#but there had been about six years of wall-to-wall aliens

[plaguedocboi]

Waterfalls! These gorgeous, powerful features of nature have been oddly lacking in my past lists, I think in part because their danger has always seemed more “obvious” to me. But doing the research for this list has reawakened my phobia of the water. Some of the later entries (numbers 9 and 10 especially) brought back anxieties that I thought I had gotten over long ago, but it was kind of thrilling. Like watching a particularly scary horror movie. Let’s get into it!

1. Underwater Waterfall, Mauritius

No, it’s not really a waterfall. It’s just an optical illusion caused by sand falling off the island’s slope down into the deeper water below. But it looks cool and scary, and the drop-off is 2.5 miles deep so that’s pretty impressive and I think it deserves at least a mention.

2. Blood Falls, Antarctica

There’s nothing particularly dangerous about this one, it just looks incredibly creepy. Obviously, it’s not actually blood, it’s just water that’s very rich in iron. But the really fascinating part of this waterfall is that its source seems to be a subglacial lake that contains a unique microbial ecosystem which has been isolated for two million years! These microbes are like nothing else we’ve ever observed in nature before. They live in an incredibly cold and extremely saline lake, and metabolize sulfur and iron ions with no oxygen present. They are being used as a model to study what life on ice-covered alien planets could be like.

3. Khone Falls, Laos

This waterfall is not nearly as famous as some of the others on this list, which is surprising because it’s the widest waterfall in the world, with an average width of six miles! Although not particularly tall, it is the second most powerful waterfall in the world, more than double the power of Niagara Falls! The Khone falls divide the Upper and Lower Mekong river, making travel by boat between the north and south impossible. What makes it kind of unsettling to me is that during the rainy seasons the falls are basically swallowed up by the river, turning them from a spectacular waterfall to a series of massive rapids.

4. Huntington Gorge, Vermont

When water levels are low, this river is a popular and scenic swimming spot, and the canyon has an almost otherworldly quality with its unique bends and overhangs. Unfortunately, these very features are what makes it so dangerous. Much like the infamous Strid, the gorge is full of holes, steep drop-offs, and powerful currents hidden beneath the water, which can suck people in and trap them against the cliff walls. Over fifty people have died here since the 1950s, and many more have been injured. With proper precautions, one can safely explore the gorge and swim in the river, but don’t forget that this water has swallowed up many people before you.

5. Victoria Falls, Zambia

I’m sure most of you already know about Mosi-oa-Tunya, more widely called Victoria Falls, as the largest waterfall in the world. Formed as the Zambezi river pours into a series of massive gorges, this curtain of water spans nearly a mile and falls 300 feet with such force that columns of rising spray can be seen for miles around. Despite this, the pools around the lip of the falls can be relatively tame, and locals have fished while balancing on the edge of the cliff for generations. The safest and most famous of these fishing holes is the Devils Pool, which allows you to literally swim right up to the edge of the world’s biggest waterfall. The pool is actually very safe when the correct precautions are taken, and I can only find one death attributed to the pool specifically, when a tour guide in 2009 fell while trying to help a man who had slipped and was dangling off the edge (and, honestly, I was expecting a lot more deaths given the amount of clickbait articles advertising it as the most deadly swimming hole in the world). Although that was the only death from the Devils Pool, there have been many other deaths at Victoria Falls, mostly tourists who underestimate the power of the river or get too close to the edge. So if you ever visit this spectacular waterfall, please observe it from a safe distance and follow all the rules.

6. Huka Falls, New Zealand

This is not a traditional waterfall, but rather a series of small waterfalls along a narrow stretch of the Waikato river, creating an incredibly turbulent chasm that ends in a whirlpool. The 300-foot wide river is funneled into a 50-foot wide stream, causing a torrent of water that flows at a rate of 58,000 gallons per second. Obviously, this is not an area that you should get in the water, but not everyone takes that advice. There have been multiple deaths at this waterfall, and a few narrow escapes, including two swimmers who, incredibly, survived after trying to raft down the falls on pool toys. Please, for the love of god, don’t do that.

7. Niagara Falls, US/Canada

These falls are the only place on this list that I’ve visited, and I can tell you they are certainly an incredible sight, but also rather intimidating due to their sheer size and power. These three massive waterfalls are fed by the Great Lakes and, combined, have nearly 700,000 gallons of water thundering down every second. There is also a permanent whirlpool in the river that has existed for over 4,000 years and reaches depths of 125 feet! Besides being huge and awe-inspiring, these waterfalls are known for their appeal to daredevils who have gone over the edge in barrels or, in one case, a giant rubber ball. But these famous success stories are punctuated with tragedy. Roughly 20-30 people die at Niagara Falls every year. Most of these, sadly, are suicides, but others are failed attempts to replicate the successful daredevils of the past, and others are accidental. An estimated 5,000 bodies were recovered at the bottom of the falls between 1850 and 2011.

8. Murchison Falls, Uganda

Also known as Kabalega Falls, this is the worlds most powerful waterfall. Formed as the Nile River flows from Lake Kyoga to Lake Albert, this waterfall is so strong it literally causes the ground to shake around it. Here, the Nile is constricted from a river nearly 400 ft wide to a passage only 20 ft wide, creating an incredibly turbulent and violent tunnel of water that tears its way into the pool below at 79,000 gallons per second. And this is no ordinary pool. Waiting below the falls is the highest concentration of large crocodiles observed anywhere in the world, waiting for any dead or stunned animals caught in the falls to wash into their lair. Although the waterfall and surrounding park are now a beautiful tourist attraction and wildlife refuge, the history of the falls includes tales of human and animal sacrifices, thrown in alive to appease the gods that some believed resided beneath the raging waters.

9. Bath Fountain, Jamaica

This is just a random little waterfall along a hiking trail, but the video triggered some intense bathophobia in me for the first time in a while. Like, I was scared to get in the shower after watching this. Proceed with caution:

10. Kipu Falls, Hawaii

This one scares me because, despite my research, I can’t actually figure out what the hell is happening here. Multiple people have died here; all tourists, all drownings, all of seemingly very unclear causes. Kipu Falls is a beautiful and popular swimming spot, and locals frequently dive off the top of the falls with seemingly no danger. However, five deaths over the course of five years from 2006-2011 challenged its reputation of being a safe swimming hole. All the articles I could find seem to repeat the same information; there is no current in the pool and the waterfalls are not especially powerful. Despite these established facts, all five deaths were the same. Someone jumped in, surfaced, and then were dragged back down to the bottom of the pool and held there until they died. This has resulted in a lot of speculation, including everything from a hidden whirlpool current to evil spirits. I’m just. Really unsettled by the lack of information on this one. Every article I found was published in 2011 and I couldn’t find any updates, which hopefully means people aren’t still dying here, but… what the fuck???? Was going on????? Sorry guys this one might not be as dangerous as some of the others but it freaks me out a lot so it’s getting a higher rating. I want to know what’s going on but I’m sure not going to investigate it myself.

[typewritingyip]

The Arcturus Missions

Part Seven - Communication Break

Part Six

———

Radio waves were the first sign that the intergalactic community got that there was intelligent life on Earth, as they traveled infinitely through space, language and music lightly introduced to scientists of several societies. Special equipment was designed to refine the weakened waves and check the sounds that originally traveled over them. It was interesting to learn about a civilization so far away.

Radio waves were a common communication tool across several planets, whether for entertainment or military operations. It was considerably easy to maintain and made communications between groups on the same planet more convenient. Most societies kept track of a certain number of channels to prevent conflict, you’d be stupid to have espionage over radio.

In roughly the area of space that Cybertron sits, the radio waves from Earth were from around twenty or more years ago, and were going though the systems for re-mastering the original audio. Unfortunately those who chose to listen to other worlds radio waves, it was now playing the original hits of the 1980’s, just before the Quintessons attacked.

—

Hound was standing there, staring through a wall in the general direction of the communication while the others lost their shit behind him, “He can’t actually mean Jazz, not like pilot Jazz, right?” Sideswipe stands and starts pacing, looking over to Sunstreaker, “We heard him over the delayed messages, we knew he made it to this planet. But there is no way he’s still alive.” Sunstreaker leans his head back against the wall, “It’s been five years and we’re the first group Mecha has bothered to send to find him, five years. Stuck with a bunch of aliens who have similar tech to our own.” It hung in the air for a moment, “Could they be fighting the same things we are?” To be perfectly honest, none of them had thought of that before.

What if those things were fighting the same thing they were, on this weird planet that was covered in metal and rained acid, fighting the tentacle monsters of nightmares, “Even if they are, our mission is to stop them from attacking Earth. Was to find Jazz and stop them from attacking Earth.” Hound turns to the others, who were all in states of shock, “Our focus needs to be on the mission, if we can actually find Jazz then that’s step one done.” Sideswipe stands, moving over to Hound, “If we get Jazz, we might actually be able to finish this mission.” Breakdown nods slowly, finally letting the hum of his cannon die, “That is if we can get off this planet, with the Odyssey.” “If these things trust Jazz, then I’m sure he can talk them into helping us.” Sunstreaker pops his knuckles lightly which causes his suit to creak painfully, Sideswipe winces and swats at his brother, “Don’t do that.” “Then stop biting your lip.” And they started to bicker as Breakdown got up, moving over to Hound.

“What do you think of this, really?” Breakdown leans towards Hound, they’d stayed off comms since Prowl’s abrupt appearance and disappearance; “I don’t like it, if these things are spread out attacking multiple planets? How are we going to find where their coming from and not where their attacking.” Breakdown hummed and shook his head, his visual feeds starting to pick up the beings heading towards them, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?” He sounded unsure of the saying but Hound nods with a smile, resting his hand on Breakdown’s shoulder, “You’re not wrong. But if these things are keeping Jazz hostage or worse, then they are the enemy.” Breakdown nods and keeps watching as the figures drew closer. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe standing, joining them near one of the walls.

—

The transmissions were near and clear, filled with typical battle chatter and sounds of explosions. Even if no one could make out exactly what they were saying, the same strange mechs as Jazz had activated the defense system of a solar farm off the coast of the sea of rust. It typically defended the area if the Quintessons landed in the sea or for the regular vermin that lived out there, it was over kill for the scraplets though.

It had been Blaster who’d picked up the signal and sent it to Prowl, knowing he was able to loosely translate the strange language. At which point Prowl had been in a meeting with Mirage, he’d gone from going over the recent reports to standing stock still, staring at nothing. For a click, Mirage let it slide, when Prowl continued to stare at nothing though, it was time to act. Standing and moving over to his commander, Mirage edges his way in front of him, “Commander, Cybertron to Porwl, sir.” He waved his servos in front of him, “Sir?” Prowl just about jumped out of his plating, “Mirage, I apologize, I was receiving a communication from Blaster.” Nodding slightly, Mirage steps back to give Prowl space. He watches in almost shock as Prowl drags his servos down his faceplates, the only time he looked like that was when it involved Jazz, “Sir, is it Jazz?” Mirage couldn’t help but ask, always finding their relationship so intriguing.

Prowl’s scowl was more typical, making Mirage smirk a bit, “No, it’s not Jazz, but it’s more of his kind.” That made the smirk fall and sent his spark to his peds, “More of them?” Jazz was a unique mech, needing more recharge but able to take more pain than any cybertronian. He was already becoming a mythic legend on the field, more of them could help keep the Quints off Cybertron. The gears were already turning in his processor. For Prowl though, who knew what Jazz really was, he was horrified. One of them, this Hound, had given a pilot number like Jazz did when trying to contact home. More pilots sent on a mission to their demise for the greater good of their planet, more who missed their families and home. Prowl could understand that, he’d have given just about anything to save Praxus, but he’d learned that giving your life for a cause didn’t mean much in the long run.

Raising a hand, Prowl silenced Mirage’s tirade, “Their out at the rust sea and likely are to attack anyone they come upon, since our weapons hit them first.” “Scrap.” Prowl nodded again before starting out of the room, Mirage hot on his peds, “I’ll need to contact Jazz along the way to alert him, their is a potential that he knew these other— mechs.” Biting his glossa, he nearly swore aloud at himself having to reframe from saying pilots. Mirage nods and falls in at Prowl’s side, “Do they know were coming?” Prowl delays for a second, “Not yet.” Nodding again, Mirage falls silent as Prowl contacts the strangers.

Out in the sunshine, they hurried into a transformation sequence, Prowl turning on his siren briefly to clear a bit of the traffic. Iacon was a sizable distance from the edge of the rust sea, the specific solar far that was current being attacked was on the edge of Polyhex, if they got on a high speed transport they could be there within clicks. Mirage stayed tight to Prowl’s bumper as they sped to the transport station, it wasn’t every day you got to meet other mechanicals; meeting Jazz has altered Prowl’s world so much and Mirage wanted a piece of that action.

They arrived at the station in record time and requested the fastest private transport, Prowl was still on comms so Mirage remained quiet, not wanting to be a distraction. Entering the transport, he took a seat away from Prowl and retrieved a datapad from his subspace, deciding to take the short amount of time they had on here to catch up on a report. Prowl glances up briefly before returning to stare towards nothing in particular, clearly deep in conversation with someone. His servo comes up to rub his jaw and Mirage has to hide a smile, he knew Prowl as speaking with Jazz. Jazz was the only mech who could make Prowl flustered, though it looked more exasperated than anything. Mirage sits back with his datapad, pausing only for a moment to read a message, swearing loudly, “The big yellow one took Beachcomber’s arm off.” Prowl looks up, “Fuck.” It was a moniker he’d picked up from Jazz but it often fit the situation.

—

Their sanctuary of the warehouse shook lightly as the approaching figures landed the transport, Hound adjust the grip on his gun lightly, fingers flexing, “Stay on your toes, we don’t know what they are.” It was a reminder that none of them needed. Hound was watching intently, eyes flicking between the displays on his visor, before pulling up an experimental piece of tech from Perceptor, turning the translator on in hopes it would eventually be able to discern their language. It was still a work in progress, the front liners back home all had them in hopes of learning the aliens language.

The twins were each shifting from foot to foot, both still splattered with the very pink fluid which had since dried to their plating. Breakdown kept turning down the command to reactivate his cannon, it clicking menacingly on his back and Hound stood straight with his gun held comfortably to his front. After several minutes, the rolling door in front of them opened and three mechs stood there, though one ran off once it was open.

Both had, odd, attachments to them. One painted reminiscently of older police vehicles and the other a very typical factory blue, but both had their odd features and neither was adorned with a facial shield. Each had a highly expressive and realistic facial unit, something that was often discussed back home to make the suits appear more friendly. Hound lightly raised his hand, lowering his gun, even though the one did not lower his cannon, he honestly couldn’t blame them. Clearing his throat slightly, Hound shifts his weight wanting to step forward but deciding against it, “Uh, hello there. We are Mecha pilots, from Earth.” The black and white mech raised his hand, clearing meaning to hold Hound off from talking further. Sideswipe leaned into his brother, “So, they don’t really know any English, do they?” “I doubt it.” Sunstreaker held his arms slightly up in a defensive position in case either chose to attack.

—

Standing there, Mirage knew they were talking in their strange language, he’d heard Jazz speak it several times but it was stressful to not know what they were talking about, “Any time Prowl, would love a translation.” All their heads whipped to him, visors glowing slightly brighter, “Their creatures must have been weird mecha to give them all visors.” He shifts back a bit, looking across them briefly though eyes landing on the green one, he started at the rifle hanging lightly from one hand, “A moment more Mirage, I am trying to get Jazz on the right signal.” “Jazz, is across the planet in Kaon with Megatron and the others dealing with the Quints there.” Prowl held his hand up again, annoyingly. Sometimes he wished his commander would just ask him to shut up, the green ones held tilted ever so slightly.

—

Static filled their comms, making them all wince and the twins tried to shield their ears, “Oh god, again?” Sideswipe was half bent over from the painful noise before the comm frequency clicked and fell silent, then the monotone voice spoke, “ID’s, now.” Hound sighed, it wasn’t the most friendly way of asking but he understood this man hardly spoke English before nodding slightly, “I’m Pilot 1124, Harold Jackson, call sign Hound.” The one he could only assume was Prowl nodded before turning his gaze to the next of the Arcturus crew, “I’m Pilot 2450, Sonny Salucci, callsign Sunstreaker.” “I’m Pilot 2451, Simon Salucci, ugly’s brother. Callsign Sideswipe.” Breakdown shifted uncomfortably before looking to Hound, who nodded, “I’m Pilot 1457, Oleksknder Kovalenko, callsign Breakdown.” There were several clicks and pops over the line, Hound winced and lightly rubbed one of his ears. The blue and white mech’s eyes widened, starting at the twins, Sideswipe shifted uneasily even as Prowl rested a hand on the other mechs shoulder.

A loud crash of sound filled their ears before the obvious sounds of fighting filled the comm line, “There is no way in hell that Hound would come on a dead end mission, it’s not possible.” Jazz’s voice filled their ears even as the clear sounds of his struggle joined the noise, “No way.” “That’s funny, because as you say, I am looking right at them.” Prowl’s voice joined Jazz’s, sounding much more relaxed than previously. Hound was staring at Prowl, taking a breath before finally speaking, “He would if he was looking for you.” There was a loud crash from the other side of the line, which Hound tried not to smile at, “Hey Hound.” “Hey Jazz.” He took a breath, relieved, stage one done.

“Holy shit, Jazz, hey!” Sideswipe turned away from the weird mechs and throw his hands up, likely smiling, “Fucking five years and all you can say is hey to Hound?” Both their laughter filled the comm line, it was more than a relief, it was more than they could hope for in the mission, “Where you at?” “Ah, you wont know where Kaon is, but we could use the help with the Quints.” Sideswipe stopped, tilting his head slightly and Hound cleared his throat again, “Quints?” There was another loud crash, “Ah, right. The aliens invading Earth have been attacking here too, for a hell of a lot longer. They’re the Quintessons, Quints for short.” Jazz paused, “They really need our help, the cybertronians aren’t quiet like us. Not people in mech suits, just mechs. What you see, is what they are.” He clearly sounded worried, “And they think we’re like them, only one who knows the truth for the moment is Prowler.” The mech across from them had his face plates turn a light shade of pink. Hound stared, in shock, for a while, “Well, we’ll need to move the Odyssey, then find Kaon I guess.” Prowl looked up at him, turning to the other one for a moment to say something in their strange language before motioning them out of the warehouse.

“Do we go with them?” Breakdown kept his voice down and off of comms, “Do we have any other choice?” Together, they followed Prowl out of their sanctuary.

———

A/N

Alright, did I work on this while my family was cooking Thanksgiving? Yes, was I supposed to be studying? Also yes, but they certainly did not need my help in the kitchen and I can study more now that it’s done.

I love seeing all your tags and comments, it’s been so great.

Tags!

@lunarlei68 @whirlywhirlygig @loop-hole-319 @pixillandjester @alek-the-witch @not-a-moose-in-disguise @goddessofwind8water @neurologicalglitch @dersereblogger @pixel-transformers @mrcrayonofdoom @wireplaces

And once again thank you to @keferon for this amazing AU.

[leo-muscle]

I’ve heard a little bit about this King Leon guy. Who does he think he is to call himself a king? Seems far to pretentious if you ask me. I wouldn’t be caught dead bowing to someone like that. Not in a million years.

Sure I’m the most basic looking white dude on the planet. My face gets lost in the crowd and my body is light enough to be blown by a breeze. But a king can’t change that, and I would like to see him or any of his subjects try to.

"Are you sure about that?" The bartender told you. You had just arrived on your vacation in Haiti, and the resort's bartender had decided to strike up a conversation with you over drinks. He was enormous, seven feet of pure surfer boy muscle, with a thick gut that was the very picture of strength. He would have been the most beautiful man you had ever seen, if you weren't in the middle of a massive rant.

"Oh, absolutely." You continued. "Whoever these 'kings' are, I don't want anything to do with 'em. Who are they to declare rule over the entire world, and who are we to listen to them?"

It was true, of course. Much of Africa, the British Isles, Central America, and even the islands you were now in had been united under the rule of these Kings. While many praised them for their novel social reforms and exponential increase to quality of life in their domains, many others, yourself included, remained attached to the old ways. Even this vacation was a scouting trip, to see if whatever propaganda these Kings were putting out was true.

"On the contrary, my friend, I am perfectly happy to listen to the rule of my King. You should have seen this island before King Kai came here. Homelessness, poverty... it's all been amended since he arrived."

"Really?" You asked, taking a big swig of your drink, savoring its tingle on your lips. "And NO one's uncomfortable being ruled by just one person?"

"People love King Kai. He is kind and just, like any good king should be. You'll see that soon enough." The bartender said.

"What do you mean by that?" You asked, your heart racing.

"Oh, nothing much. Just give it a few seconds."

"What are you-- UGH!" You doubled over, your skin on fire with a sensation entirely alien to you.

The bartender walked out from behind the bar, and soon, his magical hands went to work. With his kingly essence in your system, you could be molded into a respectable citizen of the world.

He started with your pecs, cupping them from behind as they burst through your tropical shirt with new strength. They were enormous, voluptuous pillows, jiggling with muscle and a thin layer of fat.

He then moved his hands along your shoulders, pumping them into cannonballs of strength. The moment his hands reached your arms, they pulled and pushed, leaving your twiggy biceps and forearms as but a fleeting memory, replacing them with pulsing, powerful cannons of strength. In awe, you flexed your right arm, forming a mound easily as big as a baseball if not more.

You moaned softly as King Kai's beautiful hands lightly traced a six-pack onto your stomach, each ab popping into existence, forming an impenetrable wall of strength.

Soon, his hands navigated south, one massive hand palming your flat ass, while the other grabbed your tiny three-inch cock. You moaned, long, low, and hard as both of his hands began to move out from your body, pulling your cock and ass with them. Your cheeks rounded out into a big, bouncy bubble butt, bigger than most women's. It shook with strength and sexuality with every slight movement you made, much like your cock, which had grown so big with the King's touch that no pair of pants could conceal your enormous bulge. His touch was electric on your shaft, causing you to pre almost endlessly.

Your mind was in heaven as he continued to your legs. Your cock was at full mast at its enormous eleven inches as he took his hands to your legs, and blew them up into corded steel pillars as big as any christmas ham. You moaned, your cock firing blanks as he looked you deep into your eyes, placing one hand to completely cover your currently-unchanged face.

"As much as I love my people, we cannot be a global community if all my citizens are homogenous." King Kai said. "Hmm, where should I send you..."

Your skin flickered through thousands of shades in a single moment, before settling on a tone a few shades darker than your original. Your hair darkened to black, and you instantly sprouted a thick dark mustache, and a chinstrap beard to match. Your eyes became narrower and monolid, your stare intensifying into a sexy smolder. As King Kai leaned in and kissed you, your bulk increased, and your muscle became padded with a thin sexy layer of fat.

"Cum." King Kai commanded you, his voice sexy enough to send you over the edge.

You had been reborn, a Vietnamese stud in the Carribean. Your brain was aflame with new neurons, making connections faster and better than ever before. You knew you had been improved, in every conceivable way. You were stronger, smarter, wiser, and you had no one but your new king to thank.

[sugar-softies]

Out of This World Gains

Feeder pov, contains stuffing and extreme weight gain

You should never have been nervous about starting your new job as a interplanetary diplomat.

For starters, you'd studied hard for years, you had degrees in xenolinguistics and extraterrestrial sociology, and if that wasn't enough you had your secret weapon.

See, making sure important alien diplomats, guests, and royalty had a good time on Earth was pretty simple thanks to one simple fact:

No one makes food like Earth makes food.

Most recently you'd been tasked with escorting two neptinites during a six month stay on good ol' terra firma, and already the effects of your hospitality were showing.

You woke Auran and Minxi around three in the afternoon, letting them sleep in the way they so loved to now. You remembered when they first got here and would be up and ready at eight am, their slender frames already dressed in crisp formal attire.

Now, you had to bribe them out of bed, and encourage them to change out of pajamas.

"Noooo, five more minutes..." Minxi whined, trying to hide under her blanket.

You informed her you'd brought doughnuts and she peeked back out from under the blanket with a curious trill. You dangled one above her face and chuckled as she reached for it, encountering trouble when her belly weighed her down.

You'd guess she was weighing in around 270 now, which was nothing compared to most of your guests at this point, but her species didn't gain weight easily and she was clearly thrown by how the added weight had affected her movement.

Auran needed a little more bribing. While Minxi ate doughnuts and tried to squeeze into clothes she'd had resized just last week, you had to roll Auran onto his back and start pressing doughnuts to his lips.

Auran's growth was... well, nothing short of impressive especially considering he came from a more slender species. 530lbs of lazy extraterrestrial flab- the frilled fans on either side of his face were beginning to become swallowed by fat, his tail had gotten so chubby he could no longer lift and wag it as he once could, his belly hung down to his knees even when standing.

It was no wonder he'd gotten this large though, he loved Earth food so much you were able to feed him while he was still waking up.

You were able to feed him two and a half boxes of doughnuts while he was still half asleep, and once his strange purple eyes finally opened you were able to plop the next box on his belly so he could help himself.

"Mmph... mornin'," he mumbled around a mouthful.

You patted his stomach fondly before going to help Minxi with her outfit.

She squeaked and whined and jumped as she tried to yank form fitting jumpsuit up past her shapely hips. "It's so small!" She huffed, trying again and gasping adorably as a ripping sound echoed through the room.

She blushed purple as she examined the large tear in the jumpsuit and then looked to you. "... I need comfort," she pouted dramatically.

You slid up behind her, lifting her belly and giving it a jiggle before reaching up to squeeze her round breasts, and assured her that you'd already placed an order for comfort in the form of burgers and fries, and they'd be here shortly.

She squealed with delight and hugged you. "We'll never fit back on the ship home, you're just going to have to roll us back to your place and feed us forever."

You laughed and told her you wouldn't mind that at all, which made her blush.

She was startled out of her cute expression when Auran belched loud enough to shake the walls. "Hey... little help?" He held up his hands.

You and Minxi went over, rolling him closer to the edge of the bed and then straining to help pull him up to his feet. Auran panted as if he'd done any of the work and then accidentally bumped you with his swaying belly as he went right for the jar of candies you refilled for them everyday and left on the dresser.

Your heart pounded as you watched him open the jar and tilt it towards his open mouth, and were glad you'd thought to remove all the wrappers. He gorged, pouring candy down his gullet, eyes glazed over. You'd heard Earth food could be a bit... addictive to some off planet species before but you'd never seen it like this...

After helping your charges get dressed and then helping them through a hearty fast food breakfast, it was time to get back on schedule.

You were supposed to show them a few historical sights, but after ten minutes of waddling, whining, and gasping for breath, your alien friends got distracted.

"What is that?" Minxi asked, her fans quivering with excitement as she sniffed the air and glanced over at the nearby restaurant.

You explained it was a buffet, and how it worked, and suddenly found yourself knocked on your ass as both of them pushed past you to get inside.

You sighed fondly as you paid for their entry and tried to guide them towards a table.

Minxi was eager to try everything she could, making several trips back and forth. You waited at the table as she did that, and wondered where Auran had gotten off to.

"Nn... helppp... I want more but-" Minxi tried to get up and her stuffed belly bumped the underside of the table. She hiccuped and tried to slide out of the booth but ended up groaning and rubbing her belly. "Too heavy..."

You smiled, heading over to fill up another few plates. When you returned, you sat down next to her and started hand feeding her.

Minxi's eyes glazed over and she trilled with sleepy delight as she ate everything she was offered. Her belly gurgled and groaned, and she had trouble keeping her eyes open as she continued to feast.

"M... more..." she breathed. "More? More..."

You chuckled and told her if she had anymore you wouldn't be able to get her out of the booth much less the door. You rubbed her belly to help her digest, assuring her you'd come back here again tomorrow. Her shirt had ridden up considerably, so you were able to feel her skin warm under your loving hands.

After you felt that Minxi was suitably handled, you decided you really needed to go find Auran. It wasn't too hard to find him, he'd sort of... attracted a crowd.

You gasped as you found the wreckage Auran had left behind: buffet trays emptied and tossed onto the floor, full sections completely emptied out, employees scrambling to clean up and refill.

Then there was Auran himself.

His belly was swollen, hiding his knees from view and squishing up against the counter as he ducked under the sneeze guard and simply grabbed handfuls of whatever food he came across, shoving it into his maw forcibly without stopping. It was clear he'd fallen prey to Earth food addiction, and you knew you had no chance of stopping this now. You'd just have to wait for him to run out of food or get too heavy to move.

You followed him as he waddled and shuffled from counter to counter, eating and eating and eating and eating-

At one point he stopped to catch his breath and burped. His eyes rolled back and he tried desperately to get one last chicken wing to his fat face as he fell completely onto his back with a loud thud that shook the restaurant.

You sighed, wondering how you were going to get him out of there, then noticed he was still trying desperately to feed himself.

Well, in for a penny... in for several hundred pounds.

You grabbed the tray he'd been eating from and, ignoring the onlookers that were being shooed off by the staff, started feeding him.

You couldn't tell if you were forced feeding him or not, because he kept moaning and turning his head as if to escape, but whenever you stopped he groaned for more. You could feel his stomach growing taut even under all the pudge, and his clothes were starting to rip into ribbons.

"So... full..." he gasped for breath, his belly weighing on his lungs.

You shushed him gently, and fed him another slice of cake.

You considered Auran and Minxi's stay on Earth to be successful because they didn't want to leave.

Not that they'd be able to get up and walk to the shuttleport on their own anyway...

"Nnmpf..." Auran chewed greedily as you fed him another slice of pizza. "Faster."

You shook your head fondly at his demands and reminded him that if he hadn't eaten himself into such a huge state then he'd be able to move his arms and hands with enough dexterity to feed himself.

Auran was in bed technically, although you couldn't see the mattress or shattered bed frame under his bulk. He was a melting pile of rolls of fat with a greedy ever open mouth.

Minxi wasn't there yet, but she was close behind.

She whined as she got wedged in the doorway, a popsicle in her mouth and a pair of shorts two sizes too small struggling to cover a growing ass. She braced her hands on either side of the door and tried to force herself through. You watched her attempts for awhile, and were somehow surprised when the doorframe simply... crumbled to accommodate her wide body.

Minxi grinned as she waddled to her own bed, every inch of her swaying side to side and jiggling incredibly as she plopped herself down on her ass. "Oooh you got the kind I like!" She wiggled her fingers before flipping open one of the pizza boxes. She started rolling the pizza into a burrito shape, which was her preferred method of eating them these days. "You're the best!" She giggled, taking a big bite and patting a belly that was only going to grow bigger and bigger...

[phoenixcatch7]

The Wayne doll house

Have some haunted doll au, since it's been bubbling away in my mind.

The bat cave is large and sprawling, many layers and tunnels and hollowed out cracks in the walls. It takes many years to fully reinforce to prevent stray kids from tripping into stagnant waters or fall down crags as he once did. The doll cave, as it becomes known, is in one of the deepest, darkest corners, one where the lights of the furnished caverns above don't reach.

It's one late night sitting at the computer when it suddenly occurs to Bruce that his first encounter with a doll was at the well entrance, many levels above.

There was nothing there when he went back.

-

The justice league stared at the subaru. The subaru, having no eyes, did not stare back.

The seven of them had just finished a very long, arduous mission, and narrowly escaped government censure after the base they'd been raiding had turned out to belong to some corrupt official. With the alert up, they couldn't escape through city airspace, or even in their hero suits.

So civilian it was.

Batman had hotwired some bloke's car while the rest of them ducked into alleys and shop bathrooms, but the problem remained. There was seven of them. And five seats.

"I can shift into something more suitable for being carried," suggested j'onn, "but I believe one of us might have to hide."

"Foot well?" Hal tried, and everyone looked around at the tall, bulky, broad heroes.

"Think they'd have to go in the boot," Barry finally said. Everyone immediately turned to him. "No."

Batman spoke up before the discussion could devolve.

"I think.... I would be best for that."

The team stared.

"Batsy?"

Having no lungs meant he could not drag in the tired sigh he wished, but whatever force allowed this body to talk was capable of approximating something suitably resigned.

"As I am, I am... incapable of fully passing as human. It would be best if I remained out of sight."

"So just? Go change? I swear we won't be weird about whoever you are under the mask. Even if you're like, bald."

"Thank you, Wally, but I'm afraid I'm being serious." Reaching for the mask in broad daylight was unpleasant, but the glue and wires held as he gave it a few thorough tugs. "It doesn't detach."

Everyone stared. Clark reached out as if he wanted to check, but withdrew.

"Do you even have a civilian identity??" Oliver eventually asked. "Because at this point I'm genuinely not sure."

Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries had a meeting that same evening. "Hn."

"Can we go back to the 'incapable of passing as human' part?!"

"We can discuss it in the car," he snapped, stalking past Barry and popping the boot. "In case you haven't forgotten, we're on a time limit."

For once, that seemed to encourage them, and batman, with great dignity, folded his joints and cape into the small space, ignoring Hal's mutter of 'what kind of contortionist -' as he slammed the lid. With a little shuffling he managed to activate his comms.

"I will inform the watchtower of our delay."

"Batman, they're tapping all outgoing signals, you can't -"

"It won't trigger," he interrupted, before he twisted his consciousness and sent it spiralling across the country.

Bruce awoke with a groan, stretching his limbs and taking a moment to marinate in his annoyance before he reached for the comm and voice modulator on the beside table.

"Batman to watchtower, we've encountered delays. If the Texan state government calls we haven't entered the state in six weeks. Batman out."

-

"Alien?"

"No."

"Reanimated corpse?"

"No."

"Uh... Demon?"

"Hm. No."

"You're not just a meta human, are you?"

"No."

"Vampire?"

"No."

"Robot??"

"No."

"Batsy, please, someone's got to win the bet eventually. How do we even know you're not lying?!"

"You don't," Batman said, not looking up from his paperwork and Flash groaned, letting his sticky notes fall to the floor as he buried his head in his arms.

"One day," he bemoaned to the keyboard, "one day we'll figure it out."

"Until then please keep your eyes on the monitors."

Flash groaned again.

-

Robin ducked under superman's arm as he scuttled down the corridor, laden with the night's haul of snacks. The real problem wasn't getting them - stopping league members from raiding the kitchen would be extremely counterproductive - but keeping them until he could return home to his human body to eat them. Batman had started searching him each time they left and it was really cutting into his daily sugar intake. Unfair! Just because he didn't actually use energy to stay up my night to fight crime, it felt like he did!!

'Oh, you're broken, Robin, oh, don't go out until the glue has fully set, Robin' his arm was fine! It wasn't like there was much crime to be fought on the watchtower anyway! At least not physically.

So he was pretty pleased with himself until he went to set the snacks down and found that the tar like glue they used had soaked through the sleeve and gotten all over his chocolates.

With his other hand, he tried to pry them off, wincing as the wrappers tore and stuck. He tried to shake it, ignoring the way his elbow rattled in the joint.

"Come on, come on - aw, cheezits."

The arm fell off. Robin stared despondently at the limb, surrounded by torn wrappers and dripping black glue where it connected to the elbow. The sour stink of formaldehyde filled the air.

He was going to be in such trouble with Bruce.

The click of the door jerked his head up.

Flash stood in the doorway, wide eyed. Robin stared back.

Flash screamed.

Oh yeah @dehydratedmockingbird have a thing

[haesunray]

FINDING MEANING: PROLOGUE —l.dh, s.hb

PAIRING: (mainly) haechan x fem!reader, best friend! sung hanbin x reader 

GENRE: major angst, eventual fluff, classmates to lovers, super slowburn.

WARNINGS: contains heavy and triggering topics. self-reflection, grief and unhealthy representations of mourning, character death (hanbin), reader goes through grieving process, self-harming behavior and drug abuse. A few sentences in the beginning about weight insecurity, fat-shaming, and weight loss. If any of these topics are triggering for you, please proceed with caution, or skip the fic. You are responsible for what you choose to read. Because this fic has pretty dark and serious topics, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. Due to the nature of the fic, it will take a while to get into the Haechan x reader part, so if you’re looking for something lighter, this might not be the fic for you hehehe

SYNOPSIS: you had never been good at dealing with loss. with the passing of your best friend still a fresh wound in your heart, you find yourself alone in the dark, left to pick up the pieces of your grief. 

 then one day, against all odds, you find something that might just be your compass, in the shape of a boy named lee haechan, who swears he will stand by your side to navigate the storm. 

And though the pain in your chest makes you struggle to breathe, he chooses to stand with you under the rubble of your broken world, and he shoulders some of the weight. 

NOTES: a good friend of mine passed away very recently and I needed to write something to get it off my chest. Maybe this will help me process my grief, or maybe it won’t. But i found the process of this very therapeutic. I sobbed a lot while writing this, just because the main character is a reflection of how I’m feeling currently. It’s mainly a self-indulgent piece. I’ve experienced so much loss in the past few years, and this is a cathartic piece for me. 

THEY SAY HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS, and you suppose they are right. 

For your home had been left a heaping swelter of smoke and ash, doors torn from hinges and paint scraped from walls. There were no remnants of the solace you once held in your sacred home, now reduced to gunpowder and gasoline, and all that is left is a house that isn’t quite a home, leaving you feeling a stranger in your own house—an alien in your own body—and you can’t help but curse the very person who created that quote because how dare they make you feel so powerless, knowing that you had lost the very one who held your heart, and now you will never get it back. 

The irony of the quote is not lost on you. The positive implications; that a home has no bounds, that four plaster walls and a shingled roof don’t fit the criteria. That instead, a home is made of flesh and blood and sweat and tears. 

You found your home when you were six. You found him in Mrs. Park’s kindergarten class in the shape of a round boy named Sung Hanbin, with grubby glue stained fingers and paper cuts from the broken origami butterfly he had made you. Your home had a gummy smile and eyes that reminded you of summer days in Busan, and a heart so big, it made your home feel like a castle of gold and ivory. He invited you in and you made it your own, and the origami butterfly was the first decoration you placed on the shelves of your newfound house. 

You protected your home when you were ten, earning a month of detention when you used a pair of your mother’s favorite kitchen scissors to cut off Sophie Jung’s long ponytail on the playground after she made him cry by calling him a ‘chubby potato,’ (and at the smile he gave you as you wiped away his tears, you realized you’d gratefully take a year of detention if it meant he’d smile at you like that again). 

You’re fourteen when Park Jeongmin spreads rumors about you to your whole grade because you rejected him, and when the whispers start to crawl up your back and dig holes in your mind, Sung Hanbin is there to walk with you and defend your name. He pulled you into his warm, enveloping arms and told you not to listen to the whispers, and yet he was the one who seemed to be stewing in anger. It was the first time you had seen Hanbin angry, and it was the only time he had ever gotten in trouble at school (and after punching Park Jeongmin straight in the nose and getting cleaning duty for the whole spring semester, he told you that he’d do it again if you asked him to). 

You both were eighteen when he grew into his body and his beauty finally became noticed by more than just you. You protected him when he overworked himself over and over and over again, when he would run until his knees buckled and his chest collapsed, chasing an unattainable goal built on a road of the insecurities you tried to convince him were his own perfection. You held him when he refused to eat and sat with him when he cried, and you tried to hug his demons away even when they told him he wasn’t trying hard enough. You whispered in his ear that he was worth every bit of love you held and more, that every inch of your home was worthy of being lived in and loved, that it doesn’t matter what shade the walls are or how expensive it was, he was your home and you would never change a thing about it. And that no matter how many people looked at him now that he was conventionally attractive, you had always seen him as beautiful. 

It’s New Year’s Eve of last year, and you both are twenty-two and more than a little drunk when you share a kiss. Had you both been more sober, it probably wouldn’t have happened. After all, at a Christmas party a few days earlier you’re sure you saw him ogling the boy from your poli-sci class, Zhang Hao—who had been taking up more and more of Hanbin’s time these days—but yet here he was, the boy who was nothing less than perfect in your eyes, pulling you by your flushed cheeks as the timer ticked down to one, and when the world erupted in cheers as the new year emerged, your ears fell into a calm hush, because Sung Hanbin’s gleaming eyes had fluttered shut and his lips finally met yours. 

It was the one and only kiss you guys shared, and yet, despite the alcohol in your system, it was committed to your eternal memory, a vivid painting you had framed and hung in your home. 

As the night came and went and the morning took its place, he woke you up how he usually did after a night of drinking; with a cup of coffee, a few ibuprofen, and a plate full of food, and no matter how much you wanted to say something about what happened the night before, you didn’t. And he didn’t either. 

Maybe you both were pretending it didn’t happen. Or maybe he didn’t think it was important enough to bring up. Hell, maybe he didn’t even remember it. All you knew was that you were too chicken shit to open a can of worms that shouldn’t even be opened, because you thought it was better to keep your mouth shut if it meant keeping him. 

Minutes turned to hours and hours turned to nights. Your calls going unanswered and rain checks from him created a monster inside you named jealousy. He was slipping through your fingers, opening the doors of your house to someone new. You hated the person it made you; hated the person you became. You locked the doors and chained him up. You protected his gold-filled heart because it was worth more than money, worth more than jewels, worth more than anything because he was your home and you couldn’t bear to open the doors to someone he might just like living there more. 

Maybe it’s the vile, bitter taste of regret that runs through your veins right now, thinking that maybe if you had told him earlier about how you felt, it wouldn’t have come out sideways. Maybe if you had been less pathetic and scared to let him know, he wouldn’t have walked out the door last night. He wouldn’t have gotten in his car and left. Maybe he’d be in your arms right now, and you’d be joking about how silly Ricky’s hair looked or bickering over what to make for dinner tonight. Maybe if you had said something earlier, an unresolved argument wouldn’t be the last conversation you’d ever have. 

They say home is where the heart is, and you suppose they are right. For your heart is ripped out of your chest, artery from artery and vein from vein, placed in the cold, unmoving hands of the boy who you would have died for, and now you’re left with the words you wish you had said, because you could have protected him and you didn’t. 

This is your fault. You made him leave.

There’s no recovering from this. There’s no feeling better, because your home currently lies in a coffin, cold and breathtakingly beautiful as ever, and you see yourself lying right beside him because he had taken the part of you that was worth living for. The truth was impossible to reckon with, a bitter pill that you would never, ever be able to swallow down. 

Sung Hanbin had died, and he took the world and everything good in it with him.

[theverumproject]

hihi verum! i wanted to ask how it’s been writing your first story! what’s the process like for you? has it gotten tough to stick with? how do you go about issues in your writing?

hope you have a great day :>

Hello! Thank you for your questions and excuse me for answering a bit late (I like to take my time, lol)

How has It been writing your first story?

Writing Verum has had a little up, then a giant down and now it has been going up again since this year. The first book took me three years to complete, while it is only more or less 15 k long! I began the second book this year in April, and I think it's at about 40 k words right now, nearing the end of season 1. So at the moment, it is going great!

What's the process like for you?

I write everything down that comes to my mind. Be it a whole book or a very small detail to some alien species' biology. That's kind of how I build the story in my head. When I begin with a book, I write down all my ideas for the book and what should roughly happen in the different parts. One to five sentences are enough, though sometimes I also write down more, depending on how much I already got in my mind.

When I wanna write a part, I first make a description of it, where I just write down everything that comes to my mind and start to plot. It should be at least 500 words long, though recently it's been getting more and more. My newest description is over 2.6 k words long, longer than my minimum word count of 1.5 k, woopsies.

Once that is done I start actually writing the part. Like I already mentioned, my minimum is 1500 words, but my parts have been becoming longer too. The latest part is over 7 k words long, also woopsies.

I always give myself one month to write 10 k. And until now, I have always reached it. I use NaNoWriMo to keep track of that. Giving myself a goal to reach has really helped me!!!

I edit in between of my "writing months". For example, I write three parts, edit them, write another three parts, edit all six of them, write another three parts, edit all nine of them, and so on and forth.

Not sure if I understood your question right, but I hope this answer is good enough!

Has it gotten tough to stick with it?

Writing the first book really has been tough. I had no... Discipline nor motivation. That's also probably why it's not that good. It's kind of half assed, I guess?

But since writing the second book it has been going wonderful! The toughest part of it is actually figuring out how to write some things, or when there are plot holes and I don't know how to fix them. Or simply just beginning to write. But once I start another month, I have no other choice but to write.

How do you go about issues in your writing?

So, while I write the whole part for the very first time (after the description), I try to ignore all issues and questions that pop up and simply just write them into the text (like this). One of the simplest issues is for example:

There's a part where Arushi and Zri'Kla go hunting. They live in an Indian jungle, but I don't know what kind of animals live in an Indian jungle. I need one though that isn't too big to carry, but it also needs to have enough flesh on it to feed them for a little bit. So instead of thinking about what animal it is while writing, I simply just write down something like this; "The arrow pierced the (animal)'s flesh". I solve all issues while editing.

But when it comes to issues that affect the plot and stuff like that, I have write down the questions on notes. I often think about Verum throughout the day, so my questions often just get randomly answered. I just need to write it down before I might forget it again.

I think my own brain sometimes gaslight me though. I have a question and a simple answer that is not good enough. I look for a better one, but can't find one. And then suddenly I think that the first answer is alright I think it's a form of giving up.

Sorry for this wall of text! Hope I didn't ramble too much.

[mandyyvibes]

Hydra Husbands- 40 …because the world is ending.

Or Winterbones up to you

40- a kiss because the world is ending; winterbones

f i f t e e n h u n d r e d w o r d s

i would love to make this a full fic and put it on ao3 one day goddamn. i kinda popped off.

Brock had never, in all his years of active field duty and life-or-death situations, been so fear-stricken as he had been when he opened his inbox to an email from Pierce.

It wasn’t the mere fact that Pierce sent out an email, one with ATTENTION STRIKE FORCE ALPHA AND CLEARANCE LEVEL EIGHT FACULTY in the subject line that had icy dread curling between Brock’s ribs.

It wasn’t the beginning of the email, in which Pierce sung his praises, gloating about how well the most recent mission had gone, that caused the dread to settle in a pit in Brock’s stomach.

It was what followed, one singular sentence, that had Brock leaping up out of his chair, kicking it to the side and storming out of the restaurant with Jack close behind, practically trembling with the horror that he felt.

The Asset will be permanently decommissioned by March 10th.

The Asset will be permanently decommissioned by March 10th.

Brock was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. There had been talk of budget cuts and the merits of replacing the Asset with something purely mechanical, taking whatever fractured pieces of a human soul that remained within it out of the equation entirely.

It had been a rough couple of months for the Asset and its team. It seemed to need to go back to the chair more and more frequently as time went on; in barely-perceptible moments of weakness its hand would tremble, or it would whimper when no one was near it.

It was breaking. Brock wasn’t stupid.

But he had been foolish enough to hope that the lab coat jackasses would simply come up with a more effective way to wipe it. Something that lasted longer, something that could reach deeper into its brain and remove all the horrors of its successes.

Instead, Pierce was going to have it put down.

“What the fuck, man?” Jack snapped, jogging after Brock to keep up with his rage-fueled pace.

“We’re going to work. Now. Check your phone.”

“God, what is it this time…”

Brock was in the car by the time Jack could read the e-mail, revving the engine impatiently. The beginnings of a plan had already begun forming in his mind, though it did little to settle the nauseous feeling of dread.

Jack opened the passenger door and gave a grim nod, one that said I’m with you on this one.

That’s why he was Brock’s right hand man.

March 10th.

It was March 4th.

He had six days before everything would come crashing down around him. He couldn’t bear to start from scratch- he didn’t want to start from scratch.

This felt closer to the end of the world than any world crisis or alien invasion had ever felt before.

—

“Where is it?” Brock’s voice boomed and ricocheted off of the concrete walls, just decibels away from a shout. He knew he had to keep his cool, to keep up appearances for now.

The handful of technicians busying themselves with paperwork gave him a strange look.

“Cryo prep-“

“No. No, fuck no. Leave it out.”

“Pierce ordered-“

“I don’t give a RAT’S ASS what Pierce ordered. Do you know who the fuck I am?!” He was yelling now, clenching his fists and working his jaw.

“Rumlow,” Came a calm voice from behind him.

Alexander Pierce himself stood at the bottom of the stairwell, many floors below where he usually ventured.

“Sir.” Brock grunted, chastised. He knew that this conversation would impact the entire course of the rest of his life. No room for fuck-ups.

“The most humane way to do this is to leave it in cryo,” Pierce said pointedly, gesturing to the heavy metal door on the far wall. “I understand that this might seem sudden, but Sitwell-“

“Mr. Secretary.” Brock interrupted, shoving his hands in his pocket and taking a step forward, chin raised in a show of nonchalance. “It has served us well for decades. I simply want to see it in action one last time. I’m requesting permission to take it up to the gym to spar-“

“You want to hurt it one last time,” Pierce’s eyebrows were raised. He would’ve been smirking, if he had been capable of such a thing.

“There’s no point keeping it in good condition now,” Brock replied, mirroring his amused expression.

He felt sick.

He felt angry that he felt sick.

“Alright. You can have it for a couple hours. Then it needs to go back into the cryo tank.”

“Thank you, sir. Hail Hydra.”

“Hail Hydra.”

Brock let his shoulders sag slightly as Pierce disappeared up the stairs. This is what years of loyalty to this organization had gotten him. A couple hours.

He maneuvered into a camera blind spot and pulled out his phone to text Jack.

—

It was still in its gear from the last mission. No one had even bothered to clean it. Cryo prep, his ass. Those lab coats were just bluffing.

The Asset stood at attention, its back pressed against the wall. It was almost strange to see it like this, its gaunt face exposed, after growing used to seeing it with its muzzle on. It looked like they hadn’t been feeding it enough.

Brock let the door shut behind him and could practically feel the Asset’s fear dissipate, though it didn’t move an inch. He took a step forward.

“Kneel.”

The Asset knelt, falling silently, gracefully, to its knees.

Everything was still. Brock watched it for a couple long moments, waiting for a tremor or a sob, anything that indicated weakness.

It couldn’t know the fate that Pierce had dictated for it.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Brock crossed the room in two strides, resting a hand gently atop its matted hair. He resisted the urge to tug on it and listened to the way its breath deepened. Something primal ached deep within his chest.

“Who do you belong to?”

“Hydra, Sir.”

“And who is your primary handler?”

“Commander Rumlow, Strike Force Alpha, Identification number 06081965,” Its eyes narrowed as if it was processing something, reaching into the depths of its brain to understand. “You, Sir.”

“Good, good job. Look at me,” Brock crouched down, putting himself at its eye level, breaking nearly every protocol in the book- protocol that he had written.

It looked startled when it met his eyes. There was something deer-in-headlights about the icy blue gaze. It looked back at him as if waiting for answers, for instructions, for help.

Brock would have put money on the fact that it could sense his fear. He took a deep breath.

“There’s been an emergency. You are going to come with Rollins and I and listen to every word that we say. No hesitation.”

The sound of a nearby explosion made the Asset break eye contact for half a second, gaze darting to the source of the noise.

Deafening alarms began to ring.

“Soldier!” Brock barked, gripping it by the back of the neck. “What did I say? Look at me, goddammit.”

“Sorry, Sir. Please.”

It held eye contact once again, conveying everything that it couldn’t say with its eyes. It was scared, it was confused, it hadn’t mean to upset him.

“It’s alright. Nothing outside of normal mission parameters, just focus. Any weapons on you?”

“No, sir.”

Brock slipped a knife from his boot, tucking it into one of the many holsters affixed to the Asset’s clothing.

“That’ll do for now, Rollins is bringing in some guns in approximately two minutes. That’s when we move. Do you require anything else for optimal functionality?”

“The Asset has not been provided nutrition in approximately six days, Sir.”

No wonder it fucking trembled. Brock could’ve burnt the whole place down, he was so mad. He reached into his pocket and produced a Jolly Rancher hard candy (Jack’s favorite).

“You see this? This is candy. It’s a reward. You can have it if you do good, if we get out of here. And I’ll get you some real food too.”

“Thank you, Sir,” It all but whispered, still staring at him unblinkingly. It hadn’t even looked away to assess the candy.

It was so good.

It would be good.

Brock stood, keeping time carefully in his head. They had about thirty seconds. He motioned for the Asset to rise and follow him towards the door.

One second passed. Brock turned around and stepped towards it, toeing at its boot with his own.

Two seconds. They would get out together, all three of them. Flee the country. He already had forged paperwork for the Asset.

Three seconds. But if they didn’t…

Four seconds. Brock lifted his chin slightly and leaned in. The Asset remained perfectly still, perfect, lips slightly parted. It breathed in through its nose and out through its mouth.

Five seconds. It exhaled. Brock pressed his lips to it, something chaste and sweet, entirely unlike anything he’d done to it before.

Six, seven, eight, another explosion. The Asset inhaled and exhaled once again. It did not speak.

Brock kissed it again, because he could, because this very well might be his last chance. The rage in his veins popped and simmered like hot grease. Together, or this was the end.

[samieree]

Peace, Wound, Scar. Again. || SW: The Acolyte

Qimir (The Stranger) x OC

-> Previous chapter -> Next chapter

Chapter II ''Hunch''

Originally, the mission assumed that after they captured Osha, they would return to Coruscant, but at that time the Temple on Olega was broken into. They were instructed to go investigate the incident and take Osha with them. Of course, there was a little opposition from Yord, but eventually he went to set a course for Olega, and Lys followed him.

"If the person behind the break-in was the same who killed Indara, it couldn't have been Osha." Elyssa said, leaning against the wall of the ship and watching Yord get the coordination right.

"Unless two different people did it. Or they work together." he replied skeptically, not even looking at her, instead focusing on the task at hand.

"She's surprised Mae is alive." here he looked at her and gave her a look that clearly suggested that he still didn't believe this version. "I feel it." she added.

She was already getting irritated by his constant questioning of everything. She wouldn't say that if she wasn't sure. His eternal skepticism towards everything without hard evidence could be irritating, especially since some things were easy to guess. But of course he never simply believed in anything.

"I was close to Osha, just like you, but a lot could have changed in six years." he explained calmly, finishing setting the route. He sat down in the pilot's seat.

"No, you don't understand." she denied it immediately. "I know she didn't do it." she sighed and moved away from the wall, sitting on the other chair next to him, turning around so that they were face to face. "I can't explain it, but as soon as I set foot on Carlac I had a feeling where she was. The same feeling tells me that she's not the one who killed Indara."

"If she's really innocent, we'll prove it. Jedi never allow injustice to occur."

Something inside her cringed at his statement, but she didn't say a word about it. She turned in her chair and looked at the landscape outside the window. The ship had already taken off and would soon leave the planet's atmosphere, and then it would only be a jump into hyperspace.

While she was staring out the window, Yord was staring at her. After even this short stay on the snowy planet, her hair was already starting to return to its original state. She rarely left them as they were - thick curls. Even though her curly hair did a better job of hiding the scar on her face that he had had for as long as he could remember. He always wondered what she must have done to herself as a child to cause such a wound. Many would say it defaced her face, but in his opinion it added her character - and even a kind of charm.

"How does it feel to finally be away from Coruscant?" he asked, wanting to continue this conversation and not make it look like he was staring at her mindlessly. He wouldn't want her to notice it. There would be some uncomfortable questions from her right away, and it's possible he wouldn't even have to answer for her to see through him.

"It's kind of nice to finally have something tangible to do." she replied. "Despite the circumstances."

She still wondered, why now? Why did Vernestra want her to fly on this mission? Until now, she felt like everyone was trying to keep her on Coruscant while she wanted to explore this vast galaxy. What changed that made her set the condition for Sol to take her with him?

* * *

Olega was very different from what she had become accustomed to on Coruscant. It wasn't so bustling with life, even though there were plenty of people and aliens of various races on the streets. It wasn't multi-level, it didn't look so clean and bright. When they went to the local Temple, she looked around the city: dilapidated buildings, sand instead of normal streets, and the style of clothing was completely different, more... careless.

She had the same feeling when she saw the Jedi who greeted them. His robes were significantly different from theirs, although they were now wearing the 'inferior' ones, designed for field operations rather than the formal ones worn mainly in the temple on Coruscant. Although Lys wore them less often than others in the Temple, as she spent more time training than them.

While she was looking around, she was listening to the conversation. An elder Padawan brought a child who helped Mae break in. She was even more sure because the child, when talking about who made it do it, pointed to Osha as the hooded person.

They entered the Temple, which was not at all as majestic as the one on Coruscant. Moreover, most of those that were merely Jedi stops on planets were built worse than the headquarters, especially on the most remote worlds. Or maybe she was just pickier after all that time spent in the perfect surroundings of the Temple on Coruscant.

Suddenly Lys stopped, and the others - except for Yord, who walked right next to her - continued on. They turned and saw Osha turning into a side corridor.

"If I were suspected of murder, I wouldn't separate myself from the group like that." he said.

"Luckily you're not." she replied, quickly adding: "Let's follow her."

"I was just about to say that."

She rolled her eyes. Together they followed Osha, staying at a safe distance to see what she would do. They also remained quiet so that she wouldn't hear them. They followed her to the room where Master Torbin's body lay. They were late.

But at least they now had proof that Osha hadn't done anything. Even though Yord would keep insisting that they could have worked together, in the end he was... Well, Yord.

They saw her crouch down next to the body and pick up something from the ground - something like a vial. Then she closed Torbin's eyes, and then the Jedi who led them through the Temple and the rest of their team rushed into the room.

"Hey! Step away from the body." he shouted, drawing his lightsaber.

It was obvious that Osha was on the verge of jumping to her feet, but she forced herself to do it slowly, lest the Jedi accidentally react more aggressively.

"I know what it looks like, but I can explain everything." she said calmly.

"Do not move." the Jedi ordered, still holding his saber on.

"You better start explaining." said Jecki.

"He was poisoned-"

"How do you know that?" he didn't even let her finish.

"She didn't kill him." Lys said, coming down the stairs with Yord at the second entrance to the room.

"We've had our eyes on her since she left the group." Yord added. "When she came here, Master Torbin was already dead."

"Thank you." Osha said to them. She was obviously relieved that the Jedi had sheathed his weapon.

There were no signs of a struggle in the room - which Jecki rightly noticed. This meant that Torbin had to voluntarily take the poison, which only raised more questions: why did he do it? He meditated for over ten years, and now, when - most likely - Mae came to him, he simply kill himself? How much his conscience must have been bothering him, what happened?

For her, there are still more questions than answers. Sol seemed particularly affected by the death, after all, he was an old friend of Torbin.

It also turned out that the poison was done from a bunta, from Osha's planet, Brendok. It had to be made here, because after distillation it retains its deadly properties for a short time. Osha explained all this to them. The decision was quickly made to take a closer look at the only pharmacy in the city, because it was there that the poison was most likely prepared.

They stood on the balcony of one of the buildings near the pharmacy. The Padawan who caught that child was watching through binoculars as some guy entered the building.

"Hey, it's not the usual one." he said, putting down the binoculars. "I do not know who this guy is."

They looked at the man who was just entering the pharmacy. He was just finishing eating something, was wearing large clothes that fit the atmosphere of the city - and so did his longer, messy hair. He had a quite large bag slung over his shoulder, I wonder what he was carrying in it...

"Is he alone?" Yord asked.

"No signs of Mae. She may not even be here, she could have killed Master Torbin and fled the planet." said Jecki.

"Any suggestions?" they heard Master Sol behind them.

Yord immediately began to outline his elaborate plan, but Lys didn't really listen to him. With her arms crossed, she looked at the building that this suspicious guy had just entered. When her eyes fell on him for the first time, a strange feeling passed through her. She couldn't explain it, but she clearly felt that something was wrong.

She realized that she had been staring only when she heard Jecki presenting her plan for this action.

"...if he's working with Mae, he might confess something useful, we'll record it and we'll have evidence. This seems like the most logical thing to do." she had only been listening to her statement for half of the time, but even without knowing what Yord had proposed, she knew that this was definitely a better plan.

"I'm in." Osha said.

"I also prefer Jecki's plan." Lys added, so as not to make it look like she wasn't paying attention.

Yord then looked at her as if he was sad that at least she didn't support him. Lys just shrugged and felt like giggling when she saw Yord roll his eyes. Especially since Sol had decided that they would do as his Padawan suggested.

Of course, he had to point out that giving this weapon to a civilian violates several laws.

Just a dozen or so minutes later, they first watched Osha enter the store, and then they were gathered around the communicator to control the situation.

"Hello." Osha greeted after clearing her throat.

"Hello." the guy answered her, quite cheerfully. Not like someone who recently made a poison that killed someone. Not like someone who works with a murderer.

"Hi." she said again, a little awkwardly.

"Hi?" it sounded a bit more suspicious, but still extremely light. "Hi." he dragged out the word. "Everything's all right? You came back early."

"I wanted to see you."

"See me? Oh." he seems rather... silly. "Mae, are you okay? Did the poison work?"

"That's all we need." Jecki said, breaking the silence that existed between them as they listened to the conversation.

"We're getting her out." Yord was about to go, but Sol stopped him.

"Wait!" he said and everyone fell silent again.

"You're acting strange. Wait... You killed Torbin without poison. He will be so pleased."

Who will be pleased? What 'he'? It had to be this mysterious someone who trained Mae. And this guy knew him too.

"Go." Sol said quickly.

They no longer paid attention to the conversation. Everyone left their observation spot and split into two groups. Lys and Jecki went to the back entrance, and Yord and Sol went to the front. By the time Yord reached the doors, Osha had her stun blaster drawn and moved away to the door. The stranger looked surprised.

"Where's Mae?" Yord asked, already drawing his lightsaber.

"Hold on, hold on..." the man started to retreat to the second exit, but first Elyssa came out, and then Jecki.

'We know it was you who gave Mae the poison that killed Master Torbin." said the first one, stopping at the end of the counter and leaning against it.

"You admitted it yourself, we have it recorded." added Jecki, standing at the counter.

From this distance, Lys could definitely say that she wasn't just thinking something up, she really felt something strange. Although she still wasn't sure what it was, she became much more careful.

"Wait, wait, wait, it wasn't my idea, it was hers." he defended himself. "I didn't know what he was going to do with it."

You given someone poison and didn't know what it would be used for? Pff...

"If you cooperate, we'll consider letting you go with just a warning." Sol said as he walked past Yord.

Let go? Someone who does with something like this? If it wasn't a bluff, she will have to protest.

"Okay, thank you. Thank you, sir." the guy thanked, gesturing quite strongly. "Please don't do the memory wipe thing or whatever it is you guys do."

Even though Lys was still looking at this odd stranger, she quickly glanced at Yord and made a small gesture with her head, suggesting him to turn off his saber. There was no way he could escape them now, so there was no need to have his weapon ready.

At that moment, she didn't know that the stranger had already taken a look at her. Especially since a certain detail in her appearance... Well, it's quite eye-catching.

"What's your relationship with Mae?" Sol asked.

"I'm just her supplier. Yeah, I started out gunrunning for the Hutts, and now I'm supplying people like her with what they need." he explained with a shrug. "For the right price." he added a little more quietly, grimacing for a moment.

Either he really was that silly or he was very good at faking it.

"So maybe you could supply us with something too? The truth." Yord spoke up for a moment.

"Who is 'he'?" Sol asked next.

"Uh?" the stranger frowned, clearly confused. He looked from Sol to Yord, turning his head several times. "I-I thought he was with you?" he said to the Jedi Master, pointing behind him at Yord.

"Does Mae have a master?" Sol continued, after the man possibly trying to avoid the question. "Is someone training her?"

"Look, I have no idea what's going on with this girl. All I know is that she wants revenge on four Jedi." there was silence for a moment before the man added something else, as if he was just remembering it. "If you want to get her, she'll come back here tonight. I'm holding a few things for her."

"Yord, secure the area. Keep an eye out for Mae." Sol began to give orders. "Jecki, Elyssa, go back to the ship."

Lys wanted to protest, but Sol had already left, telling Osha that she would go with him. He said over his shoulder that they would come back in the evening and he was gone. It was written all over her face how much she resented being taken off the case again.

* * *

On the ship. She. Kept away from everything again. Why is she here? One person is enough to pilot the ship or set the autopilot. She would definitely be more useful on site, securing the area with Yord. Instead, she sat on a chair in the cockpit and spun around.

"Mae's here already?" she asked Yord over the communicator.

"You're asking this for the tenth time in fifteen minutes." he replied to her, clearly tired - but at the same time a bit amused - by her constant questions.

"Is she there or not?"

"No. When I see her, I will tell you."

She sighed heavily and swiveled in her chair again. She literally has nothing to do and it's killing her. She even began to consider whether she would rather stay in the Temple on Coruscant and do something, like helping with the younglings or training again with her favorite guard.

"I have a bad feeling about this." she and Jecki heard over the comms after a few minutes spent in silence. "What if the guy is lying? What if it's a trap?"

"We'll find out soon." Lys muttered, looking at her nails as if it would keep her busy in any way.

"Yord, stick to the plan." Jecki admonished him. "Don't interfere. Master Sol wants to face her himself."

"And what should I do in the meantime? Count the cables on this ship? Are they diodes? Or maybe buttons?" Lys' voice was dripping with sarcasm, which clearly showed how much she disliked her current situation.

"Everyone has their own task, we secure the action from the ship." Jecki was calm and quite happy with her part in the action. Besides - apart from a short stop on Carlac - this was her first mission.

"You do it, I just sit here and wait until it's all over and I get back to Coruscant." you could still hear she was angry, but she was telling the truth. She wasn't needed on this ship, Jecki could handle it all herself just fine.

"You will still have a lot of work to do, there are many tasks that require the Jedi's attention."

"It's a pity I don't fly to do any of them." she said it more to herself and didn't say anything else.

The next few minutes passed in rather awkward silence until Yord's voice came over the communicator, saying that Mae had showed up. Only then did Lys perk up a little, but not enough to get up from her seat, even when Jecki took off. Sol was fighting with Mae and she was here, why should she look out the window? Might as well imagine it.

"In the name of the Galactic Senate of the Republic, you are under arrest." Jecki said, which also echoed through the ship's speakers. Only then did Lys get up of the chair and, with her arms folded across her chest, stand behind Jecki's chair and look at the situation below. "Drop your weapons and surrender."

For a long moment, it looked like Mae had no escape route. For that one moment, the case was over, won.

But nothing comes that easy. Yord, you have prophesied that.

Mae used the Force and moved sand up all around her, giving her cover for long enough to escape.

"Open the door." Lys quickly said to Jecka, taking off her coat to give herself greater freedom of movement.

"But-"

"Open the door!" she interrupted, repeating her words, but much louder. She was already at the exit of the ship. It was a short moment, one blink, but she probably knew which direction Mae was running, she could still catch up with her.

The second time, Jecki listened to her and opened the exit from the ship, through which Lys jumped out. She landed on the roof of the building, doing a somersault as she did so. She sprinted forward, jumping to the next building, from which she managed to see the silhouette of Mae running away.

She ran in that direction without looking back, jumping onto lower rooftops along the way, and finally jumped down onto the street, using the Force to break her fall not only by rolling. She caught up with her in a narrow street. She used the Force to push her against the wall and gain a few precious seconds to reach her.

Mae grabbed her wrist and threw her against the wall, and so began their brief exchange of blows. In the narrow alley, they took turns pushing each other against the walls or dodging so as not to get hit in the stomach or face. Lys didn't draw her saber until she realized that Mae tried to take it from her every chance she got.

"You want that?" she asked, panting and kicking her away. She took the hilt in her hand, which was longer due to the fact that she had chosen a double-bladed lightsaber. "Then be my guest!"

She attacked her with a sword in her hand, hitting her opponent's arm with just the metal handle. Their fight continued until they reached the street, where they fell out quite suddenly and were hit by a speeder.

Unluckily, Lys was the first in the vehicle's path and took most of the impact, while Mae remained mostly unscathed. The alien driving the speeder immediately stopped it and got out of it, running to Lys lying on the ground. Mae took the opportunity to kick him so that he wouldn't stop her from stealing the transport.

However, something stopped her from driving away already. Osha.

Her sister. She was convinced he was dead. Seeing her...

"Oshie...?"

They looked at each other for a moment until Osha, with tears in her eyes, shot but missed. The brief moment during which they were occupied with each other gave Lys enough time to get up from the ground. Thanks to adrenaline, she didn't feel the force of the speeder hitting her yet and managed to get back on her feet.

Mae started to drive away, but suddenly the speeder stopped, held from behind by the Force.

"Shoot!" Lys shouted to Osha, but in vain, because the girl couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger again, and Lys couldn't hold the speeder much longer, especially since Mae seemed to be pressing the gas pedal harder and harder.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and as soon as she let go, she flew forward, landing on the sand once again.

~

-> general masterlist -> Star Wars masterlist

Tags: @linkpk88

[mollybecameanengineer]

Qualifying Life Events

Summary: Set in 2007, when Mulder finds a concerning lump, he and Scully discuss health insurance. 

Word count: 1405

This was insipred in part by this post by @unremarkablehouse

@today-in-fic

Read on AO3 or continue below

2007

Mulder was soaping up his balls when he felt it. 

A lump.

On his testicle.

It was pea sized. Hard. And in forty-six years of ball soaping, he’d never felt it before. 

The edges of his vision darkened, and he leaned against the cold tile of the shower wall. He took deep breaths, trying to bring his panic under control. 

It could be anything. 

It didn’t have to be cancer. 

Right? 

He would have shouted for Scully, right there and then, if she’d been home. But she was at work. Mulder rinsed off, and in nothing more than his boxers, headed to his office to consult Doctor Google. 

.

When Scully arrived home, she was annoyed she didn’t smell dinner. They had discussed this: on nights she got home after seven, he needed to cook dinner. How hard was this to remember? She’d even put a schedule on the refrigerator to remind him. 

“Mulder!” She knew she sounded annoyed. She didn’t care.

“In here,” he called from his office. Scully put down her stuff and stomped across the living room. If he tried to explain to her how some shit about aliens had kept him from cooking dinner, she was walking right back out the door and going to her mom’s. 

She slammed open the door and paused. He was sitting there, in only his boxers, looking at the computer. If that wasn’t strange enough, when he turned to face her, she saw his panick face. 

Her anger dissolved and she crossed the room. “What’s wrong?”

He grabbed her hand. “I need you to look at something.” He stood, and started pulling down his shorts.

“Mulder, I’ve seen that before,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.

He grabbed her hand and placed it on his balls. “There’s a lump.”

Scully’s stomach dropped as she started palpating his testicles. She felt it. 

“Well?” Mulder asked. “I’ve been looking things up on the internet. It seems like the likelihood it’s nothing or I’m dying is fifty-fifty.”

“The internet isn’t good for you,” Scully murmured, continuing to feel the lump. Louder, she continued, “I’m not an expert, but I think it’s more likely a cyst than a tumor. But you need an ultrasound and a consult with a urologist.”

“Can you do the ultrasound?”

Since Mulder had been in hiding, Scully had been doing his physicals at home. A few times she’d brought him to the hospital for a blood draw, wanting to keep an eye on his cholesterol. But this — this she couldn’t do herself. 

“No. I’m not a radiologist. I’m not confident in my ability to tell a cyst from an early stage tumor.” She let go of his balls and stepped back. 

He pulled his shorts back up. “What do we do?”

She had long feared something like this would happen — that Mulder would need medical care and would have to come out of hiding for it. 

“We make you an appointment for an ultrasound.” She tried to keep her voice calm. Detach herself from this situation. He was a patient. Don’t think about anything else. “You can go with your Anthony Blake ID and pay out of pocket. It should be less than $500. It should hold up if no one tries to run it for insurance.”

“Then what?” 

“Then we will know what it is.”

Mulder started pacing. “What if it’s not just a cyst? What if they need to do a biopsy or something?” 

She grabbed his hand and pulled him to her. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If the ultrasound isn’t conclusive, we’ll figure it out. Ok?”

He grunted. She patted him on the back before pushing away. “I’ll order some pizza. Go put something on the TV.”

.

“What if it’s not nothing?” he whispered to her. He’d been lying in the dark, unable to quiet his mind and sleep. 

She rolled towards him and put a hand on his chest.

“I know you want to wait and see,” he said, still staring up at the ceiling, “but my mind is going crazy and I need to know we have a contingency plan.” Mulder had looked up how much it cost to treat cancer. Sure, they could afford a $500 ultrasound, no problem. Even a $30,000 biopsy would be fine. Not how he wanted to spend 30 grand, but fine. A couple million for cancer treatment? They didn’t have that. “I’ll need health insurance.”

“I know.”

“Can we get me health insurance?”

She sighed. “I think the Gunmen could have figured something out, but I’m not convinced your I.D. will hold up. Plus, we need to get you the insurance before there is any record of this lump, or else it will be a pre-existing condition.”

“So ‘Fox Mulder’ needed health insurance yesterday?”

She stroked his chest. “This is why I want to wait. If it turns out ‘Anthony Blake’ needs treatment, then we can start the process of getting ‘Fox Mulder’ insurance. And then none of the diagnostic work will be on your chart.” 

He grabbed her hand, the one that was stroking his chest. “So, what will bring me down is a mass on my balls. Not the government, not the aliens… mother fucking cancer.”

“We don’t know it’s cancer. It’s likely a cyst.”

He rolled his eyes. That had to be the twentieth time she’d said ‘likely a cyst.’

“Well, I guess if I do come out of hiding and get arrested, the government will pay for my treatment in jail.” 

She sighed. “Mulder, they aren’t going to arrest you. If they wanted to, they would have already.”

He let go of her hand and scrubbed his face. “You keep saying that.”

“They know where I live. Yet they have never been out here to search for you. They. Don’t. Care.”

What she was saying was logical, even reasonable. But he couldn’t shake the fear. But he could shove it aside, for the moment. “Ok, assuming they really don’t care, how do I get health insurance without a job? Just call an insurance company?”

Scully retracted her hand from his chest. “We’ll get married and add you on my plan as a dependent. That will be significantly cheaper than purchasing individual insurance.” 

He froze. Slowly, he turned his head to look at her. He could just make out her face in the moonlight. “Did you just propose?” 

“I proposed a plan to get you health insurance. And anyway, you’ve already proposed to me half a dozen times.”

“Do you want to get married? Other than for the insurance?”

“I… I don’t know that getting married would change anything for us. I’m committed to you, and I think you are to me.”

“I am.”

“So,” she took a breath, “the main difference it would make is in health insurance and taxes. But none of it matters if you’re in hiding, so it didn’t make sense to bring it up.”

He reached out, taking her hand again. “I want to marry you. And not just for the health insurance.”

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “That’s very romantic.”

“What can I say? I’m a romantic guy.”

They settled into bed, him wrapped around her. His mind felt more at ease, now there was a plan. He drifted off to sleep, thoughts of their wedding displacing fears of cancer. 

.

A year passed. ‘Anthony Blake’ had his ultrasound, and it came back conclusive that the lump was only a cyst. Thoughts of weddings and coming out of hiding were put on the back burner, until one day the FBI approached Scully. They needed Mulder’s help, and all would be forgiven if he assisted them. 

It turned out coming out of hiding involved a lot of paperwork. New driver’s license, access to bank accounts. Setting up retirement crap again. Trying to figure out what to do with his life, now that he could do anything. 

One night, when he knew Scully wouldn’t be home too late, he cooked her favorite meal (that he could make) and put a cloth on their old table. He lit candles, and put on what could only be described as ‘make-out’ music. The table set, the food ready, he added the final touch. 

A print out. The form to add a dependent to a health insurance plan, due to a qualifying life event. And on top of the form, Mulder placed a ring. 

[writingpei]

wicked games (l.m.) - chapter six

previous chapter series masterlist next chapter

pairing: lee minho x reader genre: academic rivals to lovers wc: 2.6k words

color me green

everyone ought to know not to mess with the extreme hormonal imbalance that gets tangled up in the form of teenagers.

because classes started in march, the education system pulled out one of the most important events that students would most like to experience during the school year, valentine's day. what happens is that, in haneul high school, the students could not accept such slander. in the 90s, the celebration of kiss day was created; it consisted of a day that was common to see heart-shapped confetti across the floor in the halls, people crying over being rejected and others with teddy bears and bouquets of red roses under their arms, bragging about the amount of confessions they received.

to say that day made y/n want to gouge her eyes out with her bare hands would be an understatement.

everything about the celebration made her feel odd. she could not shake feeling like an alien observer watching the girls her age and all their unspoken yearning, how they fell apart over loud displays of affection and exaggerated gifts. what's with the allure of romance anyway? she couldn't quite grasp it within her fingers, and for some reason, it stressed her out.

shaking her head as a way of physically trying to shift her focus to another corner of her mind, she quickly settles into thinking about hyunjin and theorizing how much her assistance had actually helped him on his math test.

she hadn't heard from the boy the last few days, ever since the test. she figured he must have blacked out after studying as intensely as he had for the first time in his life. or he probably failed, and that wouldn't be kind to her ego.

when she first stepped into school in the chilly morning, she noticed that the confetti hadn't been thrown all over the place yet, so she still had the margin to pretend that day was a normal day.

what caught her eye, however, was the employees hanging up a gigantic sheet of paper on the wall. a cluster of people started forming in a circle, curious eyes examining the words printed in oppressive black ink, some were on tiptoes trying to catch a glimpse among the sea of heads.

y/n hurried into the middle of the crowd. even though physical contact with so many people made her skin sting, she slipped into the tangle until she came to a stop in front of everyone to see all the rankings on display.

once she found her name in the first column of the chart signaling her perfect score, a wave of relief and satisfaction emanated through her entire body.

regardless of how focused she was on her own accomplishment, her eyes were captured like a magnet to the name right below hers, and, to bring even more joy to her day, with a not-so-perfect score...

while she made 100 points, lee minho's name got stained by a hideous 98.

after the hellish week the boy had put her through like he had decided out of the blue to tease her countless times more than he already did on a day-to-day basis, y/n allowed herself to rejoice at the feeling of pride she felt because of the score.

caught out of her blissful trance, she realized classes were about to start, if the halls beginning to overflow were any indication to follow. her steps were determined while she made her way to english class with certainty that nothing would strain her mood.

when her eyes found minho sitting at the back of the classroom with his pet friend on his side as usual, she didn't refrain from her calculated stride until she came to a stop in front of the boy. minho, seeing her approaching, already masked his lips with the classic sarcastic smile he always performed flawlessly whenever he saw her, taking advantage of any prospect to get her worked up.

"what do i owe you the pleasu-" he started, but quickly realized she wasn't having any of it at that moment.

"shut up, now it's my turn" she interrupted, crossing her arms and lifting her chin, superioring herself through her ever-so-fierce body language. "you got 2 math questions wrong on the test? what's going on with you? i hate to say it but you were better than this back in the day..." a smirk that held no trace of kindness bloomed on her face as a silent challenge to his own, that started to die down by the second, cheeks falling.

he just frowned as if he had come upon something that had a bad smell, disgust being physically transferred from her to him, tables turning.

"you know it's not like me to put the blame on other things when it comes to my performance, but taking this test in the same classroom as you really affected me. i almost had to go outside to throw up 3 times just because i couldn't shake off your presence inhabiting the same space as me."

"oooh, taking it to heart now, are we minho?" a humorous little laugh escaped her lips as she lightly tapped her fingers on her arms.

"this is much worse than when you're tearing your hair out just by listening to me" he rolls his eyes and turns his body completely towards the blond boy who was aggressively drinking from his juice box, not daring to spare a glance to the frightening girl in front of him. "she's so annoying, seriously..."

"so you can play the game but i can't?" the question sounded dumbfounded and she felt anger starting to bubble on her chest.

"uhm, duh-uh" he replied as if it was obvious. "i prefer it much more when you are locked up in your own brooding"

"i don't get locked up in brooding" her tone got higher at his ridiculous accusation. "i'm sorry to spoil your childish ways of entertainment but my pride won't allow you to remain unchecked"

"talk about your pride" he scoffed with all his might, disdain evident in his voice. "don't go putting all your judgment over me on a single test, especially the first one. i don't want to see you crying later when i start to take this seriously."

"what ever made you think that i'm afraid of you taking things seriously? if you are trying to humiliate me by attempting to put me at your level, i can tell you is not working" her hands slipped from her previously crossed manner, and descended to settle on top of his desk, leaning in as a way to provoke him. "your immaturity has no bounds whatsoever."

minho looked into her eyes in silence for a chain of seconds until he groaned in desperation, eyes rolling back and an irritated sigh escaping his lungs.

"ugh, today is going to be a good day for me filled with chocolates and love letters, so stop trying to spoil it with all your nagging on my ears" he said, eager for the conversation to end soon.

minho hated it when she was like this, and getting 2 questions wrong on a 40-question test was disgraceful enough.

sometimes he found himself believing that both of them were one and the same while being two completely distinct planets all at once. he could tell that her talent for consistent pestering was just like his, but he couldn't help but prefer when she was the one hot-faced and struggling to hold her unceasing rage from lashing at him in a deadly streak.

and he really was looking forward to all of the confessions he was going to receive throughout the day, that hadn't been a lie. the compliments that were thrown in his direction by lovesick girls always amused him and tickled his undying ego.

"you never fail to make me sick to my stomach" she says with a deep frown, knuckles turning white at how hard they were being pressed against his desk.

"speak to my hand" minho raised his hand towards her, mocking her with movements imitating someone talking. "ah, i'm park y/n and my favorite pastimes are terrorizing innocent classmates and institutionalizing extreme boredom" he spoke in a demon-like voice as if trying to imitate her, and she only managed to scoff at his antics.

it took all her strength to walk over to her usual spot at the table at the front without caressing his pretty face with an uppercut.

he was outrageously unbearable, lee minho was the worst of the world.

"you fell asleep in the middle of the math test. you wouldn't do that if you had doubts about any of the questions" yongbok started right after she left them be, looking at him from the corner of his eye, pinning him in an accusatory stare.

"the last few days have been weird for me, yongie, give it a rest" minho dismisses his friend while sulking and crossing his arms, face falling slowly until his forehead reached his desk.

"if you say so..."

“why, are you insinuating something?” it didn’t take many seconds for him to get defensive as he always did over topics like this. topics that were about her.

minho liked to perceive himself as a person who was fully aware and in control of why he did the things he did, and having someone who knew him as well as yongbok insinuating things bothered him beyond measure, making him doubt his own conscience.

“oh, no, never” he answered sarcastically and kept chugging the straw coming out of the orange juice box. 

“ugh, whatever” minho says finally, shrugging and pretending he didn't care. "you've been weird as hell these past few days too..."

the class went by smoothly and y/n believed that her good mood would be unshakable for the rest of the day. it all ended in shambles when the bell rang and people started to leave the room to go to their respective next classes.

it all ended in shambles because it was at that exact moment that hwang hyunjin burst through the door like a cannon, wide eyes scanning the complexity of the classroom in search of the girl.

"y/n! i've been looking for you everywhere!" hyunjin's voice calling out for her in such an open place and in the midst of so many of their classmates put y/n on alert instantly.

she didn't even think about looking to the back of the class to check if he was still there.

"um, what do you need?" asking carefully collected, she looked barely managed to scan around her to see if there were still a lot of people in the room who hadn't left yet.

"you are never going to believe it!" he was anything but quiet, still daring to bounce up to her in his unmatched good humor. "i got 30 out of 40 questions right on the test! can you believe it? can you?" he exclaimed, and she realized she hadn't looked up the boy's name when she'd seen the rankings earlier.

regardless of the non-existent relationship she had with hyunjin, the information left her very much satisfied. knowing that she had the ability to teach well meant that she could land some tutoring gigs down the road.

"that's nice, hyunjin" she responded with a small sign of contentment on her face.

while she started bending down to pick up her bag from the floor and going on her way, he stopped her by handing her a white bag.

"this is a thank you present for you. as soon as i entered the school and saw the rankings, i skipped the first class and ran to the bakery near the school to buy this. it's a cupcake, no big deal!"

but y/n's focus had been ripped from the words that came out of the mouth of the boy in front of her and thrown to the small whispers she heard behind her back as soon as he waved the gift in front of her face.

"oh my god..." a girl said.

"so the rumors were true? they're going out with each other?" another trailed.

y/n gritted her teeth and exasperation started building up inside her chest.

"hyunjin" she called him, firmly yet quiet as ever. "have you gone insane?"

"what? why?" the big smile that previously covered his face was replaced by an expression of pure confusion. "you don't like cupcakes? i'm sorr-"

"today is kiss day, you dumbass" she explained, holding the bag he had given her with only one finger as if she touched it more than necessary, she would be consumed by it on the spot.

"oh" was his first reaction, realizing that he had completely forgotten about the day. however, when he finally came to realize how what he just did could create such horrific misinterpretations, his eyes widened and he let out another "oh!", this time sharing y/n's panic.

after his comprehension of how grave the situation was, hyunjin's first instinct was to snatch the bag from her hand without hesitation or grace. "it's nothing like that!" he exclaimed loudly almost as if he was screaming at her, noticing that there was a considerable amount of people still in the room who were eyeing them curiously.

"tutoring session this friday again!" was the only thing he accomplished to say before running out the door with the same agitation he had entered it.

all's well that end's well.

"i hate cupcakes anyway..." she whispered at last, leaving the room without looking any of the people who saw the scene in the eye.

as if ignoring that everything that had happened would immediately be forgotten and left behind by everyone. she knew she was fucked.

"we're going to be late for the next class, minho" yongbok called over to the boy who was still sitting fixedly in the chair, eyes narrowed at what he had just witnessed.

with his best friend's call, he put the bag on his shoulder and started walking next to the blonde in wary strides.

"who was that poor guy?" he asked, a lump in his throat that felt like something else was trying to escape from his lips, but he couldn't put it in words.

"that's the hwang hyunjin you asked me about these days" yongbok clarified, not missing the bewildered tone coming from his friend.

"oh. i really had no idea who he was until two minutes ago."

after a few seconds of walking in eerie silence, a squeaky voice shouted "minho!" at their back, and echoed down the hall.

when they both stopped at their steps and turned around, they saw a small girl with long dark hair and red cheeks running towards them with a giant box of chocolates.

"this is for you!" she held the box out to him, starting to smooth her hair in a not-so-discreet way from the second he took it from her hands. "my name is bae minah, let's hang out sometime."

minho smirked mechanically but the genuineness was nowhere to be found. he still leaned into her slightly as if to take a better look at her, flattering the younger girl in the process as her eyes started to blink rapidly at the sight of him growing closer.

"yeah, sure, i'll think about it. bae minah..." he said and she opened a big - and pitiful - smile. 

and so they both went continued their way, leaving her behind.

"take this" minho held out the box to yongbok, who looked at him confusedly and adjusted his glasses that fell down his nose.

"don't you want it? it's a super expensive brand."

"nah" he said, looking away. "i'm actually feeling a little nauseous."

stay tuned for chapter 7! ☆

[docholligay]

Do you have any words (yours or by others) on grief/grieving a loved one?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I got it. I know this will sound strange coming from me, someone who writes not-infrequently about grief in the context of fictional characters, but you have to understand this: A frame makes a thing look like art. It’s easier to do things when they’re made to sit on a wall. So I’ve written and erased a dozen things, because I’m not sure how to talk about it when it’s me saying it. Which I guess is sad in its own right. That’s fine. This will have to be what it is. 

Some people have never been touched by death. 

I know it’s true, but it surprises me every time. I think all people of a certain age think they’ve lost someone, but there’s losing, and there’s being touched. If you’re coming to me with this question, you must know what I mean. You know someone who died, and that’s a little sad, you miss them, and you think of them from time to time. Grandparents, great-grandparents, classmates. Celebrities, if you’re weird enough. 

But then there’s being touched. I’m not sure I could have described the difference, before it happened to me. Someone dies, and, the world changes in an immeasurable way. Nothing will ever feel the same again. Now that’s all a very well traveled and quasi-hackneyed set of ideas, but it is true. The world is shifted. Doorknobs turn the other way, and always will. You could have sworn that clock had a robin at six, and not a blue jay, but the jay is singing now. The coffee didn’t taste burnt yesterday, or maybe it did but it was right for it to be burnt. 

The world is too still, and too loud. 

Grief is a shared way in which we are alien to each other. No two people mourn alike, and no deaths are mourned the same. I have been furious in the first flush of grief. I have burned things and made sacred oaths to my eternal anger. My grandmother sold everything he owned the week of my grandfather’s funeral. My friend once sobbed picking up a box of cookies from the supermarket. If at no point in your grief could you be called insane by a reasonable person, you cannot possibly understand what I’m talking about. 

You ever eaten a piece of gristle? I think grief is that piece of gristle. You chew and you chew, and you chew, but it just won’t go. You think, ‘if only I could get this down, everything would be okay’ but you can’t. It just sticks in your mouth, and it makes you gag, turning its oiliness over in your mouth. 

I nearly died once, by accident, mind you, in the grips of grief. It happens. You gag. 

So I think about that a lot, because its true what they say that flowers grow best where there was rot, and that’s true, but the trick of it is, that before the flowers can grow, that rot has to be broken down. It has to be chewed. And that takes time. 

There was a bar we went to. It was a fucking dive with shitty food and badly-poured beer, but PBR was a dollar on Mondays and you got a free basket of bacon. That’s where she told me she was dying, and I told her if she planned on doing this, she might have paid more than 3 bucks for my tab. 

It was a mess of a bar. 

They tore it down, shit, seven years ago now? And I remember thinking, ‘No, they can’t do that. They can’t get rid of that bar. It has to stand.” and I couldn’t have articulated to you why it had to stand, why this place I never thought much of and in which nothing good had ever happened to me had to stand, but I it tugged at me so hard. Because I could still hear her voice echoing there, and I could still hear what she told me. And if that bar didn’t exist anymore, than maybe it was never really real. 

Because that’s the insane part, right? You have individually and personally experienced 9/11, but everyone around you doesn’t realize the massive change the world has gone through. You are screaming at the smoldering pit, the scent of jet fuel in the air, and someone gives you that pitying look and goes, ‘How you holding up?” because the world is not different for them. You are fully prepared to have your knitting needles confiscated for the next twenty years if it would just make you feel safe again, make things feel right again, but this asshole standing in front of you has no idea. 

Because you’re changed. 

Grief changes us, but it’s wrong to think of that change as a ruining. 

The grand canyon is nothing but but a ditch dug by time, and wear, but people travel from all over the world to see it. A silver bowl tarnishes, but in the tarnish there are patterns and plays of light the new silver never dreamed of. Then again, that shitty dive bar is now a gastropub that serves burgers with aioli and has a gluten free menu, so some change is ruin, but that is not settled law. You can be changed and just be different. Different is not always worse. 

I think every person I’ve lost, and there have been more than I’d like, has changed me in some way. I’ve been a drunk, I’ve been destructive, I’ve been religious and reflective, and I’ve been a planner. I’m not any of those on a full-time basis anymore, but I see them all in the mirror, looking back at me. All those Docs, all the ways she has felt, still exist in me. 

 My grandfather, he of blessed memory, used to say that you don’t ever have to get over things, but you do have to get on with them. I think that’s what I’ve tried to carry with me. 

That’s the first step to breaking down the rot. Chop wood, and carry water. You keep it moving. You carry that with you, and you carry them with you. Sometimes thre’s nothing to do but the work.Then one day, you realize you told a story about them, and you laughed. You didn’t even think about crying. So then you cry.  Time comes you spent a whole day not thinking about them, and then you cry again. But slowly, life starts to take shape there. Things grow in around the ruins, and maybe it��s even more beautiful than before. You fly their memory like a kite, bright and bouncing in the wind of your life. People can see it in you, even if they don’t quite know what it is. It’s just a pretty, dancing thing in the clouds. 

And then you realize, you don’t want you knitting needles confiscated anymore. 

I recently laid years of anger to rest over someone’s death. It was the first time I cried about it. As soon as I stopped being mad, I had to let the sorrow in. After you clear the rot, you still need the rain, I guess. 

You get better. There are still trenches dug in the French forest from WWI, but the forest is no less green for them. Tragedy above all others. Covered by the willingness to grow. 

I feel like this fucking ramble makes less sense the more I noodle on it, and in many ways is more about how to move through grief than what it feels like, so, I don’t know, the best I have in the way of a poetic thought is that sometimes grief in the way all the clothes end up in the hamper now, and the way you stop halfway up the stairs with a cup of coffee before you remember, and the way you never walk past that cafe with the little pink cakes. That sharp, cold knife is small, and fits in so many places. 

But it can’t stop the grass from growing.

[egittae]

21th of Ethereal Moon, Imperial Year 1135

Well, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this.

An old song and dance by now in his mind, revolving around the same topic, questions and answers each time only to reach a conclusion that too wasn’t new.

The impossibility that was his revival, that it could mean- why did it even happen. Days where he spent thinking if this was an act of defiance against the Goddess where he ripped the pen from her hands and continued to write page after page in the book that was his life long after the epilogue had been completed, or if perhaps this was part of her plan all along and she simply chose to give him a second chance as there was something out there he had yet to do, and he could only truly die after he sees it done.

In both cases, the result too led to a wall. If he defied the Goddess, how come she hasn’t dragged him back to death yet? If this was her intention, then how come people much more significant than him- literal saints and greater kings and queens from the past, weren’t offered the same grace?

Sitting down on his bed, holding the shabby paper calendar he had on his desk, his eyes remained fixated on the date, moon and year. The number almost alien to his brain as it didn’t match any of the couple of memories it was able to gather.

Almost half a decade had passed.

Half a decade in which he didn’t exist. He wasn’t asleep or lost, just ceased. Only to return now, his organism seemingly unbothered by the fact he should’ve rotted away and become one with nature at this point- instead, it kept going. It wasn’t perfect, Lambert could tell whatever it was that happened to him did take a toll on his general health, but he was still alive and surprisingly healthy for a man that had been dead for years now.

The conversation he had with Matthias earlier, one he had actually thought to himself a couple of times before, returned to his mind. Lambert should be completing fifty years of age now- but how can he, when at least four of these years were lost? Was he fifty, or forty-six? Such a simple and almost stupid question to be stressing over, but one that sent his mind into absolute disarray because it was the most real proof of how abhorrent his situation was. Lambert could just say whatever number he wanted if others asked, but in the end he knew, in his own mind, that he…didn’t know the real answer.

Wallowing would only get him so far, in the end. Putting the calendar aside with a sigh and leaning on his elbows against his thighs, he stared at nothing in particular. It was only then that he figured- perhaps, the best way to approach his dilemma.

He closed his eyes, falling back into the fairly disorganized archive of memories that was his mind- searching for nothing specific but a key moment all the same. What he found were not one, but multiple short instances- all spoken in the tone of a joke, never taking the situation too seriously. He didn’t have to.

Lambert! Get down from that tree, you dumb arse- you will fall and split your head open! Have some more faith in me, will you? I can just walk it off anyway! Not if you die! Then I’ll get to not only walk it off but also haunt you!

–

And what would you do then? If you were to fall in combat. I have taken more than enough precautions for that to not be the case- and in the odd chance it does, I do have contingency plans on paper. Is that so… Yes. But please, Krima. Have more faith in me, will you? I am not so careless. Besides, I am not in the mood to let the Goddess drag me away so soon! I will just have a talk with her and she will let me go. Lambert, do not joke about this! Oh, you dummy…

–

If you were to die and then come back, what would you do? Haunt my brother. Stop always saying you’ll haunt people, Your Highness! Every single time! Hehe, that is the fun part, is it not? Hmm… It would feel creepy, wouldn’t it? Imagine, being fully aware that you’re a ghost…or an undead-! I think…I would feel really powerful.  Eh? Yeah, it would feel powerful, would it not? To meet the end, and then go back from it. The one boundary no warrior has ever gotten back from! The coolest king ever! I think I would wear that with pride.  With pride…

–

Maybe, instead of letting it plague his thoughts so much, he should just wear his defiance of death with pride. As his younger self, many years ago, would've wished.

[aching-joints]

If one of your characters had to write an AITA post on Reddit, what would the title be?

I point to oc yap card at u ! Tell me about Jude and Alana more

I love u, ur so sweet for this!

It's funny u choose them!!!

Alana and Jude are my little lab rats who lived in isolation for like 50 years in an abandoned lab, (are they human? alien? something else? we'll find out eventually 8 -).)

Because of where they were brought up as children and later adults - a place with strict rules, a solitary room they both shared with a few books, a couch and a painting on the wall that Alana hyper fixated on for 50 odd years after the "experiment" was shut down and they were forgotten about - they have no real concept of what "AITA" would even constitute. They don't even really know how to act "human".

There's a lot to it, but the tl;dr is that Leticia went to steal something and ended up with them instead. She had to call like 4 other people to show up, because they unsettled her and she didn't want to be alone with them when taking them back "home".

Leticia actually wanted to take them back to where she picked them up from (yea, she's heartless and I'm full of angst) because they scared her and creeped her out (Alana and Jude would just sometimes stare at her for hours, it wasn't malicious though - no social cues and they did just spend 50 years in a small room with not much to do - Leticia was new).

So, the point being - there could be a lot of AITA posts (mostly Alana though, she's honestly fucking nuts, I love her though), but they possibly wouldn't even know they were the assholes and wouldn't think about it that way, unless someone told them that they were and explained why.

For them leaving that room they were abandoned in was basically exploring something new - they're not entirely human, they don't need sustenance (or so we thought) but they're discovering things like human foods, mobile phones, internet, TV, social gatherings, etc., etc.,

More to the AITA questions though

I think with Alana it might be easier because she's more eager to push boundaries she's not even aware of, ever since Leticia got her and Jude phones with internet connection, Alana has been OBSESSED. Every crappy AI food recipe? She'll fall for it. Spend six hours doom scrolling TikTok? No problem. Reddit for five hours? No problem. She's crazy about it.

It might be something to the lines of:

"AITA because I "WASTED" food trying a TikTok recipe for crunchy chicken (i've never had!!!) and accidentally giving everyone food poisoning because the chicken was raw?"

It's ridiculous on the surface, but obviously, she lacks a lot of common sense and it's been a learning process. Admittedly - Alana has a very scientific approach to things, because that's how she was raised, so her approach to actually dissecting feelings/cultural norms etc., is very skewed as well. When the topic of sex was eventually brought up, her solution was to hook up with everyone that messaged her on every dating site - she's not a fan and a bit dumb.

As for Jude.

I don't think he'd ever write an actual AITA post, because he's more level-headed than Alana, calmer, his brain isn't a continuous storm of thoughts, desires and wants like Alana's.

I think in Jude's case, he'd be more likely to directly confront the person and ask about what he did wrong and reflect on that, as much as he could, before he'd probably piss them off by asking 100 questions about why, how and again why? He's still learning too, even if he's less annoying than Alana is.

This got really long, I'm sry. 👉👈

[rose-of-oz]

𝐑𝐄-𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆… 𝐌𝐘 𝐃𝐂 𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑, 𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐀 𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐘

❝ There were very few people who knew that Poison Ivy, plant-themed seductress and long-time enemy of Gotham’s Caped Crusader, had a daughter. Born out of a one-night stand between her mother and low-level gang member, Elena had inherited her mother’s powers for plant and toxin manipulation, and Pamela Isley had been prepared to raise her daughter to be her little partner in crime, a twisted version of a mini-me to help her mother terrorize Gotham with their thorny and poisonous abilities.

But Elena hadn’t wanted that for herself. A sweet, shy girl with a tendency for kindness, she had wanted no part in her mother’s schemes against the Batman and Gotham’s innocents, and so had run away, searching for the one person she believed could help someone in her situation. She found the Batman and begged for his help, begged him to free her from her mother’s plans and show her how to be a good person like him… and she made this desperate plea at the ripe old age of six years old.

Bruce Wayne, hidden behind the imposing cowl of his iconic suit, had almost shed a tear at the sight of this sweet, tiny girl pleading for his help to get her out of a desperate situation. Knowing he could never put Elena into the foster system or have her adopted because of her powers, the billionaire vigilante had taken the daughter of one of his nemeses into his home and, later, his heart, raising her as his own, helping her learn to control her powers, and, eventually, teaching her to fight so she could fulfill her wish of joining him in taking down crime on Gotham’s streets. Over the years, Elena steadily wormed her way into Bruce’s walled-off heart, and he came to view her as his own daughter, never forgetting but not caring about her true origins.

Now, several years later, Elena roams the streets of Gotham at night alongside her adoptive father, taking down criminals in a beautiful green suit under the alias Persephone. But after the death of Superman, who was killed in a fight Bruce kept her away from, Elena sees strange aliens start to show up around her city, attracted by Earth’s newfound vulnerability. With a huge, deadly threat looming on the horizon, Bruce is forced to recruit new allies into a team to help him and his adoptive daughter take on the incoming alien army.

Now part of a team of amazing and imperfect heroes (including a very cute and very awkward speedster), Elena must prepare herself to finally find out if Bruce answered the plea she gave him all those years ago: to make her into a hero who is worthy to fight alongside him.

(And, possibly, to find out how much her flirting can make Barry blush before he passes out, but that is not her focus here. What? It’s not!) ❞

General Taglist: @hiddenqveendom, @foxesandmagic, @artemisocs, @reyofluke-ocs, @endless-oc-creations, @stanshollaand, @ginnystilinski-reblogs, @luucypevensie, @ginger-grimm, @arrthurpendragon, @fakedatings, @impales, @claryxjackson, @dancingsunflowers-ocs, @eddysocs, @lucys-chen, @ocappreciationtag.

[aarghhaaaarrrghhh]

A Summer in a Pioneer's Neckerchief/Лето в пионерском галстуке - Chapter Nineteen

Master post here

Chapter Nineteen - Pen "Pals"

It was not the best time to have gone - the rain had been pouring for a week already, and Yura knew from the forecast that it was going to continue in the same way. But he did not have a choice - his concert tour had ended and tickets for the flight back to Germany two days hence were bought and paid for in his wallet. So, there was no other time for a visit to Lastochka.

Frozen and soaked from the constant drizzle, Yura looked at the moss-covered statues, the deserted sports area, the collapsed wall of the kitchens. Suddenly the clouds thickened, and twilight descended upon the camp, as though the sun had already dipped below the horizon. But that could not be so - six o’clock in the evening in September, too early for sunset. And too late for reminiscing. Yura shook his head. Enough wasting time. I should get going. Do what I came here for.

Making his way through the tall, wet grass, he returned to the path that led to the beach. Part of it was laid with big grey paving slabs, but as soon as Yurka had passed the children’s dormitories, the path narrowed and turned to sand, and, after a sharp bend, disappeared downwards.

As he looked at the road made of concrete squares, with sedge and dandelions growing up through the cracks, Yura remembered the newspapers that had been laid on the floor in the construction site. Back then, he had thought, If only there were newspapers from the future here. Even if not the very far future, but at least summer ‘87… Five years’ time, maybe, or ten. What about twenty…? Yurka smiled sadly - now he knew. 

‘86 passed by in a haze. The early days were unbearably sad. Returning to Kharkiv, Yurka felt like he had fallen into a completely alien and unknown world. It seemed like everything around him was a bad dream, and that to go back to Lastochka, all he had to do was wake up, But no matter how much Yurka pinched himself and tried to deceive himself, reality was there, in that stuffy city, in the four walls of that old apartment. The only thing that Yurka had left from that July during which he had been so happy were: the photograph on the rug over his bed, his memories and his letters from Volodya.

“When I got back to my room and arranged my thing,” his very first letter began, “it felt totally outrageous that I had nothing to remember Lastochka by. It’s true, Yur, we left everything in the time capsule, besides the troop photographs. Olga Leonidovna only gave them to Lena and I to hand out to the children as the bus was already leaving. You would have bent over laughing if you’d seen her as she ran after the bus - the driver didn’t notice her and hit the gas. Imagine that! Have you imagined it? I can feel you smiling.

I hope that you also received yours. I will send you a photo of the fifth troop. Send me one of the first in return. If the squad is in full force, naturally.”

Yurka sent him his, while the photo of the fifth troop he somehow managed to stick to the rug above his bed. He decided that it had to be there in particular, because the window of his room looked out to the east and the first rays of the sun fell on exactly that spot. 

In the photo, Volodya was smiling unnaturally; he looked tense and disciplined. Standing close to him were Olezhka on one side, and the fat boy Sashka on the other. The boys were standing stiffly, to attention - crisp, clean and well-groomed. Behind them, the Zina Portnova monument loomed, and above them, a spotless sky stretched far away. Each morning as he looked at that photograph, Yurka thought that they looked totally unreal, captured there. And Volodya in particular looked unreal in it. After all, only Yurka knew what exactly he was hiding behind that smile and the lenses of his glasses.

For the first couple of months, Yurka held out only thanks to the letters. No, he tried with all his strength to hide his malaise from those around him: he smiled to his parents, sometimes he went for walks with the kids from his block, he ate, he drank, he went to his grandmother’s, he helped his mum around the house and his father in the garage. But in his thoughts, Yurka was constantly returning to Lastochka, while the time ticked down between letters. In them, he found confirmation that Volodya really did exist, that he was still with him, and apparently even loved him. But they were almost a thousand kilometres apart. It was so unfair! Yurka had always thought that love could conquer all, but it turned out that distance was beyond its control.

Only as it drew towards winter did it become slightly easier. Yurka made his peace, his yearning dulled somewhat, as though his heart had also frozen a little bit along with the first chills.

As he stepped onto the next paving slab, Yurka felt as though he were stepping along the timeline from ‘86 to the next year.

Like a newspaper dated 1987, it was almost as good as new, whole, without any sprouts of grass or cracks. In ‘87, their relationship was just as pure and whole, even though they had been pining away for each  other in different cities for more than half a year by then, and they continued to take comfort in the only thing that remained to them - the letters.

Volodya wrote often and about everything. At first, his parents were taken aback: who were all these letters coming from, why were there so many of them, and why did they come so often? Yurka, of course, told them that it was his penpal who he had met at Lastochka and who lived in Moscow, which was why they could only continue their friendship like this, at a distance.

And to look at the letters, they really did appear to be just friendly - he formulated his thoughts so that no-one could suspect anything untoward behind them.

Yurka learnt to read between Volodya’s lines; he knew where a reference to their shared past and private present was hidden behind an operative phrase. Without seeing him, he could imagine his behaviour, guess at his mood from the letters, the handwriting, the inkblots and the imprints of fingers upon the paper. He knew at which words Volodya was frowning, at which he had sharply pushed his glasses back into place. He imagined his room and Volodya himself, sitting at his writing desk by a window. He imagined him at his lectures, him listening to his teachers and chatting with his coursemates. It was just what they talked about that he could not imagine. Volodya barely wrote about these discussions - he kept it close to his chest, afraid of saying anything private, despite the fact that they were now allowed to talk about a lot.

The concepts of ‘Glasnost’ and ‘democratisation’ were first heard from the lips of Gorbachev in February 1986 at the XXVII Congress of the CPSU, but Yurka truly came to understand and feel Perestroika in himself, and Glasnost and ‘New Thinking’ along with it, in ‘87. 

 These concepts were heard everywhere: in the streets, on the television, and at home. The progressive majority strove to “reconstruct” themselves, while many Soviet citizens did not believe in them, and some were afraid. But in public, it was not the adults, but rather the children insisting upon change. Their demands thundered like the tocsin and spread throughout the country. Had it ever been seen before: pioneers criticising adults, boycotting the resolutions of the Pioneer Organisation Congress, questioning whether the Pioneer Organisation was needed at all in the first place? At first glance, it had little to do with Yurka, three years past the age of being able to leave the pioneers as he was, but somewhere inside him, he felt a sense of foreboding take root: if children were being allowed to criticise, then soon something really would change. And so it did. 

‘87 was the year that business was legalised and cooperatives were founded. The deficit of goods from the USSR increased, but foreign items appeared, markets began to develop. Girls began to swap copies of Burda Style between themselves, a deficit-era magazine printed in Germany in Russian that had recently appeared in the USSR. The youth strutted about in bright, multicoloured trousers and jackets with studs and buttons, while Yurka got some flared jeans for himself, with a camel on the back pocket. But not one item pleased him more than the photograph his mum brought home from work, the one from Lastochka. The one that Pal Sanych had taken after the play. Yurka framed it and turned it over in his hands for hours as he examined the faces of the whole troupe, standing in front of the stage in the theatre. But for Yurka, the most pleasing of all, of course, was to look at Volodya, who had his arm slung around him.

Besides the ‘formal’ youth organisation, Komsomol, informal ones also emerged: rockers, who roamed around the city in the night, metalheads and punks - the most aggressive, and also a new generation of quiet hippies, dressed in worn jeans decorated with bracelets. In one of his letters, Volodya wrote about civilised-looking, athletic guys from the Moscow suburb Lyuberets, who, on the other hand, ‘cleansed’ Moscow of the informals and all those who, in their opinion, were a disgrace to the ‘proper’ (that is, ‘their’) way of life. The Lyubers - that was how those guys were called - beat the informals up, tore their extravagant clothes and cut their ‘bird’s nests’ short.

Clearly so as to calm Yurka, Volodya affirmed: “They won’t get at me.” Yurka chuckled to himself at that: I bet they won’t.

There were no Lyubers in Kharkiv. But Yurka, considering himself neither an informal nor a ‘formal’, obeyed the fashion and grew his hair out to his shoulders. He ceased to be so tight-knit with the guys from the block and turned back into a homebody. Together with his father, he watched the programme Glance every Friday, and thrice a week he wrote to Volodya, and thrice a week, Volodya replied.

His handwriting told Yurka a lot. Usually it was tight and even. When Volodya was nervous, the letters became slanted and the tails of ‘y’, ‘g’ and ‘z’ grew long and narrow like dashes. When Volodya was angry, he pressed the pen down so hard that it crumpled the paper. But one of the letters arrived with near-perfect calligraphy. Yurka immediately noticed this and asked him not to rewrite neat copies of his letters anymore, and to instead send them as they were, be it with crossings-out, inkblots and even big splodges. They’re more honest, he thought, and more lifelike.

Soon, they developed an interesting habit of decorating the corners of the envelopes so that, when they glanced in the postbox, they could immediately recognise each other’s letters. Yurka was the one to begin this. Once, he decided to write ‘Waiting for your answer like a nightingale for summer’ on the envelope like a child, and began to draw a letter ‘W’ in the top left corner, but, having come to his senses, he felt embarrassed and crossed it out. In response, he received a letter marked in the same way. 

Thus did they get through all of ‘87. Yurka prepared with difficulty for the winter term at the college into which he had gotten, barely avoided getting conscripted into the army, and in December, he invited Volodya to come over and stay. But even back in ‘86, he had written, “I’m not going to come visit you, nor shall I invite you to me until you get into a conservatoire.” And now, in his reply to Yurka’s request for a meeting, he reminded him of what he had said back then.

Yurka had been hanging around the piano for a long time, hesitating, but with each passing day, his desire to continue his education grew stronger and stronger. Volodya’s ultimatum could not have come at a better time - it was the last straw, and Yurka heeded it and began to learn. It was a little scary; Yurka reproached himself for having cast the piano aside. But when he tidied all the junk off the instrument, placed his photograph from Lastochka upon it and sat down to play, he began to rail violently against himself for having ignored his mother, his father, and everyone who had tried to persuade him to pick it back up again before too much time had gone by.

Yurka quickly came to understand that he could not prepare for entrance into a conservatoire by himself. He said this to his parents, and his father hired a tutor. He turned out to be the most vile and despised teacher from Yurka’s school. It took great effort for him to realise that his hated Sergei Stepanovich only scolded him because he genuinely cared about his talent and his outcome. And oh, how he scolded him! He got even for the laziness and arrogance he had displayed while at school. He said that Yurka had too little experience to improvise since he still had not grasped the basics. And, after listening to Yurka, he gave the verdict that “it’s not even average, it’s a C-”. But he reassured his mother - there was talent. And to Yurka, he said that in order to develop, he needed to stop acting out and finally start listening to people with more experience. 

Yurka communicated this to Volodya, who gave him dry praise. Usually, Volodya wrote very evenly, if not to say dispassionately - he was afraid that the letters may be read. Each time, he left a postscript where he covertly asked him not to speak clearly about what had happened between them, and he was very reticent in his emotions himself. But sometimes, emotions burst forth nonetheless. It was precisely these rare occurrences that Yurka remembered best of all.

“Sometimes I miss Lastochka so badly that it drives me up the walls. I don’t remember anything concrete, but more like the whole summer at once. These memories are somehow hazy. I remember the events, but I can’t remember the faces, or the voices.

But that evening when we carved that thing into the willow’s bark, I remember in details. What about you, Yura? Is everything alright with you? How’s your health, are you sleeping alright? Do you have friends? Is there a girl? You don’t write anything at all about that.”

They never repeated questions with subtext in their replying letters. If in a typical situation, they wrote something like ‘You asked why I’ve not played until now. I answer - it is because…’, then for special questions, they formulated a general rule: to ask and answer them in the final paragraph only. Volodya’s questions about Yurka’s situation was written in the last paragraph, and Yurka answered him in the same place, briefly, but fully understandable to Volodya:

“During the day, there was a rerun on the TV of the Leningrad-Boston telecast, which came out while we were at Lastochka. On it, the Soviet lady participating answered the American’s question about whether we have programmes about sex here in the USSR by saying, ‘There is no sex in the USSR. We are categorically against it!’ You hear that? Now that’s humour. The guys from my block - by the way, I met with them for the first time in ages, it’s the same crew - keep repeating it with and without reason, ‘there is no sex in the USSR.’ And you know, it gets a bit boring.”

Yurka was not lying. Knowing how untrue it was, even in the absence of television or newspapers, he had not had any for the rest of ‘86, nor in ‘87.

Yura took another step. A new slab beneath his boot, a new year, 1988. A year which flew by insanely quickly. A year in which they once again failed to meet. If the paving slab really were a newspaper, then the most standout headlines of 1988 would perhaps have been: “Deficit Increases: Essential Goods Disappear From Shelves”, “AIDS Epidemic! Number Infected Reaches 32” and “Richter, Dyagilev, Tchaikovsky Too? The Great Homosexuals of the USSR and Russia.”

An uncensored liberal press appeared. Newspapers and magazines began to discuss topics that earlier were not only deemed inappropriate, but were forbidden to even imagine! For example, the concept of ‘prostitution’. They wrote not only about how they currently existed, but about how, it turns out, they had always existed: in the eighties, and in the seventies, and in the sixties! By the following year, a film about prostitutes had been made.

Yurka watched Yeltsin on the television and went to see Little Vera at the cinema, where he saw a sex scene on screen for the first time. Volodya did not like that film, rather he loved a different film with his whole being, ASSA, and watched it many, many times. Laskovyj Maj played on repeat in the discoes, but Volodya was enraptured by Kino, Aquarium and Butusov. Yurka did not listen to music much, he played it.

As he continued to prepare for the conservatoire entrance exam, Yurka learnt the old and the new, and began to compose his own. Inspired by the memory of Lastochka, he wrote a sorrowful melody and sent the notes to Volodya with the message: “It’s about the construction site. Remember?” Nervous to the point of his hands shaking, he awaited Volodya’s response. To his delight, the reply came quickly:

“I had to ask one of my coursemates to play your melody on the piano. Yura, I really liked it! Please, keep composing! Write about the willow, about our theatre, about the curtain. Or about whatever you want, just as long as you write!

“One of my acquaintances has a Japanese tape deck; I took it for a day and asked my coursemate to play it again, while I recorded. It’s great, now I can listen and relisten to your melody whenever I want! To remember Lastochka, and, of course, you.”

In 1988, homosexuality began to be discussed openly in the country. Yurka learnt a new definition - ‘gay’. The newspapers vied with each other to write about ‘who else’ out of the great figures of world culture was ‘one of them’. People spoke about homosexuals with contempt; they made jokes and mocked them. But Yurka did not associate himself with those people; for him, everything was as it was before: he loved and was loved and that was that. However, Volodya began to lose his mind:

“Do you have a girl? Yura, find yourself a girl,” he advised, in earnest or in jest, Yurka could not tell. But already by the following letter, the advice had turned to a demand, which was repeated time and time again; the sharp handwriting with the narrows ‘z’s, ‘g’s and ‘y’s returned from letter to letter. 

“You ask as though a girlfriend is some sort of pet,” Yurka joked, and then added in earnest: “You can see how many of ‘those’ people are good people. Not just good - great!”

But Volodya was not reassured. And the last straw for him was the announcement on the television about the mass outbreak of AIDS in Elista. 

“Do you know about AIDS, Yura? It’s this disease from the West, it’s fatal and it infects prostitutes, hobos and ‘that sort’. They die, in terrible agony for ages!! wrote Volodya, pressing down on the paper so hard that there were a few tiny holes in places. “Nature has devised an incurable disease to wipe out people like me! This means I need to go to a doctor before it’s too late, otherwise I’ll fall ill with it as well! And how much harm will I do then? You have heard about what happened in Elista, right? The hospital overlooked an AIDS patient and infected five adults and twenty-seven children with an unsterilised syringe! That patient must have been the same as me, Yura, otherwise where else could he have caught AIDS?”

Yurka replied to Volodya saying that he was just having a panic attack, that he needed to calm down and stop acting as though he were responsible for all the evils in the world. That that disease did not just come out of nowhere, as Volodya himself well knew. That it was a virus, and a virus kills without selecting its victims, it was inanimate, and he was fine. But Volodya did not back down. His fear of falling ill became so strong that it seemed to imprint itself upon his consciousness and became associated with his ‘disease’:

“It’s all it’s fault, I need to go to a doctor. And it’s long past time that you got friendly with a girl. And then, what if…”

Yurka ignored the question about making friends and about ‘what if’. He understood that he could not give him peace of mind with a few letters; they needed to see each other, or at least to speak. Time after time, he begged Volodya to find someone with a telephone that he could call from a payphone, and each time, he was refused.

Tired of Volodya’s panic, he did not even think of worrying about himself. Each line of the letters he received shone through with despair, and, though Yurka knew that it was temporary, that Volodya would certainly calm down, his fear weighed like a stone in his heart. He would have done anything if only it would have made Volodya even the minutest bit better. He would have understood and forgiven anything, except one thing - ‘treatment’. 

Sometimes Yurka yielded to Volodya’s panic, and in those situations, he grabbed the photograph from the theatre and looked at him and Volodya for a long, long time: tired, exhausted, sleep-deprived, but smiling, because they were together, they were side-by-side. 

From the mere suggestion that the piano would be empty, Yurka’s chest began to ache disagreeably. It was a true jewel, black-and-white and fragile, the most valuable thing in the world. Yurka calmed down as he looked at it, remembering his past with Volodya and imagining their future meeting. It had not been easy and peaceful for them back then either, they had been afraid of a lot of things then as well, but all the same, they had been together and been happy. And if they had been so in the past, then that meant that they would still be happy again!

With regret and a repulsive sense of helplessness in the face of Volodya’s fear, Yurka realised that he would have to give this best-ever means of calming himself down back to him. Hoping that, when Volodya saw them together and remembered, he would calm down, if even a little, Yurka took the photo out of the frame and begrudgingly sent it to him. He did not comment on the photograph at all, and continued to write about the same old stuff in various ways:

“It was announced on the TV that AIDs is transmitted through blood. My father said that in order not to get infected, you need to not get cuts, nor make contact with foreign wounds, that is, with blood. And you have to only use your own needles, and your own scalpels during operations. Mum says that you can’t cut your nails with other people’s scissors at the beauty salon. But you don’t do any of that, right? No! That means it’s all good, you don’t need to go anywhere. So, take your sedative and go sleep a while longer.”

Yurka wanted to ask Volodya about sex. Had Volodya had it with somebody, and, if so, had he used condoms? But he was afraid to write about such. Instead of questions, he sent him a few booklets which his father had brought from the hospital. On each of them, it was written in huge letters: AIDS is sexually transmitted.

In addition to everything else, Yurka suffered for a drought of information: If the cause of the outbreak in Elista really was one of ‘those people’, then what did they do with him? AIDS is incurable, that’s obvious, but did they try and cure him of his ‘disease’ at all, rather than AIDS? And if so, how? And what really is it?

Asking Volodya was pointless, but, in order to slake this thirst in any way possible, Yurka went to the furthest extremes - he asked his father about everything.

“It’s a psychological deviation,” he drily replied, his face hidden in his open newspaper.

“Congenital or acquired?” Yurka tried for details.

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re a doctor, and you talk with doctors!”

“I’m a surgeon.” His father suddenly lowered his newspaper and gave Yurka a stern, doctor’s stare: “What’s it to you, anyway?”

Yurka choked out a sigh and stared at the floor. To tell that truth about Volodya would be a betrayal, and as for himself - no, Yurka was still not prepared to admit it to himself, much less to his parents.

“It’s just interesting,” he hemmed. “And what of it? Look how many of them there are around!” He nodded at the radio, from which a song by the provocateur Leontev was playing. 

His father’s face was distorted by a smirk very similar to Yurka’s. He disappeared into his newspaper again and grumbled:

“In any case, it’s abnormal, and you’d better keep away from such people. They can damage your psyche and lead you astray.”

“But how is it treated?”

His father peered out once again from over the top of the page and frowned - he was clearly irritated by the topic. And Yurka understood that on top of that, it was not just anybody taking an interest in it, but rather his own son, which would drive his father mad.

“Yura, I’m a surgeon!” His father, for the first time in the last month, raised his voice. “They used to treat them in special clinics, but how exactly, I don’t know. What they do with them now, or whether they even do anything at all is much less clear. It’s all turned topsy-turvy - gays should be isolated from normal people, and instead they’re getting up on stage. There, have you seen that Leontev?”

It was a rhetorical question. Yurka, still just as hungry for information, and feeling as though dirtied by that conversation, left his father empty-handed. The song by Leontev, who his father hated, about Afghanistan finished. By then, it was no longer current: the war in Afghanistan had come to an end and the USSR’s soldiers had been extracted in the spring.

The AIDS outbreak in Elista induced a genuine hysteria, which made the people forget for a time about what was afoot in the country. The deficit of food products increased. The corners of the Konevs’ kitchen were stacked with boxes of fish conserve, bought for stockpiling. His mum pickled and made jam out of anything which grew in his grandmother’s garden, and grew nervous as she constantly repeated the rumours that their wage would soon be paid in the products of the factory - ball-bearings. His father took on an unpleasant habit of reading the crime news at the table. Hidden behind his newspaper, he spoke very little; more and more often, he silently smoked his old deficit-era cigarettes. Yurka gave up smoking, but he also read about the constant shoot-outs, arsons and tortures by hot iron. Once the word ‘racketeering’ came into general usage and cooperatives for the protection of other cooperatives began to be founded, the whole Konev family began to think seriously for the first time about emigrating to the GDR. But in 1988, that remained too complicated.

The 1989 paving slab, scrawled over with cracks and overgrown with grass, crunched under Yura’s boot. That year had been full of anxieties: about Volodya, too suddenly and abruptly placated, about getting into a conservatoire and his failure at the exam, about the search for the opportunity to get out of the USSR. The Iron Curtain fell, all paths were laid open, but the past did not wish to let go of Yurka, and the future did not want to allow him into itself. In expectation of something new - possible or inexorable - for all that eternally long year, Yurka was tormented by a premonition: things were bad then, but in the future, they would be even worse. By all means, they would.

The smell of vinegar did not leave his home for weeks. His mum watched Escrava Isaura on the television every day and made either jam or acid-washed jeans. Adverts began to show up on the television and more and more new programmes came out. Yurka watched his dad’s favourites, Sixty Seconds and The Fifth Ring from the corner of his eye. Once one evening, he even turned his whole body around, listening closely and raising an eyebrow sceptically - had he imagined it? - when, live on The Fifth Ring, the composer Kuryokhin reported that Lenin was a mushroom.

The airwaves were filled with something fundamentally new and even stranger and more suspicious: the appearances of the psychic, Chumak, and the hypnoticist, Kashpirovsky.

On the topic of the latter, Koshmarovsky, as he was called by the populace, Volodya wrote:

“Hypnosis is a swindle, it doesn’t actually work…”

To which Yurka asked: “In the construction site, you said that hypnosis could help you, so where has this conclusion come from?”

But Volodya replied evasively: “An acquaintance went, he had a different problem, not like mine: he was sleeping badly. And since his problem was not solved, mine is much less likely to be solved.”

Yurka began to suspect that there was no acquaintance of Volodya’s and that he had gone himself. One the one hand, as he understood that hypnosis was not as dangerous as emetic injections, Yurka was assuaged. But right away he began to panic - if he had been to that kind of doctor, then what if he also went to another? He began trying to persuade Volodya to hold off on going to a psychiatrist.

In these attempts at persuasion, which resembled haggling at a bazaar, he lost his anger at himself for having failed the conservatoire entrance exam. That which once would have seriously damaged his self-esteem was now unimportant. Yurka knew that he would try again the next year, that, if he failed then as well, then he would try again and again and that there was no way he would not eventually get in. Trying to get in and not making it was not a mistake. Giving up on studying was a mistake, but an even bigger one would be to let Volodya do himself wrong.

A month had not gone by before Yurka’s suspicions began to prove themselves true: Volodya’s letters began to change, his handwriting changed! If before his mood could be figured out from the manner of his letters, then now Yurka was haunted by the feeling that someone else was writing the letters. Now Volodya wrote in a larger, sprawling hand with long strokes, but what was even stranger was that he had begun to make elementary orthographic mistakes which the Volodya that Yurka knew could never allow. But before asking directly, whether Volodya had gone in for treatment, Yura reread all of his letters several times, in order to find anything in them that he had not noticed before. He tried to figure out when exactly Volodya had changed, tried to guess why, since the AIDS outbreak in Elista did not really have anything to do with either him or Volodya, and in the depths of his soul, Yurka thought that that motivation was stupid. No matter how many times he read through the whole heap of his letters, no matter how attentive he was, he could find neither a cause, nor even a date for Volodya’s abrupt change. Ultimately, he began to doubt whether there was a cause in the first place, whether there had been a change.

There was no way out, hesitation became unacceptable. Yurka began to insist on visiting, or inviting Volodya to stay with him, but he refused either to come visiting or to allow him to come to Moscow. Yurka even threatened to turn up uninvited, but the threat did not work on Volodya. Evidently, he guessed that Yurka simply did not have the money for tickets, and therefore replied in his sprawling handwriting:

“Yura, do you remember our agreement? I will not come to you, nor will you come to me until you get into a conservatoire.”

Yurka lost it - a conservatoire? And he wrote in his last paragraph: “Are you serious about the conservatoire? That’s still so long to wait! Volod, I miss you and really want to see you! What’s happening? I can see that something’s up with you. Answer me honestly, did you go for treatment?”

Yurka was exasperated by this damned conspiracy. He could not ask anything directly, and Volodya could not respond plainly. Sometimes, their preemptive measures to keep themselves safe seemed absurd to Yurka, and the very thought that someone might read their letters far-fetched. But he needed only to imagine his parents happening to find and read an ‘honest’ letter for the safety measures to immediately cease to seem ridiculous. 

A reply from Volodya did not come quickly. Yurka had already grown tired of waiting and was about to write again when he saw an envelope with a familiarly crosshatched corner in the postbox. With trembling hands, he opened the letter, turned it over and, in the final paragraph, read:

“I wanted to lie to you, but I can’t, you don’t deserve lies. But I also don’t want to speak to you until everything is solved once and for all.

“Yes, Yura, I confessed to my parents. I would have had to do it at some point anyway, and what’s happened in Elista provided the last shove. It was scary to speak and difficult to start. More than anything, I was afraid that they would not take the news seriously - like how Irina didn’t believe Masha back then. But they believed me… Of course, they were in shock, I’ve greatly disappointed them, but the main thing is that they understood: it’s a problem for me just as much as it is for them. My father spent a long time looking for a doctor who would take care of the treatment unofficially, so that I wouldn’t be registered at the psychiatric dispensary. Also, he’s started his own business and made himself known in certain circles, so, you know, his reputation.

“At the consultation we chatted with the doctor for ages. He prescribed me some tablets and said that, if I have close people with whom I can be open, then I should tell them both about my illness and about how I’m getting treated for it, in case I need their moral support. And he also instructed me to start looking at pretty girls around. Just looking for now, not getting to know them or going on dates. It’s necessary in order for me to learn to see their beauty. It’s funny, Yur, but I already see it well enough, and more than that, there are loads of girls that I find pretty, but… I’m not drawn to any of them. I hope that it’s just for now and not forever…”

Yurka read this letter and felt his hair prick up on the back of his neck. He was terrified: for Volodya and for himself. He cried out loudly on the inside in hurt: He wants to be cured of me and of his love for me. He wants to forget everything! I asked him so many times not to go and he did it anyway! He betrayed me!

But once his emotions had softened somewhat, other thoughts began to visit Yurka - Volodya needed him! His letter read like a cry for help, he needed his support. Yurka understood that things were twice as difficult for Volodya now - the fact that his parents knew about him and were paying for treatment put responsibility for the result on him. And what if it did not turn out, or not immediately?

And since Volodya had not betrayed him, he had not kept the truth from him, he kept on thinking about him.

If Yurka did not support him, his one true friend, then he would be the betrayer. However painful it was for him, however much he doubted the necessity of the treatment, he had to help.

Yurka took a long time to compose a reply to Volodya’s letter and was only satisfied by the fourth version. As he wrote, he spat on the rule he had implemented himself - no clean-copies.

“Volodya, you know perfectly well that you are my one close friend. I asked you not to go. I will not lie to you - I am not pleased about this, but I trust you. If you are sure that this is the only way forward and that you will only get better with the help of a doctor, then I will support you.

“True, I am now even more worried for you. Tell me how it’s all going for you. Does it definitely not harm you in any way? What kind of pills do you take? Do they help? How?

“I say it once again, and will continue ceaselessly to say it: you are my only, my best, my beloved friend. You can be open with me about everything. Absolutely everything, and any time. Don’t be afraid, alright?

“I very much look forward to your reply. I want to know everything about you. If  I can do anything to help, just tell me and I’ll do it!”

This time, Volodya’s reply came two days later than usual, and Yurka wasted away in the meantime. 

“We just talk. The doctor asks me about all sorts… It was difficult for me to be open with him about everything, but he’s a psychologist; I can trust to tell him about how I’ve been suffering and afraid for so long. And I really do feel better after these conversations. And the pills are just sedatives. Thanks to them, I’ve stopped having panic attacks, I’ve stopped washing my hands in boiling water - that was my habit, remember? It seems like this treatment genuinely is helping me!”

And however much that letter frightened Yurka, however much it made him feel like Volodya was drifting further and further away from him, he was glad for his friend. And if Volodya was getting better, if it was helping him, then all Yurka could do was support him. And he supported him for that whole year.

Towards autumn, the most important international news struck like a thunderclap: the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The physical border between the FRG and the GDR no longer existed. Officially, the countries were still a long time off planning to reunite, but his uncle found out from his contacts in the East German government that reunification was in the works - and not at some distant point in the future, but very soon. He wrote to Yurka’s mum that while it had not yet happened, the whole family needed to gather its strength and go to the GDR embassy, since if the countries united, then emigrating to the FRG would be even harder. His mum went.

As he listened to her, Yurka was struck by how complicated it was. For the time being, they could only emigrate as a Jewish family. But in that case, at the very least his mother needed to have the word ‘Jew’ in the nationality column on her passport and to be part of Jewish society. But his mother’s nationality was Russian; as for participating in the culture, despite his grandmother’s efforts, she stubbornly refused, having bowed down to her in only one thing - Yurka’s ritual circumcision. His grandfather’s surname for the Konev’s was lost, while his grandmother had already changed both her name and surname at the beginning of the war. On top of all that, all of her German documents, including her marriage certificate, were destroyed. The trail of his grandfather’s life ran cold at Dachau, which meant that Yurka and his mother could be considered victims of the Holocaust, but his kinship with his grandfather still needed to be proven. The only relative they had in Germany, an uncle by his grandfather’s line, was not related in a close degree to Yurka, and whether this could help the Konevs in any way was not yet known. Only one thing was clear: they needed to hunt down and restore a whole bunch of documents. But despite that, neither Yurka, nor his parents, nor his uncle lost hope for their return to their historic homeland.

At the same time, a terrifying deficit had begun in the USSR. Even soap and washing powder disappeared from the shops; there was no cereal, nor pasta. Yurka’s family, along with others, began to receive coupons for sugar. His father was stuck on duty for days on end without a break, while his mum was seriously ill for a long time with pneumonia. Already accustomed to queues, Yurka froze in a long line of embittered people with his German textbook as he heard about the miners’ strike. Half a million people threw their helmets down on the asphalt. 

It was more or less calm in Kharkiv, but Volodya wrote that in Moscow it was not just the miners, but the rest of the Soviet citizenry as well, who, tired of existence on the cusp of starvation, had begun to go to meetings. And with them went Volodya himself, who had manifested a lively interest for politics.

Yura expected to see a line of ants on the next paving slab, but the rain continued. He watched the empty surface, glistening with water, and it seemed to him that an ant was just about to come running out of the grass, and another one after it, and then more and more until they crisscrossed the whole slab with their little queues, like they had crisscrossed all of 1990. Queues had been everywhere and for everything that they could be: for vodka, cigarettes, food. They stretched from shops and stalls, they stood motionless outside the offices of the conservatory, they spread for kilometre-long strips outside the embassies.

The country was feverish. Yurka saw the same things on every news broadcast, even if he did not look at the television at all: that alcoholism and crime were growing to all-time highs, that scalpers were growing fat, and refugees from Karabakh were hiding everywhere. The people rioted in earnest because of the deficit of cigarettes: they staged walkouts at work, smashed and burnt the shops and flipped over their bosses’ cars. The USSR began to be called ‘the Dustpan’ in derision.

But Yurka felt that they were exaggerating things on the television. Yes, all of that was happening, but life did not seem so grim to him, and on the other hand, it burst into bright colours: non-governmental, uncensored radio stations appeared, which circulated so much new music that it seemed to Yurka that the same song was never repeated. The Lambada was danced in the discoes; true, he did not go to the discoes and did not take peeks under miniskirts - Yurka stayed at home, studied German with renewed strength and continued to prepare for the entrance exam. It was independent study by that point - his mother had been shifted onto a part-time work day, while his father’s salary had been delayed for a few months. His parents could no longer pay for a tutor. But Yurka pushed through, spending as much time at his instrument as he could. He was emotionally prepared for yet another failure, but he succeeded!

“I did it!” wrote Yurka in his next letter. “I thought that I’d fail again, but I somehow managed it finally, Volodya! Just like I promised you! Now that I’ve gotten in, everything’s gotten all mixed up in my head. Before, I dreamed of becoming a pianist, but now that’s not a dream anymore, it’s a goal. Now I want something else: not to pick scores, but to compose them. I dream of becoming a composer, I dream of writing a particular work, not just pretty, but full of meaning.” And in the last paragraph of his letter, Yurka reminded Volodya of their agreement: “I remember your promise, that we’ll only meet once I’ve gotten into a conservatory. There you go!”

There was no reply for a long time; Yurka blamed it on interruptions in the mail services. In his letter which arrived a week later, Volodya was so glad for him that Yurka smiled as he read the letter. But Volodya refused a meeting, citing that he had absolutely no time at all: he had failed one of his exams, and the resit was scheduled for September; he needed to prepare for it and, at the same time, help his father with work. And things were agitated in Moscow - meeting after meeting, riots, strikes.

“Besides,” wrote Volodya, “I want to ask you to hold off on a meeting, because I’m afraid it might negatively affect my treatment, since Yur… I remember you.

“I’m learning to control myself. Like for example, at my last session, he brought photographs that… well, the kind he thought I would like. He asked me how and why I could find them appealing, but imagine, out of twenty, only one really caught my attention. And that was probably just because it reminded me so much of our last night in Lastochka. Then he gave me different photographs, this time with girls. He asked me to look at those too and comment on what attracted me to one or the other, and what I categorically did not like. And he gave me homework.

“You… You asked me to be open.It’s a little difficult, but I’ll try. In the end, we’re mature people and though it’s not something spoken about in polite society, we have a bit of an understanding between us. To keep things short… he sent me home with the kind of photographs that I should enjoy once I’m cured of my disease. He said that once I was alone, I should try to relax and take a good, long look at the prettiest one to… Well, you understand, so that I learn to receive real physical pleasure from looking at them and imagining. And what fortune, Yur - it worked! I thought only about what was in the photograph, and I was able to! I could do it all!”

It took all of Yurka’s willpower to suppress the emotions that gripped him immediately after reading it. Still, he understood that it was the lesser of two evils, and that in fact, if Volodya had not been suffering from his problems, by that point he would have long since been in a relationship with a real person and done real things with them, rather than imagining them by himself.

They no longer raised the question of meeting and the letters went evenly, neutrally. Yurka finally realised that Volodya had calmed down and that his treatment was helping him. Yurka would have been glad for him, but, on the contrary, he felt ill at ease. It seemed as though, having escaped from his fears, Volodya had escaped from thinking about him, had forgotten him, fallen out of love. 

That letter was the last of that year wherein Volodya wrote about the personal. 

In October, that of which his uncle had warned them in the previous year came to pass: Germany reunited. The Konevs went to the embassy and after five hours of standing in line, they were finally given their documents.

Among the acquaintances of Yurka’s parents, three families had already wisened up and managed to leave for the West. From this news, his mum became utterly unbearable. With venomous envy in her voice, she repeated almost every day:

“The Mankos have left. The Kolomietses have left. Even the Tyndiks have left!” she said about her colleagues. “They’re in America out of all places! And we have full right to German citizenship! And what of it? Nothing! Wait, you say! How long can we wait? We’re on the verge of dying of hunger!”

“Citizenship isn’t necessary for leaving for Germany,” his father disputed quietly, unwillingly and tiredly.

In November, the only neighbours with whom the Konevs were close left. It was with Auntie Valya’s younger daughter that Yurka went to go see Guest from the Future, and to the elder’s wedding that Yura’s father procured some spirits. This news completely took his mother out.

“I’m an engineer,” she would not calm down, “someone with higher education, I’ve given my whole life to that damned factory! It’s utterly trashed my health! And what do I get from it? Ball-bearings instead of a salary? And Valka, she’s some sort of go-between, a moneygrubber, she brought over some clothes from Turkey and that’s it, she’s set!”

She did not blame his father, although his salary was delayed, she blamed the German embassy and the whole world in general. His mother’s health really had gone to pieces; she had begun to have problems with her lungs. The incessant illnesses and their poverty finally ruined her once-soft character. As though trying to find a new means for self-pity, she even asked about Yurka’s ‘penpal from Moscow’: how was he getting by in the capital?

“Just as bad as us?”

Yurka shrugged noncommittally:

“Probably…”

He could not say any more in response. Volodya’s family was not impoverished - Lev Nikolayevich really was a businessman. He established a construction firm and after not even a full year, he began to receive enough of a profit that Volodya’s mum gave up work - it was no longer necessary for her. Volodya himself continued to study at MGIMO, and additionally studied economics, so that he could begin helping his father as soon as possible. 

Yurka wrote to to Volodya with a smile: “Now that’s a real irony of fate - the country’s falling apart, and you’re building.”

That the country was falling apart, Yurka was not exaggerating. The dissolution of the USSR began in 1990 with the Parade of Sovereignties.

In his penultimate letter, Volodya joked, “Who knows, maybe by next year we won’t just be living in different cities, but different countries entirely. Wait, I’ll figure something out with my work, make sure of the results of my treatment and come to visit you, while we’re still citizens of the same country.” On the topic of “you’re building,” he replied modestly, “I’m trying to help, but there’s not much point there in an international lawyer, though I know English. I got some textbooks on market economics, and my old man got a couple of books on directing business affairs - management, they say in English,” he explained. “I sit and study. It’s important. The country is transitioning from a planned economy to a market-based one, and nobody knows how to work under the new conditions. But I’ll know. My brains will be my father and I’s advantage. Don’t you dare think that I’m boasting. It’s still too early to boast.”

“Citizens of the same country,” Yurka repeated aloud and felt his heart drop. He did not hurry to tell Volodya that their documents had been accepted by the embassy. Yurka simultaneously feared jinxing it and knew that he did not want to upset him ahead of time. He had written to Volodya about Germany more than once, but he did not talk about it seriously, and, at times, he did not even believe in the chance himself. But now he suddenly reconsidered - they really might be split across different countries, even different continents, since, even if Yurka was not going to live in Germany, Volodya always dreamed of fleeing to America. And he was so stubborn, if he truly wanted something, then he would receive it, without fail - Yurka believed him. 

As soon as he opened Volodya’s final letter, he immediately understood that it was written hastily, in a panic: blotted, crumpled, the letters hunched over each other and the strokes crept downwards:

“These abominations are creeping back into my head again! The pills only help half the time and I can’t repeat my success with the photographs anymore because I’m distracted by thoughts about that! And I’ve begun to dream dreams again! Today I dreamt such a vivid one that, as I woke up, I was almost driven up the wall - why couldn’t it be real?!

“It’s like I’m standing by a train and through the crowds of people exiting the carriage, I see U. She smiles, I hug her. We go down to the metro, standing on the escalator, but instead of taking a look around at one of the most beautiful stations, she’s looking only at me. It’s like she doesn’t care where she is, she doesn’t care what’s happening, I’m the only thing important to her. We go to the VDNKh, sit by the rockets, and walk by the fountains. It’s hot. She places her face and hands beneath the jet of water. Then we go home by the metro. I cover our laps with my jacket and give her hand a squeeze beneath it. We’re at mine. There’s no-one home. I smooth out the sofa, while she gets some cherry jam out of her bag and puts it on the table.”

Yurka knew that ‘U’ was ‘you’, and she was he. Volodya was writing about him. Yurka saw how panicked Volodya was, he understood that he was doing badly again and was frightened. But he could not wipe the smile off his face - Volodya was dreaming about him! And although gladness was utterly out of place there, he could restrain his emotions in his responding letter, and only after it was sent did he regret what he had said. To Hell with this conspiracy! I’m not a she, and I still love you anyway! And what’s more… we’ve got our documents from the embassy. Most likely I’ll be leaving for Germany soon.”

He send that letter in the end of December and three days later, received a telegramme from Volodya:

“Do not write to me at this address anymore. I will write to you myself after.”

The paving slab for 1990 was the last one. Further on was the sandy bluff. In the Nineties, his relationship with Volodya suddenly and abruptly cut off, too.