unsure of where you’re going with this. "There are pills, right? And condoms too, I guess."

"There are also implants,” you explain, wringing your hands in your lap.

Jimin blinks, clearly confused. His gaze slides down to your chest for about half a second.

You sigh again. "Not that kind. It's like a piece of plastic they put inside you that emits a hormone. It stops ovaries from creating eggs. They're over 99% effective at preventing pregnancy."

He still looks confused. "Yeah, but why would that make you-"

You shake your head. "That's how most of them work. There's a newer, more tailored kind of implant for PhysComs that's 100% effective." When the technology was discovered, it was a hot item for PhysCom networks. Of course, some people developed negative side effects to it, but if one’s body was compatible with this new miracle form of birth control, it boosted their advantages in the field exponentially.

You let go of your legs and look to him, resignation in your gaze. "It puts the reproductive system into a comatose state and ceases all function of the ovaries and uterus apart from lubrication."

"Oh." Jimin looks shocked, and you don’t blame him. Barely anyone outside of the sex work industry has even heard of the technology. Who else would sacrifice their own pleasure for ensuring zero chance of pregnancy?

You’ve tried to climax before on your own, god knows. But the implant leaves you in a perpetual state of mild arousal with nowhere to go, like constantly revving an engine. Clitoral stimulation feels good at first, but with no resolution, it soon becomes tortuous.

You can put up with it for short periods, like if one of the boys starts to rub you while they fuck you. They mean well. But you’ve learned to convincingly fake an orgasm before it gets to be too much. Most of the time it’s not an issue, since your pleasure doesn’t enter into the equation.

"That's how all of you can cum inside me all the time. It's how I can keep it plugged up in me without any fear of getting pregnant." You laugh humorlessly, tapping the plug at your core.

Jimin stares at the plug, as if it’s presence has taken on an entirely new meaning to him. "I never thought about that."

You actually do laugh at his naïvety. “I’m sure no man would look that gift horse in the mouth.” You realize from his puzzled expression that the idiom might not translate well. “No man would question such a privilege.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess…” A shadow crosses over his face, and you decide to draw this uncomfortable conversation about your reproductive system to a close.

"There is a way to turn it off, in case of emergency side effects. But I can't just turn it off for fun. You have to understand that.” You rest your hand on his shoulder again, hoping he now comprehends the reason for your earlier outburst. “It's a part of my job."

"I understand. Sorry,” he says, giving you a small nod. He twists his mouth to the side, chewing over the revelations. "That must really suck. Not being able to cum."

You laugh heartily this time, your spirits lifted from his sentiment. "Yeah, it does sometimes." You give his thigh a pat and get up to go find your robe. "But I get to make all of you cum for me, so doesn't that make up for it?"

He shrugs, that pout appearing once more. You feel bad for bringing his mood down. You’re supposed to be lifting him up, making him feel good.

You tie the belt of your robe and come back over to him, your finger tracing under his chin.

"Come on, baby. Let's go order that outfit for you."

His spirits seem to lift a little at the proposition and you smile to yourself. Jimin truly is one of your easiest clients to please.

-----

A while later, you stand in Seokjin’s bedroom within his walk-in closet, admiring yourself in the full length mirror. You‘re wearing a gown more expensive than a house, and jewels decorate your throat and hair, elbow-length gloves adorning your hands.

“Are you ready for dinner, darling?” Seokjin purrs in your ear as he slinks up behind you, his hands lightly gliding up your waist.

“Yes, Master Kim.” Your answer is obedient and full of gratitude. You gaze at his reflection in the mirror, letting him take in your appearance.

“My, my, my… look at how lucky I am to have such a pretty pet, hm?” He chuckles, one of his hands skimming gingerly up your ribs and settling on your breast, squeezing you through the silken dress.

“Yes, master,” you sigh, leaning into his sinful touch and playing along with his fantasy. Seokjin's pleasure seems to hinge on your luxury. The more extravagance you’re dripping in, the hornier he gets. Which he often likes to complement with your unique position in the house...

“Such a pretty pet. I bet you’d gladly have us all fuck you on the dinner table, wouldn’t you?”

You shiver. Seokjin’s dirty talk was good when you started working for them, but it’s only improved over time. "Of course, master. I love to be your little fuck toy." You smile at him in the mirror, and then turn around in his arms, placing your hands on his chest.  "Please use me tonight, any way you wish."

“That’s the plan, darling.” He chuckles, taking your hands and bringing them up to his mouth, languidly kissing each and every knuckle. His eyes burn with unbridled passion, and you wonder if tonight he’ll be in the mood to fuck you before you even make it to dinner.

Seokjin looks gorgeous, dressed to the nines in a tailored suit, with his hair styled perfectly, not a single strand out of place. Anyone would fall to their knees if they received a look like the one he’s giving you now.

“I have a gift for you, my sweet.” A smile tugs at his lips.

You gasp in delight, your eyes wide and innocent. “I’m so lucky! What is it, master?” You know what it is. He gives you one once a week, every Friday night, when it’s his turn to call the shots.

“Close your eyes, pet.”

You obey, and feel a slim piece of leather grace your throat. In a few moments he tells you to look in the mirror again, and you see a decorative collar circling your neck.

“Oh, master…” You don’t have to pretend to be impressed. Though Jin collars you every week, he never uses the same collar more than once, and this week’s purchase is a decadent, lacy display, with tiny jewels inlaid in its surface. “It’s beautiful.”

His hands are on you again, skimming up your waist while he noses your neck. “A perfect fit for my beautiful slut,” he breathes, and you feel a flutter in the pit of your stomach. Jin is just as charming as the rest of them, and It would be easy to underestimate him, but that would be a grave mistake. He gives off a certain aura of power that’s unparalleled by any other man you’ve met.

“How many?” He asks in a husky whisper, one hand slipping down your back to ease over your ass.

You shiver. Jin gets satisfaction on his night of control by knowing how much cum you’d collected inside you over the course of the day. “Sixteen.”

His hand comes down in a hard spank, rubbing you ass afterward to calm the sting. “Fuck. So greedy…” he rumbles, his voice thick with lust. “That’s more than two rounds each… Did you beg for them to fill you up, like the little whore you are?” His voice is soothing and elegant, a stark contrast to the filth coming from his beautiful mouth.

You nod, biting your lower lip. Anything to hear his silken voice in your ear again.

“You’ll eat well tonight, my sweet…” his voice lilts as he kisses up your neck, his hands slipping up once more to your tits, squeezing them possessively.

You moan softly, leaning your head back to expose more of your throat. Jin’s presence feels secure and thrilling all at once. You know he’ll never hurt you, but the effortless brand of posh dominance he wields keeps you on your toes.

“How do you feel towards Taehyung, pet?”

Your blood runs cold. How did he find out? Did Tae tell him what happened? Fuck. You try to keep your voice even, try not to let yourself become stiff in his arms. “Why do you ask, master?”

Seokjin shrugs one shoulder, more concerned with peeling down the bodice of your dress to reveal your breasts. “He requested the first taste of you tonight. I obviously won’t grant him the privilege of touching my pet if he’s done anything at all to fall out of your good graces.”

You swallow. You don’t know why Tae requested to go first, and you’d rather not give him any more ground until you’ve had a chance to talk to him. To make sure he knows the kiss was a one-time thing. To make sure he hasn’t gotten any ideas about those feelings of his.

“I… I would rather have someone else go first, master.” You say quietly, knowing that refusing Tae’s request could be just as condemning as going through with it and whatever he’d been planning to do to you.

Jin raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t question you. You remind yourself to calm down. For all he knows Taehyung could have eaten all the breakfast cereal. He doesn’t have to know why Tae’s not in your favor right now. “Very well, pet. I’ll choose someone else.”

“Thank you, master.” You visibly relax, and let Seokjin play with your tits. He circles his thumbs over your nipples, and they quickly become erect under his touch.

“Do you know why I gave you this collar?” He murmurs, his breath hot against your skin as he licks up your neck.

You know. “Why, master?”

“Because tonight you’ll be passed around and fucked by all of us. Every member of this household.” His words are crisp, in delicious contrast with his soft hands massaging your breasts. “You’ll be our dessert course. I want them to remember that you’re mine and that I’m granting them the privilege of fucking my sweet little toy and having a taste of you.” He nips at your neck, sucking gently before pulling away. “And I want you to remember that you belong to no one else in that room but myself.” He rolls your nipples between his fingers, tugging at the sensitive buds. “You obey me, and me alone. Is that understood?”

You whimper and nod. “Yes, Master Kim.”

“What a good little slut.” He smiles serenely and gives each tit a light swat before tugging your bodice back over your chest.

There’s a moment of tender silence as he observes you in the mirror. His eyes soften, and you can tell he’s set his act aside for a brief moment. “You know, you’re really good at this.” He smiles appreciatively, giving you a warm hug around the middle and nuzzling into your neck.

You laugh at his break in character, laying your arms atop his. “It’s my job to be good at it,” you reply with a fond roll of your eyes.

He straightens his posture and adjusts his cufflinks, resuming his role seamlessly. “We’ll be starting the main course in thirty minutes. Be prepared.”

You nod obediently, and he hovers close to you once more. His tongue darts out to lick up your cheek possessively. “Be good while I’m away, pet.”

You watch as he leaves the room, the door shutting softly behind him. Well, you have half an hour of time to kill before they’re ready for you.

Pretty soon after you were hired, the boys’ company decided it would be a good idea for them to take turns living out their wildest fantasies with you. One night of the week is dedicated to each of them, and during that night, whoever’s in charge can do whatever they want with you, and the other boys have to either watch or join in. Their company said it’s good for group bonding, and for healthy sexual expression. The boys decided who would have which night through rock, paper, scissors, and Seokjin got slotted for Fridays.

Something about Seokjin’s banquet nights always give you jitters, as if you’re about to perform onstage. Well, if you count a tabletop as a stage. Regardless, you always find ways to relax before the show, so to speak.

Tonight you’ve decided to kill the time on your ComGear, with the few limited apps you’re allowed to have. You’ve become a master at solitaire and minesweeper, and as you take a seat on the chaise lounge, kicking your feet up, you select the hardest difficulty mode.

Honestly, you haven’t played a good game of solitaire in several weeks. But last banquet night you finished the novel you’d been reading and you’re now suffering from a severe hangover from the detailed and colorful universe the author had crafted. The next book in the series isn’t set to release for a few months, so until then you’re back at the games.

Easy. You beat the game in under ten minutes. There have to be some more difficulty levels. You switch to the settings menu and scroll until you find the gameplay options.

Huh. Strange. An option you don’t remember seeing before. ‘Connect and play with your friends!’ Psh, what friends? Did your network forget to disable the useless feature? Curious, you tap on the button and are greeted with a spinning circle, indicating that the game is probably trying to find your non-existent friends from your non-existent contact list. ComGears are so heavily restricted, they might as well be walkie talkies. All you’re allowed on there is messaging and scheduling between you, your clients, and your handler. Plus the games. But you’d requested those.

After several moments, you give up waiting and put the Gear away. You have more pressing issues on your mind, and solitaire isn’t enough of a distraction.

Why had Taehyung requested you first tonight? In fact, why had he disappeared right after the… kissing incident? He hasn’t messaged you since then, and the lack of closure is starting to make you antsy. You can trust him, right? Yesterday, you would have said so, undoubtedly. But you also wouldn’t have guessed that he had anything more than platonic feelings for you.

God, men are so complicated.

You groan and stand up, spending the rest of your down time doing your stretches, going through your positive affirmations, and trying not to worry about Taehyung. He’s under Jin’s control tonight, nothing bad will happen.

You hope.

-------

The dining room of the house is enormous, with high ceilings, chandeliers, and ornate paintings on the walls. Seokjin goes all out for his banquets and makes the room seem even more opulent with the addition of candlelight, a trained wait staff, and vases full of roses found on nearly every surface.  Formal dress is required, and all the other boys are dressed just as fancily as Seokjin, though not all of them can pull it off quite as elegantly. He makes sure to hire a string quartet, the most elite caterers, and he even calls in the secondary PhysComs to assist during the meal.

You see, Seokjin has a very specific type of kink he likes to experience. It has to do with food, but it’s not exactly considered foodplay. Jin loves to combine fine dining with sexual acts.

During the first course, PhysComs are beneath the table, sucking off each member while they taste their soups and salads. They’re not allowed to cum until desert, so the PhysComs are only there to get them hard and ready.

The second course marks the beginning of the voyeurism. A fish course is served while a PhysCom is strapped down to the table and teased with at least one vibrator, moans and whimpers filling the room in harmony with the string quartet. Seokjin encourages the boys to talk about their week so far for some family time, largely ignoring the sinful sounds coming from their overstimulated centerpiece.

During the third course, sex is performed on the table by any number or gender of willing PhysComs, while the boys are forced to watch while they eat the stew you made. Jin often likes to give commentary on the PhysCom’s forms, or occasionally direct them around.

Lastly is the dessert course, where you make your grand entrance. All their hungry, lust-crazed eyes are on you, horny as hell from all the buildup. A maid brings you in on a leash, attached to your collar. You walk past the cluster of secondaries, and they aim stares at you, some jealous, some of admiration. You don’t care. Your eyes are on Seokjin. Your owner for the evening.

He stands as you enter, his eyes burning with barely contained lust. “Ladies and gentlemen. I present to you, our dessert.”

The other boys rise as well, and you can sense Taehyung’s stare burning into you, but you avoid meeting his gaze. Your eyes are locked on Seokjin. He orders the maid to help you up, and soon you’re standing atop the table, all eyes upon you. She hands the leash to him. You await his orders.

“Take off your dress, dear.” Seokjin says, sitting back down, and the other boys follow suit. His voice is quiet, but the atmosphere is so charged with sexual tension, you could hear a pin drop.

You reach behind to undo your zipper, the noise simply sinful as your dress falls to the tablecloth, pooling around your feet. You hear a few inhales of breath from around the table.

“Bring the bowl.” Jin’s voice commands again, and a butler hurries over with a jewel encrusted dish, setting it at Seokjin’s right. After that, he dismisses all the other people in the room. The only ones left are you and the seven men around the table.

Jin takes the dog bowl, holding it up to the light and watching the way the crystals shimmer and gleam. “How many loads did you take today, my pet?”

“Sixteen,” you reply obediently, and you see Yoongi’s jaw clench from the corner of your eye.

Jin makes a rumble in his throat, like an affirmative. “So much cum to fit in such tight little holes.”

You nod, awaiting his instructions.

He licks his lips and places the bowl at your feet. “Empty yourself out for me, darling.”

You smile. Kneeling down over the dog bowl, you carefully remove the plug from your cunt, and moan as you feel their cum start to trickle out of you.

You can feel their eyes staring, faces flushed, lips bitten, as their combined releases drip into the dish, slowly coating the bottom.

Seokjin’s hands are tented in front of his face, hiding all but his glittering eyes from view. “Now your ass,” he murmurs huskily, and they all watch as you twist that plug out too, and even more cum joins the rest. Sixteen loads from throughout the day fill the dish, and you look to Seokjin, awaiting further instruction.

“Jimin.” He says, and the boy’s ears perk up. “Would you do the honors of fucking her first?”

Jimin scrambles up, as if unable to move fast enough. He climbs onto the table and unzips his pants, his hands shaking. Meanwhile, Jin orders you on all fours and pushes the dish closer to you. “Why don’t you enjoy your dinner, my pet? It’s been cooking all day.”

He takes such filthy pleasure in scenes like this, it makes your core clench just from the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice. “Yes, master.”

You lean down and start to lap at the bowl. You can feel Jimin’s hands on your ass, but… something’s wrong. Why isn’t he fucking you?

You crane your neck over your shoulder to look at him, a “what the fuck” look on your face for interrupting the flow of the scene, and see something unexpected. Hesitation colors Jimin’s expression, and he looks between you and Seokjin, seemingly torn.

Everyone’s eyes are on you.

Jimin leans over to speak privately, his tone lowered so only you can hear. “Do… do you want to be fucked right now?”

Your mouth hangs open in shock. Why the hell would he be concerned about that?

Seokjin realizes that something isn’t right, and he snaps his fingers. “Jimin, sit down. Hoseok, go fuck her.”

Hoseok is always a good fuck. He grins and climbs on the table, fishing his cock out of his dress slacks. “Ah, look at this ass. Pretty as always,” he chuckles and gives you a light spank before lining himself up with your entrance. He pushes into you with a heated groan, his hands groping you appreciatively. “So wet, baby…” Soon he’s snapping his hips into you at a good pace, filling you up with his length.

But you can’t focus. You stare at Jimin, sitting shamefully with his head bent. You look to Taehyung, sitting across from him, only to see a smirk on his face. What the hell is going on?

Taehyung subtly catches Jimin’s attention and mouths something to him, but of course it’s Korean, so you can’t make out the words as Hoseok pounds into you. Jimin’s eyes widen and his grip tightens on the stem of his wine glass, his knuckles white as his expression changes to one of anger. Tae merely smirks and sits back in his chair, a challenge in his eyes.

What the fuck is happening? Is this about you?

Your heart sinks through the floor. It has to be. You and your damn lips are the only common denominator in this equation.

Hoseok grabs your leash from Jin and tugs on it, the collar forcing your head back. Your neck feels like it might snap from the sudden strain of trying to keep watching their silent conversation, but it’s no use from this angle, and you give up, forced to stare at the ceiling as your legs quiver and anxiety washes over you, a sense of foreboding starting to build in your chest...

Someone jumps to their feet, their chair scraping back from the force, and something crashes to the ground with the unmistakable noise of breaking glass.

“Jimin!” Seokjin’s voice cuts through the sound of Hobi fucking you, and he halts his thrusts. You’re able to see again, pants of breath from Hoseok filling the silence as Jimin looks down, frustrated at being reprimanded. “What’s gotten into you? Sit down, now.”

Taehyung chuckles, seemingly satisfied with himself, and Jin looks to him with narrowed eyes. “That goes for both of you. Stop fucking around.”

“Yes, sir.” Taehyung merely shrugs. You can see Jungkook place a hand on Jimin’s arm, his eyes wide with concern as he helps him calm down and return to his seat. Namjoon shoots Taehyung a look, but he doesn’t acknowledge it, his eyes still fixed on Jimin.

Seokjin’s attention turns back to your display, sighing from the interruption, and he gestures for Hoseok to go harder on you. Hoseok is all too happy to comply, chuckling as he pushes down on your back, forcing your face into the bowl of cum as he pulls out of you and starts fucking into your ass instead.

Normally this is part of the proceedings. But this time you aren’t prepared, too distracted and worried by Taheyung and Jimin to focus properly, and you gasp into the bowl, choking on the pool of stickiness and sputtering on cum as you turn your face away to try and catch your breath.

Seokjin has no reason to sense anything is amiss with you, as you would sometimes struggle for show. He hums and pets your hair as you’re fucked into the table. You try to inhale, but your lungs won’t work.

You feel suffocated by the weird tension in the room, and your heart starts pounding in your ears. You know this is your fault. The other boys all look uncomfortable. Jimin’s shooting daggers at Taehyung, and Tae is glaring right back. This isn’t right.

You just need a minute to think, a minute to sort this out, to fucking talk to them and clear this up. Fuck, you want Hobi to stop. You want everything to stop. You feel overwhelmed, you can’t take it anymore, and you’re flooded with shame as tears spring to your eyes.

“Bulletproof!”

You cry out your safe word, a sob wracking your body. “Fuck! I’m sorry...”

It takes Hoseok a split second to realize what you said before he pulls out of you, his eyes wide with worry. The others all look just as shocked, and Jin jumps to his feet in an instant, helping you off the table. “What can I do, darling?” He asks with concern, grabbing a napkin and carefully wiping the cum off your face.

He doesn’t question why you broke character, he only wants to help, and that makes you want to cry harder. But you pull yourself together, inhaling deeply to keep any more tears from falling. There’s only one person who can help you clear your head, and your gaze turns to him, your voice wavering. “I need to speak privately with Kim Namjoon.”

All eyes fall on their leader, who looks just as surprised to be requested. “Uh, yeah. Sure thing.” Namjoon gets up, his high backed chair scraping against the polished wooden floor as he circles around the table to you.

Namjoon is the conduit between them and their company. An ambassador of sorts. If anyone could help you sort this out, it would be him.

As he comes over, he takes off his suit jacket, draping the garment over your shoulders to help cover your naked form. “We’ll just be a minute, guys,” he calls over his shoulder, one supportive hand on your back as he guides you into the other room, leaving behind a different sort of tension, one of fear and worry.

-------

“What’s up, sweetheart?” Namjoon says softly, shutting the door behind him. He’s taken you to one of the larger bathrooms, with a few areas to sit in addition to a toilet, soaking tub, shower stalls, and a few sinks. “Is everything okay?”

Clearly it isn’t, but him trying to bring some normalcy into the situation makes you want to cry all over again. “No, it’s not.” You sit down on a cushioned bench, covering you face with your hands. “Fuck, I’m so sorry…”

“No, no. Shh… it’s okay, honey, really.” His hand on your back is more of a comfort than you’d care to admit, and you find yourself wishing he would hold you, wishing you could cry in his arms.

But no, damn it, that’s what’s gotten you into trouble in the first place.

“Mr. Kim, I-”

“Please, call me Namjoon. I don’t mind.” He gives you a small smile, and his willingness to be informal with you adds another layer of comfort.

“Namjoon.” You start again, and he looks to you with sincerity. “I, uh… fuck, I don’t know how to explain this.” You give a rueful laugh, running a hand through your hair.

“It’s okay. Take all the time you need.” He rubs your back soothingly, offering you a tissue from a nearby box to dry your eyes.

“Thanks.” You blow your nose, and a part of you feels self-conscious, letting him see you this way. You haven’t been this out of character in front of him since you were hired. “Um… okay. So, earlier today, two of the other members kissed me. I didn’t want it to happen, but it did...” It tumbles out of you in a rush, and you glance down nervously. Damn. This the third time you’ve lowered your walls in front of them today. What the hell is happening?

He seems to chew on your statement for a moment before proceeding, his tone cautious. “It was against your will? They forced themselves on you?”

Your eyes widen and you shake your head. “No! No, they didn’t- it wasn’t like that. It was… nice.” You’re ashamed to admit that you took pleasure in breaking your own rules, but you can’t let him think they were forcing you to do it. “I enjoyed it.”

He looks more confused. “So, you did want it to happen…?”

“Not at first! I mean… ugh, I shouldn’t have let it happen at all.” You grouse, still kicking yourself for being so unprofessional. “I think at least one of them might… have developed feelings for me.”

A moment of clarity lights his eyes. “You’re worried about keeping up boundaries.”

You nod miserably. Thank god someone in this house understands your limits.

“Who was it?”

“Huh?” Your gaze snaps to him.

He repeats the question. “Who kissed you?”

Your eyes lower to the floor. You feel bad dropping names, but he probably has a good reason for asking. “Taehyung and Jimin.”

His mouth stretches into a thin line. “I see.”

“I don’t know what to do. I feel like they’re trying to breach my professional boundaries. But... I like it. But I shouldn’t!” You groan. “Fuck, I have to keep this job...” A weary sigh leaves your throat and you try to keep your tears at bay this time.

Namjoon makes a noise of understanding. He seems to ponder the problem for a moment before speaking. “Those two are young. They’re still figuring out their feelings.” He says it to comfort you, you’re sure. But you decide not to point out that he’s only a year older than them. “But I think I know how to fix this.”

You sit up straight. “You do? How?”

Namjoon smiles, his dimples poking through. “Like I said, they’re young. They want what they can’t have.” He smirks. “You made kissing off-limits, right? So they want it now.”

You’re following his logic so far. It would make sense that something off-limits is more tantalizing… that’s certainly how you felt when kissing them.

He continues. “Look, if you liked it, then that means it’ll happen again. No offense, but willpower is damned when it comes to matters of the heart.” He gives a wry chuckle.

“Remind me how we’re fixing the situation?” You ask skeptically, wrapping his jacket around yourself and nudging him with your arm.

He smiles. “It’s simple, really. I think you have to desensitize them to kissing. We need to show them it doesn’t mean anything that they kissed you. You’re still just their PhysCom.”

You blink, still at a loss. “How do we do that?”

His thumb brushes your cheek, and he has that same tender look in his eyes as he does right after you would get him off.

“I think we should go out there, and I should kiss you senseless, sweetheart.”