#at least the jonathan argument had some weight

[pendinganchor]

neglect is definitely still abuse but what we’re not going to do is pretend that leaving your teenage son home alone for a week is comparable to physically beating him

[dandelion-network]

Jericho's Book Review of We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer

In these 225 pages (I'm excluding the notes, appendix and bibliography in this count), I found that the author would repeatedly circle back to points and personal reflections. It's a stylistic choice I'm sure but in employing this type of writing style, the 225 pages feel both under-utilized and too long. There is so much to be said about climate change and our connection to it and I feel like so much wasn't touched on at all. At the core of this book, the message is that if humans eat less meat (save it for dinners and/or special cultural events), that it could significantly increase our chances to combating climate change. I don't disagree with him as the numbers for the damage industrial animal agriculture is quite clear. It's that he doesn't argue for it as strongly as I've seen it argued by other people. I can't remember if he even names capitalism as a massive component to the issue of climate change at all. But he makes it clear that over-consumption of animal products, meat specifically, is the issue. I agree but I don't agree with him in proclaiming "over population" as an issue because that's an eco-fascist talking point. Capitalism wastes more than what can be consumed, first of all. There's also him equating weight with eating habits when it's very much tied to genetics and specific conditions, not because people are over consuming meat. Part of this book feels like a memoir because he talks about his family a lot and I believe it's his tactic to showing the immediate connection between humans and the climate. I think he does it also to show how he struggles with his own internal conflicts about the topic and wants to be as transparent about it as possible because he knows he isn't perfect and he doesn't expect perfection from others either. I've seen reviews immediately call him a hypocrite or say he's doing some kind of self-flagellation whenever he brings up having eaten meat even though he's been a vegetarian for several years. Personally, I think it's smart that he does bring up his own struggles to show that effort and at least trying is the whole damn point, not perfection. And that people shouldn't get stuck on perfection but should focus on the act of trying. Because many people don't even try, for whatever their reasons are. But veganism as it has been explained to me is the effort to reduce harm, effort being the key word. If you can't reduce harm for X but can reduce harm for Y, then why wouldn't you reduce harm for Y? It's not an all or nothing thing. Anyways, I think the youtube channel Our Changing Climate had a much more well constructed argument to whether or not veganism is the answer, (spoiler alert, it's a part of it but not thee answer), and a great job in general tackling the issue of climate change. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwYoe...

[pappydaddy]

Tribulations (n.w.)

 A/N: I am slowing knocking these requests down! I am so happy to finally be able to get these imagines out for you guys who have waited so, so patiently!! This one is for the lovely anon who requested Nancy x fem!reader with a secret relationship. I had no idea what to title this so I just went with a word😅! This has some hardcore angst so I hope you don’t mind! Hope you enjoy it lovely💛!

Pairing: Nancy Wheeler x Fem!Reader

Show/Movie: Stranger Things

Requested

Inspired by: i love you by billie eilish (slowed + reverb) (first bit) and She by dodie (second bit) *creds to owners, found in links)                    

Warnings: Angst with a happy ending, argument, fluff.

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation - my gif -

 There was a certain comfort about hiding something so tender from everyone else. Maybe it was the fact that it remained untouched by the menacing hands of the outside world, maybe it was the fact that it laid in the shadows, unseen by everyone else. Whatever it was, Nancy didn’t have a problem continuing this charade of hiding her relationship from her friends and family. She was perfectly content on hiding the loving touches and kisses that she and Y/N shared in the confines of their rooms. 

 Y/N on the other hand was growing tired of being hidden. She wanted nothing more than to hold Nancy’s hand as they walked down the street in the daylight. She wanted to kiss her in front of their friends just as Nancy had done with her boyfriend’s in the past. She wanted to have the sickeningly cute relationship you saw in the movies, but yet, she was restricted to stealing kisses when they snuck away under the pretenses of powdering their noses. 

 “Hey, Nance,” Y/N spoke up, her teeth picking at her bottom lip nervously. She didn’t lift her head off Nancy’s chest, remaining in her comfortable position of laying between Nancy’s thighs, their stomachs pressing together. Nancy hummed, her fingers continuing to comb through Y/N’s hair. “I’ve been thinking-”  

 “Uh oh, thinking almost always leads to something.” Nancy commented, trying to keep the lightness of the situation, almost as if she knew exactly what Y/N was going to try and talk about. Y/N sensed her girlfriend’s nerves rising, the panic stirring under her calm surface. She pulled herself from Nancy’s embrace, suddenly the calmness she once felt a second ago turned to undeniable tension. Sitting on her knees, she faced Nancy who sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. 

 “Yeah, that’s kinda the whole point,” Y/N nodded awkwardly, tangling her fingers together nervously. “Um, I was just wondering when we could maybe tell people about us,” She spoke the question that had been weighing on her mind for some time. “It doesn’t have to be everyone, it can start with Robin and Steve or something, or maybe just Robin, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re comfortable, but I just want someone else to know about us.” She rambled, worried that the thought of telling everyone they knew would freak Nancy out too much. 

 “I don’t know, Y/N, I kind of like this.” Nancy shrugged, wrapping her arms around herself. Y/N sighed, her shoulders slumping. She knew that Nancy had worked at breaking from the mold of the perfect daughter, trying to stop living with a safety net under her at all times, but she also knew that the safety net had only dropped so far. 

 “Like what, Nancy? Like only being able to hold each other within a certain four walls? Is this all our relationship will be? Hiding in our rooms, stealing kisses in empty public washrooms?” Y/N pressed, gesturing to the room they currently sat in. The walls of Nancy’s room was a sight that Y/N saw pretty much daily, but right now, she would rather be anywhere else. 

 “Of course not,” Nancy defended, her mouth falling open as she struggled to find a way to reply to her. “But you have to admit that there is something special about keeping this,” She gestured between herself and Y/N who remained at the foot of her bed, keeping as much distance between them as she could. “Keeping us away from them.” She pointed her finger towards her window. Y/N glanced towards it before shaking her head.   

 “Look Nancy, I get that you’re nervous to tell people and that’s okay, but honestly,” She took a deep breath. “You might be okay with hiding us from the world, but it makes me feel like shit. It makes me think that you don’t want people to know that you’re dating me and that hurts.” Tears stung her eyes, but she hurriedly blinked them away. She kept her eyes from meeting Nancy’s brown ones, knowing that if she looked at them, she wouldn’t be able to stop the salty tears from streaking down her cheeks. 

 “That’s not what I meant to do, you have to trust me, Y/N/N,” Nancy pleaded, rolling onto her knees to reach for Y/N’s hands. Y/N scrambled off the bed, standing in the middle of Nancy’s room with her hands raised in the air to avoid Nancy from teaching them. She shook her head, a lump forming in her throat. “I never meant for you to feel like that, I just think it’d be better if we keep our relationship a secret for a bit longer-” 

 “Yeah, a bit longer,” Y/N’s voice was weak as she tried to hold back her emotions, her bitter sarcasm straining through just enough for Nancy to recognize it. “That’s what you said two months ago! And two months before that,” She exclaimed loudly. Nancy sent a panicked look to the closed bedroom door, shushing Y/N. “Christ Nancy! We’re nearing our one year anniversary and we are still keeping us a secret,” She continued. Nancy opened her mouth to talk, but Y/N unknowingly cut her off, finally meeting Nancy’s eyes. “Why,” She spoke the word softly, so softly that it was almost unheard. “Why do you want to keep us a secret?” Hurt was evident in her voice and Nancy knew that nothing she could say would make that hurt go away right now.  

 “I-I,” She stammered, this time, it was her eyes that dropped from Y/N’s. “I-”  

 “Is it because you’re dating me, a girl,” Y/N posed the question with a strained voice. This time a tear did roll down her cheek. “Because I really don’t want to think that you would be ashamed of that, but I really cannot find another reason why you would be so adamant about keeping us a secret. And if you’re not ready to come out to people yet, that’s fine. I am completely okay with that because that’s something you have to do on your own time, but all I am asking for is for you to tell me so that we can figure out where we can go from here,” She ranted her voice wobbling. She looked up at the ceiling, trying to will the tears and lump in her throat away, but it was useless. “Because I don’t want to sit here and just be a secret forever.”  

 “That’s not the reason! Maybe it’s part of it, but trust me when I say that I am ready to come out to my mom and brother! Even our friends, but I don’t want to fully disclose our relationship with them.” Nancy told her, her eyes wide.  

 “That’s the thing, Nancy,” She sighed. “I don’t want to force you to come out to anyone if you’re not ready. If you were truly ready, you would have talked about it or at least thought about before you realized that you could lose me from this,” Y/N finally shuffled back over to the bed, sitting on the edge of it, just far enough out of Nancy’s reach to let her know she still didn’t want to be touched. “I’m not saying I want to break-up, I am saying that I want to talk about this with you, but I think we both need to take some time and think about what we want separately and then talk.”  

 “So you want to go on a break?” Nancy’s voice wobbled this time, her bottom lip quivering ever so slightly.  

 “No, just take a day or two, think about it and then we can talk and see where to go from there. We need to start communicating instead of just brushing everything under the rug,” Y/N paused, hesitantly reaching her hand out to lay in over Nancy’s, their eyes connecting. “But don’t feel like you need to come out to keep me, I don’t want to force you to come out, I just want to talk.” She reminded her. 

 “Talk,” Nancy nodded, swallowing thickly. “We can do that.”  

 “Okay,” Y/N whispered, pulling her hand off Nancy’s slowly. “I’m going to go now, call me when you want to talk?” She asked, picking her bag up off the floor. Nancy nodded, her lips pressing together in an attempt to stop the trembling. She didn’t answer, too scared that she’d break down if she opened her mouth to speak.  

 With a final nod and a tight smile, Y/N opened the door to Nancy’s room. It felt like even more of a weight settled down upon her now that the fate of their relationship hung in the balances of uncertainty as she closed the door behind her and quickly made her way out of the Wheeler household. “Leaving so soon, Y/N, I was just going to go up and ask if you were staying for dinner tonight.” Mrs. Wheeler perked up as the teen rushed past the entrance of the dining room. Y/N stopped, backing up to peek her head around the wall, a fake smile on her lips.  

 “Uh, not tonight Mrs. Wheeler, thanks for the offer though! I’m just really swamped with College Applications and stuff, the busy life of a Senior!” She lied, hoping the older woman would buy it. Mrs. Wheeler hummed, nodding as if she hadn’t bought the lie she gave her. 

 “You’re coming to the movie night this weekend though, right?” Mike popped up, blinking at the girl. The monthly movie night. It started with just Y/N, Steve, Robin, and the kids before it expanded to include Nancy after her break-up with Jonathan. 

 “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” She told him, earning a smile from the lanky teen. “See you, Mrs. Wheeler, thank you for having me!” She called over her shoulder, escaping the seemingly cheery house as she felt like she was suffocating. She regretted bringing the topic up. She wanted to huddle back under the shade of the shadows, the protection of blissful ignorance, but she knew that if they wanted to progress this relationship any farther, they had to talk about this sooner or later.  

 She held onto her tears long enough to slip into her car, but the second the door slammed, her shoulders shook as tears rolled freely down her cheeks. The fear that maybe this might be the end of her relationship weighing heavily on her mind. ____  

  “Nancy?” Y/N gasped in shock when she pulled her front door open to see her girlfriend standing on her porch. Nancy looked up from her feet, her eyes connecting with Y/N’s. Tension and an air of awkwardness surrounded them as they stood there staring at each other. 

 “Um, I know you asked me to call you, but I was out driving and I thought that there was no better time to talk than now,” Nancy explained, shuffling her feet. Y/N blinked, not having expected Nancy to be ready to talk so soon (a day) after the fight. “Could I come in?” She asked the stunned girl, pointing past her into her house.  

 “Yeah, yeah,” Y/N nodded, stepping aside as she ran a hand over her face. “Come in, and uh, sit down, my parents are out for the night so we can talk in the living room if you’d like.” Y/N swallowed, gesturing towards the empty living room. 

 “Thank you.” Nancy whispered in passing, slipping into the house and practically beelining towards the living room. Y/N softly closed the door, leaning her forehead against the wood of it before pushing off it and joining Nancy.  

 “Would you like a drink or something before we start talking,” She asked, rubbing the back of her neck. Nancy shook her head, settling down on the couch, placing her bag by her feet delicately. “Okay,” Y/N nodded, rubbing her nervous palms on her jeans. She sat on the opposite end of the couch stiffly, clearing her throat. “So, you’re ready to talk about us?”  

 “Yeah, um,” Nancy shifted, angling her body to look at Y/N better from the corner of her eyes. She kept her gaze on her interlocked fingers that were placed in her lap. “I gave it a lot of thought.” Nancy informed her. Y/N hummed, turning her head to look at Nancy, waiting for her to continue, but she didn’t.

 “And?”  

 “And I am ready to come out to our friends and my mom, but I just don’t know about telling them about us.” Nancy slowly let her eyes flirt up to look at Y/N, avoiding eye contact despite being glued to her face. Y/N nodded, pulling her face away from the girl, looking off towards the wall in front of her. The lump returned, blocking her airway.  

 “Okay, may I ask why you don’t want to tell them about us?” She wondered, trying to keep her watering eyes from developing into tears. Her heart sinking to the bottom of her feet. 

 “I don’t really know, it’s just that this is good - what we have is good.” Nancy tried to explain.

 “Can I ask if you feel scared to tell people about us?” Y/N once again wondered, not wanting to push Nancy into doing something she didn’t want to, but also wanting to be happy in a relationship. She wanted to be with Nancy, but if Nancy wasn’t willing to consider the option of telling someone about their relationship, Y/N wasn’t sure she would be happy in the relationship.  

 “No, of course not,” Nancy defended honestly, slumping when she realized that she would have to expose the real reason to Y/N. “I just don’t want anything to change. I like how this is going and I don’t want to let the world at what we have, it’s too tender and too soft for the world.”  

  “If what we have is too soft for the world then it’s doomed because even hidden behind a curtain of secrecy, our relationship still had to stand the test of the world,” Y/N told her, still not looking towards the slack-jawed girl. “Look, Nancy, the world will get to us, maybe even more if we keep this a secret. Change is inevitable, it will get us either way.”  

 “I get that, but for right now, we can protect this from the world for just a bit longer!” Nancy cried, trying to prove her point. Y/N shook her head, turning her watery eyes to look at Nancy. 

 “Don’t you see it, Nance? This right here,” She gestured around the room and between them. “This fight, this argument that we’re having. This is the world getting at we have. And as much as I respect your desire to stay a secret, I just can’t be happy in a secret relationship that has no signs of becoming public at all.”  

 “So you want to break-up?” Nancy’s question was so similar to the one she asked the other day and she wished that Y/N’s answer would be the same as it was that time. Nancy let out a breath when Y/N shook her head.

 “No, I don’t want to break-up, but I want to know that eventually, we will tell our friends at least because I love you and I want to hold your hand, I don’t want to pretend to be just friends in front of everyone. I love you Nancy Wheeler and I want to show you that I love you in front of our friends because it kills me to hear them asking you if you’ve met anyone and for you to tell them no.” Y/N ranted, her eyes darting away from Nancy’s once again.  

 Nancy sat there, her world shattering around her at the words Y/N spoke to her. “You love me?” Nancy whispered, hoping that Y/N didn’t mean those words.

 “Yeah,” Y/N whispered back, her body riddled with anxiety. She could hear Nancy swallow from the deafening silence blanketing the room. Y/N’s tongue darted out to wet her lips nervously, waiting for Nancy to say something. “If you don’t want to say it back, it’s fine. Really, and it’s okay that you don’t want to tell people about us, but I just want you to tell me that there is a chance of us telling people about us before I fall any deeper.”  

 Nancy watched the glistening tear roll down Y/N’s cheek, a ball forming in her throat and a suffocating weight being placed on her chest. “I-I don’t know,” Nancy stuttered out, standing from the couch, her purse dangling from her fingers. “I need to go and think more, I guess I wasn’t ready for this yet, I’m sorry, Y/N,” She rushed out. Y/N stood, her heart falling from Nancy’s hands and splattering on the carpeted floor under their feet. “I’ll call you when I’ve figured it out, okay?” Nancy fled to the door, yanking it open and darting to her car before Y/N could even get to the front door herself. 

 “Wait, Nancy,” Y/N called, scrambling onto the porch, watching as the girl she loved slid into a Station Wagon. “Where does this leave us?” Her voice echoed into the night, but it didn’t receive an answer. ____

  The weekend rolled around faster than Y/N wanted to. She had waited for so long for Nancy to come and talk to her, but her phone never rang nor did her doorbell. Y/N regretted a lot of things. The deep regret of bringing this up in the first place still grew in her stomach, the regret of saying that she loved her in the height of emotions piled on top of that to great a giant pile of regret. 

 Nancy on the other hand was high strung. Her mind ran a mile a minute. Her thoughts were all occupied by Y/N. The way her touch made her feel, the way her smile lit up the world, the beautiful melody that was her laugh. Before, she wasn’t sure why she wanted to keep the beautiful relationship between them a secret, but it came to her suddenly. She was scared, scared of having this relationship fail too. She had fallen out of love with Steve easily when Jonathan crept his way into her heart then she fell out of love with Jonathan due to the struggles of long-distance. When Y/N had uttered those words to her, it re-enforced that fear, but also made it clear that Nancy was once again free falling. She couldn’t escape her feelings, they were there and they needed to be tended to.  The doorbell to the Wheeler household rang through the still house, jolting Nancy out of her thoughts. It was Y/N without a doubt, the others were already piled in the basement waiting for the movie night to begin. Swallowing thickly, Nancy chewed on her bottom lip. She stood from her bed, rushing down the stairs when she heard her mom greeting Y/N with excitement. She always loved Y/N. “Y/N,” Nancy exclaimed, stopping on the turn of the stairs. Y/N snapped her head up at the call of her name as did Mrs. Wheeler. “Could I talk to you in my room for a second?” She nodded her head up the stairs, her eyes pleading.  

 “Yeah, of course, Nancy.” Y/N nodded, her voice full of worry and nerves. She was convinced that Nancy was going to break up with her. That this would be the end to Nancy and Y/N. Mrs. Wheeler sent her daughter a wink and a smile, causing Nancy’s cheeks to flush, but Y/N was too wrapped up in her mind to notice it.  The walk to Nancy’s room was short, but right now it felt like the length of Indiana itself. The silence between them was absolutely stifling. Nancy closed the door behind them, not missing the way Y/N moved to the other side of the room - putting as much distance between them as she could. 

  “Hi.” Nancy breathed, turning to face the silent girl. Y/N blinked, obviously filled with anxiety.  

 “You wanted to talk to me?” Y/N reminded, her hands slipping into the pockets of her denim jacket. Nancy cleared her throat, nodding. She took a few hesitant steps towards Y/N, not too many that she made her feel uncomfortable, but enough for her to get closer. From there, she was able to catch a whiff of Y/N’s calming scent from the spring breeze rolling in from the open window. Nancy took the chance to breathe it in, having missed it for the past few days.  

 “Yeah, I realized something while we were apart,” Nancy paused, looking down as she fiddled with her fingers. “I realized a lot actually and I’m not really sure where to start-”  

 “Just start where it feels natural, let your gut choose.” Y/N offered, making Nancy look up at her. The last rays of the sun shining through the window, creating a glow around her, making her look like an angel. Nancy lost her thoughts as she gazed upon her, the hues of pink and orange glowing off her skin, looking like a painting you would find in the Le Louvre.  

 “You mean everything to me,” She exhaled, startled that it had slipped out of her mouth. “Oh wow, okay, guess we are going with that first,” She admitted bashfully, dropping her head to face the carpet to hide the blush dusting her cheeks from Y/N. “I love you Y/N, so much and the reason I ran after you said that was because you were right, right about me being scared,” She sucked a breath in, trying to keep all the mustered up confidence that she had in her. “I was scared of those words, scared of yet another failed relationship and that’s why I was so against us telling people.”  

 “And what about now,” Y/N stepped one step closer, feeling hopeful. “Are you still scared?”  

 Nancy shook her head gently. “A little, but I’m more excited to see where this goes if you still love me.”  

 “Of course I still love you! It would take an awful lot for me not to love you,” Y/N smiled, taking a few more steps towards Nancy. Nancy took two steps, the two meeting in the center of the room, face to face. Their mouths were both stretched into large smiles, matching blushes painting their cheeks as they held each other. “You mean everything to me.” She whispered, leaning her face closer to Nancy’s. Nancy giggled, closing the distance between them to press their lips together.  

 They both welcomed the taste of each other, missing it desperately. Warmth spread through Y/N’s body, feeling like every single nerve was alive with happiness from the touching of their lips. Pulling back from the tender kiss, Nancy still held Y/N tight to her. “I want to tell them.”  

 “Tell them that you like girls and guys?” Y/N questioned, not knowing that Nancy had come out yet. 

 “I already told my family that, they are very accepting, my dad was a bit cold, but mom talked to him,” Nancy told her as if it wasn’t a big deal, but the growth of her smile told Y/N otherwise. “I want to tell them about us. I am pretty sure my mom already knows, I think she knew before I came out, but I want to tell our friends. Tonight.”  

 “Are you sure, I don’t want you to think that you have to do that in order for me to stay with you because I’ll stay with you regardless.” Y/N worried, not wanting to pressure Nancy into anything she didn’t want to do. 

 “I want to, I think it’d be a good baby step for us to slowly not be a secret anymore.” Nancy confirmed, pulling away from Y/N, but keeping one of her hands tightly in her grasp, her eyes twinkling with pure happiness. 

 “Only if you’re sure. You can take the reins on this one in case you change your mind, okay?” Nancy ignored this, pulling Y/N towards the door and into the hall, her fingers intertwining with Y/N’s absent-mindedly. Their hearts beat wildly in their chests as they rushed down the main stairs and dashed to the basement door. The room was already dark, the only light being from the blue screen coming from the TV, the VCR already prepped for the movie night.  

 “ ‘Bout time you two got down here.” Dustin grumbled from his spot on the floor next to Mike. 

 “Sorry, but we had to discuss something that we want to share with you guys,” Nancy could barely contain her excitement as she shared a giddy, love-struck look with Y/N. The group looked at her, Steve and Robin sitting on the couch with their feet propped up on the middle cushion. Max and Lucas sat on the floor with their backs pressed against the couch. “We’re dating, have been for almost a year.” They looked back at the group to see them all sharing looks.

“So,” Mike spoke up, as they all turned to look at the two girls again. “We already knew that. For a while now.” 

 “Wait, what?” Nancy sputtered, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open in shock.  

 “For starters, you guys are not discrete at all.” Steve broke the news, tossing a piece of popcorn into his mouth. Nancy scoffed, rolling her eyes, muttering a small ‘says you’ under her breath, earning a whine from her ex-boyfriend.  

 “Secondly, you should see the way you two look at each other, it was so obvious that you guys were mad for each other,” Robin shrugged. “Now hurry up and sit down so we can start this movie, I’ve been itching to see it.” Robin ordered, pointing to the armchair that was conveniently the only chair left for them.  

 “And we thought this would be ground-breaking news,” Y/N chuckled, shaking her head as Nancy led her across the darkroom. Plunking down in the soft chair, Nancy pulled Y/N down to sit on her lap, but Y/N shimmied so that only her legs rested over Nancy’s lap. “I love you.” She hummed, snuggling into her girlfriend.  

 Nancy pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love you too, Angel.”

[gentlemancrow]

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

OK so I saw @hey-there-hunter ‘s JMart Wedding Challenge and I pretty much fan ficced immediately??  Like it was an instantaneous plot bunny that stabbed me in the brain and would not let me free until I made it exist.  SO HERE YOU GO!  Read it here or head on over to AO3 below!  And enjoy some unapologetically aggressive fluff with weddings!  Also subtitled someday Crow will stop abusing excessive astral imagery and symbolism for extended metaphors, but today is not that day.

Read on AO3 instead!

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

Jonathan Sims always thought of himself as a man with a deep appreciation for the great literature of the world.  A passionate turn of phrase, crystalline motes of clear imagery like snowflakes reflecting light in his mental scape, a devastating contemplation on the nature of good and evil in the hearts of all mankind, everything that could express the beauty and tragedy of the world in ways he never could.  Prose was a bright paintbrush on a ragged canvas of the universe he had known from an early age was swathed in shadow and pain and evil, and those words on those pages, for at least a moment, were another world he could hold in his hands, could cradle and protect, could mourn.  He liked the power of them as well, of the tinkling brightness of alliteration, the oaky sophistication of a well-aged metaphor, the evocativeness of the idiosyncrasy in a simple simile, laying bare truths in ways he never could have articulated for himself.

There was one thing he could not abide by in language, however, one cardinal sin liable to besmirch any piece of lush and sparkling verse or prose and taint it forever.  And that was idioms.

Jon loathed idioms and their dismally quirky cliches dressed in familiarity’s tacky clothing almost as much as he hated spiders.  Perhaps it was something about their reliance on common knowledge and repetition.  He couldn’t bear reading the same book twice, or even a book that felt too familiar, it only made sense that hearing a hackneyed phrase repeated in that awful singsong sardonic tone of someone who knows full well they’re saying something asinine that has been repeated ad nauseum for millennia would scrape at the back of his skull and down his spine.  They were too whimsical and blasé, crutch words for when one’s limited lexicon came up empty, or worse, for ill comedic effect.  They reinforced that staunchly English notion of skirting about the true depth and breadth of emotion for clipped niceties and unfeeling banalities.  Idioms to him were mere verbal window boxes, colorful and meaningless, dressings for untold disasters behind the shining windows they peacocked before.  

He hated them all with vaguely equal rancor, but there was one he could definitely single out as the one he hated the most, and that was the one about hanging the moon.  Such and such thinks you hung the moon, to me you hung the moon, and so on.  This particular rhetorical felony attracted his wrath only marginally because any moon symbolism never failed to feel outlandish and infantile, a mawkish image of love and care rampant in nursery rhymes and cheap commercialized slogans for t-shirts and wall art.  That was the least of it.  He hated the idea of hanging the moon mostly because once, another lifetime ago now it seemed, Tim Stoker had lobbed it in his face in a fit of smoldering rage and he had been completely, complacently, ignorant of its magnitude.  

Funny thing was, he couldn’t even remember what the actual fight had been about any longer.  Though he could remember exactly where he was standing, cornered next to the file cabinet for the year 1985, January through February, and the label had been peeling up on the upper left-hand corner.  He remembered he’d discovered a hole in the elbow of his jumper that morning and he had been obsessing over it all day, fussing with the dangling green thread and tugging at the knit as if it might magically close the wound.  He’d put his finger clean through it with his arms crossed haughtily over his chest without even realizing he’d been fiddling with it when something flippant about Martin came out of his mouth.  It hadn’t even been cruel, he couldn’t even remember how Martin had come up in the argument in the first place, he could only remember Tim’s mouth moving like he wanted to say something else, then him forcibly stopping himself before he snarled.

“Yeah well, god knows why, but he thinks you hung the moon, so you might try treating him at the very least like a human being once in a while.”

It was such a small thing.  Small words for a small feeling cloaked in a chintzy veneer of idiomatic dismissal.  A trembling little bird cupped in his scarred and battered hands and smothered.  Or so he thought.  Sometimes trembling little birds turn out to be phoenixes, and those who looked to someone else to hang the comfort of a wise, silvery moon in the sky already have the hammer and the picture wire at the ready.

As far as Jon was concerned, the moon only rose on their Somewhere Else because Martin deigned to pull the strings every night, not him.

It was Martin who brought him tea every morning, set it down on the breakfast table with that little flip of the tag and the deft, one-fingered turn of the handle toward him.  It was Martin who scolded him because whites are a separate load, Jon, were you raised in a barn?  Martin who talked him through every episode of the Doctor Who reruns that were the only thing their ancient aerial could pick up.  Martin who planted flowers in the garden and brought muffins from the sweet old lady at the grocers because they traded baking recipes.  Martin who still looked at him with diaphanous pools of ethereal moonlight in his eyes and his smile like he alone hung it in the sky over his head to wash him in its radiance.

Even after everything.

Even after it had been Martin who had to hold the knife buried in his chest as he lay gasping wetly for breath in an alleyway in Another Chelsea to keep the hemorrhaging at bay.  Martin who had cupped his face in his bloody hands with tears streaming down his and forced him to focus, furious love blazing in his sea mist eyes as they locked with his, screaming at him and him only, heedless of anything else.

“Look at me.  LOOK at me, Jon!  Stay with me!  Stay with me, DAMN YOU!”

Stay with me had not been a plea, it had been a command.  He had never once said please because it was never an option.  Shivering, breathing blood through his teeth, the streetlights a fading, star studded halo in Martin’s strawberry blond curls be damned, he was right.  Against every tangled thread of fate twisted deep into his flesh, or perhaps because they had been the only thing that held his torn innards together, he made it to the part where he awoke a few fractured times to nothingness, and then to fingers he knew every inch of inextricably bound up in his and a fierce whisper in his ear.

“I’m here, Jon.  I’m still here.  I’ve got you.  I’m going to fix this.  I’m going to get us out of here.  We’re going to be okay.”

It had been Martin who orchestrated their clandestine escape from the hospital the moment they both agreed he was well enough to survive under his rudimentary medical care and before the authorities got too invested in an urban ghost story of two men who didn’t exist.  Not to mention one of which should, by all medical and logical law, be dead.  It had been Martin who had stolen the necessary antibiotics, drugs, and wound care supplies, Martin who had picked enough pockets to buy passage on a midnight train to the only place they could think to go, and expressly told Jon not to ask where he learned how, even though he knew full well he would later.  Martin who had fought for everything and kept him hidden and safe while he lay in a dingy hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drifting in and out of consciousness between kisses, cold compresses, spoonfuls of whatever he could get him to swallow and keep down, and desperate ‘I love you’s.

Martin had been the one who hung the moon even on the nights Jon couldn’t see it, just so he knew it was there, that the light might finally guide him home.  Not him.  He could have never done something so selfless and simple and beautiful.  No not him.  Not The Archivist.  How could he have ever known that?  Stupid, myopic, pedantic, all-seeing and blind.  A blustering, sanctimonious Tiresias in a sweater vest and half-moon glasses.  And how important was the moon, anyway that he was expected to hang it too?  Would not night still come and the stars still shine?  The stupid, vapid saying should have been about the sun anyway.  Something that nourished and guided and warmed.  Not the moon.  Not the thing of night and hungry wolves and quiet loneliness.  Not a thing of the darkness they fought and still not won, not exactly, not in a way that mattered.  How could he have known the weight of such a thoughtless, frivolous, meaningless phrase and how far and how long Martin had borne it for him to protect he who hung his moon?  

He could see the weight of it so clearly now.  He could see it especially on the darkest days, which came, in grotesque mockery, the moment they found something like their safehouse and rest at last.  Jon had conned his way into a job at the village library with an ancient head librarian who didn’t care much for too many questions, or background or credit checks, and was more than happy to pay in cash.  With Martin’s help of course.  Martin himself had taken up stocking at the village grocers, and their life had teetered onto something so close to quaint and normal it suddenly laid bare the gravity of the depths of darkness they had escaped.

No longer did they have to run, no longer did they have to fight, they could finally lay down the chase and curl in upon each other to lick their wounds in quiet.  But without the driving, primal instinct to live, to survive, that ushered in the days where all the hurt came back to roost and brood and fester.  The days where he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, or the days Martin couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, or the days they shouted themselves hoarse, stormed apart for hours then came back, silent and broken, red-eyed and exhausted to hold each other and weep into the spaces between neck and shoulder where it still smelled like love and home.

He could see so painfully clearly the toll following him to the ends of the cosmos and back had etched its marks into his goodness, his body and soul, see how often he would walk down the road from their cabin, just a little ways, to stand on the heather spotted hills and gaze out into the frigid infinity of the gray sea.  Cold terror would grip him then, incite a desperate want to run after him, to throw his arms around him and bring him home, but also the fear it would only be to have him turn to mist and slip through his fingers forever.  He always had a cup of steaming tea waiting for him when he came back, just in case.

But again, and always.  It was Martin who would pick up Jon’s hands, kiss every slender, scarred finger through his tears and be the first one to utter ‘I’m sorry.’  Martin who told him with just a single scathing flash of stern blue eyes and not a single word uttered that he was certainly coming to bed and not banishing himself to the couch like an idiot.  Martin who wrapped him in his arms and warmth and boundless love and reminded him, “One way or another.  Together.  That was the deal, right?  You don’t get to back out now.  No returns, refunds, or exchanges, I’m afraid.”

And even through the deepest sobs he would find the laugh Jon didn’t think was in him.  Martin sifted through the mire and the muck and held fast to the tiny, shining things so easy to lose in the darkness.  Things Jon was certain were lost forever, only to be reignited and hung in the brightening sky of their story.  Even if they weren’t quite the moon yet.

It had also been Martin who, on a perfectly ordinary day, on a simple walk through the local farmers market, stopped to peruse one of the usual unremarkable stalls filled with crystals and oils and trinkets.  Jon had wandered off to procure the parsnips and the strawberries, unrelated recipes Martin swore, he had been tasked with finding.  When he returned he found him, a radiant monument tall among the faceless locals, rusty curls caressing his face in the salty breeze, carved of marble and rose quartz and gazing down at a pair of hematite rings on a velvet display box.  His eyes were distant, but not in the enthralled, disembodied way they were when he looked at the sea, or the broken way when they weren’t speaking, but in the contemplative, regarding of puzzle pieces way when he would look into the fire during their talks and turn his words in his mind over and over again like a rock tumbler until they were polished just right.

“Getting into crystals now, are we?” Jon had joked, “Surely I’m not so dull to be around that that’s becoming an attractive hobby.”

Martin snorted and shook his head.

“Supposed to mean healing, or grounding, or something.  Aligning your meridians, I think the lady said?  Whatever that means,” he elaborated, reaching out to touch.

They clinked weightily together, thick and glossy and the dark astral gray of a moonless night.  Martin turned over the card that went with them and read.

“’A grounding stone that belongs to the planet Mars.  It strengthens our connections to the earth and aids the warrior on their journey.  It is a stone of invincibility, but also fragility.  It balances yin and yang energies with its magnetic properties for the perfect reflection upon one’s own soul, astral, physical, and spiritual.’”

“Hematite, is it?” Jon asked, “Also more commonly called bloodstone.  You know if you scratch it, it leaves a red mark.  Like it’s bleeding.  Watch.”

He picked up one of the rings and firmly ran it down the corner of the card Martin had been reading from.  Sure enough, the black stone had left a faint, but starkly crimson mark on the yellowed paper.

“It BLEEDS?” Martin exclaimed in horror.

“It’s just a kind of iron oxide, so, rust, basically,” Jon explained with a chuckle, “Kind of weirdly romantic if you think about it?  This intimidating shiny black stone like armor, made of iron to boot, but with a bleeding heart at its core.”

“I just thought it was pretty, I didn’t know it bleeds,” Martin had laughed in that incredulous way he always did when Jon was telling him something he didn’t actually want to know, but appreciated anyway.

“I find that the strongest, prettiest things often do,” Jon had said in reply.  He remembered saying that particularly clearly, waxing poetic, feeling a swell of affection for the hugely beautiful man he leaned against and was adorably aghast at bleeding rocks.

“Yeah, I reckon they do,” Martin murmured back.

And then his cheeks had flushed bright red under his freckles and the stone steps of his shoulders crumbled a bit under the crushing ancientness and vastness of what he had originally been pondering.

“So, I mean, before you spoiled it with the blood thing.  I was thinking… Well, I was just having a browse and I saw these and I thought they were quite fetching, and then the lady told me they meant grounding and healing and a journey, like on the card.  A-And there were two of them, all by themselves, and everything else was so colorful and flashy these were just so… Um.  Maybe the blood and rusty iron thing makes it more poetic now, actually?  I don’t know.  Sorry I-  This sounded so much better in my head.”

It wasn’t his fault, Jon remembered thinking.  Martin couldn’t find the words because there weren’t any.  Not in this universe or any other.  Not for what they’d gone through, and especially not for what they meant to each other.

“I guess I was just thinking.  If… I bought one.  And wore it.  Sort of like.  Um.  You know.  Would… Would you-?” he had asked, his voice trembling.

Jon had never said yes, yes of course he would, faster or with more conviction in his life.  And there was that look again, rising from the ashes, that flooding of golden, unbound love and light, of eyes turned sky blue, of looking at the man who hung his moon in the sky come back to him.  He could still hang Martin’s moon all over again after so many nights of black clouds and darkness, even if it was only paper.  They’d paid for the rings in rumpled bills, exchanged them right then and there, and kissed each other as the crowd of oblivious people in a world they did not belong in flowed like a river around them.  Jon forgot the bag with the parsnips and strawberries.

But it didn’t matter.  It didn’t even matter that Martin’s fit nicely on his ring finger, but Jon had to wear his on his thumb, and even then sometimes on a chain around his neck for fear of losing it.  It didn’t matter that it was the closest thing they were ever going to get to a proposal and a wedding, consigned now forever to the shadows in a borrowed reality with only each other.  Because it was theirs, and they could begin to figure out how their broken pieces fit back together again.

But like most things that don’t matter, it didn’t until it did.

It began as simple things.  Seeing a wedding on some program they weren’t actually paying much attention to and Martin making a flippant, innocuous comment as he combed his fingers lovingly through Jon’s long and silvered chestnut hair in his lap about how he would have loved to have a cake that had a different flavor on every tier at their wedding.  Just so everyone could have something they liked.  And Jon woke up from his half catlike stupor and looked up at him with such aching regret as those words settled into the pit of his heart alongside ‘he thinks you hung the moon.’  

And soon they began to gather a collection of completely innocent remarks that ran the gamut from ‘would they have worn black or white?  Or one of each?  I don’t know… does it really matter?  And were these engagement rings or wedding rings?  I don’t know.  Neither?  both?  And do we say husband instead of boyfriend now?  Fiancé?  Whatever you want, Martin…’ To the heavier, cancerous weights that sank to the bottom of his gut, even below hanging the moon, like ‘I know Tim would have thrown the most amazing bachelor party for both of us, and his mum had always talked about him getting married someday like it was a farfetched pipe dream, but she would be happy for them, he thinks.’

He could never answer those questions.  There was too much at stake, too much finality and familiarity in them, a strange weightlessness in a world that weighed far too much.  The sun and moon continued their eternal dance of time, ignorant, unbothered, but Jon kept collecting those silent debts of normal life, secreting them away in a hidden singularity in his heart that only grew heavier and metastasized farther the more times Martin walked out at night, not him, beaming starlight from his eyes and his fingertips, to hang the moon again.  So soft, so full of wooly cows and pink heather and the smell of tea and sea salt and Martin’s shampoo on the pillow next to him did it become, that it was almost inevitable that one morning Jon awoke absolutely convinced none of it could be real.  

The moment he decided that, everything made so much more sense.  He could breathe again.  There was a reason he could never sit still, never just feel at ease or talk about the future like it was a real thing that could still happen.  He knew why the silence made his brain itch and why he still glanced around corners and glowered at anyone who dared let their gaze linger on his Martin too long.  Why Martin’s ring fit and his didn’t.  There was too much debt to the universe to be paid, too many broken promises, too many corpses in his wake, he had done nothing to deserve this idyllic life of love and peace and smallness and Martin.  It had to be Her doing, It’s doing, some carefully woven torture chamber that would lure them to the apex of their joy, the center of the web, where they would just be devoured over and over to empty husks and set up like chess pieces to fill with love and light just to knock down again.  He wasn’t free after all.

Jon had been halfway into his coat and halfway out the door to do, he didn’t know, something, anything, to go to the library to use their computer and research something he didn’t know he was looking for when Martin had seized his hand and whirled him around.

“Jon.  STOP.  It’s over.”

And he’d stopped.  He’d looked into those baleful blue eyes, fallen into their depths, landed on the precipice of madness, and broken.  It wasn’t over.  Not for him.  He finally understood.  It was still there.  The Eye.  It always had been.  Though not really, he understood slowly as he wept on his knees in their doorway into Martin’s chest, it had indeed closed forever on him, but it lingered as distant static, like a phantom limb, a metaphysical itch that could never be scratched.  Martin had cradled him close and listened, listened so patiently as he ripped the jagged black fear from the deepest, ugliest part of his heart, hauled it up bloody and messy from his throat and finally laid it bare for both of them to see.  And when it was done and he couldn’t cry anymore Martin had locked eyes with him in a way that made him forget any others could have ever existed outside of crystalline blue and filled with moonlight.

“Listen to me.  I know you think you have some cosmic burden to bear.  That you’re still wearing some… some fucked up crown and sitting on a throne of skulls and death and eyeballs or whatever image you want to put there, and that you have to sit and hurt and watch over everything so it doesn’t happen again, but...  Sorry, Jon, but that’s bullshit.  It’s just a scar now.  That’s all.  Just like the rest of them.  Ugly and beautiful and proof that you —Jonathan Sims— are still alive.  And you are not The Archivist anymore.  You’re just mine.  My Jon.”

He’d held his Jon’s stunned face in his hands and peppered kisses over the pock marks in his skin, over the slash on his throat, the burnt fingers that still couldn’t bend quite right, even the one on his chest, the one almost always hidden by fabric but the one he didn’t need to see to find.  His heart and fingers would always remember exactly where it was.  And he’d kept his lips there a moment, then turned his ear to his chest and wrapped his arms around his waist to listen to his heartbeat like a trembling little bird.

“If I can hear it and feel it.  So can you,” he whispered.

Unsteady fingers curled desperately into Martin’s silky locks, hematite loop cool against his scalp, “Thank you…”

Martin stayed for the kiss on top of his head he knew was coming and smiled.

“Okay, so it’s simple to fix if you think about it,” he murmured into Jon’s chest, “We just need that thing, you know?  The thing that makes you feel like you’re still doing the thing, but you’re not.  What was the word for it again?  A placeholder?  Like when you quit smoking and you hold a pencil or a straw or something that’s not actually a cigarette so you can wean yourself off the ritual?”

Jon blinked owlishly down at him as he dried his eyes.

“A… placebo?  Are you talking about a placebo?”

“Yeah!  That’s it!  We just need to find you a placebo for Knowing things!  That’s all.  Like… reality shows, or-or zoo cams or something!  We’ll figure it out together.  Alright, love?  I promise you.  It’ll be okay.”

Jon was skeptical, so very skeptical, but if Martin was determined to find a balm to soothe his jagged, ontological scars he would happily play the part of lab rat for him.  They’d tried a myriad things to replicate the feeling of Knowing and looking something deep within him still craved.  The zoo and animal livestreams were a bust, cute and entertaining as they were, but animals weren’t ever the purview of The Eye and the camera itself was barely a scrap.  Reality shows came closer, the more salacious the better, but even that temporary fix wore off when Jon’s disgust with the overall content and participants outweighed any benefit.  Martin was just happy to have finally converted him to Bake Off, at least.  They tried people watching in the square in the village, but it made Jon far too self-conscious and guilty.  He used the binoculars exactly once, and that was to look at the cows in the fields, and the choose-your-own-adventure books Martin had been certain would strike a sagacious chord wound up in the donation bin at the library.  But that was when he was struck with a bolt of genius.

Unbeknownst to Jon, which brought him no small measure of glee, Martin ordered, received, and then set up with a literal bow in their back garden the finest telescope he could afford on his meager savings.  He’d researched for days, asked on every amateur astronomer forum he could find, and had it delivered to the grocers so he could make it a proper surprise.  He’d even gone so far as to attack and blindfold a hapless Jon the moment he made it home from work on the day it was ready, and stood behind him giddily bouncing as he tore the tea towel away from his eyes.

“A… Telescope?” he’d blurted dumbly.

“Yes!  It’s perfect, right?  I asked around to find the one that had all the best features, and this one has the best overall magnification and the most lenses, but it doesn’t have the little satellite positioning thing?  I figured you wouldn’t want that anyway, you always like figuring things out and finding things on your own better.”

Martin had been positively radiant.  Jon had just stared at the gawping black tube and chewed the inside of his cheek as he processed what to say.

“I mean… thank you, Martin, really.  It was a sweet thought, but if the binoculars didn’t-“

“Screw the binoculars!  This is different!” Martin happily insisted, “You can look at so much more!  Stars and planets and galaxies and what have you, and it can maybe be sort of like you’re looking for other worlds?  Wormholes or whatever?  Or signs of The Fears and where they’ve gone?  Or even if the stars are the same here as they were back before?  Space literally has so many things to LOOK at we can’t even count them!  This has got to be it!”

Jon tried to smile and laugh and agree to try it out, at the very least, if only because Martin was beaming so sweetly with pride and hope.  Though that first night he didn’t, ushering them back in with promises of tomorrow, Martin, I promise tomorrow.  Tomorrow had been a lie.  As had been the next night.  In fact, it took Jon a full week to even remember they even had a telescope, and that was only after getting the smuggest, Cheshire grin out of Martin after casually mentioning there would be a visible, if partial, lunar eclipse that night.  He’d relented, only because he’d entrapped himself, and they’d both bundled up, looked in the manual for the best size lens to view the moon with, poured a few glasses of wine, and turned their eyes to the stars.

Martin had gone first, gripping the eyepiece and adjusting the focus all the while gasping in awe.  It was so beautiful he’d burst into poetry with a crooked grin.

“Art thou pale for weariness?  Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, wandering companionless among the stars that have a different birth, and ever changing, like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy?  Sounds a little familiar, eh?” he joked, casting a wry look over his shoulder.

Jon rolled his eyes fondly.

“Gross.  Keats again?”

“Nope, Shelley this time, and even he thinks you ought to have a look at the moon.  I think you’ll find you have a lot in common.”

Jon had sighed obligingly and shuffled to the telescope, fully expecting to look at something bright and round with a bit of a shadow on it that was distinctly unremarkable, have another glass of wine, and then go back inside to snuggle by the fire.  What he saw in that tiny pinhole of light pierced straight through the hazel brown of his eye and plunged him into another world entirely.

The sands of the moon glowed the purest white in the refracted light of the distant sun with which it waltzed.  He could see in crisp, shadowy relief the innumerable scars she bore, the depth and breadth of Ptolemaeus, the boundless lonely flatness of the maria, named for the oceans they were once thought to be, an insult to the rock plains forged a millennia ago in birth by cataclysmic fire.  Every crater remained wrought in perfect, frozen detail with no erosion or foliage to slowly heal them over, and she beamed them proudly, ostentatiously in her heavenly light.  A hulking, ancient protectorate, hung by the hands of creation at the dawn of time for a fledgling planet, hundreds of thousands of miles away, and yet so crystal clear and unafraid as he perused her millions of years of cosmic sentinel through a lens.  It was dwarfing, humbling, viscerally awe inspiring in a way he dared not voice for fear of snuffing out the fragile glow of wonder and excitement welling in his chest he had been so certain was gone forever.

Astronomy had never been something that had particularly interested Jon, back when his entire reality from the moment his childish hands had touched a single book was spent peering into shadows and watching his own back.  There was no point in wondering what lay among the stars when danger and death lurked so close behind with slavering jaws ever poised at his throat on terra firma, but now.  Now, he had been living in an alternate world, dimension, reality, somewhere, he couldn’t even say for sure.  He’d been hurled potentially through the very stars that twinkled coquettishly above, flashed through their nebulous veils and curtains under their indifferent gaseous gazes, but seen nothing.  Here was a vast expanse of complete chaotic indefiniteness inviting him in to see what few had ever seen, to guess and hypothesize and gesture wildly at secrets only the stars could keep.  To Know.

Jon had jerked back so suddenly from the telescope to survey the entirety of the astral dome above them that Martin had choked on his wine.

“Jon?  Are you quite alright?”

“Yes, I…” he’d murmured, only even half hearing that Martin had said anything at all, stars reflected in his wondering dark eyes, “I’m fine, I just… How… How much more can this see?  How deep does it go?”

Jon hadn’t seen the victorious smirk on Martin’s face as he set down his wine glass and picked up the instruction manual and lens guide.  They’d watched the rest of the eclipse, of course, marveling through the lens at the inky trickle of shadow over craggy white, but then they’d changed the lens to the strongest one, according to the guide, and spent the rest of the evening triangulating their position beneath their slice of the universe and plotting out the various stars, planets, and constellations above.  Jon had even dashed inside to grab a mostly blank notebook and had filled several pages with notes and observations and things to research later, all while Martin held back tears watching him come so alive over a project he didn’t even know he needed.  Eventually though, sleepiness and cold claimed him, and he kissed his beloved goodnight and left him, more than gladly, to ride out the intellectual flare up until it burnt both him and itself out.  

Martin had no clue what time it was when he finally returned, and it didn’t even matter.  All that mattered was at some point, a practically frozen Jon had climbed into bed, snuggled up close behind and wrapped his arms around him to kiss the back of his neck so softly like the wings of a butterfly and whisper.

“Thank you.”

Another victorious smirk and a loving murmur.

“Told you so.”

Where there had been nothing but an Eye shaped hole in him, scarred around the edges and aching in its vacuum, Jon had filled it with the names of nebulas and quasars, of the myth of Andromeda, and Orion, and Castor and Pollux, or Hercules, and why they had all been hung in the stars for eternity.  The stories were much the same as he remembered, but he’d found slight eccentricities, tiny irregularities in the sky which fascinated him even more so.  Night after night he would look at a different astral body, chart it down in his notebook, then come bounding in with starlight beaming from his eyes and his fingertips with some cry of eureka.

“Martin!  Did you know here Polaris is in the south and Sirius is in the north?”

“Martin!  Did you know the Andromeda Galaxy is actually a little closer to the Milky Way here?”

“Martin, you have to come see this!  Oh, no it’s not weird this time, it’s just I finally got Saturn in the telescope and you can actually see the rings!”

His nightly herald would always be different, but Martin would always rise from the comfort of the couch, put his slippers on, and let Jon talk as long as he needed to about his latest discovery, watching him smile again while he, too, watched the matching smile it never failed to ignite illuminate Martin’s face and they lit each other up in the fused brilliance of a binary star.

Martin no longer hung the moon for Jon, he’d finally just up and quite literally given it to him, and there was no mortal way to repay him for that.  Or so he’d thought.  It came to him, as most flashes of brilliance do, on a night he hadn’t even been thinking about it at all.  All he had been doing was sitting in a lawn chair with his telescope long after Martin had gone to bed, chewing his pencil idly, vaguely missing a cigarette and pondering notes on Vega and Lyra between watching it through his lens.  He’d been stuck for days on Vega and its potentiality for another solar system and what that could imply for their new Earth and their new sun, as well as Lyra and the tragic tale of Orpheus and his doomed love.  Even in their new reality he still turned back at the end of the story, still could not contain the roiling, effusive adoration to his own downfall.

Bitterness had risen like bile in the back of Jon’s throat as he replayed the myth again in his head, unsure why it was vexing him and rewinding in his brain so torturously.  “Stupid, stupid man, if he’d only just…” he’d thought again and again, each time giving the star-crossed musician a different decision, a different choice, urging him down another path somewhere, anywhere along his journey, but in the end, he’d always looped back around to the original.  It was the point of the story, after all.  Not so much the love itself or even the loss of it, but the power of it over one man and the creation born from his mourning and eventual destruction.  Patently Greek.  But the chorus would always begin again in Jon’s head.  If he’d kept his Eurydice, if his songs had been happy, if he hadn’t spent the rest of his life mourning so intensely he was eventually destroyed for it, would he have become the paragon of healing he was, the oracle, the lynchpin of the fate of the world he had eventually become?  Which of them was the stupider man?

Jon was only mortal now, he was no longer all-seeing oracle and dark savior, he had no authority to say, but it was a trifle easier to ponder the hubris of Orpheus instead of his own.  He couldn’t help but think, achingly, sometimes the heroes just deserved to pull their beloved from the pit of Tartarus, promise to love them for eternity, and then simply get married, ride off into the sunset, and live happily ever after.  A story wasn’t a story if it didn’t write itself upon the very bones and sinews of its heroes, that was the law of the universe, but when the story was done and the cracks and fissures in their tissues had faded to myth and legend, what became of the heroes who did not die a tragic or heroic death and were not hung in the stars?  What happened to heroes left behind?  Twisting his bloodstone ring on his thumb idly as it caught the shivering fire of those stars in its dark mirrored surface, the musical arrow of the muses pierced his heart, wide-eyed in wonder.  He’d asked the universe, but he already knew the answer.  He’d always known.  He knew, and he knew it with such clarion joy as he had never known anything before.

He could no longer be the man who hung Martin’s moon, he hadn’t been for a long time.  That much was clear to him, but he could certainly do something else.  Perhaps they had grown past the need for moon hangings in the first place.  He knew how their story ended.

It took months of saving, secreting, preparation, and then finally just simply waiting for the perfect, clear night.  The moment it came, the moment he knew it was the night, Jon struck without hesitation.  Poor Martin wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the couch, into Jon, when he returned from a late shift at the grocers, but found himself instead stuffed right back into his coat with a picnic basket in hand and hauled out into the frigid night in a flurry of Jon with little time to protest.  He bounded up the hill behind their little cottage beneath a perfect blanket of stars flaming coldly overhead, trailing Martin’s hand in his behind with his breath coming in silvery puffs of clouds, and paying no heed to the whining.

“Jon, whatever it is, does it have to be NOW?” Martin panted, “I am absolutely knackered and it’s beyond freezing and wouldn’t it be nicer just to curl up with a cuppa and fall asleep in front of Star Wars or something?  Doesn’t that have enough stars and space in it?”

Dauntless, Jon only tugged harder.

“There’s tea in the basket, and I’ve seen Star Wars.  And yes, it has to be tonight, it’s really important, I promise.”

“Look.  I love you.  So much.  You know this, and please know it is with the utmost love and deepest affection in my heart that I point out that you say that every time, and you’ve still shown me Pluto like, a hundred separate times.  While I quite like it, and I still feel sorry for it being bumped out of the solar system and all, it’s just a dot?  How many times can you look at a dot?” Martin sighed.

His words finally threw a caltrop into Jon’s warpath, and he paused, turning over his shoulder woundedly.

“What?  No, it’s not Pluto, I swear just- Please, Martin?  I’ll never ask again if you don’t want to, but just for tonight, please?” he pleaded.

Martin winced, and immediately folded under the onslaught of doleful honeyed brown eyes under a nimbus of stars.

“Oh, lord there you go with the puppy dog eyes.  Okay, okay fine, but there better be a nip of whiskey in this,” he chided lovingly with a gesture at the thermos in the basket.

The smile flared back to life brightly on Jon’s face as he turned back up the craggy little footpath to the top of the hill.

“Of course, hot toddy with tea.”

“Ooh, lovely, you do know me.”

The rest of the way was trivially short to the small, flat hilltop surrounded by heather where Jon had already set up a blanket and the telescope over a pristine vista of the dark line where the stars sank into the sea.  He ushered Martin to sit down first, then perched on his hip beside him and poured him a generous helping of tea and whiskey from the thermos before pouring his own.

“Thanks, much.  Right then, what exactly are we up here to look at that we couldn’t see from our garden?” Martin asked, accepting his cup of potent hot toddy and sipping it gratefully around the lemony steam that billowed up.

Taken aback by the sudden logic lobbed into the center of his romantic posturing, Jon looked momentarily stunned, as if someone had slapped him upside the head.

“Oh!  Oh, um, well-!  Ahah, that is to say- Uh.  There is a reason for all this.  It’s not that we couldn’t see it from our garden, we very much could have.  B-But it’s so beautiful up here, and you can kind of hear the sea?  And it’s nice and peaceful, and the heather is still blooming a bit and um…” he trailed off, cheeks burning.

“Okay…?” Martin probed, frowning a little.

“Er, actually...  It’s less about the stars than it is- W-Well it is about the stars.  Let’s get that clear.  But to be completely honest I mostly just… I-I well.  There’s something I need to tell you?”

Jon was ill-prepared for the look of abject horror on Martin’s face as he went paler than the moon overhead.

“Shit, what is it?  Did you find something?  You saw something?  There’s been a sign of The Fears?  Oh god it’s not HER is it?” he asked frantically, nearly slopping hot toddy all over his lap.

“What?  No!  No, none of that!” Jon spluttered, aghast.

Martin regained a modicum of color in his face and breathed in measuredly.

“Okay, so then what is it?  Oh god, you’re not… Jon you’re not ill, or something, are you?  Please, you can just tell me if-“

“No, I am not ill either, damn it, Martin!  If you would just listen to me!  I-!” Jon moaned exasperatedly, “I just wanted to do something… nice.  Something nice for you.  And nicer than I normally would because I am apparently much worse at crafting romantic moments than I thought and-“

“Wait…” Martin cut in, eyes gleaming with realization, “Jonathan Sims… Are you grand gesturing?”

“Well I am certainly trying but you are making it exceedingly difficult!” he retorted, red in the face and breathless.

“Oh my god, you are!  I’m so sorry!” Martin laughed brightly, “Oh god Jon you poor thing I’m so sorry, I’m awful, I’m the absolute worst!  No please!  Don’t let me spoil it.  Please go on.”

Grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead, Jon tried to summon the words again, only for Martin’s strong, warm hands to take it from him and tip his chin up to gaze into his eyes.

“Hey.  Hey, Jon.  Look at me,” he breathed, looking into his eyes idolatrously, “I’m sorry.  I love you.  You can tell me.”

Taking the steadiness from those clear blue depths he needed, Jon focused on them, on the strawberry blond curls tossing in the icy breeze, of the kiss of chilled pink under his freckles, and that eternal, sunshine smile.

“Okay,” he finally answered, smiling softly.

With a deep, shuddering breath, and a long swig of whiskey laced tea for good measure, Jon drew himself up and fished deep in his soul for the words he had waited a millennium to say.

“Okay… So here it is.  Um… I’ve um, I’ve had a lot of time alone lately with my new hobby, as it were.  So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  A lot of it is overly complicated and ridiculous and doesn’t deserve to live outside of my head but… a lot of it has been about you, about us.  And I know we don’t need to-to put a label on us or put us into a… a box or anything like that.  But every time I look at this ring on my finger, I can’t help but remember we never actually talked about what they meant,” he began, holding out his left hand and fidgeting with the loose band around his thumb.

“Oh Jon, don’t worry about that.  It was just me being a big sappy, sentimental dork.  And if I recall correctly, we’d had a pretty awful row a night or two before, and I just wanted to feel close to you again, I guess?  We both know what they mean to us.  It doesn’t matter,” Martin assured him sweetly.

“Except that it does!” Jon insisted passionately, “That’s the point!  You are a big sappy, sentimental dork, Martin.  I bet you were the kid that had a dream wedding all planned in a notebook with pictures cut out of magazines and everything.  I adore that about you, but big sappy sentimental dorks should have big sappy, sentimental moments like huge, expensive seaside weddings with three-flavor cakes and all your friends and family and rose petals and dove releases and whatever else your heart could dream up.”

Martin snickered and shook his head, charmed at least by the mental image of kissing Jon on a seaside cliff at sunset while doves flew in glorious formation around them and everyone they had ever known and loved cheered.

“Pfft, I don’t need a grand wedding and all that, I just need-”

“Me.  I know,” Jon finished for him with a smirk, “I knew you’d say that.  Maybe not.  But you deserve one.  And I know I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s necessary in this case.  You deserve it.  All of it.  Me on one knee with a ring in a box, you deserve us picking out flowers and tuxedos and arguing over the font on the invitations.  You deserve Tim’s awful bachelor party and laughing at me at the altar because I had to read my vows off a card and they’re still so stiff and awkward and they pale in comparison to the beautiful poem you wrote about me.  You deserve smiling so hard your cheeks hurt and crying as we exchange rings.  All of it.”

Martin weighed his words carefully on his tongue with a sip of his boozy tea to chase away ghosts of things that never even were.

“I mean, sure, not going to say I never wanted that.  And I did have that stupid wedding notebook, by the way.  But all that became a pipe dream the minute we wound up here, right?  No use being upset about something that can never be.”

“That may be so, but the crux of it is… you also contented yourself with the idea of it never coming true not because we’re here, but because you didn’t think I wanted it,” Jon answered, his unspoken truth hanging heavy in the chill night air between them, “Every time you tried to tell me you wanted to be with me forever, I brushed it off and painted it gray and tucked it away and carried on the way we always were like nothing happened and it didn’t matter.  Because it was alright, really, you were just so happy to have what we have, that I didn’t die in your arms that night, that we were still together after everything.  That I at least kept that promise after I’d broken so many.  You were so grateful just for what you were gifted after we thought we would end with nothing you didn’t dare think to ask the universe for more and I am so, so sorry it took me so long to see that, Martin.  I’m so sorry.”

His voice broke.  The breath caught in Martin’s chest as he reached out to touch his wrist comfortingly.

“Jon, I-“

“No, please.  Please let me finish I… I can’t give you any of those things.  I can’t give you our friends back, I can’t give you cake and doves and the sunset and crying through vows in front of the vicar.  I can’t even give you an elopement at the register office because we still don’t legally exist.  And I guess for a long time I resented myself for that.  For all of it.  For stealing that from you, for dragging you through literal hell only to give you a shadow of a life stuck here with me because I betrayed you.  But- no stop, don’t say anything yet I’m not done.  B-But now I finally realize.  You’re right, Martin.  You were always right.  It doesn’t matter.  Those things are all just… things.  I said to you once, a long time ago, and I’m still not even sure if you really heard me, that I didn’t want to just survive.  It was true then, and maybe it wasn’t true for a while, but it’s certainly true again.  We did not fight tooth and nail to just survive.  We fought to live, and live together.  So what I’m saying is… I know now I don’t have to give you tuxedos and white roses as long as I give you something… Something to prove to you that you are my everything, my entire world, something to show you that I love you more than I have loved anything in my entire life.  That I want forever with you.  S-So I…” he trailed off, sucking in his breath to give his gesture of undying love the ardor and grandeur it deserved, “I bought us a star.”

The proclamation rang out like the toll of a bell, its gravity sonorous and quaking.  Martin blinked.

“You… I’m sorry?” he squeaked.

Jon set his empty thermos cup aside, flailed his hands in the air and shook his head frantically

“I-I know, I know it sounds mental just hear me out!” he protested, “Technically I didn’t buy the star, if we want to get picky about it.  I mean obviously no one can own a star.  Just the rights to name it?  It’s a thing you can do online.  I was a bit gobsmacked it was real to be honest.  I just had this silly idea when I was out looking at the stars.  I was looking at Lyra and thinking about you and Orpheus, and I… W-Well I just typed it in, ‘can you name a star?’ and it came right up.  Right then and there.  It um… comes with… hold on.”

Remembrance placed a gentle bookmark down on Jon’s fluttering thoughts, and he rummaged in the picnic basket for a moment before pulling out a navy-blue manila folder covered in stars and full of the paperwork and certificates that had come with registering theirs.  He handed it to Martin, who took it in place of his own empty cup, numb, muscles quivering under his jaw, and opened it to the glittering gold typeface that proclaimed ‘Congratulations!’.

“It comes with paperwork, too!  See?  So, it’s official, at least?  The Jon-Martin star.  Not a marriage license I know, but at least our names are together on something legal?  Our real names?  I figured even if we manage the fake identity thing we’d have to get married as not us.  Not really.  So…  I-It could be like our marriage certificate?” Jon explained, chewing his lower lip.

Martin said nothing as his hand turned the pages of the documentation, his eyes distant in a way Jon had never seen before.  Not disembodied and enthralled, not broken, not even regarding puzzle pieces.

“Oh!  Um, also I-I got us a binary star.  I forgot to mention that bit,” he went on, filling the sudden void, “It’s, ah- What a binary star is- It’s technically two?  But they’re caught up in each other’s gravity and they orbit each other so tightly they look like one star together, one that just shines a little brighter.  They’re bound together forever by the most powerful cosmic force in the universe.  Just like us.”

Only silence answered, punctuated by one last crisp whisper of paper, and then the folder closing with Martin’s spread fingers atop it, bloodstone gleaming in the vivid pale light of the night.  Jon’s heart pitched frantically in his chest, and desperate, stranded tears pricked at his eyes.

“I uh… I would have rather gotten us a whole constellation.  Heh, you know?  But they don’t do that, obviously,” he tried softly, his fingers barely brushing Martin’s knuckles, “They record heroes in constellations, after all.  Great deeds, doomed romances, lovers who can be together no other way… That would have been a better way to honor us, I think.  Our story.  A-And who knows?  Maybe back on our world there are a few new stars to remember what we did, to mark the place we left it, so that everyone we left behind can look up and remember us.  They don’t know how the story really ended, and they probably never will, but we do.  We do, and I want to end it right here, right now.  With our star shining above us ‘and they lived happily ever after.’”

Martin still said nothing, but his head bowed, casting a slice of shadow over his eyes, and his shoulders quivered as a thin, bright line of wet silver trickled down his cheek.  Jon felt the very sky shatter above and begin to crumble around him.

“Please… M-Make no mistake, Martin.  P-Perhaps the gesture is silly and meaningless, but it was all I could think to do to go with everything I’ve said tonight.  Martin… Martin, don’t you see?  These are my wedding vows to you.  This is me saying ‘I do’ and also ‘Martin K. Blackwood would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the universe?’  All at once.  This is me saying I swear to you I will be yours, through everything, until the end of time.  M-Maybe I wasn’t before.  Maybe I was still punishing myself, but I’m telling you, I’m ready now to have my happily ever after.  With you, Martin.  If you’ll have me.  If I haven’t-“

He would never finish.  In a dizzying blur of blue folder, flashing hematite, and a wreath of golden curls, Martin kissed the words off his lips.  He kissed him so hard and so fierce, through wracking sobs with his hands woven so raptly into his long, wavy locks he thought his lips would bruise and his fragile soul would finally shatter to pieces in Martin’s arms.  Undone, all Jon could do was surrender and kiss him back with equal passion, thumbing away the hot tears as they spilled freely down his cheeks and anointed them both with their cleansing, hoary heat.  Their lips parted and they panted softly against each other in the space between, each afraid to break the sacred, pulsing silence.

“You’re crying,” Jon whispered at length, “I’ve said something wrong. Martin, darling I’m so sorry.  I never meant to-”

Martin laughed, raspy with tears, but ethereal, sparkling, like stardust floating on the breeze.

“People are allowed to cry when they’re happy you stupid, silly man,” he murmured in between kissing him again, and again.

“Oh.  Oh.”

He kissed him one last time, that idiot man who always burnt the toast and always knew the facts but never knew what to say, who finally figured it out and bought him a star, and threw his arms around him, enveloping his slight, fragile form protectively in his embrace.

“I love you.  I love you so much.”

Jon sank into that warm, familiar comfort and buried his face in his shoulder.

“I love you, too, Martin.  I want to be yours for the rest of my life.  I want to be me, I want to be us.”

“I know.  I’ve always known.  Oh god, you do know that right?  I know that you love me, it’s written in everything you do and say.  I have never, ever once doubted you love me with everything you are.  Even in the moments I was afraid that… that maybe we just weren’t meant to be together, I still knew it wouldn’t be because you didn’t love me.  Never because you didn’t love me.  Just maybe that we didn’t fit together anymore,” Martin replied in a small voice through his tears as they spilled down his cheeks.

As much as he wanted to vehemently deny there was ever a chance they might have not fit back together again after they had both been so shattered, to kiss him and tell him not in a million years would there ever have been a future where they weren’t Jon and Martin against the world, Jon knew it to be inescapably true.

“I’m so sorry you ever had to be afraid of that,” he swore, digging his fingers into Martin’s back pointedly, “After everything.  After we fought so hard to escape fear itself.  That I almost let it truly win in the end.  That I couldn’t just let go… Because… Because this was never about The Eye, was it?”

A heave of breath and its shuddering exhale shook Martin’s body free of lifetimes of grief, and fear, of ugliness carried far beyond the borders of their souls.  His fingers curled tighter in unspoken reply.

“No Jon, no it wasn’t, but I’m so very glad you finally figured that out.”

“Me, too…” he whispered.

They held each other in the quiet wake of being a moment and let the astral plane wheel calmly overhead.  An impatient star twinkled.

“Wait… you never answered me,” Jon finally said as he pulled back, sliding his elegant fingers down Martin’s strong arms.

“Huh?” Martin blurted, scrubbing under his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

“About marrying me tonight.  You never actually said yes, so…”

A twinkle in his eye and a slight mischief to his grin, Jon dove back into the picnic basket and emerged with a velvet ring box.  Martin’s hands flew to his mouth.

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I did!  Nothing fancy, but I thought it was high time to retire the blood rings,” he explained rising from his former perch on his hip to kneel properly.

The box cracked neatly open, and inside lay a simple, white gold band with a tiny circle of milky moonstone embedded in it on a midnight-blue satin cushion, blindingly bright against the dark.  Martin sobbed joyfully all over again.

“So, uh… I suppose if it had just been us, if we’d just been together, without everything, and we’d arrived at this moment.  I would have done much the same.  I would have brought you somewhere beautiful, somewhere I could teach you some inane fact you didn’t actually care about, but liked because it came from me.  Emulsifiers in ice cream and rum raisin…” they both snickered, “And I would have tried my best to make it into some sort of romantic metaphor but completely bunged it up and you would be laughing as I got down on one knee, just like this.  And it would have just been simple.  To the point.  Just… Will you marry me?  So…”

Jon assumed the traditional position, on one knee, arms outstretched, his every slender point a star in a perfect constellation of love.

“Will you marry me?”

Their eyes met, across a thousand different realities, across a thousand different worlds, carried on celestial winds to fall hopelessly, inexorably, into each other’s orbit.

“Yes, yes I do believe I will.”

With one last farewell kiss upon it for what it had meant for them both, Jon slipped the bloodstone ring from Martin’s finger and replaced it with the delicate band made of starlight.  It took its place radiantly, and shone as Martin drew his hand back to admire it with an equally radiant grin before it dimmed with concern.

“But what about you?” he asked worriedly as he watched the old ring entombed lovingly in the box.

Jon only smirked and produced a second box from the basket, which he offered on his open palm out to Martin.

“Naturally, I got one for myself.  Couldn’t pass up a chance to get a wedding ring that actually fits, could I?  It’s just… Don’t you think you deserve to give it to me the way you would want?” he urged.

Martin took the box eagerly, biting his lower lip in thought.

“Not sure you want to give me that freedom.  I had about five different ways of asking you in my head and all of them you would have hated so, so much.  But I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t kind of the point,” he answered wryly.

Jon chortled.

“Sorry I, the unromantic one, sprung this on you, the romantic one.  But I did want to surprise you.  I-I mean you can still write me a vows poem later?  If you want to, of course.  I’d love to have it, even if I don’t actually get to hear it at our wedding.”

Martin’s face flushed immediate crimson and his eyes darted coyly away as he toyed with the wedding band box in his lap.

“Oh that?  A-Actually I… I have it memorized, i-if you really wanted to hear it.”

“You- WHAT?” gasped Jon, his cheeks flushing in tandem.

“Oh yeah, I wrote my vows poem for you ages ago and I’ve gone over it so many times I know it by heart.  It was comforting, okay?  I-I’d read it again when times were good and I thought maybe you’d actually- um… a-and when times were not so good, when you were gone, in your own head, when I was afraid we were broken for good, whenever I needed it.  I’ve read it over a thousand times and never changed a thing from the first time I penned it.  Never needed to.  I’m surprised I haven’t recited it in my sleep at this point,” Martin admitted sheepishly.

Jon’s entire body flushed with a solar heat that melted his joints and his heart into a swirling flare of adulation.

“I can think of no better way, then, to receive my ring,” he breathed, reaching out to cup Martin’s cheek in his hand, “I’ve had my turn, now it’s yours.”

In mirror ballets of love exchanges, Martin cradled Jon’s hand against his cheek as he spoke the first lines of the vows etched ever on his being softly into his palm.

“Let he who, shadow dwelling, must In paper, pen, and book be bound Shake off the chains of dark and rust And chart his own bright fate unfound.

Let he with lifelong burdens borne Cut paper wings with thread of gold And hand in hand, the sky forsworn Flit clouds and sun in laughter bold.

Let he whose blood and soldier’s ken The world did shield from dark and fear Heal fast those wounds, be whole again And sleep at last, held close and dear.

Bring him to me with spirit free With stars in eyes and music sung From lips a joyful promise be One soul conjoined, one fate’s thread strung.

Two hearts rejoice in love renowned. We lift our heads, alive, uncrowned.”

He waited until the last couplet to pull the ring from the box and slide it onto Jon’s finger where it too, fit perfectly, like it had always been there, and shone defiantly bright in the moonlight.  Jon wept.  He had been weeping since the first words of verse left his beloved’s lips, but seeing that ring like a piece of his missing soul returned to him undammed the tears effusively.

“God that was… Martin, I don’t have words.  I-It was… so beautiful.  You’re so beautiful.  Thank you,” he cried fervently, “I wish I could tell you properly how much that meant, but I just-“

“Hey… That’s alright.  I’m the words guy.  You’re the emulsifiers guy.  Making you cry is all I need to see to know how you feel,” Martin assured him warmly, reaching out to brush his tears away as he chuckled.

“Yeah… add this one to the running tally.”

“Oh, I have,” Martin snickered, “Speaking of!  Now we’ve done the crying through vows bit.  Shouldn’t we say the ‘I do’ bit, as well?”

Jon pursed his lips with a shrug as he reached out with his left hand to take Martin’s left as well, twining their fingers together

“Yes, I suppose we should.  I don’t see why not.  Well then, Martin, do you?”

“I do.  And Jon, do you?”

“I do.”

“You may now soundly snog the groom.”

“Martin…”

The emphatic drawl of his name the way Jon only called it when he was frustratingly enamored of him perished gently against Martin’s velvet lips as they caressed his.  They kissed slowly and reverently, sealing a pact ordained by the heavens long before either of them had seen the stars in the other’s eyes, lighting with white flame the torch to guide them for the first time, forward.  They broke it only to punctuate it with two more featherlight kisses and a breathless laugh, bowing their foreheads together in deference to the forces of fate and the universe.

“I know this isn’t the wedding either of us ever dreamed of, but as far as I’m concerned, it was perfect,” Jon murmured, nuzzling closer into his husband, swaddling the new, fledgling and beautiful word in his heart.

“Well, hey, what is a wedding really other than just a formal declaration that this is it?  This is us, we’re forever, no matter what.  We did it.  And you did it for me, in the STARS, Jon… Can we just remember that again?  You put us in the actual stars.  I am so writing a ballad for our constellation later, you do know this.”

“Oh lord.  Of course you are.  But really, it was the least I could do, after you’ve done so much for me, sacrificed everything for me.  Waited for me for so long.”

“And you came back to me,” Martin reminded him passionately, “And I don’t just mean back to life, here, in this world.  I mean you came back, Jon, MY Jon, the Jon I was in love with the moment I laid eyes on him.  The fidgety and obstinate Jon who can’t make a decent cup of tea to save his life, who puts on two different socks in the morning because his nose is already in the paper or a book, who teaches me about bleeding rocks and binary stars and still reacts to the simplest acts of kindness like a warm cranberry orange scone without asking for one like they’re divine miracles he is undeserving of, who looks at me like I hung the moon or something every time.  Even when I thought I was a complete and total waste of a human being, you, Jonathan Sims, the most beautiful, amazing, brilliant man to ever walk the Earth, looked at me like I hung the moon.  And that was… Still is… everything to me.”

The heavens shifted, the stars wheeled, the last piece clicked smartly, smugly into place.

“W-What did you say…?” Jon asked with such urgency, grabbing his hands so fiercely, Martin startled.

“Wh-I-I don’t-?  Which part?  The moon hanging part?” he stuttered, rolling his eyes fondly as he realized mid-sentence, “Oh, right.  Ugh, Jon are you seriously going to get after me about your weird vendetta against idioms at our wedding?  Because if you are that would be annoyingly adorable and so intensely you and kind of perfect, but also can you not on THIS particular occasion?”

The laugh that tore from Jon’s throat was half mad, half euphoric as the weight of the moon lifted from his shoulders and became naught but an indifferent sentinel disc in the sky once more.

“No no no, it’s just… It’s funny, I had more than a few things very, very wrong for a very, very long time.  That’s all.  Don’t worry about it,” he explained, leaning in and pressing a delicate kiss to Martin’s forehead, “If you’re the one who hung the moon after all, then I suppose ‘written in the stars’ will have to do for me.”

Martin lit up with literary glee.

“Oh ho!  Two space related idioms in one go?  What a rare treat!  Maybe this is your gateway drug into puns…” he teased impishly.

“Absolutely no chance in hell.”

They both laughed, laughed with the billowing icy breath that reached with victorious fingers up to the heavens.  They laughed, messily sniffing back the pesky drip of tears and cold.  They laughed with lightness of the encumbrance of hematite armor shed, its bloody protections no longer needed to cage wounded hearts and keep them safe and close.  They laughed in breath and also in the dancing points of light in their eyes as they fell into one another free from gravity.

“So uh… Do I get to see my star tonight, or don’t I?” Martin finally remembered, relishing the utterly horrified yelp from Jon.

“Oh god I completely-!  Y-Yes!  Yes of course, it’s already set up at the proper coordinates!” he had already sprung to his feet, “Oh, though, hang on, it took longer to get to the star viewing part than I anticipated, so I might need to adjust it a bit.  Oh!  And I have a little strawberries and champagne, if you like?”

“I do like, please and thank you!”

Jon set to readjusting the telescope to the proper ascension and declination while Martin poured them two glasses of crisply bubbling champagne.  They twined their arms to drink a toast from each other’s glass, ‘to us’ or ‘to happily ever afters’, or to several other messily rambled toast worthy sentiments.  They couldn’t decide and toasted to all of it.  They ate plump red strawberries and licked the juice from each other’s fingers as they looked at their star, which was, after everything, just a dot, just like Pluto, but Martin had to admit that he rather liked looking at dots after all.  And that one was their dot.  The warm intoxication of love and champagne begged for music, and someone fumbled in the cold for a wedding playlist on some app, somewhere, it didn’t matter, just as long as they could join hands, gaze into each other’s eyes and dance inelegantly, stepping on each other’s toes, under the umbrella of stars in a gentle rain of moonlight.

“I don’t see your problem with cliches, idioms and all that, really…” Martin mused at length, laying his head on Jon’s shoulder as they slowly spun to the rhythm of a longing ballad and the song of the sea, “Like this stupid, great song.  They’re familiar and cozy and everyone knows them.  They’re like… like old friends.  Always there to rely on when we can’t come up with the words ourselves, because sometimes we can’t.  And if something trite and silly sums up the way you feel, why not just let it be?  Sometimes things are said over and over again because some truths are universal, you know?  They’re just… human.”

Jon pressed a kiss into the mop of curls that tickled his nose and smelled faintly of toasted sugar and lavender and mused on all of the romantic cliches that had just passed through his mind unbidden.  Who was he to deny he was but one star in the sky, a single gear in the grand mortal mechanism of the universe.  If he had handed himself over to the humanity of it all instead of rusting, stopping, looking outside where there was never anything to see, perhaps he could have had this dance much sooner.  It didn’t matter though, until it did, because that night Martin took his breath away, made his world go round, he was head over heels for his match made in heaven, and better than heaven, they were written in the stars.

“You know what, Martin?” Jon laughed in reply, “Tonight, being what it is, I am willing to concede.  You are absolutely right.”

“I’m glad…” came the tender acceptance, followed by a distinctly puckish beat of silence, “Then does this mean I can I start saying love you to the moon and back?”

“Don’t push your luck...”

[voiceless-terror]

Going Back (The Magnus Archives)

Whumptober 2020 Day Thirty: Wound Reveal

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Characters: Jonathan Sims, Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood

Summary:

“I can’t even feel it anymore, really. She just liked to see what colors she could make me turn.”

Martin could’ve thrown up.

Jon returns from the Circus through Helen’s hallways. Martin and Tim see the aftermath.

The room wouldn’t stop spinning.

He kept it together just long enough to get Melanie out of Elias’s office. Jonathan Sims, Human Shield. Who would’ve thought it?

But now, stumbling down to the Archives, he wasn’t so sure. Everything was scrambled, neither here nor there. His arm throbbed and the hallway tilted, or perhaps he tilted. Wouldn’t that be funny? Just walking sideways down the hall while everyone stared. Don’t mind me! He let out an involuntary giggle- did it echo? Like Helen’s voice echoed? Like poor Michael’s? No, not ‘poor Michael.’ He tried to kill you!

Right, right. 

He was getting some looks. Jon was starting to get used to this whole ‘pariah’ business. He was never the most social person, but people would still greet him in the hallways. Now, though. Now they just stared and whispered. It’s not their fault, of course. He knows he doesn’t look good. Jon hadn’t seen a mirror in a good long while, but he certainly wasn’t feeling good, The Circus had done a number on him and it’s not like he had time to make himself presentable before going back to the office. The Distortion wouldn’t have allowed them to make pit stops. Be funny if it did, though.

He laughed again, stumbling into a wall. A woman looked as if she wanted to help, reaching out an arm that was slapped away by her companion. “Leave him,” the man whispered. He was right to. Jon was starting to think this whole avatar business was contagious. 

“Don’t worry,” he whispered back in an attempt to be reassuring. It probably would have come off better if his voice didn’t have the consistency of sandpaper. “I’ll be gone soon enough!” He smiled and they scurried off, looking horrified. Huh.

He didn’t know what he meant by ‘gone.’ Out of their hair, back in the Archives, dead in a hole somewhere. It was all the same to him. 

There was a song playing in his mind, an incessant, repetitive tune that should be cheerful but it was not. He hummed along with it.

Ten minutes or two days later, he stumbled through the door to the Archives, tripping down the stairs at a rate more like falling. No one was there to greet him, perhaps it was lunch time? Jon was very hungry. But that wasn’t a good indicator of time- Jon was always hungry now. For answers, for food, for someone to look at him without anger. Hungry hungry hungry.

Someone must have left a thing or two in the break room. Martin always had snacks lying about. Maybe he could have one of Tim’s protein bars? Melanie’s Gatorades? So many choices it almost made him weep. 

Elias was always saying he chose this. He’s starting to agree. He always wanted more- more answers, more information. The choice was always easy then- go wherever the knowledge takes you. So why was this one so goddamn hard? Just pick some food, any fucking food you’re so hungry-

It would be nice if someone picked for him. He hadn’t had to choose his own food for a while, but now the options were just overwhelming. Just let him have one more thing out of his control. He wasn’t ready to go back to normal, not just yet.

But they had to move forward, he knew that. Jon wanted answers and so did the rest of them. They never liked the answers he gave them. Is that Jon’s fault, really? Maybe. Everyone else seemed to think so. Elias didn’t tell them he’d been kidnapped, but he’d been gone all the same. It’s sad isn’t it, when you become a person no one will miss? Jon missed them. Jon missed everything that was real, flesh and blood and warm. Jon was selfish that way.

But now he had an answer. Something good that came out of all of this, a lead. Tim would be happy. He might even thank him.

The world tilted and Jon tilted with it.

________

“Hang on-is that Jon?”

Martin peered into the break room on his return from lunch; he wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here. But there was a small figure there in the dark, swaying on their feet. He rushed over and flicked on the light switch- it was Jon! His excitement was dampened, however, when he got a good look at the man.

Jon looked bad. Martin didn’t think he could possibly look worse than he did after Daisy brought him back but no, this was definitely worse. At least then he’d been angry, rushing around and demanding answers from Elias. Now though, he was just...swaying, his eyes distant and cloudy, not even noticing the other occupant in the room. His hair was tangled and long, his face was gaunt. He was drowning in his clothes- clothes that were dirty and blood stained and torn as if he spent the last month living in the woods. “Jon?” he asked hesitantly, inching forward in the room like he was approaching a spooked animal. “Jon, are you alright?”

No answer. Jon was humming, a strange, childish tune like something from a music box or an ice cream truck. Tim was silent and still behind him; Martin wasn’t surprised he was unwilling to help. It was a horrifying picture, after all, and he and Jon weren’t on the best of terms. Martin managed to get close enough to venture a hand on Jon’s shoulder.

This seemingly broke him out of his fog and stopped that god-awful hum. His eyes cleared as he turned to Martin and smiled- Martin had always wanted Jon to smile at him but not like this, never like this. Happy and dreamy yet somehow manic. “Oh!” he croaked; he sounded as if his voice hadn’t been used in days. “M-Martin, you’re here!”

“Yes, I am,” he explained slowly, trying to match his smile if only to put him at ease. “Are- are you alright, Jon? We haven’t seen you for a while, and you look- well, not great.” That was an understatement. There was a strange, glowing sheen on his otherwise unhealthy frame, like a doll that’d been covered in greasepaint. It was unnerving, to say the least.

“Yes!” Jon said excitedly, grabbing at his arm with thin, spindly fingers. There was a desperate strength behind it. “Now that you’re here. Where’s Tim? I have to- I need to find Tim!”

That was not a good idea. “Erm, are you sure?” he hedged, trying to usher him into a seat but Jon was having none of it and pulling at his arm insistently. “Jon, I really think you should get to a doctor, I mean look at you-”

“Tim!” Jon called in that croaking, animated voice. The man in question looked irritated at first, and then clearly disturbed by the man in front of him. “Tim, I have news.”

Tim backed up as Jon approached and leaned forward on his desk as if imparting a secret. ‘I know where it’s going to be. The Unknowing.” Martin watched as Tim’s eyes lit up unwillingly and he grabbed at Jon, pushing him into his own desk chair. Easy, Martin wanted to chide, though he knew Tim wouldn’t heed it. He had a one-track mind when it came to dealing with the Circus.

“Where?” Tim asked urgently, his hands on Jon’s shoulders as if ready to shake him lest he gave the wrong answer. Martin noticed the way Jon leaned into the touch, threatening as it was. “Where?”

“A wax museum!” The words were...delighted. Jon was smiling like a child giving a teacher the correct answer and that strange, clouded look was coming back into his eyes. “I don’t know which one, though. They didn’t tell me that.” Who?

“Who?” Tim echoed his thoughts and pushed Jon up straight as he listed to the side. “Was this- was this one of your powers? How long have you known?”

“No, not this time,” Jon patiently explained. “I was there. I’ve known for- hm, Elias said - about a month!” What? Tim’s eyes narrowed and his hands gripped harder. Jon didn’t seem to notice. “I would’ve told you, but I was all tied up!” He reached his hands up imploringly, sleeves slipping down his arms to reveal wrists rubbed raw, clearly infected. Martin gasped and even Tim let up, looking nauseated. 

“Jon,” Martin kneeled by the chair, trying to meet his eyes. “Jon, what happened? Who did this to you?”

Without Tim’s help, Jon fell to the side of the chair, only supported by it’s arm. His shirt, worryingly baggy, slipped off his shoulder to reveal deeply bruised skin, blooming a purple and green that seemed to extend beyond what they could see. Jon must have noticed their horrified stares, for he rushed to reassure them. 

“I can’t even feel it anymore, really. She just liked to see what colors she could make me turn.”

Martin could’ve thrown up.

“Who’s she?” Tim stuttered out, horror rooting him in place though his hands twitched in what look liked an urge to help.

“The clown. Nikola. Needed- needed my skin for the dance. She couldn’t cut me up yet. I was almost-” Jon was no longer there with them, not anymore. “I was almost ready.” He pitched forward, eyes rolling back in his head and Martin rushed to grab him but Tim got there first, sweeping an arm under his chest and pulling him back up on the chair. There was a feral, unhinged look in the man’s eyes- anger, fear, and something he couldn’t name making his arms shake even as they kept Jon in a tight grip. 

“Should- should we get him to the hospital? This is bad, Tim.”

“No!” Jon shot up in the seat, arms flailing in a sudden panic. “No more- no more strange hands! I don’t w-want them touching me, please Martin, I don’t want to I don’t want to-”

��Shh,” it was Tim who hushed him, leaning Jon into his side and taking most of his weight. He was completely attentive now in an entirely different way- Martin would say it was protective if he didn’t know the man’s real feelings. “We won’t. How about we take you to the cot, have a rest, yeah?”

“Tim…” Shouldn’t they be doing more? A nap wouldn’t cure him- he needed real medical attention.

“Just for now,” he said and his tone didn’t leave room for any arguments. “He doesn’t want it. Not right now.” Martin wondered what made him suddenly attuned to Jon’s needs- as if a switch had been flipped at the mention of a clown. He followed behind like a lost puppy, watching as Tim took a still-murmuring Jon into Document Storage.

“Their hands, Tim. I don’t- too much touching-”

“I’ll let go of you as soon as you’re settled,” Tim promised, laying him down with the utmost care as Martin watched from the doorway. “I’m sorry-”

But Jon’s arm shot out and grabbed at Tim’s as he tried to walk away. “Not- not yours. I-I didn’t mean yours.”

And to Martin’s surprise Tim sat down, leaning back against the cot and entwining his hand with Jon’s. His eyes held that same far-away look as Jon’s, as if he were trapped in a memory and seeing something else entirely. Martin suddenly feels like he’s intruding.

He shuts the door and lets them be.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27285688

[kimistorm]

Doctor Strange x Reader || It’s All a Little Strange || Chapter 3

“Master (l/n).” The Ancient One called you over to where she was standing with Strange.

“Yes?” you stepped forward.

The Ancient One quirked an eyebrow at you and pointed at Strange, “why don’t you help train Mr. Strange.”

“What?” both of you demanded at the same time.

“I’m rarely ever here! And even when I am, it’s so that I can spar and make sure I’m still on par!” you protested.

“I hate her!” Strange pointed at you.

“Oh wow, real mature Strange.” You snarkily shot at him and turned to look at him, “at least my argument made sense. And you didn’t have to be so blunt about it.”

Strange looked at you in confusion, “I believed that my hatred for you was implicit from our interactions during the past few years.”

“Oh it was.” You shot back, “I just wasn’t certain that you wanted to shout out your hatred for the whole world to hear!”

“Enough!” The Ancient One shouted and the room fell into silence. “Master (l/n),” The Ancient One turned to you, “it will be a good experience for you. You’ve been here long enough that I believe you are more than capable of passing on your knowledge to Mr Strange. Besides, he will be taking the classes with the other recruits as well. You’re only helping with his training. Mr Strange,” now The Ancient One turned away from you and towards said person, “you said you wanted to learn, and here’s your opportunity. Need I remind you that I threw you out before?”

“No ma’am.” Strange mumbled dejectedly.

“Good,” the Ancient One smiled, “now that that’s settled, Master (l/n), help Mr. Strange get settled.”

“Yes ma’am.” You nodded and spun on your heel to exit the room with the assumption that Strange was following you. Once the door closed behind you, you turned to Strange with a furious aura surrounding you. “What are you doing here?” you demanded. You moved forwards and somehow, even with your shorter stature, Strange stepped back into the wall.

“I got into a car accident.” He explained shakily. Apparently your fury was enough to scare even Doctor Strange.

“I know that!” you nearly shouted and jabbed a finger into his chest, “I was there the entire eleven hours that you were on the table!”

Something seemed to click behind Strange’s blue-green eyes and he reared at you with nearly as much fury as you, “how could you ruin me like that!” he yelled.

“What are you talking about?” you demanded in return, but now it was your turn to step back.

“You ruined me!” he bellowed and brought up his trembling hands into your face, “I can’t do anything now because of this!”

“We did the best we could!” all rational thoughts about being quiet and respectful to everyone else in the building were thrown out the window.

“Well your best wasn’t very good, was it?” he snarled in return.

“It’s your fault for getting in that car accident! You drove off the side of a mountain!” you shot back scathingly. “The nerve damage was already done by the time you got to the hospital!” you crossed your arms and glared at him. The two of you were in the center of the dimly lit wooden hallway only feet from the room where the Ancient One was probably still in. “Look at this, you’re still alive. You’re still standing, are you not?” you demanded in a dangerously low tone.

“Everything I was is gone now!” he yelled and nearly shoved his hands in your face to get his point across.

“That’s not our fault! It’s your fault for letting your ego get to your head and for not paying attention to the road! It was a rainy night, you were on a mountain, and you were driving recklessly!” (e/c) eyes met blue-green ones and sparks practically flew in the air between you, “would you like to explain what you were doing? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out it had something to do with your over-inflated ego.”

“I do not have an over-inflated ego!” he retaliated.

You snorted mirthlessly, “you’ll have to do a lot to convince me otherwise.” The two of you continued the stare down until you broke the silence. “What are you doing here. Kamar-Taj isn’t really a place that’s making headlines.” You asked in a quieter voice.

“I came seeking healing.” He explained, following your lead and not shouting as well.

“How’d you find this place?” you asked.

“Pangborn.” Was his vague answer.

“Who?”

He smirked, “what, you don’t know this guy?”

“No, but I don’t care. I just want answers.” You rolled your eyes as his smug atmosphere returned.

“Jonathan Pangborn. He had a C7-C8 spinal cord injury.” Strange explained. You looked at him in confusion. “He came here, and walked out. Literally.”

“So he told you about this place.” You concluded and Strange nodded. You gave a chuckle, “guess you didn’t really find what you were looking for.”

“You could say that.” Strange nodded, “and finding you was certainly not something I expected.”

“Same could be said about you.” You returned, “what are you doing now? You now know that you’re not going to find healing here.”

“I’m going to listen to the Ancient One.” You couldn’t help but snort. Doctor Strange listen? It was laughable. “I’m going to learn.” You were laughing now. “What?” Strange frowned as you put a hand on the rough wall to stop yourself from falling over.

“Doctor Stephen Strange. Learn something that’s not science?” you continued to laugh.

“I don’t understand how that’s so funny.” He continued to frown as he watched your laughing form.

“Sorry,” you stopped laughing and explained yourself, “but everything I know about you is that you’re a stubborn, arrogant, man who only believes what science can prove. Everything here,” you spread your arms out to gesture to the entirety of Kamar-Taj, “is nothing that can be proven by science. The idea of you accepting this. Is laughable.”

“Is that a challenge?” Strange quirked an eyebrow mischievously.

“Only if you want it to be.” You countered.

“Challenge accepted.”

                                                  ✯✯✯

You were walking past the stone courtyard where the recruits typically trained but slowed down when you realized it was just Mordo and the Ancient One standing there expectantly. You bit your lip, you knew it was impolite to intrude, but you just had the feeling that you should’ve asked them what they were doing. You shook your head and continued to walk to your destination. Since it seemed like the recruits weren’t in the courtyard, Strange must’ve been in his room.

You navigated through the maze of dimly lit wooden halls and stopped at his door. “Strange?” you called and knocked on the door, “are you in there?” when there was no answer, you concluded he wasn’t there. “I could continue searching for him, or, I could go spar with Mordo.” You thought out loud. You decided to go spar with Mordo. It would be good to spar with him. You briskly walked through the hallway back to the courtyard, since that was where you last saw him.

You were almost there when you stumbled upon Strange. Who was shakily trying to make it back to his room but was finding it very hard. Considering that he was practically frozen. “What happened?” you demanded and grabbed onto him to help hold his weight. His body was icy to the touch, his hair was frozen all over the place, and he was shivering violently.

“The Ancient One trapped me on Everest.” He stuttered out through shivers.

“Oh,” you nodded. It wasn’t the first time that she’d done something like that. You started to steer him away from his room down a different set of hallways.

“Where are we going?” Strange shivered and you tried to rub his arms to warm him up, “my room is that way.”

“I know that.” You snapped, “I’m leading the way to a fireplace. Unless you have one in your room?” Strange shook his head and confirmed your conclusion that he didn’t have a fireplace in his room. So, you led the way to another section of the building where there was a hearth with fire burning brightly in it. Upon seeing it, Strange’s face practically melted with relief. “Sit there.” You pointed to the floor right in front of the blazing source of heat and he didn’t hesitate to follow your words. “I’m going to find you some towels and blankets, don’t move.”

“Thank you.” Strange whispered. You merely nodded to show that you heard his words before you rushed off to find some towels to soak up the melted ice and some blankets to warm him up.

When you returned he was still sitting in front of the fire but he looked considerably less blue and his hair was now lying flat with water. “Here.” You shoved a towel in his direction while your other arm held a couple blankets. “I hope you still can use a towel.”

“Of course I can.” He shot back and took the towel from your hands.

“Are you up for some training?” you asked quietly and squatted down next to him as he ran the towel through his hair, “it’s okay to say no. You did just arrive from Mount Everest.”

“I can do it.” He stated stubbornly and started to get up.

“Hold on.” You put a hand out to stop him from getting up. You then put your hands on his arms, “no, you’re still practically frozen.” You shook your head and removed your hands from his freezing arms. “Focus on getting warm.” You brought out the blankets and gave it to him, “I can help you with individualized training later on.” You stood back up to your full height and turned to walk out of the room.

Masterlist (Originally posted in 2018)

[heartless-error]

Broken, not perfect, but together. - Chapter 10

Fandom: DC comics, Batman

Pairings: Jonathan Kent x Damian Wayne (JonDami) & Jason Todd x Timothy Drake (JayTim)

Rating/Tags: Family feels, hurt/comfort, mental health issues, running away, unresolved romantic tension

Other(s) links: AO3

Broken.

The Batfamily was broken.

It was six years ago, and they had barely stood together since then, trying to stand up despite guilt and regret.

Damian  was sure there was nothing to save, not after losing something that he  didn’t know he cared about. But when a new opportunity to get back what  they had lost appeared, he cannot help to doubt as his past decisions  haunt him again.

If you love somebody, set them free. But you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

Chapter Summary: He knew he wasn't a good father, he had always knew. But he was trying, like always. And he knew he couldn't get rid of all his mistakes too, but at least he wasn't alone facing them. He had Clark, he always had Clark, even commiting the same mistakes.

Chapter 10

 Six years ago

 Contrary to what many people seemed to think, Bruce didn’t always have everything under control.

 He was trying, what was different. With all his strength, every day, with all the means and knowledge he had. Even if it was never enough, over and over again. The key was in that, in trying. It didn’t matter how many doubts were around him, how many problems arose against him or how much they tried to stop him, he had to keep trying, to solve it, showing a calm and in control facade so others didn’t know how much his mistakes or indecision haunted him in every step he took.

 Bruce knew there was no need to do it, to be so controlling or to bury his insecurities so deeply and hidden from anyone who dared to look. But he also knew where those problems came from, everything that had fed them, and what brought them to light.

The desire to control even what he couldn’t born in him from the moment in which the sound of the lifeless bodies of his parents resounded in that alley, that fateful night, and since then he lived with it. That desire to watch, intervene, and always be prepared for the worst grew as he did too, and became the man, the supposed hero, he’s now. And it was when those closest to him suffered or were injured by his decisions or failures, which reaffirmed more and more in his being.

 That feeling, that need, was like a vine with thorns. Pointy, infinite, dangerous, and sturdy, rooted within him without any limit, pressing and suffocating him everywhere, ready to hang him. It scratched his scars so that he would always remember them, suffocated his mind so that he would never forget it, and strangled his soul and that of those around him, because it was a double-edged sword where the line of protecting or controlling was easily blurred.

He couldn't get rid of it either, because then, what would be left of him? He was Batman. Batman. The one who always had a plan, a contingency, who stood out for his critical sense and his mind, what always had another alternative. He was the one whom the others looked at when they were trapped in a situation with no way out, the one who kept calm in extreme situations, the one who was able to save the day or the world thanks to his control.

 He couldn't lose that, but it's not like he wanted to, or knew how, either. So, doing his best was all that was left. Keep calm, control. He tries it.

 He tried but the manor was quiet. He knew it wasn’t something unexpected after what happened three nights ago, but it kept worrying him because it was as if everything had turned off suddenly.

Damian's firm, light footsteps were no longer heard in the hallways, his youngest son hadn’t left his room since that night, he had also refused to receive anyone and was recovering from his sprained ankle. The soft Richard’s laugh had also vanished, he was like a ghost, he knew that he walked around the corridors from time to time because he couldn’t bear the confinement, but he was impossible to detect. Alfred's courtesy couldn’t be seen either, he knew that the man was not only angry, but that he respected his desire to be alone right now. The presence of his daughter, Cassandra, was also lying much in need, as much as she was silent in itself, her stay was always appreciated. Stephanie's jokes had been replaced by cautious and angry looks upon learning what happened. Barbara hadn't even deigned to answer him when he asked for a certain favor the night before. Timothy and Jason had fallen into complete silence, nothing unexpected.

 It was afternoon, but Bruce was in his office in the manor, thinking about how the place he had managed to fill with laughs, footsteps, and life over the years was now as empty and silent as when Thomas and Martha Wayne died.

He hadn't moved much, from the big chair in front of the expensive office desk, because he was still thoughtful and analyzing the argument that had happened in the cave three days before.

 Bruce knew he wasn’t a good father. Like all of him, he was trying, but he was very aware of reality. If someone asked him about the mistakes he had made regarding his children, he could list each and every one of them by heart, classify them by different categories, and then recite them out loud almost without thinking. This, obviously, was because he had them in his mind and insanely at all times and, of course, feed again those cravings for control that dominated him. The fear of losing them was too much, he couldn’t bear it, and that led him back to enter that infinite cycle that dominated his life.

The more he loved his children, the more he needed to protect them. That, in one way or another, involved controlling them and their environment, and the more he tried to do it, the more damage he did directly or indirectly. He always ended up failing, making mistakes. And these mistakes were present again, trying not to be repeated for then commit others instead.

 He was also aware that most of his children hadn’t had an easy life. Everyone came to him as children whose circumstances had been difficult and unfavorable. He couldn’t be responsible for the trauma or abuse that others had done to them, he just helped to mitigate it, give them the happy, healthy home they deserved and tried to change things where possible. But at the end of the day, the adult who took responsibility for them was him, and definitely had made mistakes.

 The worst and what tormented him most at the moment, is that if he listed those mistakes and removed the most obvious and indisputable of the list -how, for example, involve all of them in their crime crusade - most of them involved Tim and Jason in some way or another.

 That certainly didn’t help him.

 If he initially wouldn’t have been so hurt by Dick's departure to the Titans, perhaps he would have considered not controlling Jason the way he did when he adopted him or making the same mistakes as with his first child. If he hadn't been so convinced that the wounded but brave boy from the Bowery, needed Robin, he might not have felt like he needed to fill his older brother's shoes and run away later. If he had made it to Ethiopia in time, to the warehouse, Jason wouldn’t have died. If Jason hadn't died, he wouldn't have fallen into the spiral of self-destruction that Tim had to save him from, and he wouldn’t have turned him into Robin. If he hadn't turned Tim into Robin, maybe his parents were still alive, maybe he would have had a normal and happy life. If Tim had a normal life, Jason wouldn’t have risen with so much hatred and resentment towards them and wouldn’t have tried to kill him. If he hadn’t "died" later, Tim wouldn’t have lost another person, nor fallen into the same self-destruction from which no one could save him now.

 If... If not...

 There were so many events that he could have changed, and others not. So many mistakes, so many things could have been better. Everything turned in his head and had harassed him for three days. His bad decisions, the possibilities, the memories, all of that filled him with guilt and uncertainty, blamed him that it didn’t matter how human he was, how much he felt, because his mistakes always had more weight and consequences in the people he loved, whatever he did.

He remembered the despair he felt while holding Jason's corpse, bloody and broken as the warehouse burned and collapsed around him. The fear that ran through him when he helped to trait Tim's wounds after Red Hood's beating him up at the Titans' tower too, knowing who had done it. He remembered the disappointment and pain that Jason's spiteful words provoked him when he was ready to kill the Joker. Also, the understanding of Tim's tears after his father's death.

 They were his sons. His sons. He felt and suffered more for them than for himself, and for the fact that because of his own crusade their lives have been so affected.

They had big hearts, unshakable will, and unmatched bravery. A potential within them that drove them to help others innately, to fight with everything they owned. It was that light, that ability, why they were Robin.

 However, that didn’t take away the fact that his field-acquired wounds, both emotional and physical, could affect them on a deeper level than they could think. Endangering themselves, the other, and the rest of them with that hidden relationship that was revealed three nights ago.

 Jason was the brave and fighting boy from the streets who decided to fight the crime he experienced firsthand. But the trauma related to the abuse, the streets, and his own death was still very entrenched inside him, shaping his decisions both inside and outside his vigilant life. The Lazarus Pit had made him violent and angry, a killer who lost control when one of his triggers of said trauma appeared, including the bats themselves. As much as he had improved his control, they still had no guarantee that the Pit Rage would appear at any time and become a threat for all of them again.

Tim, the sweet little Tim, was still the smart and kind boy who threw away all opportunity to live a normal wealthy child life to become an extraordinary hero, someone who cared for and saved people in a selfless and sacrificed way. But the experiences that came along with that decision were not as kind as he was, and while Tim gave his all, without contemplation, in exchange he lost family, friends and stability. Bruce was not stupid, he recognizes a severe depression when he saw it, and although no one knows what happened to his third child during the time he was lost in time -or what he had to do to get him out- it had to be bad enough for Timothy became the lifeless emotionless shadow which was now.

 “You’ve been years without knowing anything from us!” Jason said three nights ago.

 It wasn't true, but it wasn't false either. He couldn't deny it with the same force as Richard did, because as much as he would like to say that both of them were still integrated in the family, it wasn’t true. They hadn't been in a long time, and they couldn't run away from it.

For him, it was always easier to treat Jason as if he had been a fallen soldier in battle because doing it as the son he left to die was too painful, it kept shaking him to the depths of his existence, perhaps that was why he hadn’t been able to integrate him among them again, in addition to all the history resulting from those events. He couldn't ignore his morality and methods, destructive and totally different from his. Neither the numerous attempts to harm him or the rest of the family, especially Tim. There was the fact that Red Hood operated in Gotham apart from the Outlaws, yes, but they hardly worked together or cooperated. They had their territories very defined, but he could barely catch a glimpse of Red Hood without twisting things, neither Jason. He knew that sometimes he was in the cave or the manor, but he always made sure not to see him and not stay long unless it was necessary.

For his part, Timothy, after he returned from his "death" and accepted Damian as Robin, he adopted the Red Robin alias and seemed to disappear entirely. He claimed to be in favor of carving out his own name as a hero, but he was elusive, smart, and determined. He went to live alone, to work with the Titans or at WE. It didn’t matter how many calls they made, how many emergencies or meetings would be held. Tim barely stepped on the manor, he didn’t stop to talk about anything other than the vigilant job, and long periods passed without seeing him. He hid his wounds very carefully and his habits began to be dangerous for him. They knew enough to realize that he was trying too hard and something was going very wrong but reaching out to help him without scaring him in the process was hard, complicated.

 Maybe for all that and more, his sons didn’t trust him enough to reveal what was going on between them, that they were dating. He didn't blame them, he really deserved it, because he couldn't figure it out either. He also deserved they were angry with him and his opinion on the matter.

 They could get mad at him, hate him, or yell at him. But he really believed that he had reason to say that relationship was something that should be discussed or thought more carefully.

Relationships on the field were dangerous, he knew it personally, and he still remembered the discomfort that had plagued the team when Barbara and Dick broke up so many years ago, not to mention Tim and Stephanie too. And he also remembers the serious injuries Jason inflicted on Tim, how much Red Hood lost control around him, and how little Tim has always valued himself and his injuries.

 Jason's problems along with Timothy's emotional state were not a good combination at all. It wasn’t. It didn't matter how they looked at it, nor how many years will pass. Their story was too rough, there was too much torment, too much tension between them. They themselves were not in a position to have such a relationship with anyone, much less with the other. And if he already doubted the red team itself -despite its efficiency- he also couldn't help but doubt this.

 He couldn't leave them to destroy each other, he couldn't. He knew that was how it would end, and the simple possibility that it might happen made his cravings for control beg him to take the reins of everything again, to fix all this and do it now.

 However, he had already been too carried away by that feeling to know that it wasn’t a good idea to follow it. So, before he could do anything, he received a call. A call that lasted for hours, most of the night, where he got another perspective on the matter and helped him to decide and ask that favor from Barbara that he hadn't heard from yet.

 Despite knowing there would be no response yet, he couldn't help but check his phone again to make sure, eager to be able to do something about it instead of sitting for hours in that office evaluating and planning the best course of action.

 He was just going to think about that when a few firm touches on the window caught his attention, causing him to straighten and look at the window on his left suspiciously.

 Even though he had told him that he didn't need him to come, there he was, his call.

 Frowning, Bruce got up from his seat and went to the window to open it wide, looking at Clark Kent, who floated in front of him in his civilian clothes as if it were the most normal thing in Gotham in the middle of the afternoon.

Holding back a sigh, he opened the window and stepped aside to let him in, trying to decide what to say first.

 He was debating between a "What the hell are you doing here?" or "I specifically told you not to come here.” before the Super raised his hand and talked.

 “When was the last time you slept?” He asked, looking at him closely.

 Not even a "Hello, how are you?" before starting to enter the matter. It wasn’t necessary, they had already overcome that phase of their relationship for a long time. What's more, Clark didn't have to ask how he was doing, he already knew it, he knew it very well.

It had been him who had finished calling after the discussion in the cave with Tim and Jason because he knew that something happened to him only by his heartbeat. It's not like he could have hidden it from him, because not only would he have found out sooner or later, but because he already did, and he was his best friend, so he finished telling him everything. They talked too much, and the call lasted for hours, with both locked in their offices for more privacy and with Clark insisting on going to see him.

 He said there was no need, but he had ignored it, as always.

 “That’s not relevant.” He replied, frowning further.

 To Clark, that was the fragrant confirmation that -indeed- he hadn’t slept for three days. In his defense, Bruce would say he was too busy thinking about other things to allow himself a little rest. What's more, he wouldn't even have done it if he tried.

Every time he closed his eyes he listened to Tim's choked sobs and his weak voice begging him to leave them alone.

 Clark wasn't going to know that, but didn’t seem to like his answer at all, because he crossed his arms and looked at him the way he always did when he had no idea what to do with him.

 For a moment, Bruce had the slight hope that Clark would let him go, but it was Kent. So, when he grabbed his arm and dragged him onto the couch in the office to make him sit down with him, he wasn't even surprised. He just rolled his eyes and reminded himself that trying to fight Superman for this was not worth it, because he already knew the result, he had tried too many times. So, he ended up sitting next to him on the sofa and sighing heavily.

 “Sleep.” Clark said simply and shrugged. As if it were that easy.

 “I don't think it works that way, Kent.” He replied with a snort.

 Clark looked at him again disapprovingly a few seconds, then his annoyance softened, and his look turned into one of pure concern.

 “Rest, please.” He asked softly. “I know you, and I know there have been rough days, but it wouldn’t be better like this.”

 After a moment of silence, Bruce decided not to answer that and instead leaned on the sofa to look at the ceiling in silence, closing later his eyes and completely ignoring the tug on his chest that Clark's concern caused him.

That seemed to be an acceptable move for the Kryptonian, because then they were completely silent, together. Bruce could feel the warmth of the other's body, sitting too close. Also, how he tried not to move too much so as not to distract him or disturb his rest, which didn’t help much because he couldn’t rest by himself, but the effort was appreciated.

 He didn't keep track of how long they were quiet and just being aware of each other's presence, but Bruce found himself breaking that peace after a few minutes without even hesitate.

 “Why are you here?” He asked without changing his position.

 He felt Clark stir in his seat and his bluish gaze fixed on him.

 “I wanted to see how you were.” He replied directly. “Do I need something more to see you?”

 Again, he remained silent, that tug on his chest appearing again. However, unlike a few minutes ago, this time he opened his eyes and turned his head to look at him too, meeting his face closer to his than he had originally thought.

 He didn't look away, neither did Clark. They just looked at each other intently and waited for the other to say something. A tension already known between them leaked into the room.

 If someone had told Bruce years ago that Superman would be his most supportive person in his life, who he would trust the most, maybe he would have laughed, a lot. Now, he would have no choice but to agree and say thanks for it.

Because if it hadn't been for that call and those hours of conversation, things would have been much worse, and the situation would have only exploded after he had done something crazy. It was Clark who helped him see that it wasn’t necessary to carry the burdens of his mistakes alone, but that it was easier to do it together. It made it lighter. It was Clark who told him that even Superman made mistakes, everyone did, and the thing was learning to live with them and fix them after all, but don't let them dictate your life. And, above all, it was Clark who convinced him not to take hasty actions and try to clarify things with Tim and Jason without emotions clouding his judgment.

 It was Clark, it was always Clark. The one who managed to make him reason, the one who broke each and every one of his barriers with ease, the one who gave him hope, the one who saw beyond the calculating and calm façade he showed. Clark, always Clark.

 “My son was here yesterday.” The Super ended up saying in a whisper, they were close enough to hear it.

 “I know.” Bruce answered.

 He always knew when Jonathan showed up at the manor to visit Damian. This time he even thanked him, because he didn’t know the state of his younger son, but he did know that Superboy could cheer him up. As much as he broke Gotham's “no meta” rules and the limits set by his parents, he decided to let it be.

 “And you were okay with that?” Clark asked, more curious than annoyed.

 “Yes.”

 “Why?”

 “What do you think?”

 His answer made that tension, known but unsolvable, grow even more. Clark swallowed hard and Bruce didn't look away.

 The truth is that they would have had to be very blind not to have realized that their sons were in love for a long time and hopelessly they were going to end up together. After all, it was something that had been happening and developing in front of them since they made them team as children, and what they also had avoided talking at all cost.

 If Bruce at this time wasn't so worried about what had happened with Tim and Jason and how to solve it, maybe he could stop to think about how unfair he and Clark were being not wanting to recognize the feelings that their sons had on the other.

 They would like to; they would really like to. But admit that would openly lead to mention Conner's fixation with Timothy, which would lead to the conclusion of that, for some reason, always has existed a connection/fixing between the Supers and the Bats. And to admit this fixation would mean declaring that it really exists, along with that... Something, between them.

 There was something. Something between Bruce and Clark which didn’t want to admit, speak, or recognize. They've been ignoring it for years and had always worked like this, they had no reason to bring it to light, nor act on it. However, recognizing the situation of their sons not only will make it much more real, if not that -in some way- impossible.

That doesn't make sense because it was already impossible anyway. Clark was married to Lois, Bruce was dating Selina, they have been best friends since the League was founded, and their children were going to end up together, so there was no way they could... What?

 Do what? To say what?

 There was nothing to do, nothing to say. It wouldn't do any good because it was too late. No matter how much they tried to ignore it, it was something that hung over their heads and the moment it arrived they had to impose their sons' happiness on theirs, because that was how it worked, that’s what it meant to be a dad.

Although maybe that's why they didn't want to admit it, maybe that's why they tried to postpone all that until they could no longer, because they knew that the moment their children spoke for themselves, the decision of both of them was made, and it was like closing a door definitively that they had never dared to cross, but whose existence knew.

 But that wasn’t the important thing at the moment. The important thing was Tim, Jason, their relationship, making sure they were safe and secure, and waiting until Oracle managed to contact them in order to see them. But that was a matter of time, he just had to wait.

 So, ready for it, Bruce turned away from Clark, snorted wearily, settled back on the couch, and closed his eyes to get some sleep after three days without rest.

And if Clark's hand held his in the process, was something between them and no one else.

 ~0.0~

 When he woke up, he was alone.

 The office was dark, it was already night, the window was closed, and Bruce was lying on the couch.

There was no sign of Clark, but before thinking about how he had taken advantage of the fact that he had fallen asleep to accommodate him and leave without saying anything, he focused on the light of the flashing notification from his phone that he had been waiting all day.

 "Don’t thank me. Say hi to Hood before the patrol.” Barbara's text said.

 She had done it; she had granted his request and had been successful. Oracle had managed to locate the red team to take them to the Cave and sort things out. To have a conversation about it without surprises or threats, just leaving the cards on the table at once. There were situations and secrets in the family that could no longer be ignored more, and this was one of them.

 Bruce didn’t have time to be surprised that it was precisely Jason who agreed to attend that appointment, because he realized that he should head there. It was time to prepare for the patrol and it was better not to make anyone wait this time. He was determined to make his position clear and protect his sons, as necessary.

 He was halfway to the cave entrance when a loud sound made his world stop and a jolt of terror prick him.

 Bang!

 He breathed for a second, and then, recognizing the sound as a shot, he went through the entrance and down into the cave as fast as possible. Everything in a pure ingrained instinct that he had acquired after so many years in the crusade against crime, which tightened his muscles and contracted his bones.

 With his heart hammering hard and thousands of possibilities and explanations piercing his mind, when he arrived at the cave precisely the least expected received him.

 The vision of Dick Grayson, gun in hand, with Jason Todd bleeding out on the floor, made him realize that everything had gone too far.

 There was no longer a solution.

[ghostspideys-moved]

All For The Best

Chapter Eight

A/N: I’m actually pretty proud of this chapter. Don’t forget to leave a comment or reblog if you’ve been enjoying this ride so far.

Word Count: 2.7k

Pairings: Steve Harrington x OC, Nancy Wheeler x Jonathan Byers x OC

Summary: While El looks for the flayed, Hawthorne reveals a secret he’s been keeping in for a long time.

Somehow, Hawthorne was stuck sitting in the waiting room, watching over the kids. He supposed someone had to look after them, especially since Nancy and Jonathan decided they’d be the ones to visit Mrs. Driscoll.

He was sitting next to El, who was reading a magazine, mostly flipping through and glancing at the pictures. He’d already heard about her break up with Mike, and he didn’t need to be able to read her mind to know it was bothering her. Especially when he’d caught her glancing over in Mike’s direction a few times. 

“How are you holding up?” Hawthorne asked. El glanced up at him, a confused look on her face. “You know, with you and Mike?”

El shrugged. “Okay.”

As she turned back to her magazine, he debated exactly how to help her out. It wasn’t exactly Mike’s fault, though he hadn’t been the smartest either. Hawthorne remembered what Hopper said about his “talk” with Mike, and he couldn’t help feeling that was the real problem here. Not that he was surprised. Even he was a bit annoyed with Hopper handling this the way he had.

“You know, I think you two should talk,” he finally said. “I mean, you both seem miserable without each other?”

“Miserable?” El set her magazine down, clearly wondering what he was getting at. 

“You know, like...sad. But, like, really sad,” Hawthorne explained. “If you two don’t talk to each other, I’m sure it could get a lot worse.”

She at least appeared to be considering her words. Sure, he didn’t know how solid his own advice was, but he was a little tired of watching them tip-toe around each other. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “Like Nancy and Jonathan.”

Hawthorne sighed, slumping in his seat. “Yeah, something like that,” he said. “They’re working it out, but it happens. Fights happen.” It wasn’t like he was some expert on relationships, and he didn’t really know where all of this was coming from, but he hoped it was helping her, even if only a bit.

Turning to her, Hawthorne gave El a reassuring smile. “Just don’t hold a grudge against him, okay? Most guys your age do dumb things.” He was glad that part earned a laugh from her. “Hell, I do dumb things all the time.”

For all his attempts to keep Nancy and Jonathan together, it was taking a toll on him. And, though it was taking some time, it seemed like the two of them were finally making progress. There was still some understanding needing to be reached, but it was something. He didn’t plan on mediating forever. Eventually, they’d have to own up to their own mistakes - they both had some apologizing to do, he was sure - and he was just glad to help kick-start the process. If anything, he didn’t want El and Mike to let this sour their relationship. They were kids, and they deserved to learn from their mistakes just as much as anyone else. 

Hawthorne let his advice sink in and left when Mike came over to talk with El. He was more than happy to give them space to work things out, though he made a mental note to have a talk with Hopper about the mess he’d made.

By now, he was starting to realize Nancy and Jonathan had been gone for a while. And maybe there was nothing to worry about, but he had an awful feeling. It was sitting in his gut, constantly pestering him. With how easily things went to shit again, Hawthorne hoped they were okay. It occurred to him to check on them, but there was no way he was going to get past the receptionist. And if he did manage that and it turned out he was worrying for nothing, he would just feel like an idiot.

Just as his anxiety was starting to get the best of him, the lights started flickering. Normally, Hawthorne might pass it off as nothing, but that usually wasn’t a good sign. He’d learned that by now. Thankfully, he wasn’t the only one to notice, and even worse was how jumpy Will was. The poor kid looked pale and unbelievably freaked out. It was becoming abundantly clear to Hawthorne that he may well have been right to be worried.

Will’s shaky, “he’s here,” was enough for it to dawn on Hawthorne that this was about to get pretty intense, as much as he hated it.

At the very least, they’d missed the action so far, but neither Nancy nor Jonathan looked like they were in very good shape. And as soon as they explained everything that happened, they were off to the cabin.��

Rex came running over when Hawthorne let them all inside, and El ended up locking herself in her room as she tried to track the flayed. Hawthorne tried to busy himself with feeding Rex while everyone else was working out their plans. In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t sure how to help, and he felt pretty useless. He’d hardly done anything to help. If only he could stop being a coward for just a minute, he might be able to contribute something. 

He’d been so deep in thought that he’d accidentally spilled some of the dog food. His only response was a deep sigh as he moved to clean it up. Hawthorne looked up when he noticed Nancy trying to help. She opened her mouth to speak a few times, trying to find her words.

“Are you okay?” Nancy asked. 

If there were any words to describe how he was feeling, “okay” was not one of them. “Fine,” Hawthorne lied, standing again.

It was clear she didn’t totally believe him. Even when they finished cleaning, she didn’t let up. “If this about what’s been happening between Jonathan and I, I’m really sorry you got caught in the middle of it.”

Sure, that might have been part of his stress, but he had no clue how to even explain everything that was going on in his head. It was so much more than that.

“No. I mean, not really.” Hawthorne sighed, looking down. “I guess I’m just stressed out with everything that’s been happening. After last time, I really hoped all of this was behind on.”

The concerned look on her face only made him feel bad for putting all of this on her. Nancy had much bigger things to worry about. Seeming to sense his apprehension, she took his hand and made him look her in the eyes.

“Everything’s gonna be fine, okay?” Whether it was true or not, he almost believed her. “We’ll get through this just like last time.”

“Nance, I don’t even know where my sister is, or if she’s even okay. I don’t know where Hop is either, and I feel like I’m doing a terrible job of keeping it together.”

Nancy paused for a moment before asking, “You saw it, didn’t you? When you were walking in the parking lot?”

Hawthorne had almost forgotten about his vision, but he could never forget the dread he felt in that moment. “Yeah. It wasn’t much, really,” he admitted. “But I freaked out.” If it came down to it, he wasn’t sure if he’d really be able to help any of them. This was worse than last year, and he just knew that, given the chance, he’d freeze. Just like he always did.

Somehow, Nancy always had a way of making him feel better, and this was no exception. “You’re stressing yourself out too much,” she said. “Don’t forget. You’re not alone. You have me, Jonathan, the kids, your family. None of us will ever make you deal with this alone.”

Deep down, he knew that. It felt good to hear it, though. Sometimes, he needed a reminder that he wasn’t carrying all of this weight alone. 

Hawthorne offered a slight smile as she kissed him on the cheek. Now that he was feeling at least somewhat better, he let her get back to planning. He let her borrow the phone in the meantime, and he actually managed to feed Rex. The poor dog probably needed it. Hawthorne was feeding him as regularly as possible in all this mess, but he felt bad for leaving him for so long every now and then.

Just as Hawthorne was settled, Nancy finished her final phone call, none of which produced any results. It wasn’t looking so good. With no clue where any of the flayed were, they had no clue what they were doing. It was like they’d just disappeared, and they weren’t any closer to finding the source of the flaying.

Worse still was the argument happening between Mike and Max. Hawthorne didn’t feel so inclined to agree with either of them, no matter how much they yelled. Realistically, both of them were right. He’d learned the hard way that even if they explained to El how damaging it could be to push herself, that didn’t mean it would stop her. Mike was very adamant on finding a new plan, though, and Hawthorne couldn’t blame him. El had been locked up for quite some time now looking for the flayed.

“You’re treating her like some kind of machine when she’s not a machine, and I don’t want her to die looking for the flayed when they’ve obviously vanished off the face of the earth,” Mike snapped. “So can we please just come up with a new plan? Because I love her, and I can’t lose her again.”

His words were met with silence as they sank in. Hawthorne could hardly believe what he’d heard, but Mike said it with such confidence and conviction that it was almost frightening. 

Before anyone could say more, El finally came out of her room. She looked fine, if not a bit exhausted, and Hawthorne thanked whatever omnipotent being there may or may not be that she was okay. 

“What’s going on?” El asked, glancing at each of them curiously.

Mike was quick to cover for them. “Nothing. Nothing.”

“Just a family discussion,” Lucas added.

“Oh.” El seemed satisfied enough with their answer, even if she didn’t totally believe it. “I found him.”

El usually needed some quiet when she was tracking. The TV was turned on, only playing static for her, and her blindfold was back on. Everyone was trying to stay quiet for her sake in the hopes she would find something. 

Thankfully, she found Billy, just like she’d said, though they didn’t have much to go off of with the information she had. He was sitting in his room, which Max confirmed wasn’t normal. It was clearly a trap.

But El was insistent that she might know a way to figure out where he’d been, and while Hawthorne didn’t want her to push herself, he knew it was the only way to get anywhere. They hadn’t been having any success on their own. 

After taking a break, El put the blindfold back on and tried to look again. 

Hawthorne sighed and sat back while she gave it another go. “So, what do we do if this doesn’t work?” he asked quietly, trying not to bother El.

“Don’t you have powers?” Mike asked. “Can’t you help somehow?”

Nancy gave him a stern look. “Mike.”

“We’ve never seen him use them. Maybe he just doesn’t have any,” Lucas said.

“If they took him to the lab, he has to have them.”

Hawthorne raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, hi. Standing right here.”

“Well, do you?” Mike asked.

There was no way around this. Hawthorne was going to have to explain himself eventually, and he knew that. 

“Yeah. It’s just...not a good idea for me to use them,” he claimed.

“But whatever it is you can do, it might help El.”

“I haven’t used them in years. The last time I did that things went wrong.”

“We can’t push everything onto her, though. She’s going to wear herself out.”

“You told her you’d trust her, though.”

“And I do, but I know she could use the help.”

Max finally cut in. “Okay, seriously. You’re gonna break El’s concentration.”

Hawthorne and Mike finally shut up, but they gave each other one last look of disdain. Nancy pulled him and Jonathan over to the kitchen where they wouldn’t bother El.

“Hey, don’t worry about him, okay? He’s just worried,” she said. 

Hawthorne sighed, leaning against the counter. “I know. I get it,” he replied. “I’m just as worried she’s going to wear herself thin, but I don’t think I’d even be all that helpful.”

“What happened the last time you used your powers?” Jonathan asked. “It sounded like it was pretty bad.”

That felt like the understatement of the year. But if he trusted anyone with this, it was both of them. He might as well get it off his chest.

“I just...they made us do a lot of tests, you know? The scientists liked to up the stakes each time, and they’d already learned a lot about my powers. I really just tried to go along with what they asked of me because it was better that way.” Hawthorne swallowed dryly. “Whenever I touch people - any sort of skin contact - I absorb their strength, memories, abilities, sometimes even pieces of their personality. But it always wears off eventually, and they just pass out until it wears off.

“One time, I guess the scientists were curious what would happen if I tried it on one of the other kids. Maybe I could absorb their powers. And they were right. It worked the first few times, and it only lasted about half an hour at most. They’d always be fine afterwards. But one time, it didn’t go that way at all. There was this kid they had me try it out on and-” Hawthorne almost couldn’t finish, but he dismissed their looks of concern, trying to press on. “It didn’t wear off that time. And he went into a coma. Pretty sure he didn’t make it.”

Jonathan placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a reassuring look. “How long did it take to wear off?” he asked.

“It didn’t.” Hawthorne avoided their eyes, knowing he’d break down otherwise. “I still have his powers. I don’t use them, but I could any time. It’s kind of been eating at me.”

They shared a look, almost seeming to debate if they should ask him anything else. But he knew they’d stop if he really asked them to. 

Nancy finally braved one more question. “What exactly were his powers?”

Hawthorne hesitated. “Shapeshifting.”

In his mind, it wasn’t anything monumental. Nor was it going to do them any good. And while he had his powers mostly under control by now, he wasn’t sure how he’d feel about knocking anyone else out if he didn’t have to. 

Before he could go into it any further, El announced she’d found the source. They raced over as Max asked where it was. 

“Brimborn...Steelworks.”

Jonathan grabbed the phone book and flipped through the pages in a hurry. “Found it. 6522 Cherry Oak Drive.”

“That’s close,” Nancy realized.

El still hadn’t come back yet, which was beyond worrying. Mike was trying to call her back, but it didn’t seem like she could just yet. There wasn’t anything they could do to bring her back. She had to do it herself, but it didn’t look like she was ready yet. 

The room went silent as they waited hopefully for her to get out of there. El finally threw off the blindfold, screaming. 

Hawthorne felt his heart sink when she started crying, throwing herself into Mike’s arms. He raced back to the kitchen and grabbed her a glass of water as Mike calmed her down. They made her sit down and take a drink, giving her enough time to bounce back from whatever she saw. 

Hawthorne was taken by surprise as she clung onto him, clearly exhausted and scared beyond belief. He tried to calm her down, wrapping his arms around her as he let her cry. If he was having any doubts before, they were only growing and settling in his mind, but he would never back out on any of them, but least of all El. Mike had been right about her needing all the help she could get.

//

Taglist: @charmedtenderness​ @nxncywheeler​ @koibecomedragons​

[ultravioletsoul]

Can you rank your fave CoD antagonists?

Hello there nonny, sorry for taking so long to reply and thank you for your ask ♥♥

Rank my favorite CoD antagonists? Sure, I can do that! There are several antagonists in the series, but I’ll only rank my top 3. Hope that is okay with you c:

3. Jonathan Irons

Original gif

Advanced Warfare may not be a series as popular as BO or MW, but I actually enjoyed the game and I also liked Irons. Honestly, I don’t think we’ve gotten that many antagonists that started out as our allies in CoD (at least I don’t remember any others atm), much any less an American antagonist, so that kinda made him stand out to me.

I’m not familiar with Kevin Spacey’s works, and I barely watched any trailers pre-release. So to see Irons go from someone who I believed genuinely wanted to make the world a better place, where every human being could live in peace and thrive, away from the pointless wars that governments waged, to someone who was willing to use any means necessary to achieve his goals, regardless of how many lives he had to sacrifice... well, that was something that hit me hard.

This man who gave my character a second chance, who treated me (Mitchell) as his son, who cleaned up after the colossal mess that others countries made, helped people from devastated war-zones rebuild their lives and gave them hope for the future, turned out to be someone I was forced to betray because of different viewpoints and philosophies. Despite everything, I think Irons had his heart in the right place, but his methods were ultimately terrible and in his messianic delusions he ended up doing more harm than good, so of course he had to be stopped.

And what I liked about him was that he didn’t start out as a bad man, he didn’t do all those things because of greed, and his characterization wasn’t that of a cartoonish villain. In a way I could find logic in his arguments, he made a few good points about the current state of the world and the inability (or indifference) of many politicians to solve the real problems of the people. But the root of it all lies in the loss of his son, his only child, to a government he no longer trusted nor had any faith in doing what was right. Despite having served in the military in his youth, Irons had grown disillusioned at the way the US handled domestic and international policy, and strongly disagreed with them— opposing the status quo in favor of change. 

One could argue that serving in the military was entirely Will’s choice all along, and as a grown adult he knew what he was getting himself into. Still Irons couldn’t help but think that if that war had never happened, Will would still be alive. So that left him with a bitter taste, and it served as the catalyst behind his actions.

If nobody else would bother to do anything to actually solve the world’s problems, then he would be the savior to do it— whether they liked it or not. And he didn’t care what methods he had to use, how many had to die, or if he had to plunge the world into total chaos before he could ultimately end all wars and bring everlasting “peace” (perhaps one of the greatest ironies) as his dream seemed to be. Even at the cost of such a high price.

I don’t think Irons gets the credit he deserves.

2. Raúl Menéndez

Original gifset

BO2 is one of my favorite games and Raúl is undoubtedly one of the most memorable antagonists in the series. Much like Irons, his actions were heavily motivated by the loss of a loved one but his life is also one sad story, so it’s no wonder he turned out the way he did. Not to justify him, but it’s not hard to understand what led him to do all those things.

From a very young age, his life was destroyed by the actions of Americans, from the horrors of the dictatorship in Nicaragua (in which the Contras were supported by the US); the crippling and disfigurement of his young sister Josefina, due to the greed of an American owner who burned down a warehouse in order to obtain 11,000$ through insurance fraud. After losing everything during an earthquake, and becoming homeless, Raúl and his father started over by selling drugs, successfully establishing a cartel that was so powerful in Nicaragua that they were equally feared and admired among the people.

But this status and power they had newly acquired concerned the US government, and it wasn't long before they sanctioned an assassination order on Raúl's father and sent the CIA in to kill him. Raúl observed it all, a teenager back then, and managed to escape thanks to his father's training. Though he could do nothing to stop it, nothing to save his father, this event marked him and further embittered him against the US and the West. And the last straw was the unfortunate death of Josefina, at the hands of Woods. He lost his sister, the only living relative he had, and his world fell apart. But if we think about it, Raúl was indirectly responsible for her death too, after the horrible torture he put Woods through in Angola. So the next time Woods saw Raúl he lost his mind and threw the grenade that tragically bounced into Josefina's bedroom and killed her.

So he spent all his life orchestrating a huge plan, a brilliant plan, that would shake the US from the very ground. And he was damn charismatic while executing it, earning the support and approval of billions of people all around the world— even from those who lived in US soil!— to begin a world revolution and end the dominance of capitalist nations that had subjugated other weaker countries, amassing huge riches through market economy and wars for resources, destroying lives and sinking many in poverty. And he also manipulates and pits two superpowers against each other... sending everyone to the brink of another world war, or a second cold war at best.

He wanted revenge on the US for playing with the lives of other people, for taking everything he loved away from him, by making them live in fear and destroying everything they had built. He wanted them to feel the same pain, to suffer the way he did. And he wouldn't rest until he achieved that because he had nothing to lose anymore.

Depending on the outcome, he can get revenge on Woods for Josefina, as well. And though we all like it when the "good" guys prevail and foil the plans of the villain, I think this particular ending had a much deeper and stronger emotional impact. The conversation they have at the end is something I didn't expect. Raúl has come to kill Woods but they're both in a place where the years have beaten them down with the weight of they’ve done and rather than an over the top scene, what we’re given is quite the opposite of that. 

There’s no screaming, no heated argument between them, no dramatic lines. It’s just two old men who had to live with what they’ve done, and who have come to terms with the inevitability of that moment. Raúl slits Woods’s artery with Josefina’s pendant, and then he does something that surprised me: he closes Frank’s eyes, takes him off the wheelchair and lies his body on the bed. Something that is a huge contrast with what he did to Hudson many years ago... the savagery he used when killing him. For Raúl to behave that way with Woods, the man he considered to be his sister’s killer, it raises the question as to whether he still hated Woods after all these years, or maybe deep down he finally acknowledges that his actions (namely torturing Woods and killing his whole team) was the true motive that led to Josefina’s death.

The thing is, Raúl knows that he's to blame for what happened. It's also the reason why he burns himself alive in front of Josefina's grave. It’s because he has to pay for what he's done to her, too, and he chose to do it in probably the most horrible way possible but it didn’t matter to him. Nothing was more painful than living with the knowledge that his sister died because of what he did.

To him Josefina was the true innocent soul, who didn't deserve any of the suffering she went through.

1. Vladimir Makarov

Original gifset

It’s no secret that Vladimir is my most favorite antagonist (and character) in all of Call of Duty.

Though his background and motives weren’t as well developed and explained as those of other antagonists in the series, his untold story (which you won’t find anywhere in the game, though you can deduce if you have a basic idea of the situation before and after the fall of the Soviet Union) perhaps says a lot more about him than one might expect.

There’s not a lot we know about his past other than the meager information that was provided in some loading cutscenes, but it’s reasonable to think that Vladimir wasn’t always the trashbag that we see in the games. He once was a young man with dreams of patriotism, who wanted the best for his country, who loved Russia with his soul, and who would do anything to protect her, because as a soldier that was what he was taught to do. As a soldier, that was his purpose in life and without that reason to drive him on, he had nothing left.

And however vague his backstory may seem to be, it gives you an idea that Vladimir in a way was a victim of a system that imparted a type of soft indoctrination on him, from a very young age (as many states do all around the world in some form or another, even those who hold democratic values), all the way to his education in the military academy and his brutal training in the special forces, that further cemented this undying love for Russia, maybe in a way that bordered brainwashing.

His true radicalization came after the fall of the Soviet Union with the loss of his homeland and the Soviet culture as he knew it, as well as Russia becoming weak and losing much of her power and influence across the world. Then came his deployment in Chechnya in 1994, where he lived the horrors of a war that most likely left him psychologically scarred after the experiences he had to go through. And when he returned home, he was kicked out of the armed forces under accusations of human rights violations during the First Chechen War. And they may be true, he probably did a lot of bad things there (under the illusion that he was serving his country for a higher cause), and sadly it’s something commonplace in many armed conflicts. I’m going to leave this short post here for some details on that.

When he returned from war, he didn’t receive any professional help or if he did, it didn’t work. He didn’t know how to cope, he ultimately was unable to adapt to a normal life, he became a misfit. He had lost his job, he had a stain in his career, and finding a decent way to get by was very difficult at the time when the country was in the middle of a political, social, and economic crisis.

He was in financial ruin, and it was hunger that pushed him to become a criminal (something that wasn’t uncommon for ex military men in 90s Russia). Not just that but also hatred for those in power as well as society as a whole, and what they represented: total decadence and the reason why Russia was falling apart with these “stupid” western conceptions about freedom that in his eyes did nothing but give leeway for debauchery and corruption, which he ultimately sought to “fix” by returning Russia to what it used to be (a god-fearing empire under the autocratic rule of a tsar that was likened to a father to all his subjects, and where religion was used as a resource to legitimize his power and as a moral regulator that maintained the social order).

He pretty much felt abandoned, betrayed by his government— a leadership that had done nothing but sink Russia deeper and deeper into ruin, destroying the values under which he was raised and turning people like him into cynical masses that had lost faith in everything and were adrift without any real purpose in life, no future to look forward to, completely disillusioned that the dreams they’d bought into, the promises they had been sold by the west, were nothing but lies.

He’s still a piece of garbage, we know that, but I also think that he’s gone through a lot of struggles and bad experiences in his youth that marked him and filled him with resentment. Everyone sees Vladimir as the puppet master of the storyline of MW, and we have to give him credit for that, but deep down he’s just a man who has been a slave to his own obsessions and ambitions, unable to free himself from the hatred that has poisoned his mind for years, which led him to commit so many atrocities and strip himself from any semblance of humanity— all for the sake of a higher cause, as he undoubtedly tried to justify his actions at the end of the day.

In conclusion, all three were marked by losses in one way or another, and saw themselves as men who had to take the hard path and do what had to be done. And it’s also curious that Call of Duty, while not a game with any deep meaning on the surface, almost seems like social commentary on how war ruins lives and how anyone can do horrible things if put through the wringer enough times. It’s like these stories are trying to say that bad circumstances can make bad men out of seemingly good people, who wouldn’t have done any of the evil they did if maybe things had been different.

And I think that’s what makes these characters so interesting.

[littleladymab]

did someone say stardust!jonmartin AU

I DID, and @pizza-snake​ and I have been talking about it all day. We have some details all worked out, but not a very coherent outline of those facts. Will I write a full fic for it? Maybe, but until then, I will write snippets and add to this list of ideas: 

Tristan is Martin, who is trying to win the approval of his Mother 

He promises to bring her a star to show how much he does love her!!! 

Dunstan is Tim, so he’s actually Martin’s roommate. 

He’s a good friend, and is also “yo, listen, you don’t have to prove anything to her???? She’s an awful person to yoU????” 

He had a dalliance on the other side of the wall once, won’t stop talking about her, Martin is convinced she’s made up but is too kind to say so. 

He's been trying to go back but he can't schmooze the guard anymore because he wizened up to Tim's antics 

Lamia is Jonah, an aging warlock who just wants to stay young and powerful forever. 

He hears of a fallen star and wishes to retrieve it so that he can have it’s eyes

The successors are the other Avatars 

NO They’re not related they are just trying to do a power grab when Gertrude dies

Septimus is Peter Lukas

Primus is Simon Fairchild

Una is Sasha 

Which makes Ditchwater Sal the Stranger, who keeps her prisoner! 

Gertrude dies and persnaps she has this powerful gem that can be used to let whichever Avatar has it to bring about their own Apocalypse or something and as one final ‘fuck you’ to the avatars she just ollies it into the stratosphere

It hits Jon, The Most Disagreeable Star to ever fall to Stormhold. 

Georgie is Captain Shakespeare, her first mate (and girlfriend) is Melanie, and Daisy and Basira are there too

When I write this as a Full Fic, I will have shenanigans, don’t you worry (you remember in the book how there is this whole secret society mentioned and then it’s only mentioned twice and never discussed and it’s like what the HELL DOES THIS ALL MEAN yeah I need to give the girls SOMETHING to do)

And for sticking around, here’s a little scene for you all to enjoy 

++++

Dancing vs Dueling

Georgie settles into her stance, hands lifted carefully before her, weight on her back foot. 

Martin stares at her dumbly, his grip completely wrong on his sword, and confusion written over every inch of him. 

She taps the blade of his sword with her own. “Come on, Blackwood. At least try to pay attention.” 

He flushes as he settles in to mimic her stance, though with a bit more flair that completely necessary. Alright, so maybe he has had a little training, but not nearly enough. “Right,” he says. “Sorry.” 

“No need to be sorry,” she says, “just follow my movements.” 

Dueling is a dance of its own. It needs two people on even footing, a balance of rhythm. A back and forth between partners. 

Against Melanie, it has always felt like an argument — but a scripted one, the sort of witty reparté and banter that belong on the stage. Dancing and dueling, though Melanie is a better dueler than a dancer. But it is a pace that is comfortable and familiar and Georgie loves it as much as she loves her partner. 

The first few steps with Martin are a fumble, but Georgie is patient (and strict). Each error she resets them back to the beginning. “Again,” she says, as Martin shuffles the wrong foot forward on an advance. “Again,” she says, as he grips too high up the hilt. “Again,” she says, as he nearly stabs Basira with a blade pointed too low and his own shoelaces coming undone. 

He doesn’t argue. He just resets on her command. 

Dueling is a dance that is hard to learn, but Martin proves an apt student. 

Jon, on the other hand, is incredibly stubborn. Rivals Melanie’s level of stubbornness, though she knows better than to say it outloud. (She is certain that Martin has picked up on it as well, though, and enjoys sharing the look of fond exasperation with him when the pair is at odds.) 

One look at Jon, and Georgie knew that he is not cut out for dueling. His wrists, for one thing, barely look strong enough to wield the carving knife at dinner. 

So she teaches him to dance instead. 

If he is what she suspects him to be, then he’s not a very graceful one. Perhaps the rhythm of the heavens abandoned him when it was forced to inhabit such knobby knees and bony elbows. 

“Chin up,” she says when she catches him staring at their feet again. “At least try to look like you enjoy my company.” 

This gets him to flush in embarrassment, and he mutters an apology that’s something along the lines of how he does, actually, enjoy her company. And that’s why he doesn’t want to be rude and tread on her feet. 

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m a strong woman,” she tells him, sweeping him across the deck of her ship as he stumbles to keep up. “I’d rather like it if you looked me in the eyes while we’re dancing.” 

He looks up at her sharply, as if she had said something that made him alarmed, but all she does is wink and his lips form a perfect moue. He must have practiced that while looking down and observing the rest of them. 

When Georgie and Melanie dance, she can feel Jon’s eyes on them — studying their movements, their footwork, the unspoken give and take as they obey the beat of the song. 

The next time she dances with Jon, he’s more sure of himself. He rarely checks his feet. He keeps Georgie’s gaze, like a challenge, and she can’t help but smile. He dances like it’s a duel, a game of take and give. 

“Dancing is a partnership,” Georgie tells him as she stops them mid-beat. 

His brow furrows. “I know.”

“I don’t think you do.” 

This time, he frowns. “I’m doing it exactly as you and Melanie dance.” 

She expected that, figured it, and rolls her eyes fondly at him. “Then maybe you should dance with Martin.” 

Jon stutters, and to her amusement, the blush turns to a soft diffused glow across the surface of his skin. “Why—?” 

“Are you really asking me that question?” 

He at least doesn’t answer that. 

“Martin?” Georgie calls, turning to glance over her shoulder where the other man is currently looking extremely overwhelmed by the drills that Daisy is trying to run him through. 

Martin looks up eagerly at the sound of his name. “Yes?” 

“Care for a different sort of footwork lesson?” 

“Georgie,” Jon hisses, tugging on her hands to try and pull her attention back. 

“Jonathan,” she teases, and steps aside as Martin arrives. Georgie gently passes Jon’s hands over to Martin and backs away with a courteous bow. “A hint: Avoid getting your feet stepped on, and you’ll make a decent duelist yet.” 

To her utter amusement, neither of them are looking at her as they nod. 

From the upper deck, leaning over the balustrade and looking down at the scene as she mans the gramophone, Melanie gives Georgie a knowing smirk. She starts the song over again from the beginning without waiting for the command. 

Jon and Martin stand hand-in-hand in the middle of the deck, the rest of the crew clearing a space for them — and at least pretending like they’re not looking. Their heads are bent close together, having a brief muttered conversation before their hands settle into the correct place and Martin takes the lead. 

He’s a surprisingly decent dancer, considering how rough his dueling was at the beginning. And where Jon would strain against Georgie’s lead (the way that Melanie would, the conversation that he doesn’t know the words to that he tries to perform anyway), he submits himself to Martin’s careful pace. 

Georgie ascends the short flight of stairs to join Melanie on the railing, letting her arm slip around the other woman’s waist. “Too soon?” she asks as they watch Jon and Martin stutter their way through the steps. 

“More like took long enough,” Melanie replies with a scoff. She tilts her chin down at the two men, as Jon laughs at something and ducks his head against Martin’s chest. “Do they think they’re being subtle?” 

“Jon’s glowing, I don’t know how that is for subtle.” 

“Even when he’s not, Martin looks at him like he’s seen the sun.” 

Georgie snorts and tilts her head against Melanie’s. “Try not to sound too bitter, love, or else I’d think you’re jealous of them.” 

Melanie gives an answering snort of her own. “Was I ever that soppy?” 

“You were that oblivious.” 

Melanie just groans, but doesn’t push the conversation, and instead they continue to watch the two dance. 

[just-patchy]

Twst Florenetta OC: Gian Sidhe

https://picrew.me/share?cd=TVJ1r8A3A7

ღBasic Informationღ

Name: Gian Sidhe (ジアン・シー)

Nickname(s)/Alias(es): Stupid Cat

Age: 17

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Pansexual

D.O.B.: 17th July

Horoscope: Cancer

Homeland: Land of Pyroxene

ღNRC Fileღ

Dorm: Florenetta

School Year: 1st (he stayed behind a year)

Class: 1-C

Class No.: 30

Occupation: Student

Club: Light Music

Best Subject: Music

ღAppearanceღ

Height: 172 cm/5’8”

Weight: 141 lbs

Hair Colour: Brown, with part of his bangs dyed yellow

Eye Colour: Green

Clothing: He wears oversized and comfy clothes like hoodies, sweaters and sweats aside from school and dorm uniforms.

Jewellery/Others: He owns collars with tags on them that read “Gian Sidhe: if lost, please call Jonathan Reynard de Onestà at XX-XXX-XXX”*

ღPersonalityღ

Gian is a mischievous, lazy cat who mainly follows Jonathan around. He’s very laidback and easygoing, a pacifist who dislikes arguments and fights (mostly because they’re really annoying to deal with). He is a petty thief as he was raised in the same neighbourhood as Jonathan and would often steal some food from stall vendors, especially those he had a grudge against. He idolises Jonathan and sees him as an older brother since he was the first person around his age to reach out to him aside from his siblings.

Gian is playful, friendly and sociable, albeit he isn’t very bright. He often jumps on people, particularly tall people like the Leech brothers and Jack, and loves physical contact such as hugs, cuddles, head pats, etc. As a result of being more physical with others, he doesn’t have much ideas when it comes to personal space, so he sometimes gets too close for comfort. He tends to purr a lot because he’s always either happy or relaxed.

Favourite Food: Chicken Steak

Least Favourite Food: Chocolate

Dislikes: People who waste food

Hobby: playing with stray cats that wander into the campus

Talent: playing multiple musical instruments

ღAbilitiesღ

Unique Magic: Cat got your tongue (猫に舌を噛まれた | キャット・ゴット・ヨー・タング)

His unique magic allows him to temporarily silence the target.

ღTriviaღ

-Dominant Hand: Right

-He has 3 siblings, 2 sisters and a brother, and all 4 of them were raised by a single mother along with some other alleycat neighbours and the de Onestàs. One of his sisters is his twin.

-CV: Shimono Hiro

-*the numbers on each of his collars are all different numbers that lead to burner phones just in case Gian tries something like stealing

-Twisted from Gideon, Honest John’s sidekick in Pinocchio

-Sidhe is derived from Cat Sith, a mythological feline. Another way to spell it is Cat Sidhe.

-His unique magic is partially based off of Gideon’s role as a silent minion

Kindly ignore the human ears in the pic! The picrew maker didn’t give the option to remove the human ears so they ended up there

[bubonickitten]

TMA fic: Night Terrors

Summary: At first, Jon assumes his nightmares are just that: bad dreams. But it's only a matter of time before he is forced to acknowledge what it means to be the Archivist.

Cross-posted to AO3 here.

[Spoilers up to MAG 132. CW for canon-typical horror, unsettling dream/nightmare imagery (think MAG 120), some passive suicidal ideation, and some spider mentions here and there.]

Jonathan Sims has had the same nightmare since he was eight years old, with only slight variations.

Sometimes he is the fly in children’s overalls being offered up as a meal. He can feel the anxious buzz of the delicate wings on his back, a foreign and sickening vibration humming its way across his exoskeleton. Four feet rub together nervously in front of him in an uncanny, insectoid pantomime of hand-wringing. The looming form of Mr. Spider is made all the more horrifying by his hundredfold vision and his inability to blink.

Sometimes he is the larger fly, offering up a victim as sacrifice. He can feel his face contorting, features molded into the horror-stricken face of Mr. Horse that still haunts him on sleepless nights. He is forced to watch his offering devoured, slow and excruciating. After, the monster turns its eyes on him.

Most often, though, he is the spider. Or, rather, he watches from the spider’s perspective, a prisoner trapped behind the creature’s many hungry, glinting eyes, as helpless as a fly caught in a web. The dream sequence unravels in slow motion and he is forced to witness the weeping faces of his intended prey for what feels like hours. Enormous block letters bear down on him, announcing the spider’s insatiable hunger, its demand for more, more, more.

Finally, blessedly, he is allowed to close his eyes, but the relief is always fleeting, for when he opens them seconds later, he sees the aftermath of a massacre: smears of reddish-brown blood coating the walls, the floor, the wilting flowers in their vase.

Then, he hears a knock on the door. He sees many – too many – hairy black limbs reach out to open it. He catches a glimpse of a terrified, familiar, but still nameless face through the crack. He always awakens just as the victim opens his mouth and begins to scream.

Jon may have managed to wrench himself away from Mr. Spider, but the fear and the guilt still cling to him years later, like the wispy strands of a broken web. It’s only right that they follow him into his dreams.

~~~

Jon isn’t sleeping well lately.

Well, that isn’t new. But he’s sleeping even worse than usual.

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, Jon tells himself. The new job is stressful.

The Archive is a monument to entropy. A tornado could have swept through and blown things into a more sensible order than the previous Head Archivist left them. The Archives contain nearly two centuries’ worth of case files, and they're scattered about with no discernible system of organization. Material isn’t sorted by format: cassette tapes are thrown haphazardly into the same boxes as loose leaf paper. It isn’t sorted chronologically: case material from the mid-1800s can be found mixed in with recent statements from the 2000s. As far as Jon can tell, it isn’t even sorted thematically; on a cursory perusal, the statements boxed together seem to vary wildly in content, comprehensiveness, and verifiability.

In fact, the conspiratorial part of Jon’s brain can’t shake the feeling that there’s an eerie sense of curation to the disorganization. The more rational part of him knows that Gertrude Robinson was simply elderly, set in her ways, and secure in a position that she had held for decades. Elias isn’t one for hands-on management in the best of cases; there was little to no risk of him actually making his way into the Institute’s basement to observe the way Gertrude ran her Archives, let alone to actually discipline her for lax work ethic.

Either way, though, the result is the same. 

The first thing Jon had noticed when he walked into his new office a week previous was a stack of unmarked boxes against the back wall behind the desk. They were partially covering what at first glance appeared to be fingernail scratches on the floorboards, but he told himself that he didn’t have time to dwell on that and deliberately pushed it to the back of his mind. He could deal with it later – or, with any luck, not at all. 

The first box he opened contained a handful of unlabeled cassette tapes, a stack of blank index cards in a plastic sandwich bag, an empty manila folder, a nonfunctioning USB thumb drive, and a mess of loose papers with no coherent theme: some fragments of personal correspondence (unsigned and handwritten on yellowed paper in nearly illegible cursive), the scattered typewritten pages of a statement (pages 2 and 7 of 10 missing, presumed lost), and a hand-drawn map of what looked like a labyrinth. The second and third boxes contained more of the same: scattered documents and a yawning void of context. The fourth box was completely empty. The fifth contained only a single matchbook with a faded spider printed on its surface, rattling around the bottom of an otherwise vacant box. 

Unmarked boxes, improperly-preserved documents, no rhyme or reason, a layer of dust, and an ignition source. It wasn’t a good start – and, unfortunately, it seemed representative of what the job was going to look like, at least for the first few months. 

But beyond that, Elias had been insistent that Jon begin creating audio recordings of statements as soon as possible. Jon had initially chosen to interpret “as soon as possible” to mean “as soon as everything is organized,” and after seeing how big of a task that was, he was careful not to promise a time frame. After the third email from Elias inquiring about Jon’s progress with digitizing the old statements, though, Jon was honest: every day, he found himself adjusting the project timeline as they found more and more statements misfiled or missing.

“I believe it would be best for you to begin recording the statements as you go along,” Elias said. It was obviously an order, but he masked it as a friendly suggestion. Jon hates when he does that; it feels manipulative and condescending, like a parent (or grandparent, in Jon’s case) presenting the illusion of choice to a child and daring them to call it out for what it is.

Jon never was good at keeping his mouth shut, though.

“My first priority is to ensure that everything is cataloged and stored properly. Digitization will go more smoothly if everything is in order before -”

“You have three perfectly competent assistants,” Elias interrupts. Jon bites his tongue before he can make a snide remark about competence. “I’m certain they can handle a bit of filing without your close supervision.”

“But we -”

“I want you to begin making audio recordings, Jon,” Elias interrupted, finally adopting a tone that brooked no argument. “It all has to be done eventually, and it doesn’t matter what order you go in, so you may as well pick a place and start.”

“Some of the documents are incomplete.” Jon couldn’t quite manage to keep his annoyance out of his tone. “I found pages of the same statement scattered across three different rooms -”

“Start with the statements that seem complete, then. If you find more related case material elsewhere later on, you can simply make supplemental recordings.”

And with that, Elias had walked away before Jon could protest further.

So, yes. He’s stressed. The Archives are an unmitigated disaster, Jon only has three assistants to help him put them back into some semblance of order, and Elias wants him to embark on a massive digitization project when they still haven’t even inventoried the contents of most of the unlabeled boxes piled around the place. It’s like standing in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake and being told to start construction on a new building before the damages are assessed or the rubble is cleared. Oh, and he isn’t given any blueprints for direction.

Sleep troubles are to be expected.

~~~

These nightmares are new.

It isn’t that all of Jon’s nightmares involve spiders. He does occasionally have standalone nightmares that are perfectly spider-free: finding himself back in uni and failing a class he’s never attended and doesn’t remember signing up for; being chased by something sinister and tripping over nothing, only to wake up just as its teeth puncture his throat; waking in an unfamiliar place surrounded by things just to the left of human, hiding behind names he knows well and faces he does not recognize.

But this is the first recurring dream he’s ever had where spiders do not feature prominently.

At first, all he can see is the fog, pressing in on all sides. If the dream lent itself more to cartoon logic, it’s the type of fog that could be molded like putty. He doesn’t make the conscious decision to move; the dream simply puppets him forward and he lets it take him. He doesn’t even notice the open grave until one foot is suspended over it, and when the dream loosens its grip on him, he throws his weight backward, swaying off-kilter and nearly stumbling into another pit that has appeared just behind him.

The fog recedes just enough for him to make out the dozens of empty graves now surrounding him.

Then it starts to move back in, tendrils reaching out to him like the myriad limbs of a living, breathing creature, coating his skin and filling his lungs, and all at once he is pummeled with the overwhelming revelation that he is alone. It’s not just that there isn’t anyone around for miles. It’s not even just that he will never again see another living person. No. It’s that he is, for all intents and purposes, an island. No one knows him. No one ever has, and no one ever will. And he has never known anyone else, either, only carefully constructed personas meant to mask the self – if there even is such a thing as the self.

He will die here, and nothing will remain of him, and no one will notice that he disappeared. And that’s… that’s okay. It’s right. It’s exactly as it should be.

Someone is screaming. Actually, he realizes belatedly, someone has been screaming for a while now, but only now does it manage to reach him through the haze.

Once again, the dream forces him to move. It maneuvers him around the vacant graves, drawing him ever closer to the voice. When he is finally brought to a stop, he is wrenched forward and his gaze is forced downward to behold a shivering figure sprawled six feet beneath him in the earth and mud. She looks familiar, but it takes a few moments before he can place her.

Naomi Herne.

She nearly weeps in relief when she sees him, another living, breathing person after so long lost in the mist. She reaches up to him, begs him to help her, but when he tries to kneel and extend a hand, he finds that he cannot move. He cannot speak. He cannot blink.

He can only watch, and so he does.

The seconds stretch into minutes stretch into hours, and the whole time she pleads with him to say something, to say anything. He watches as her fingers dig deep furrows into the walls of her prison and eventually her pleas dissolve into hopeless whimpers.

He wakes up in a cold sweat, feeling as if he never slept at all.

Untangling himself from the sheets, he stumbles into the bathroom, turns on the faucet, and splashes cold water on his face. As he stands and stares at his reflection in the mirror, he notices how pronounced the dark circles under his eyes have become. Naomi Herne’s statement had been unsettling, certainly, but apparently it’s affected him more deeply than he had initially thought.

It’s not all that surprising, he supposes. There have been a lot of changes in his life recently. The content of the statements he reads is… upsetting. He’s stressed. It would be strange if he didn’t have trouble sleeping.

It’s fine. It’s normal. He’s fine.

  ~~~

 The next night, he dreams of Naomi Herne again.

And the night after that. And the night after that.

Every time, she begs him to say something, to take her hand. She needs to hear another human voice; she needs to feel a human touch; she needs an anchor, anything to chase away the isolation.

At some point, though, she begins to curse him. He is her jailor, her tormenter. She would rather be completely alone, to be left to suffer in dignified privacy, than to have her loneliness amplified by that unwavering stare. Why is he doing this to her? Why won’t he just say something?

As usual, he cannot make a sound, and he cannot look away.

~~~

Jonathan Sims and Melanie King rubbed each other the wrong way from the moment they met eyes, and she is no more pleased to see the Archivist in her dream that night.

They both watch as Sarah Baldwin pleads with an unseen, unforgiving assailant. They look on in revulsion as she staples her skin back together. The scene plays over and over and over again, and eventually Melanie wrenches her gaze away from Sarah and hones in on the Archivist. All of her fear transmutes into anger and she unleashes a torrent of accusations, railing against him for his arrogance, his callousness, his foolish conviction that he knows better than everyone else, that he understands anything at all.

He can’t open his mouth to argue with her, but even if he could, he’s not sure that he could counter her allegations.

Melanie is still shouting at him when he is pulled from the hospital and finds himself in the graveyard again. Naomi Herne is huddled in the corner of her grave tonight, knees hugged tight to her chest. She is utterly silent. He wishes he could look away, but the dream has his head locked in place and his eyes plastered open and he watches her for the rest of the night.

Jon wakes up all too aware of his skin and what lies beneath it.

~~~

The tables in the dissection lab are piled high with pulsating hearts, quivering lungs, and writhing bones.

Hand trembling, scalpel in hand, Dr. Lionel Elliott slices into an apple as if demonstrating how to dissect a human heart. The Archivist catches the glimmer of tooth enamel, the glint of a silver crown on one of the molars, and a shared wave of nausea crashes over both of them. The professor begs the Archivist to take the apple from him, but as always, the Archivist is immobilized. He can feel every ounce of the Elliott’s helpless fear as if it is his own.

The Archivist knows what Elliott is thinking. He wants to run. He wants to curse. He wants to beg. He wants to bury the scalpel in the Archivist’s unblinking eyes. Instead, his blood curdles and his limbs contort and his joints dislocate and he writhes like a live butterfly pinned to a board in front of an uncaring, ceaseless watcher.

The Archivist feels all of it along with him, and neither of them can scream.

It’s only a dream, of course, but Elliott feels so alive that Jon wakes up with a sense of pity all the same.

~~~

 The Archivist wants to tell Helen Richardson not to open the door, but his jaw is wired shut with invisible thread.

The Archivist has lost count of how many times he has been forced to watch as the Distortion’s maze devours her, the scene playing recursively in its mirrored hallways.

Of course he dreams of her. She disappeared right in front of him and he could do nothing to stop it. In quiet moments, the scar that the Distortion gave him still twinges, and brings with it the deep ache of guilt. It’s to be expected that it would bleed over into his dreams.

  ~~~

 Letter by letter, Tessa Winters consumes the keyboard. An eerie, cold glow highlights every detail of her pained expression. Although the Archivist’s mouth will not open, he feels one of his molars crack under the crunch of plastic, and as Tessa moves on to the monitor, a shard of glass slices into the roof of his mouth. The blood pools on both of their tongues, trickles down their throats, and they both wish they could gag.

The Archivist's thoughts unravel into acute angles and sharp edges, shredding his consciousness to ribbons. He is a collection of garbled text and rogue characters, of noisy pixels and castoff artifacts, of corrupted extensions and crossed wires.

It’s cold, and it hurts.

       IT%’s/ côLd &&;t <<hurts>>.

                 I̴t̸'̴s̴ ̵c̸o̸l̶d̵, ̵a̵n̶d̴ ̸i̴t̴ ̸h̶u̸r̵t̸s̶.̸

                                                                                                                                                             Ï̵̡̻ͅț̴͘'̴̰̙͒̌͠ͅs̶̻̿̎ ̴̞c̵̮̒̾ơ̴̞͕̕͝ļ̴̱̅d̶̥̣͎̈ ̵̨͕̀̿̊a̵̗̪̽̆n̶͕̩̞͆d̵̦̮̳͐̏͗ ̵̢̻̑ȉ̷̪t̸͓̉͒ ̶̮͉̹̇͠h̵̳̻̞͝u̴̢̬̣̒ř̴̠́t̵͍̟͛ṡ̷̨̤͓͒̾.̸̦̭̓

                                                                                                                                                                          I̶̢͚͓̤̗̹̱̠̱͚̤̾t̶̛̳̏̑͐͗́̍̈̿̄͒͗́̔̈́̈́̈́̚̕͠'̵̡̧̦̖͚͓͙͙͕̜̻̣̙̲͓̑͂͋̾̊̄͌̀̑͒̚ͅͅṣ̶̛̻͚͓̫̜̀̂͌͌̈̈́̃̽̏̐̔̌ ̵̗̫̓̊̾̇͆c̷̨̑̀̈́̇̊̇̑͊́̂̊̇͘̚͘̚̚̚͝ǫ̵̈́̎̿͑̔̔̑͛̀͋̉̋̓̾l̷̙̯͙͍͇̟̭̳͉̹̳̖͎͇̲͖̝̖͈̺̍d̴̡̫̼̗̮̹̎̌̽̏̂̐̑̈̏̀̃͆͗͂̓̚͝ ̴̧̛͈̭̼̭̰͔̥͓̟̲́̒̊̍̉̌͆̇̆̑͗̑̿̉̅̑͒̽̈̿a̵̳̰̽̌͆͂̏͒̌̓̔̈͐̆̿̕͝n̸̨̢̧̧̲̺͙̗̪̻͎̥͉̥͔͇̠͙̫͒̌̅̃͒́̌̈́͐̀̈͘̚͘̕͝͝ͅḋ̵̢̡̧̜͇̜̤̠̺̜̦̲̳͓̼̩̣̼̭̱͐̿̿̍̿̀͌͊̃̿͊̕͠ ̶̭̩̥̲͈͚̟͇̱̹̼̩̪̙̱͒́͑̌͒͐̕͜ỉ̸̲͇̬͓̫̪̞̜̱̪̻̲̎̿́̃̽̕͘͠͝ţ̸̗͙͍͍̫̞͚̞͓̙̼̝͚͕̮̋͋̏̌͂͗̈ ̵̨̟̗͉̯̘̙̫̱̹̱̲̘̪͖̤̱̟̦̘̹̟̎̐̌͗̾̋̿̄͜͠h̴̢̡̨̢̛̫͓̠̤͉̠̩̮͙̞̪̏̇͊̈͂̿̅͋͌͘̚͠ư̵̰͙̯͖̈́̄̊͌͐̾͐̃̈̈͒̑͠ͅr̷̨̛̗͈̣̰̘̲̩̦̙̅̃̽͛͒̈͜͠ͅṯ̶̮͕̺͖̹̺̺̦͈̰̮͚͇̳̘̺̤̹̭͐͊̏̓̅̊̏͌́̒́̚̕͘͘͜͝͝͠͝s̶̺̻͔̹̙̟̭̜̏̆͗͂̔̄̔͋́͆̀̋̈́͌͂̚͝.̶̘͚͚͓͕̝͖̪͔̼̙̲̞͎͉̩̳͍̙̩̋̆̅͒̇̅͌̆͗̉̋͊͒͐̔̅̏̕͜͝͝ͅ

    ~~~

When Jon finally bolts upright into wakefulness, he knows.

These are not his nightmares.

They are shared dreamscapes.

No, not shared. Invaded.

Just recently he had noted how long it had been since last he was the spider in his nightmare, but maybe that was premature.

At least the others showed up at the Institute to give their statements on their own. Tessa Winters, though, was his fault. He wrote the forum post that drew her to him. She wouldn’t be in his dreams if he hadn’t cast that net. He spun a web and waited for the prey to wander in, all because he needed to know and was willing to lure someone in under false pretenses just to get the answers he craved. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t intend this – the consequences are the same.

And Tessa Winters knows it. She meets his gaze, equally unblinking, baleful and accusing. He is a thing with too many eyes, gorging himself on her suffering, devoid of empathy or humanity. When she looks into his eyes, she sees a ravenous, pitiless voyeur, and even if the Archivist was allowed to speak, he would not dispute her claim. After all, the Beholding is the feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch, and the Archivist is its pawn and its representative and its instrument. Tessa's eyes pin him in place just as effectively as the ever-present Eye in the sky.

He is becoming – has become? – that which he fears, and he cannot look away.

It really isn’t all that different from the spider dreams after all, except this time there are witnesses to his sins.

  ~~~

 The words on the paper are blurry and his head feels full of cobwebs. His eyes itch and sting in equal measure, making it ever more difficult to keep his heavy eyelids from drifting shut. He keeps nodding off, leaning forward and jerking upright as soon as the sensation of falling grips him.

“-n? Jon!”

“Wha-” Jon startles as Martin’s voice finally reaches him through the fog. “I – what?”

Martin has a concerned look on his face. That seems to be his default state these days, Jon thinks distantly.  

“I kept saying your name but you were just… you weren’t answering.”

“Oh.”

Martin worries his bottom lip between his teeth. Jon can tell that he wants to say something, but he just stands there waffling, and –

“What?” Jon snaps, and then he and Martin wince at the same time. “I’m… I’m sorry, Martin. I – I’m just tired.” He rubs his eyes furiously, trying to chase away the haze. “I’m sorry. Did you need something?” 

“I… Jon, when’s the last time you slept?”

Silence.

“Maybe you should have a lie down? I made up the cot in the storage room, and –”

“I’m fine,” Jon replies through gritted teeth.

“You’re falling asleep at your desk. Actually, um,” – a small, cautious grin crosses Martin’s face – “I don’t know what paperwork you used as a pillow, but you have ink on your face.”

Jon groans and scrubs at his face with both hands.

“You really do need to sleep, though,” Martin ventures again, gentle but firm.

“I… I don’t want to,” Jon says stiffly. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he curses himself for the honesty – Martin is going to want to talk about that now, and –

“Why?”

Jon is silent, steadfastly refusing to look Martin in the eye.

“Fine,” Martin sighs, exasperated. “But you can’t go forever without sleep, I don’t care how stubborn you are.”

He’s right, Jon knows.

Jon did manage a full 70 hours awake before he started nodding off in spite of himself. For the past few days, he’s been allowing himself short naps, setting his phone alarm at hour intervals to wake him long before he can enter REM sleep.

It isn’t sustainable, but the alternative is haunting people’s nightmares, looking into their eyes and Beholding what they see when they look at him: Cold, calculating predator. Unblinking voyeur. Too many hungry, prying eyes, feeding on their terror, stripping them of their dignity, soaking in their trauma with cruel fascination –

“Jon.”

“Fine,” Jon grumbles. “Sixty minutes.”

  ~~~

 Whenever he slips into the dreamscape, Daisy promises to hunt him down. Finish what she started. Bury him in a shallow grave and leave him to become yet another mystery.

The Archivist wonders if being killed in the dream would wake him up, spare the other dreamers from his scrutiny for just one night.

He wonders how Daisy would react if he was able to tell her that he resents the absence of her knife at his throat just as much as she does.

  ~~~

 Six months.

For six months, he wanders, an uninvited, hated guest in those familiar dreamscapes.

The Archivist wants nothing more than to throw himself into an empty grave, to turn the damp earth into a prison with six-foot-high walls, to break his legs in the fall so that even when his resolve crumbles and he tries to clamber out of the hole, he will be unable to do so. The other dreamers would be safe from him, then. There would be nothing for him to watch but unyielding soil and the chill, impenetrable fog above.

He Knows that the Eye is still there behind the veil of fog; he can feel its unceasing gaze, but at least in the lonely cemetery, he cannot see it.

There is an open grave in front of him, its waiting maw calling him forward, promising to shackle him, to hobble him with blindness and paralysis. He stands at the edge, knees locked and eyes peeled, staring down into a plot that he desperately wishes belonged to him, and him alone. The dream keeps him there for what seems like hours, taunting him, holding relief just out of reach.

Then, the dream turns him around and pulls him inexorably toward his true objective. Once again he is forced to watch as Naomi’s freezing, bloodied fingers scrabble uselessly on the walls of her prison. Her tears have left trails in the mud on her face, and when she looks up at him, she asks the same question she does every single time: Why are you doing this to me?

Eventually – after far too long standing statue-still, eyes locked on Naomi’s pained, desperate face – the Archivist is yanked onward toward the waiting carnage of the dissection lab, the mournful singing of the coffin, the undulating mass of ants.

When Jane Prentiss shambles toward him, he can feel the worms burrow into his skin all over again. He wants to scream, to scratch, to grab a corkscrew and start digging – Dig, comes the intrusive thought, blinking in his mind like a marquee: Dig. Dig. Dig. – but his mouth and his hands are not his own, and his eyes – so many eyes, so reminiscent of the spider – are fixed on Jane. Her otherworldly screams pierce the night as she burns, and the Archivist desperately wishes he could clamp his hands over his ears to block out her death knell.

Being brought before Georgie Barker is almost worse than confronting Jane Prentiss. If she could still feel fear, the Archivist is certain she would wear the same expression as the others. Instead, there is only a mix of pity and resignation. Over and over again, Jonathan Sims has walked into burning buildings for even the slightest chance of having a question answered. She wishes she was more surprised to see what he has become, but she is so intimately familiar with his pattern of self-destruction and stubborn curiosity, and she has long since recognized it for what it is: a fatal flaw, coaxing him toward tragedy like a moth to the flame.

The exterminator makes no distinction between the Archivist and the Flesh Hive, and Georgie Barker likely wouldn’t, either. As always, the Archivist cannot find it in himself to argue.

When at last he finally awakens, he is not surprised that she leaves with such finality, her parting words condemning him as a lost cause. He pushed on past the point of no return, just like she always feared he would, and she has no desire to watch him burn.

  ~~~

 Jon may not have been allowed to toss himself into a lonely grave, but the coffin welcomes him with an eager appetite, and imprisons him in much the same way. He may be unable to move, but at least his body is his own, unlike in his dreams; he may not be able to escape, but at least he can speak.

“After the mission. I was planning to kill you,” Daisy tells him, matter-of-fact. He knows why the moment she starts talking about her dreams. “Realized you weren’t human. Needed to die, as soon as it was safe. Never mind Elias and his… insurance.”

“And now?”

“Don’t know. I – I miss dreaming. You don’t sleep, down here.”

Jon finds the prospect of eternal wakefulness in this place downright horrifying – the endless boredom alone sounds like torture – but... no sleep means no nightmares. 

“Daisy, you should know, I – I’m… if I wasn’t human before, I’m, uh – I’m even less now.”

The distant rumbling of the shifting earth picks up in volume until he can feel it in his teeth.

“Yeah.” Daisy doesn’t sound surprised. “Well, at the moment, I don’t care.”

“And if we get out?”

“But we can’t get out.”

“No.”

The noise grows in volume, drowning out his voice.

I really should have known better, he thinks to himself. Of course his rib wasn’t a strong enough anchor. He’s so alienated from his own body at this point, so far from human that he couldn’t even die properly. How many times has he found himself thinking, What’s another scar? In a way, he feels just as detached from his body when he’s awake as he does in his nightmares. The idea that a part of his body would call to him from outside the coffin… it’s just as ridiculous as his rushed, irresponsible deductions about the NotThem’s table.

“I’m s – I’m sorry,” Daisy stammers, snapping Jon out of his reverie. “I’m sorry, Jon.”

“So am I,” Jon replies. For everything, he does not say.

The rumbling fades, and silence descends on them in a rush.

“You know,” Jon begins after a minute, choosing his words carefully, “I… I didn’t know, at first. That the nightmares were real.”

Daisy says nothing, and Jon interprets it as permission to go on.

“I – I thought that they were just my nightmares. That the first statements I took hit me harder than I’d expected. I was so dismissive to the first few people who came in to give their statements in person, and I assumed that my – my guilt over how I treated them was manifesting as nightmares, since I refused to process it in real life. That I was just…” He lets out a bitter laugh. “That I was just stressed about the new job.”

“When did you figure it out?” Daisy asks levelly.

“I… I think I suspected after a few months? But I just – I told myself that I was being ridiculous. I went through a bit of a – a paranoid phase, and I thought that I was just… overthinking things. I tend to do that, to just – obsess, and let my imagination run wild –”

Daisy snorts. “Yeah, I gathered that.”

“I – I've had a lot of practice with denial, I suppose,” Jon says, sheepish. “Or feigning denial, at least. Playing the skeptic was… safer. Admitting out loud that I believed in – in monsters felt like it would… draw unwanted attention, I suppose. That it would somehow provoke the thing watching me to strike. I convinced myself that pretending to be ignorant would keep the monsters at bay.”

“That’s…”

“Stupid, I know.”

Daisy gives a dry chuckle.

“I had to give up the act after – after Prentiss attacked the Archives,” Jon continues. “Even after that, though, I still wanted to believe that the nightmares weren’t real. But then one day I woke up and – and I just knew –”

The dirt around them begins to press in again, forcing the air from his lungs. Jon feels Daisy’s fingers brush his wrist and he takes her hand. Not alone. Not alone. Not alone.

Then the pressure lets up all at once and they are both left gasping in its wake. 

“Keep talking?” Daisy’s voice has that desperate, pleading edge to it again. It’s so at odds with the Hunter that Jon knows, more like prey than predator. “I – I need – I don’t want to be alone.”

“Not alone,” Jon murmurs, as much for himself as for Daisy. “The dream that made me realize – her name was Tessa Winters. I took her statement, and that night she was in my dreams. The way she looked at me, I just… I knew. She was really there. Her eyes were so – so accusing, like she knew that it was my fault that she was there. And – and it was. The other statement givers came to me on their own, but she likely would have never come to the Institute if it wasn’t for me.”

“Oh?”

“I – I posted on a message board, soliciting supernatural experiences related to technology.”

“You can use a computer, then,” Daisy teases, a smirk in her voice.

Jon smiles too, and for the briefest moment he forgets where they are. “I just turned 30 this year, Daisy,” he says, rolling his eyes, and she snorts.

“Still, I can’t picture you making forum posts.”

“I had an ulterior motive,” he admits, his smile fading as the old guilt bubbles up. “I had found Gertrude’s laptop, and I needed help breaking into it, so I – I figured maybe I could lure in someone who knew computers, take their statement, find a way to casually ask them to have a look at the laptop for me. It worked, but then she appeared in my nightmares, and – if I hadn’t drawn her to me, she wouldn’t be there.”

Daisy makes a noncommittal sound. Jon shuts his eyes tight and takes a deep, faltering breath.

“And then – after the Unknowing, I – I should have died. I was dead, technically. My brain was still firing – dreaming,” he says with distaste, “but I had no pulse, no respiration, no… no other signs of life.” He feels the pressure of tears in his eyes and he fights to keep his voice steady. “You should have seen the way the doctors and nurses looked at me as they were explaining it. A – a medical mystery – a marvel, really – the sort of thing that most professionals would kill for a chance to study – but they couldn’t wait to get away from me, to hurry me out the door.” He pauses to take a deep breath, but between the crushing earth and his own grief, he can’t fill his lungs. His exhale comes out shallow and shaky. “And – and Georgie, and Basira, and Melanie, and –”

Daisy tightens her grip on his hand. It’s so surreal that Jon almost laughs. This is Daisy. Daisy, who seized him by the throat, who tried to kill him, who enjoyed seeing him terrified and begging for his life, who took such pride in the scar she left him with – and now she’s comforting him. He isn’t sure how to process that turnaround, so instead gives her hand a squeeze in return, clears his throat, and continues.

“So – so for six months, I was in a coma. If you can call it that. But the whole time, I was dreaming. For six months, I walked through the same nightmares, over and over and over again. There was no waking up to escape it, and – and it meant that the other dreamers couldn’t escape me, either. Up until then, if I was awake while they were asleep, they could get away from me, but – but I was in the dream every hour of every day, so I was there every night they slept. And the way they look at me – like I’m a monster – it just… they’re not wrong, but I just wish – I wish I could tell them that I’m sorry, that I don’t want this either, that I don’t want to watch. The Eye doesn’t let me speak, though – or move, or – or blink. I am an observer, and an observer does not interfere.” He laughs then, a little hysterically. “It – honestly, it felt like longer than six months. I lived through the same scenes so many times that I started to feel so numb to it all.”

“What about my part of the dream?” Daisy asks quietly.  

“I – ever since the Unknowing, whenever I get to your segment, there's nothing but the coffin. I always enter it, but it never brings me to you. Until now, I suppose,” he says with a humorless chuckle. “Oddly enough, though, I always found myself wishing you were there.”

“Really.”

“Yes, I – it’s hard to explain.” He hesitates for a moment before settling on honesty. “You always looked at me like I was prey, instead of predator. Or – or maybe like I was a predator, but a – a weaker predator, something that could be killed. A monster that could be vanquished. I… I wanted you to catch me. I suppose I thought that maybe – maybe if I died in the dream, it would end the cycle, and release the other dreamers from the Eye.”

“Might have killed you in real life, though,” Daisy points out. “If the dreaming was the only part of you that was alive.” 

“It may have,” Jon agrees.

Daisy lets that linger for a minute, heavy and revealing.

“I… I don’t think I want to die,” Jon eventually continues, “but I can't stop thinking that maybe it would be… better, if I did? All that would happen is that the world would lose another monster, and – and that would be fine. It would be right. But I still…” He chokes on his words, something between a laugh and a sob. “God, when did not wanting to die start to feel selfish of me?” 

The dirt around them shifts, sibilant and imposing. They hold their breath, as if speaking might provoke it. Daisy waits for the rustling to settle again before she speaks.

“Why did you come here, Jon?”

“To – to find you, to get you out –”

“Yeah, but why? I nearly killed you. Would have tried again. Would have liked it.” She huffs. “I know you didn’t come here out of any loyalty to me. So, why?”

“I…”

“To get yourself killed?”

“No, I – I really did want to get you out of here.”

“Why did you come for me, then? Out of guilt? To justify not dying?”

“I…” Jon sighs heavily. “Yes, I – I suppose. And - and Tim was dead. Sasha is dead, and Martin is... gone, and when we found out you were still alive, I just - I didn't want to lose anyone else. I couldn't just leave you here, not if there was a chance I could bring you back.”

Daisy is silent. Jon knows that she wants him to say more, and he takes a deep breath.

“The others don’t trust me – not that I blame them, I don’t trust me, either. Martin is… he has his own plans. Georgie wants nothing to do with me. Melanie hates me for not having the decency to die, blames me for everything that’s happened. Doesn’t even think I’m me anymore, just – just some monster wearing a familiar skin, and – well,” he laughs uncomfortably, “I have a hard time arguing with her assessment.” He takes a deep breath. “And – and Basira, she… she doesn’t put much stock in my humanity, either. Sometimes she sees me as an asset to be used, but…”

He trails off, feeling faintly guilty for his mixed feelings on Basira. She encourages him to use his powers when it will help further their goals. She doesn’t go so far as to claim that the ends justify the means, but she does frequently remind him that they need to be pragmatic, like Gertrude. The rest of the time, though… she looks at Jon like he’s a dangerous animal, unpredictable and poised to strike. He knows that she’s fully prepared to put him down if it starts looking like he’s too dangerous to be allowed to live, and although that hurts, he’s also glad that there’s someone who he can trust to put an end to him if he loses himself.

Nonetheless, it’s frustrating to be hated and feared for what he can do – to hate and fear himself so thoroughly – while still being expected to embrace those powers whenever it’s deemed useful. He’s more of an instrument than a person now, a tool to be used and then locked safely away once he’s fulfilled his purpose. At the same time, though, it at least offers him some semblance of control. He may be a vehicle for the Eye’s machinations, but perhaps he can balance it by giving their side an advantage in whatever way he can, principles be damned.

And he did give Basira explicit permission to use him.

Sometimes he wishes he had Gertrude’s certainty, or Basira’s resolve, or any sort of confidence in his own convictions. Most of the time, though, he fears what he could become if he was more decisive. He doesn’t trust himself to live without doubt.

He doesn’t know how to explain all of that to Daisy, though.

“I don’t – I don’t expect them to trust me,” he says instead. “Or like me. It seems dangerous to be near me at all, and I’m not exactly” – he huffs out a short, bitter laugh – “I’m not good enough company to risk it. It hurts, and it’s lonely, but I – I do understand. But I can at least make myself useful –”

Without warning, the Buried constricts itself around them in a rush, strangling his words and stealing the air from his lungs. This time, it feels like hours pass before it finally relaxes its chokehold. The only conversation that passes between them for a long time is synchronized, frenzied gasping for what little chill, stagnant air the Buried deigns to permit them.

“We’re the same, you know,” Daisy says eventually, forcing the words out even as she struggles to catch her breath. “I'm afraid of what I am, or - or was, or could be again. I needed the Hunt. Liked it, even – I enjoyed the thrill of the chase, the kill. But now I – I look back and I’m disgusted. I hurt people who didn’t deserve it. Even the actual monsters were… I wasn’t killing them because I cared about justice, or protecting others, not really. I was feeding on the fear of the prey. It made me feel alive –”

An abrupt coughing fit interrupts her then, and several minutes pass before she’s able to continue speaking through the grit coating her tongue.

“All I’ve felt since I came down here is fear and pain and guilt. I accept that – I should feel guilty, and I – I probably deserve more punishment than this. But still, I… I want to see the sun again, to breathe fresh air, to –” Her breath hitches. “I – I want to see Basira again.”

Jon can just barely hear her sniffling, but knows better than to draw attention to it.

“But – but if I leave here, I – I know I’ll hear the blood again. I don’t know who I am without the Hunt, but I – I still don’t want to go back to it. I deserve to be here – but I also want to leave – and that feels selfish. But I suppose it really doesn’t matter, does it?” When she laughs, it almost sounds like a bark, hollow and brittle. “There’s no way out.”

“No way out,” Jon repeats. “But maybe… maybe the world is safer without me in it – without… without either of us, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” Daisy chokes out, her voice hovering between a laugh and a sob. “That’s – that’s pretty messed up, isn’t it?”

Jon lets out his own tearful chuckle. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” He pauses. “You said that – that you don’t sleep down here, that you don’t dream?”

“Yeah.”

“That's probably for the best,” he sighs. “At least this way, the Eye can’t reach the dreamers anymore.”

“And at least we’re – we’re not alone?”

“No. Not alone.”

“I’m glad that you’re here, Jon,” Daisy blurts out in a rush. “I know that’s horrible of me, but – but it’s the truth.” She takes a shaky breath. “I don’t want to be alone. I’m… I’m glad I’m not alone.”

“I’m… I think I’m glad, too,” Jon admits.

He wasted so much time pushing people away, refusing to trust, rebuffing any offer of help. Georgie told him that he needed human connection to help him stay human, and she was right, but when he finally admitted that – by the time he finally resolved to trust the others, regardless of his doubts – it was too late. When he woke up in the hospital, there was no one left to offer their hand when he reached out for help. Even worse, he can’t exactly deny that it’s his own fault.

But now, trapped here in the cold and the damp and the cramped, suffocating dark, Daisy holds his hand. The firm pressure of her grip is comforting, despite the clamminess of their skin. He can’t remember the last time he was touched with anything less than malice.  

“I’ve been alone since I woke up,” he continues, “and – and afraid of what I’m becoming. It’s nice to have someone who – who understands what it’s like. I think this is the most companionship I’ve had in… in a long while. It’s nice to be the one seen for once – by something other than a monster.”

Daisy tightens her grip further, and Jon marvels at how such a simple gesture is so much louder than words.

A silence falls on them then – a bizarrely companionable one, so incongruous with their current predicament. They clutch each other in the dark, focusing on one another’s breathing to coax them through the irregular ebb and flow of the earth pressing down on them, peppering the gloom with quiet conversation whenever the Buried gives them an inch to breathe.

Daisy talks about her childhood dog, and The Archers, and how people are always surprised to learn that she has a sweet tooth. She tells Jon about the first time she and Basira went camping: They had stretched out beneath the night sky and Basira taught Daisy the constellations, the origins of their names and the legends they represented. Affection welled up in her as she listened to Basira muse about how even though the constellations vary across time and culture, humans have always shared this collective impulse to look up at the sky and make meaning out of randomness.

For the first time in a long time, Daisy had been truly present in the moment; for once, she wasn’t gnashing her teeth, impatiently anticipating the next hunt. Basira’s voice anchored her in the present, and the call of the blood was drowned out by a flood of warmth and devotion.  

Jon talks about the Admiral, and his brief foray into AmDram at uni, and how he's always hated poetry, but then he read some of Martin's, and, well... some of them were quite good, actually. Jon confesses that he too has an unexpected sweet tooth. Martin somehow guessed; whenever Jon was having a particularly rough day, Martin would make his tea sweeter than usual. Martin never drew attention to it, and Jon never commented on it, but it was... touching, if he's honest with himself. He wishes that he had told Martin then that he noticed, that he appreciated the gesture - that it made him feel seen in a good way for once.

Jon misses Martin desperately, worries for him fiercely. Worse, he knows with a certainty that Martin will never know just how much he is missed. He spent far too long underestimating Martin, taking him for granted. Sure, Martin had stumbled a lot in the early days, but when Jon learned that Martin had lied on his CV, he was actually impressed. It's remarkable how competent Martin managed to be with no prior experience or qualifications to speak of. Daisy listens as Jon rambles on about how Martin is so much braver and cleverer than Jon or anyone else ever gave him credit for, and how much he wishes he could tell him that now.  

They go back and forth like that, confiding in each other about their regrets, and the apologies they will never get to make, and all the things they miss. They talk about fears, and monsters, and what it means to be human. They talk about choices.

Jon does not dream. Daisy does not hear the blood. Together, they listen to the quiet.

[whatsortofschoolisthis]

HPHL Profile

Name: Maran Magdalene O’Malley.

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Birth Date: July 22.

Species: (Human, Lycanthrope, Metamorphmagus, Vampire, ect):Human

Blood Status: (Pureblood, Half-Blood, Muggleborn): pureblood

Sexuality: Straight

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Ethnicity: Irish

Nationality: Irish

Residence: Hogwarts/Hogsmeade with her Aunt Irene during breaks.  Previously lived on a homestead in Oregon. 

Myer Briggs Personality Type: ISFJ- The Protector

THE MAGE

Wand: English Oak

A wand for good times and bad, this is a friend as loyal as the wizard who deserves it. Wands of English oak demand partners of strength, courage and fidelity. Less well-known is the propensity for owners of English oak wands to have powerful intuition, and, often, an affinity with the magic of the natural world, with the creatures and plants that are necessary to wizardkind for both magic and pleasure. The oak tree is called King of the Forest from the winter solstice up until the summer solstice, and its wood should only be collected during that time (holly becomes King as the days begin to shorten again, and so holly should only be gathered as the year wanes. This divide is believed to be the origin of the old superstition, ‘When his wand’s oak and hers is holly, then to marry would be folly,’ a superstition that I have found baseless). It is said that Merlin’s wand was of English oak (though his grave has never been found, so this cannot be proven).

Thestral Core.

Animagus: A black cat.

Misc Magical Abilities: (Legilimen, Seer, Parselmouth, Obscurial, ect): None.

Boggart Form: Her  stepfather, Alive.

Riddikulus Form: Her stepfather, Dead.

Amortentia: (What do they smell like?): forests, woodsmoke

Amortentia: (What do they smell?): Whatever their love interest smell like

Patronus: An American Jackrabbit.

Patronus Memory: The first time she held Robyn.

Mirror of Erised: Her whole family alive,

Specialized/Favourite Spells:

APPEARANCE

Faceclaim:

Voiceclaim: Saoirse Ronan

Height: 5 ft tall

Weight: 99 pounds.

Physique: thin

Eye Colour: Blue

Hair Colour: Blonde

Skin Tone: Pale

Body Modifications: None.

Scarring: Several on her back, incurred from beating from her stepfather.

Inventory: (what do they carry on them?):

Wand.

A Grimoire.

An Adder Stone.

Her MAUSCA Wanted Poster.

Fashion: Wears a pinstripe dress with plain black shoes and a white apron over that, when not in uniform. Also has several blue and pink dresses she handmade.

ALLEGIANCES

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor.

Ilvermorny House: Wampus

Affiliations/Organizations: Hogwarts and her Aunt Irene.

Professions: 

HOGWARTS INFORMATION

Class Proficiencies: DADA, Charms, 

Astronomy: E

Charms: O

DADA: O

Flying: P

Herbology: E

History of Magic: A

Potions: O

Transfiguration: A

Electives:

Ancient Runes: E

COMC: A

Divination: O

Quidditch: No.

Extra Curricular: Potions Club

Favourite Professors: TBA

Least Favourite Professors: TBA

RELATIONSHIPS

Misc Siblings:

Robyn Ann O’Toole

Robyn was born to Mary and Jonathan O’Toole on Christmas Day and is Maran’s only other living sibling besides Michael, half or otherwise. Her mother died in childbirth and Jonathan did not believe Robyn was his because she had blond hair (never mind the fact Maran and her own mother have blond hair) . Her often abused and mistreated Robyn, which nearly rendered her a Squib. This worsened the abuse. After escaping, it turned out she was not, in fact, a squib and was sorted into Gryffindor at 11 years old. 

She is constantly afraid Maran will be taken away and hung and is a gentle, slightly nervous little girl. Brave in spite of it all and more daring than other little girls her age.

David John  O’Malley: 

Maran’s older brother, he died of Cholera on the Oregon Trail. He was only 15 at the time and was very close to Maran. He wanted to be a Potioneer.

Michael Devin O’Malley:

Maran’s brother, younger than her by a year and born on June 1st. Michael is very fond of Robyn and Maran but is a little afraid of the latter. He is kind and gentle and was no match for his often brutal stepfather. Not at all sad the man died. Sorted into Hufflepuff and was in Pukwudgie before the escape. 

The Littles: A collective term for the three babies that died before and after Robyn. Aideen (aged 3 years, died of the Cholera with David), Joshua (one week, SIDS), and John ( contracted Scarlet Fever on the homestead, age two)

Father (s):

Sean O’Malley

He was a good man from a moderately wealthy pureblood family that loved his children dearly and was especially close with David and Maran. Died from Typhus. Irene is his sister. Former Hufflepuff.

Peter ‘Pete’ O’Toole

A pureblood wizard with Purist beliefs, extreme even by the standards of the day, and the black sheep of the family. He was disowned by his family as he was suspected in the death of his muggleborn sister in law Ellen and was generally an asshole. He met the recently widowed Mary, married her, then took her and her children and their late father’s house elf Ichabod  across the ocean to America to make his own fortune on the Oregon Trail. While using most of hers. 

Mother: Mary O’Malley/O’Toole (Maiden name: McCarthy)

A kind woman that loved all her children. She was wrecked by her first husbands and Children’s deaths and died not long after having Joshua. Former Hufflepuff.

Love Interest: None Yet

Best Friends: Michael.

Rival: None

Enemy: Maran’s stepfather, who is dead.

Dormmates: (Who’s in your MC’s dorm with them?): TBA

Pets: Her Owl, Minerva. Ichabod Technically but he’s not a pet and is more like a parental figure, especially to Robyn.

Closest Canon Friends: TBA

Closest MC Friends: TBA

BACKGROUND/HISTORY

One day he decided he was going to kill Robyn and tried to strangle her with a Garrote after sending Maran and Michael on an errand. Michael came back early and managed to get Peter off his sister and ran into Ichabod’s quarters.  Because Mary had, wisely, never transferred authority to Peter for Ichabod, the house elf refused to let him in. At this point Maran came home. She often carried a rifle when going to the neighbors and there was an argument, during which Peter revealed what he had tried to do. 

Pre Hogwarts:

 After a series of tragedies, including the deaths of his stepson and stepdaughter and two sons, Peter made it to Oregon with his family. Peter O’Toole then proceeded to isolate his family from others and was often physically and verbally abusive. He favored Michael (who did not reciprocate) and sent him to Ilvermorny but kept Maran and later Robyn at home. Mostly because he was sexist but  also because Maran...unnerved him. She seemed to know some wandless magic, having learned it from a witch from their wagon train, and was practicing it when he wasn’t in the house. She would occasionally use it to indirectly threaten him and he sensed the events were somehow connected to her.

- Not afraid to stand up for herself or her siblings and often takes on a protective/maternal role with Robyn.

So Maran shot him and made it look like a muggle robbery. When the truth finally came out, they were already in England and living with Aunt Irene.

1st Year: TBA

2nd Year:TBA

3rd Year:TBA

4th Year:TBA

5th Year: TBA

6th Year: TBA

7th Year: TBA

Post Graduation: She became a Potioneer in Honor of her brother David  and had one son, Aiden, with an unknown man. Robyn lived with her until her death from Typhus at 32 and Michael lived next door with his wife Niamah until his death at age 75 and her death at age 98. 

Old Age & Death: Maran lived to be 101 years old and died surrounded by her grandchildren and Great Grandchildren. Was pardoned for the murder of her stepfather after she died.

PERSONALITY

- Can be absolutely ruthless when she needs to be.

- Doesn’t understand the difference between Light and Dark magic (This distinction didn’t exist out west until the early 1900s) and she often experiments with Dark Magic as a result.

- Genius at potion making and is very intelligent.

- A tad paranoid, she did murder her stepfather. Looks over her shoulder a lot and is distrustful of people at first.

MISC

- Hecate and Sean are partially named after Maran and Michael.

- Maran tries to introduce her English classmates to the newly invented game of Quodpot  and it often ends badly.

- Has a negative view of marriage, which is why she never marries (that anyone can tell).

- Wrote a book about her life as an old woman and it caused a stir in the pureblood community due to the many negative things she says about pureblood culture and purist beliefs in the book. 

- Maran loves sketching ad painting.

[becca-becky]

Accepting Duplicity, Part 2/2: Can Selfishness Be Good?

Relationships: Janus & Everyone, basically

Summary: A 'what if' scenario: what if Janus took Virgil's role as the first Dark Side to try and interact with the Light Sides? (just imagine every episode pre-AA that had Virgil in it and just imagine if Janus was there instead of Virgil)

Notes: Janus's title is Duplicity, but his nickname is Vill, short for Villain because he dresses like a disney villain (original, I know). This entire thing is just if SvS, Putting Others First, and Can Lying Be Good had a baby and it was AA Part 2

Words: 3633

Also on Ao3!

*+*+^+*+*

When Janus woke up today, he was not planning on encountering the others in his room. And no, he wasn't speaking backward this time.

"Excuse me," He said with a smooth voice before appearing in his usual capelet and hat, "What are you doing in my room?" He sneered.

The others just screamed at the sight of him. Figures.

"Vill? Oh my goodness, I am so happy to see you, that's weird," Thomas said excitedly.

Janus blinked before slowly saying, "All of you just didn't scream in unison upon seeing me,"

"S-sorry," Logan stuttered out, uncharacteristically nervous, "You do this thing where you kind of just- appear ,"

"Wait, wait, wait, what is going on with my hair? Oh, come on, I just washed it like- yesterday. How did it get like this?" Thomas whined as he took off his hoodie and tried to fix his nest of a head.

Roman brightened and threw a hairbrush at him. "Welcome back, Thomas!”

"Thanks, Roman," Thomas quickly tidied up his hair and threw it back. Roman let put an 'ow' as Thomas went back to the task at hand, "Vill, you don't understand-"

"-come on-" Roman muttered.

"-for some reason, I wasn't feeling your presence at all,"

"Yes, yes, I'm well aware," Janus said idly, "It's because I wanted to- test something, you could say. Although a more proper term for my disappearance would be 'ducking out',"

"Quack," Patton mumbled.

"What- ducking out?"

"Quack, quack,"

"That's a thing you can do?" Thomas asked Logan, who muttered back: "For this video, I guess,"

"I decided to try and remove myself from the equation for the time being, since all of you seemed so adamant that my presence wasn't welcome or necessary,"

"Well, I wouldn't-" Patton started to say before he could only mouth the movements of speech. The poor dear was telling a lie.

Janus shot a sympathetic look his way, "Don't act like I'm not telling the truth, Morality,"

Patton shut his mouth.

"Well, it's because it was kind of unnecessary for you to be there during Thomas's problem solving," Roman said, a grimace set on his face.

Janus snorted, "Oh, what, I'm not allowed to be here but you, Mr. Hopes, Dreams, and Aspirations himself, are?"

"We aren't the same-"

"Noooo, of course not, especially since we both encompass what Thomas's wants and needs in life. Definitely not,"

Roman frowned and began to open his mouth.

Logan interjected, anticipating another argument, "On behalf of my fellow sides, I'd like to... apologize for our negligence towards our treatment of you. I can't imagine it was pleasant,"

Janus sighed, "It comes with the job,"

"But, I truly don't think any of us anticipated how important you are, Duplicity," Logan said earnestly. Roman and Patton gave him a look but he just gave them one of his own, daring them to argue.

Roman sighed, and nodded reluctantly, "Without you, Thomas didn't want to do anything except for work and he couldn't even put on a show for the camera despite that! He just said whatever came into his head and he had a nonexistent filter for everything. It really made me feel bad because then it was like I was useless-" Roman slapped his hand on his mouth and chuckled nervously.

Logan paused before continuing for him, "Precisely, Vill, you encompass so much more than Thomas's selfishness and deceit. You exist to keep him safe,"

"I mean, self-preservation is basically the only reason I'm here," Janus mumbled, "But I'm glad you see my purpose, Logan,"

"B-but," Patton stumbled, "I mean, I get why he’s important, but he’s still not- like us..?" He tried to say in the most polite way possible.

Janus smiled at that, "And why should I, Patton?"

"Say what?"

"Why should I be like you?" Janus reiterated, "And how am I different than you or any other side?"

"O-oh, because lying isn't- it's not, uh, I mean-"

"Tell me, Patton,"

"Because lying isn't good," Patton spit out, his frustration and adamancy clear in his tone, before putting his hands on his mouth in shock, "I- I'm sorry, I don't understand what came over-"

Janus waved his gloved hand, pretending like his statement didn't hurt him, "Don't soften the truth, Patton, we both know it only makes things worse. And to answer your -to be frank- incorrect statement, I'll say this: how can you be so sure that lying isn't bad? And what makes you or any of the others ‘better’ than me?"

"Because you aren't being honest and the others aren’t- you know, bad?"

"And how is that a bad thing, and what makes the others good?"

"Because it's- it's not- it's not ethically right, first of all, and second, there’s nothing- ethically compromising about these two,"

"And how can you be so sure?"

"Well, um, look. How would you feel if someone lied to your face about something that they didn't have to lie about and you trusted that person?"

"I'd feel hurt," Janus said curtly, already understanding where this was heading.

"And that's because you trust them to tell you things that aren't lies because you trust them to not break your trust," Patton rattled off, moving his hands around aimlessly.

"Okay, those are way too many 'trust's in one sentence," Roman said, cradling his head in his palms like he was getting a headache.

Janus ignored him, "That's only one scenario, Patton. What if you had to tell the truth about a hamster's death to a child? Would you lie to them and simply say that 'your hamster ran away' or something more comforting? Or would you tell them the blunt truth? That their hamster is gone and won't ever come back to them? And you’re still not answering my question, Morality, what do the others have that I don’t that makes them ‘good’?"

"W-well-"

"Patton, just hear me out on this. What if not all actions have the same moral consequence in different situations as moral philosopher Jonathan Dancy says? I’m paraphrasing here- but he said it's truly impossible to quantify the ethical weight of moral principles since situations can be so different from each other for many different reasons. So, curiosity during a rather morbid experience and continuously probing the people who experienced it isn’t exactly ethically right in that specific situation. Or let’s say pride; you got a callback for an audition for a- um-"

“-an Alfred Hitchcoppalucas film-!”

“-yes, that, but your friend -who also auditioned- didn’t get the callback. Now, it’s fine to feel pride in your accomplishments but you don’t just shove it in their face, because that’s just needlessly cruel. It’s all in the matter of how far you go with it,”

"Yes, but that still leaves the fact that at least lying for selfish reasons isn't the most- morally decent thing to do-" Patton argued.

"That's you making your own judgment call. Surely you know when it's necessary, to tell the truth in a situation and when it isn't? That's the whole point of moral particularism. I'm just trying to say that lying isn't the most black and white thing to do. And even then, morals aren't black and white and shouldn't be perceived as such, since morality is more of a- spectrum of grays,"

Roman snorted, "Are there 50 shades-?" He was quickly shut up by Janus with a snap of his fingers.

"Those grays vary in shades of light and dark, but they're all the same color, and that's the mindset you should have as a figment of morality simply because life isn't simple. It gets more and more complicated as it goes on. People are never truly evil or good, it's only dramatization and opinions that shape people's perception of them. Sure, there are some people who are the darkest shades of gray imaginable and some who have shades that are so light they're white, but that suddenly doesn’t make them incapable of doing good or bad. And that's why I'm here,"

"To darken Thomas's shade of gray?" Patton muttered, confused, continuously shifting his eyes between Janus and Thomas.

"No," Janus quickly said, "No, definitely not. I'm here to-"

"-show that I have a capacity for deceit, among other things," Thomas finished for him.

Patton gasped, "Kiddo..."

"Patton, Vill isn't that bad. He really isn't, or at least, he really can't be. If he was, then I would've been better off without him a few hours ago,"

Patton looked at the floor, "But Thomas, he's still-"

"We're all capable of doing bad as well as good in life, Pat," Thomas said softly. "You know that, I know that, so why are we fighting it?"

"I just want you to be a good person," Patton whispered

"And I just want to keep him safe," Janus said. Patton looked up at him, a small frown on his face. "I know you don't like me, and I know you certainly won't try and do so today or tomorrow. But- but at least trust that I want what's good for Thomas as well. I'm self-preservation, for Christ sake, I'd be going against my job description,"

"Well, then why do you always act like the embodiment of a Disney Renaissance villain all the time?" Roman blurted out.

"Roman?" Thomas asked tensely, but Roman soldiered on, rambling incessantly like if he won’t get his thoughts out on Janus now, he won’t have another opportunity later.

"What? He's a creepy cookie! You're a creepy cookie, Duplicity!"

"Roman!" Thomas repeated.

"You're like an oatmeal raisin cookie that's primarily composed of raisins, no one wants that, least of all-!"

"Pump the breaks, Princey!" Thomas said.

Roman's eyes widened like he was somehow realizing, just now, that he said all of that, "I- I'm sorry," He placed his hands on his face in embarrassment.

"You pump those breaks,"

"I'm sorry, I just- I'm feeling a bit more truthful? Just getting all of my thoughts out there, I'm-"

"Take it easy, Roman," Janus warned.

Roman groaned into his palms once more. “Ye-yeah, I got that,”

"But to answer your rather blunt question, I was under Vi-" Janus halted before continuing as though he didn't pause his sentence, "-the belief that a dark persona would help you listen to me, that maybe if I played the villain, you- you'd listen to me. But gradually, I realized that perhaps it wasn't working as I anticipated," Janus said sheepishly. "So, I needed a bit of a break from that whole spiel to attempt and- reinvent myself, you could say. I wasn't planning on leaving you for so long, and I -maybe, possibly- thought you would enjoy the lack of my presence,"

Roman snorted, "Look how well that-" He quickly shut his mouth with one look from Thomas.

A silence passed. It was stifling and Janus was about to ask if he could go back up to his bedroom so he could be actually comfortable but Logan spoke up before he could do so.

"Well, that sounded monumentally unwise and incredibly out of character for you, Duplicity,"

Janus growled, "What? Is the embodiment of selfishness not allowed to take a break?"

"Vill, you are an incredibly important survival instinct, and it's astounding that you don't realize that, even with you saying you understand your purpose," Logan sighed, "I realize that we have undermined your presence more times than Roman can count-"

"-hey-!"

"-but you simply must understand that without you around, Thomas would suffer," Logan summoned a graph and marker and gestured to the title. "The relationship between selfishness and performance can be expressed on this curve, known as the Yerkes-Dodson curve. It's named after the psychologists, R. M. Yerkes and J. D. Dodson. They-"

"Get on with it, Calculator Watch!"

Logan frowned, hurt flashing in his eyes as he reluctantly continued. He didn't even seem to realize it. Janus tensed. His room was beginning to take a bigger hold on them than he envisioned.

"Up here is where you want to be-" Logan gestured to the point of the parabola, "-the optimum degree of constructive tension. Yes, too much selfishness pushes us to this side of the curve, and performance is hindered, which is less than ideal. But without you at all, Thomas is not just on this more overworked, under prepared side of the graph which is also not ideal when you're trying to get things done. He's all the way down here,"

"By the horn of a unicorn, that was going somewhere! I thought I'd have to drag our attention away from that stupid graph like it's somehow more important than me because my self-worth is incredibly poor and I just want someone to-" Roman slapped his hands over his mouth, flashing Janus a grateful look.

Janus stared at him with wide eyes but turned his focus back to Logan, "So, without me, aren't you always on the other side of that- um-"

"Yerkes-Dodson curve, yes," Logan ended for him.

"I was blanking on the word 'parabola', but that works as well,"

"There are ways I can work on that, Vill. But I'd rather work on it with you than without you at all," Thomas said earnestly.

"I doubt you can guarantee that with Morality around," Janus said softly, stealing a glance at the side in question, who just looked down ashamedly.

"We can all work on that, Vill," Thomas amended. "It's important because you need to be listened to. You're an important part of me -all of you are- but I need to recognize how much you need to control for me to function well. You're kind of like Roman, in that sense,"

"Well, we're both multi-faceted and we do encompass a lot of your wants and needs," Janus muttered.

Logan added on, "You're what holds Thomas back from overworking himself, you're there as a protective instinct first-"

"-and you're there to make sure Thomas gets what he wants!" Patton exclaimed, startling Logan.

Patton noticed Logan's stiff form and wide eyes and quickly apologized. "Sorry, was that too loud? I was worried I wouldn't get another chance to speak and I wanted to share my thoughts before I forgot them if Vill went on another-" Patton shut his mouth and didn't continue, however, did shoot Janus a thankful look, who reciprocated it with a concerned look of his own.

"Duplicity," Janus looked to Thomas, "In small doses, you're what encourages me to treat myself a bit when I've gotten a lot of work done. To take extra time with my appearance so I'll like who I see in the mirror, and to know when enough is enough. I- I'm lucky to have you the way I do,"

"Agreed, constant narcissism isn't pleasant for others around you, nor is it healthy for your mental health if it continues to the point of a lack of empathy," Logan said, not noticing Patton and Janus's flinch. "Whether it's a symptom of a different issue, or a narcissistic disorder, or the unfortunate result of something someone is going through,"

"And I don't want to downplay any of that, but I think maybe I could benefit from trying to hear you more,"

"And I'm grateful for that, but that doesn't-" Patton cut Janus off.

"Vill, you're what helps make Thomas happy. You're the- encouragement he needs to go out and do something for himself, like getting a hot dog or a new Frogger game. And that small action, even if it isn't much, makes me grateful for you. I- I never truly realized how happy you made me whenever you encouraged Thomas to get something he wants or to take a break from studying or practicing. And I think that's as good a sign as any that you're willing to help Thomas, even if it's through small gestures. And that happiness, that drive, makes us... better," Patton said before bursting into tears, starting to ramble.

"I- I'm so sorry, I thought you were the worst person ever and now it’s like I’m confronting these two different versions of you and I just feel really sad all the time and it's not because of you, I just keep acting all happy and hoping that the bad thoughts'll just go away-"

"-I still think that curve is useless, Logan, I can easily just poof it away and then we can focus on something actually important like me because I have an incredibly small ego and I just think that our time would be better spent-"

"-well, first off, it's called a Yerkes-Dodson curve and second of all, this is the episode where I finally got listened to and now you're starting to complain? It's almost like no matter how hard I try, you never listen and just argue with me even if I’m trying to help-!"

The three lapsed into separate, overlapping arguments, venting about all of their issues and letting their emotions cloud their filters. Janus winced, "Uh, oh..."

"Uh, what the heck is going on?"

"These three have been in my room for far too long and now they can't handle the... effects of staying here for this amount of time,"

"And what are those effects?" Thomas practically yelled, trying to be heard over the three venting sides.

"Saying whatever is on your mind in full honesty and with all of the emotional clarity without thinking of the consequences. And in combination with that , they’re driving you far over the other end of that parabola, not realizing or caring about what the others are saying and simply caring about airing their frustrations to nobody in the hopes that someone will hear and listen to them,"

"What?!"

"Hold on. We're getting them all out of here. Thomas, do not forget what you've learned. Now, think of truths. Not facts, per se, just things you personally know to be true about yourself or the world around you,"

Thomas took a deep breath, trying to ignore the yells, insults, and crying and just focused on himself. "I like cats, the sky is blue, musical theatre is really important to me-" He continued listing things off as Janus sank the gradually quieting group back down to the living room.

The group popped back up again and Janus began to scold them, "Well, that was an incredibly idiotic thing you all did, but I wish I could say I was surprised,"

Roman looked at Janus, astonished, "You... rescued me,"

"I wouldn't say rescue, but I am self-preservation and you were airing out problems I had a feeling would be too… personal for us to discuss at the moment," Janus amended.

"Incredibly right, just as you keep Thomas away from joyless and unwanted situations, you also enable him to find an escape out of them," Logan said.

"Thanks, Vill," Patton said, his tear marks glistening on his face.

Janus felt his human side flush at the praise and waved his hand, "No big deal, Patton. But I still find it hard to believe you all went through that for- for me,"

Thomas smiled, "It was worth it to regain my good ol' self-care,"

"That's right and just like you saved us, it's the cautious people that work that hardest to save others and themselves from harm, whether it be mental or physical. Sometimes it's better for a society to preserve itself than be needlessly selfless," Logan added on.

"I'm glad to have you back, Duplicity, and I promise to make sure you feel listened to and strive for a better balance from here on out," Thomas's gaze refocused on the camera, "And to all of you out there-"

"Wait," Janus found himself saying. "Good lord, I might actually be considering it,"

"What?"

"If you truly want to strive to make me feel listened to, I- I'd like it to be halfway,"

"What do mean by that-?" Roman started but quickly cut himself off as Janus began to take off his glove.

"I know this might feel... unnecessary but I would still like to be on an even playing field with you all, even if it makes me a bit uncomfortable," Janus explained haltingly, flexing his fingers experimentally.

"Oh, Vill, you don't have to if you don't want to," Patton said, concern laced in between his words. The others nodded along with him, clearly in the same boat. But Janus lifted his bare hand, motioning them to silence.

Patton quieted, staring at him with a furrow in his brow.

He took a deep breath and held up his right hand right by his face, as though he was under oath.

"My- my name is Janus," He stated before quickly flicking his eyes at everyone's expressions and putting back on his glove, ignoring the clear shock and confusion from the others.

"J-Janice?" Roman snorted.

Patton and Logan glared at him. "Why's that so funny?" Thomas said with an edge in his voice.

"W-well-" Roman noticed the flash of hurt that passed through Janus's eyes and changed his answer, "-because, um, it's... not,"

Patton hummed, "It's not what I was expecting, to be honest, but I like it!" He commented brightly.

"The name comes from Roman mythology, correct?" Logan asked. Janus nodded, too stunned by the positivity to respond.

"It was... unexpected-" Roman said, shifting his weight on his feet, "-but it must have taken a lot of trust to tell us that... Janus."

Janus gave him a slight smile as Thomas began saying his pre-end card monologue. Something about learning new things about yourself and how the 'bad' things about yourself can have pros about them at times.

In truth, he wasn't paying much attention, he was busy being confused over the warm fuzzy feeling in his chest that came after the fact.

Oh god, did he have a lot to tell Virgil and Remus.

[faejilly]

Malec, 10

10. Anniversary Celebration [X]��I am uh, really sorry about this very loose interpretation of ‘celebration’. aka the exact opposite of one. 

#MCD warning (before the fic starts, but also the only thing this is about) 

I’m mostly ignoring the whole Inquisitor/Alicante thing from the finale because… well, because I can? They lived in NYC.

Except for the first one, still busy putting out metaphorical fires as the Shadow World adjusted after Valentine and Lilith and Jonathan, helping the Clave rebuild into something at least a bit better than the last few times, they’d always taken time off for their anniversary, always celebrated it in New York, always made sure to be home. 

This was the first anniversary, after, and Alec couldn’t bear the thought of it, of NYC’s bright lights and loud voices surrounding him now that he was alone.

He’d always known he might lose Magnus because he couldn’t keep the balance of their private lives steady against the pressure of their public ones, always knew he might fall down and fail Magnus one too many times… he’d never once let himself consider simply out-surviving him. 

Warlocks didn’t age, could barely get sick, and Magnus was too bright and powerful to be easy to kill by violence or accident.

But no one was invulnerable.

Not even Magnus Lightwood-Bane. 

It hadn’t even been a Greater Demon or anything, just bad luck and bad timing and a scuffle between a panicked Warlock and a young Nephilim and one too many uridezus in the shadows.

Alec moved to Alicante after the funeral, somewhere as different as possible, somewhere close to what family he had left; Izzy was head of the Clave’s R&D departments, and Clary was still arguing with every single Clave policy that she hadn’t yet managed to drag into the 21st Century.

(Clary reminded him a bit of Imogen at her best, right before she’d died, steel and spark and a well-hidden heart; he was never going to tell anyone that thought. He might not even have told Magnus, if he could…)

Clary and Izzy had both been worried, when he said he’d be going ‘out’ for the day, but they hadn’t said anything.

Izzy especially hadn’t needed to, he could see it in her eyes, the fear that he wouldn’t come back, now that he didn’t have an anchor anymore, didn’t have Jace or Magnus; she still didn’t realize that she had always been just as important to him, so important he hadn’t needed any extra ties to bind them together, to make it some sort of “official” for other people.

He didn’t know of any other way to tell her that she’d believe, anything beyond the way they’d lived their lives, so he just kissed the top of her head, her hair catching against his lips. She was dyeing it a lovely purple-blue this month, but for all she could stop the natural grey from showing, it felt different, thicker, coarser, in contrast to the way the skin around her eyes was softer, thinner and fragile.

Magnus’ hair and skin had never changed, not in almost forty years.

Nothing about him had changed, except his smile, which only got warmer and softer, except his eyes, which got darker as he watched Alec age, as he knew their time was growing shorter.

Neither of them had ever planned for this.

Well. Magnus had planned, they’d both planned, they had updated wills and everything, but neither of them had ever really believed… 

Alec sighed, and let himself relax into his chair, his toes digging into the sand as he stared up at the stars scattered through the sky above him, listened to the sound of the ocean rolling in and out only a few yards past his feet. 

They’d always loved this beach, for whenever they got a few days free. Some tiny little island off most of the shipping routes in Indonesia. Not near where Magnus had grown up, but still almost home, or what home could have been in a better world.

Clary had taught Alec the portal rune, after Magnus…

She taught him bits at a time, spread it out over about a week, so she never actually drew the whole rune herself. It was a method she’d mastered over the years, until almost every Nephilim who’d come through the New York Institute knew the half of the Alliance Rune that they’d need to draw on themselves.

(She’d taught the other half to the Downworlders directly, so it would always be their choice, never up to only a Shadowhunter.)

She never shared the Portal rune though, said she wanted to keep the Clave at least a little humble, make them pay the Warlocks for their trouble.

Magnus had laughed, and kissed her cheek… and talked most of the Warlocks around the world into adding a commission charge to their Portals, and giving the total to Clary each year on her birthday. 

(The first year her eyes had widened and she’d missed the chair trying to sit down, landing on the floor with her hand over her mouth. Alec was pretty sure it was the only time he’d ever seen her speechless.)

She’d used it to set up a referral network, safe houses and foster parents, counselors and doctors and cops who knew about the Shadow World. She spent most of her time on it now, (in-between her daily arguments with the current Counsel and Inquisitor), now that she’d retired from field work.

Alec huffed out a breath, and closed his eyes. He couldn’t focus. Didn’t really want to, didn’t want to… 

He opened them up again, rather than let himself remember Magnus again, how he’d looked when…

It was better to remember him from before.

“I miss you.” Alec blinked until the stars came back into focus. “I don’t know how to do this. Don’t know how to be, anything, without you here.”

Especially today. 

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the small box that had been poking into his side. He traced the edges, but didn’t open it. He couldn’t decide if it was a comfort or not, that the present he’d ordered for their anniversary had arrived right on time, as if he still had someone to give it to, still had…

As if he still had Magnus.

He’d always still have Magnus in his heart, but on days like today that didn’t help. He put the box back in his pocket. It was just a charm for Magnus’ collection, a silver and gold lucky cat waving its paw. Their anniversary had always been more about spending time together than presents.

“How terrible of me is it that for all I’d never wanted to leave you, to make you feel like this, I was glad I wouldn’t have to do the very thing I kept asking you to do, would never have to learn how to live on without you?” Alec watched the sky blur as tears welled up, didn’t even bother to try and wipe them away. “I wanted you to learn how to be happy again, but I can’t… I can’t imagine ever doing that myself.” It had been a bit of a guilty comfort over the years, in fact, knowing that he wouldn’t have to try.

Showed what he’d known. 

At least I won’t have to try for as long as you would have, Magnus. 

He snorted. That was awful, and the only person who would have laughed at the desperate dark humor of it all with him was dead. 

He swallowed, closed his eyes and leaned forward, trying to keep the ache in his chest from spreading so far he’d break apart from it. 

He’d promised, and he was trying, he was, but he didn’t know how. 

‘You don’t have to know, darling.’ He could still hear Magnus’ voice every time he closed his eyes, knew what his hand would feel like as he rubbed Alec’s spine to try and soothe him, still almost felt the weight of him on the other side of the bed when he tried to sleep. ‘You just have to keep trying. You’re better at that than anyone I’ve ever known.’ 

“Only when I had you to help,” Alec whispered. It was probably a bad sign he kept having one-sided conversations with his dead husband, but at least he’d managed to only have them in private. 

At least he knew they weren’t real.

“I’m a mess, but not that much of a disaster.”

Yet.

“I’m afraid, Magnus.” He didn’t want to let anyone down, the people who were still around, or the ones that were already gone, but. “There’s only so many times I’ll be able to pick myself back up again on my own.”

‘That’s fine. As many as you can is good enough.’ 

Alec smiled. He sighed, and leaned back again. He let his hand fall, swiped down the leg of the chair until he found his bottle of beer. He lifted it up, a toast to the sky, to everything beyond it. 

To everyone he missed. 

“As long as I can.” He took a sip. “You always were nicer to me than I ever managed to be to myself. Nicer than I deserved.”

His lips twitched as he pictured Magnus rolling his eyes. ‘No such thing, Alexander.’

“To another year of your memory, of my life.” He sighed. “I’ve got a few more tries in me, I guess. For Izzy, for you. Even for Clary.”

‘Not for yourself?’ 

Alec didn’t bother to answer that one, not even in his own head. “I love you.”

‘I love you, too.’

He lifted the bottle and tilted his head all the way back, finished the last of his drink. Until next year. 

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 209

This is the “Fuck All Cameras” Episode, which is kind of awesome, but also a little outdated in this age of smartphones.    If Piccolo blew up my phone just to keep me from taking pictures of his friends, that’d be really inconvenient.    My boarding pass for the flight home would be on there, for example.   

We open on this dude, who’s just doing martial arts stunts for a crowd of bystanders.   Who is he?   We never find out, but he does look pretty cool.  

This somewhat less cool-looking dude shoves him out of the way before we can learn anything about him, and this reporter lady starts interviewing him instead.   

So it’s the 25th Tenkaichi Budokai and Videl’s here to enter, but she also specifically wants to fight Gohan, so she’s trying to find him.     Instead she runs into Sharpner, who for some reason is now madly in love with Videl.    I mean, I don’t blame him, Videl’s awesome and all, but we saw none of this in Sharpner’s previous appearances.   He sat next to her in school, so I guess he was trying to get close to her until he was ready to shoot his shot.    But now he’s wearing a suit and offering her a bouquet of roses, so this seems awfully sudden.

Basically, Sharpner’s throwing out everything he knows to try, and he can’t even get Videl to turn around.    This is downright painful to watch.    Some dork probably told Sharpner to “just tell her how you feel” and here he is doing it and he’s going down in flames.   You can make the argument that his approach here is kind of crappy, but it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t have a chance here and he never did.   Videl didn’t cut her hair for Sharpner, she did it for the boy who taught her how to fly.    There’s no topping that, and he doesn’t even know that’s what he’s up against.   

I don’t know, I feel for Sharpner here.   That feels weird to say, because he’s presented as kind of a dick, but he’s not that bad.    Yeah, he tried to pick on Gohan a little, but by the end of the day he respected him for being tougher than he looks.   Vegeta beat the shit out of Gohan multiple times, and everyone loves that guy.   I’m not saying Sharpner “deserves” Videl or anything, but it sucks that he clearly worked up a lot of courage to make this big play for her affections, only to find out that he’s a bit player in someone else’s story.   

Likewise, this little girl overheard Sharpner’s invitation to go to some stand that sells fruit juice, and she’s smitten.    Sharpner’s the handsomest guy she’s ever seen, he’s really old, like maybe ten.   He’s offering to buy her juice and she’s taking him up on it.    Apple, please!     But alas, he wasn’t talking to her, and she’s just a bit player in his story, just as he is for Videl’s.   

This is why I don’t respect people who just blow this story off as being nothing but guys screaming at each other for ten episodes.   Yes, it has that.    It makes time for that.  But there’s also a lot of exploration of the human condition in this thing.  You just have to be willing to root around for it.   

Now, let’s hurry up so we can talk about the Punching Machine.

This shot of Goku strolling through the tournament grounds is awesome.   He’s got his best friend and his grown-up son with him, it’s just really great to see.    The funny thing is, Goku’s only been absent from the show for a handful of episodes, but it still feels like it’s been seven whole years.    It’s just awesome to have him back, and in his old stomping grounds, ready to kick some ass and hug some children.

Trunks isn’t sure what to make of Goku, but he thinks his own dad is stronger.  Goten replies that Gohan always said Goku was the “strongest in the universe”, which is weird because Gohan was demonstrably stronger than Goku before he died.    Modesty’s one thing, but it’s strange that Gohan would just flat-out say something like that.    I mean, Gohan honestly had no idea that he had surpassed Goku until Goku asked him to fight Cell.  Could it be that he still can’t accept his superiority on that day, even after all this time?

Goku can’t get used to seeing Krillin with hair.    He asks why he stopped shaving it, and 18 walks by.   Well, it’s not because 18 likes the hair better.   She shaved his head in Res F and seemed to like him better that way, or at least that was my take.  

Then Goku finally notices 18 and he’s all “What’s she doing here?”  

And Krillin’s like “Me, Goku.   She’s doing me here.   That’s your answer.”

Goku’s all “How’d you have a baby with a robot?” and Krillin has to explain that 18 was never a robot, just a human with cybernetic enhancements.    This is a polite way of saying 18 has reproductive organs.    This feels like a bit of a retcon to me.   19 and 20 had entire chunks of their bodies chopped off, and they appeared to be wholly metallic, except for some fluid that might have been blood, and Dr. Gero’s human brain.    17 and 18 claimed to be modified humans, like Gero/#20, but we never saw either of them take any heavy damage, so it was never clear how much of them was still human.    At the time, it didn’t especially matter, but once 18 settled down with Krillin and had a baby, it was worth clarifying that this was possible for her.   But if she had been in some epic battle and half of her face got ripped off, she’d probably turn out to be metal underneath, and the implication would be that she was just a brain in a robot body like Gero.  It just depends on what direction the character went in.  Schrödinger’s uteurs.

Later, Gohan runs into Videl, but he explains to her that he’s entered as the Great Saiyaman, so she has to call him that for the whole day.   Then she shows off her flying ability to him, but she gets kind of frustrated that she can’t keep up with him.

Then Sharpner runs into them, and he quickly gets the impression that Videl is sweet on this Great Saiyaman person, if that is his real name, which it isn’t.

Gohan tries to leave, probably because he’s afraid Sharpner might recognize him from school, but Videl decides to play along.  She doesn’t actually tell Sharpner that she’s dating Great Saiyaman, but she doesn’t deny it either.    You can tell from the way she smiles that she enjoys watching him think about it.   

Also, when the tournament contestants are summoned to the preliminaries, she takes Gohan’s arm in hers, just to twist the knife.   Gohan’s even more unnerved by this, because, as Uncle Raditz once told him, he’s one of the mighty Saiyans too.

Speaking of Raditz, is that him posing in his underwear for a bunch of fans?    Is that Luffa on the far left?     Computer, zoom in sector 4 and enhance!

I mean, it’s not the standard color, and I’m not even 100% sure that’s supposed to be a woman, but the skin tone and the swagger are there.    This isn’t a fan, either.   You can tell by the gym bag she’s carrying....... which must contain her usual fighting clothes.    It’s perfect.    Anyway, she’s here to scold Raditz for skipping Tail Day.  

So this reporter and camera crew are trying to get interviews with the contestants, but Vegeta and Piccolo blow them off.

Goku’s more accomodating, but they don’t understand what he means when he says he’s dead and he’s only visiting for the day. 

And that’s when Piccolo gets fed up and starts blowing up cameras.    Maybe he just doesn’t want Goku explaining the afterlife to the media?   

Then we see this dude signing autographs... Is this Jonathan Joestar?    

I mean, am I on drugs today?   This episode is full of cameos.    I came for the exploding cameras, but I stayed for the JoJo references and OC photobombs.

Meanwhile, Sharpner has made it his business to unmask Great Saiyaman and expose his identity to the world.  Not sure how or why that would improve his standing with Videl, but I think at this point he’s just upset and this is the only outlet he has for his anger.    I would give him credit for not stalking Videl or anything weird like that, but that may be more self-preservation than discretion.    Videl would kick his ass in two seconds and he knows it.  

The Z-Fighters all assemble in the area for the preliminaries, where all the other competitors are.   A bunch of them are working out with weights to pass the time.    I really don’t get that.    This just seems like a bad time to lift, you know?    Also, why bring dumbbells with you.   You have to lug them around the whole time, check them on the flight, etc.  

On the other hand, I totally get that guy on the left who’s stone cold taking a nap.   I guess this is why I never had any talent for combat sports.

Hey, guess who it is?   It’s the World Tournament Announcer!    He’s still hosting this thing, and he’s delighted to see Goku, Krillin, and Piccolo return.   As far as he’s concerned, these events are downright dull without awesome guys like these to make them cool.   WTA’s gotten spoiled on gonzo super brawls, and now regular fighting just doesn’t do it for him anymore.  

So the funny thing about all of this is that WTA is one of the few people who know that Goku and his friends beat Cell, and not Mr. Satan.   King Furry figured it out, based on his recollection of Goku fighting King Piccolo, and he announcer knows it because he witnessed Goku’s battle with Piccolo Junior.   That, and WTA watched Mr. Satan win the 24th Budokai, which must not have been nearly as impressive as the Goku/Piccolo battle from the 23rd.  

Also, WTA is thrilled to see Goku’s brought even more cool dudes to join the action.  He doesn’t understand Goku’s halo, but he still hasn’t made sense of Krillin’s resurrection from back in the day, so by now he’s just given up on trying to figure it out.   He only asks that Piccolo doesn’t blow up the ring again, and Piccolo’s all “We’ll see,” which is probably exactly what WTA wanted to hear.    Yeah, he doesn’t want the ring destroyed, but he likes the idea that it could happen at any time with this crew.    Piccolo’s a master showman.  

Does WTA remember that Piccolo’s the same guy who tried to conquer the world?   He revealed himself at the 23rd Budokai, but the announcer doesn’t seem to remember, or maybe he figured out that Piccolo turned face by the Cell Games.   

In any event, Gohan is pleased to see that there’s at least one person who knows and respects his father’s greatness.   

Meanwhile, Sharpner tries to jump on Gohan from one of the rooftops, hoping to pull off his sunglasses, but Gohan bends down to pick up something at the last second, so it goes pear-shaped in a hurry.

Holy fuck he was picking up Captain Ginyu!   This episode is truly a cavalcade of stars!    

Also, Sharpner hit the pavement so hard he cracked it, and yet he’s still alive and unhurt, which lends to my theory that even ordinary people in Dragon Ball are much, much stronger than real-world people.   Bulma could kick Brock Lesnar’s ass, is what I’m saying.  He’d F5 her and she’d just jump back up and bitchslap him so hard that it’d break his neck.   The cops couldn’t arrest her for murder because she’d be too strong for their feeble handcuffs.  

Later, Sharpner gets a kid to pull off Gohan’s sunglasses while he lurks nearby with the camera.   It’s too fast for him to recognize him on sight, but he knows the camera got a good shot, but then Piccolo destroys it, along with every other camera in the vicinity.    So that takes care of Sharpner.   

Okay, just to explain for younger readers, back in the day cameras relied on film, which had to be chemically developed before you could see the picture you took.   So that’s why Sharpner didn’t just look at the photos he’d taken before it was too late.   I think camera film is still common knowledge, but I’m trying to make sure this blog post will make sense in case someone finds it on archive.org in 2030.  

Anyway, Piccolo just flat out explains that he destroyed every camera in the area.  There’s a real Ron Swanson energy to Piccolo.    “I don’t like flash photography so I murdered all of the cameras.   You’re welcome.”   Seriously, though, he did it just so Gohan can fight without fear of his disguise falling off.   He’s a good friend. 

So, in past tournaments, the preliminaries were this single-elimination tournament to choose eight fighters for the quarterfinals.    This time around, they have a much faster system: The Punch Machine.     Basically, everyone has to punch a device that measures how hard you hit, and the top 15 scorers get to participate in the tournament.    The 16th slot automatically goes to Mr. Satan, since he’s the defending champion. 

While the Z-Fighters are amused and/or disgusted by Satan’s antics, I think it’s pretty awesome how he comes out, holds up his title belt, and greets the other fighters by asking “Who among you will surpass me?!”     I think in the dub he shouts “Who wants this?!” referring to his title belt.    He knows one of these guys might beat him.   If not today, then some day, and for all his glory-seeking, he accepts that.    Plus, he gets the crowd all fired up.    Goku just isn’t built that way. 

So Mr. Satan does the first punch, which I guess is meant to establish a frame of reference for the machine.   It scores him at 137, and I assume everyone thinks no one else can top that, since he’s thought to be the strongest man in the world.   

While the gang lines up for their turn, Goku asks if Tien and “them” are coming.    He really doesn’t know Chiaotzu’s name, does he?    Is he using “them” to refer to Launch too?    Or is he just not sure of Chiaotzu’s gender?    Maybe he thinks Tien married a robot too.    He has no idea.

Anyway, Krillin explains that Tien probably won’t be here.   “No, dude, he just looked at us and said ‘I’m leaving now.   Goodbye forever.’  And then we never saw him again.   Pretty sure he’s not coming.”

All ofthese girls are here to cheer on Videl for when she takes her turn on the Punch Machine.   Are they friends from school?  Where’s Erasa, then?   It seems a bit odd that they’re allowed back here, unless they’re entered in the tournament too, and they don’t appear to be dressed for it. 

Anyway, this Punch Machine business really annoys Vegeta.   Is that Nappa behind him?   Wow.

18 takes her turn, and she tries to hold back, but she ends up getting a score of 774.    Whoops. 

Krillin scolds her for this, because now the officials think the machine is broken.    She tries again and gets like a 206, which is still suspicious, but at least they can sort of buy that. 

So the others just sort of barely tap it to get believable scores, but even so, they’re still higher than what the officials would have expected.

This is especially shocking to Videl, who hasn’t met the Z-Fighters yet.

So then it’s finally time for Vegeta’s turn.    As it turns out, this marks the start of an epic battle, one of my all-time favorites.    You don’t see a lot of talk about this one, but Vegeta vs. Punch Machine is a real classic.   Over the course of the next six episodes we’ll--

Uh...

...

PUNCH MACHINE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Videl is stunned.    Punch Machine was her godfather, but now it’s just a bunch of scrap metal.    And that red cushiony part on the front.   

Look at this heartless bastard.   He killed Punch Machine and he doesn’t even care.  It had one more day till retirement.    I... I can’t go on anymore.   

Yeah, that’s the Great Saiyaman Saga.    Not so great, actually.   They should call him Stand-Around-And-Let-Punch-Machine-Get-Murdered Saiyaman, because that’s what actually happened.    I guess “justice” is only for humans and cat people now.    Way to drop the ball, Saiyaman.