#cw: technically suicide but only because he knew he would come back | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ryin-silverfish · 8 months ago

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LMK Fanfic: The Wild Son

AO3 Mirror

Nezha-centric one-shot. Or, "how the Third Lotus Prince learns to stop worrying and enjoy the exploration of death."

CW for suicide and extensive discussions of it. Similar to my previous story, this is very FSYY-inspired, which is shorthand for "pretty fucked-up".

Y'know, with the novel's version of Nezha's suicide being the most graphic and all.

...

The Devaraja of the North has a wild son, who bows not to his father, only the Buddha. The Buddha knows of his stubborn unreason, and sets upon his father's left hand, a pagoda.

——Su Zhe, "Nezha"

Over the years, he had really come to loathe That Look.

You know, when these brats (technically, all mortals are kids to him) learned of his suicide and just gaped at him in wide-eyed horror. Usually followed by an "I'm so sorry" or "It's not your fault" or the slightly less grating "Man, your father sucks."

Duh, Dragonhorse Girl. Duh. But anyone who talked shit about Li Jing was in his good books, and he could at least appreciate Mei's straightforward nature.

Still, whatever prior impressions he left, he knew he was now seven years old and hurting again in their eyes, and would never stop being so.

And it drove him nuts, because 1) it didn't even hurt all that much, and 2) why is offing yourself suddenly such a big deal? Apart from some ol' Confucian bores' rants about unfilial conduct, no participants in the War of Investiture had ever batted an eye at his death and resurrection; the problem was with what he did immediately afterward.

That said, death in the War of Investiture wasn't final, logical, or that big a deal either, until it suddenly was.

...

Unlike killing, death didn't get less confusing even after you've kicked the bucket once. Nor was spending your time as a spooky ghost and getting your godhood rudely interrupted helpful, when it came to understanding the boundary between gods and ghosts, and how some people could come back but not the others.

Well, according to The Patricidal 7-years-old's Guide to Death and Deification:

People die when they get killed.

At which point they turn into a ghost, and float around going "Woe is meeeeee!" for a while before moving on to their next lives.

Unless they don't want to move on. In that case, they just haunt the living out of spite, and to get free stuff.

But wait! If enough people treat the ghost like a god and give them offerings, they'll become one and...dunno, make a new body outta faith or something.

If someone's name is on The List, it's totally okay to kill them because they'll become gods after death.

Wait, isn't that dragon prince's name on The List too? Then why is his dad so angry when he killed him?

And sometimes, a Daoist master just pops a pill into the recently dead guy's mouth and they are alive again.

It took him a surprisingly long time to realize that The List was not all it's cracked up to be, and was basically the Poor Man's Godhood. Or that knowing someone would come back in the end didn't make their absence hurt any less. Or that they could come back, but would remain forever out of reach, shackled by the duties of godhood and the chains of causes and consequences.

And even when a quick resurrection was possible, every death scarred the soul, making it fray and tear at the seams. Seven was the maximum. After dying and coming back seven times like poor Senior Uncle Jiang Ziya, not even The List could take your soul without it exploding into a billion little ghostfires that had more in common with ambience Qi than any living spirits.

He wondered if his inability to understand this fuss around offing yourself had something to do with a scar, too.

But which one? Was it the first and most gruesome one, where returning your flesh and blood also meant ripping out the itty bitty pieces of souls that were embedded in them, clinging to your father and mother like muscle membranes on a bone? Was it the one that looked like an ugly crack on a gilded statue, widening, spreading, until it shattered altogether? Was it not a single scar, but a bunch of little holes in his essence, like wormbites on a leaf, or a pool of oozing sludge left by the Blood-melting Knife?

Assuming he still had a soul in the first place, of course. Maybe instead of a soul, there's only one huge patch of scar tissue where his three souls and seven spirits used to be, red and fibrous and angry.

Yeah, try pulling *that* out of his body with a spell, suckers.

...

A popular god gains new domains like new year gifts. Namely, you seldom receive the ones you want, are stuck with the ones you were tired of, and have no idea where that pile over there even came from.

Sun Wukong shared a domain with him as the protector of youth, a fact he was strangely okay with. He took the silly and mischievous ones, while Nezha dealt with the moody, rebellious ones. An amicable arrangement, as far as dispute between overlapping domains went; were they ever to switch places, the result would be a disaster.

This, however, was when a joint operation would be really helpful.

Alas, he had no such luck. So here he was, sitting in the Megapolis Children's Hospital's inpatient ward, next to a girl with owl-like eyes and tubes inside her nose, who asked him "Being dead, what does that even mean?"

...

Nothing, 'cause it's something that happens to other people. That was how he would have answered this question, back when he was still a real kid, and not an 18-foot-tall immortal plant construct who could choose to look like a kid.

He did wish people would recognize him as something other than "god of youth", though. Or realize his older forms existed too. Somehow, when Jinzha's master appeared as a little boy with five hair buns, people didn't stop worshipping Old Dude Wenshu or Graceful Bodhisattva Wenshu, but one too many adaptations later, Nezha was just THE Kid God, and not also the Three-headed Six-armed War God of Setting Things On Fire.

Bah.

But this was about Nezha the human (was he ever human, though, with the whole Spirit Pearl thing?) and Nezha the kid, not Nezha, Marshal of the Central Altar. Who didn't quite realize death was real, as in, a thing you should try to avoid for both yourself and others, and had been told that it was his destiny to dish out death to people in some epic upcoming war.

Master Taiyi, bless the old immortal, was a perfect case of someone who clearly cared so much, yet still managed to fuck up so badly.

For all his grudges against Jinzha's master (less about the whipping, and more about his damn cat killing the Jade Emperor), Wenshu made some good points: You did not tell a kid that you would protect him from all the consequences of his actions, then set him loose and expect him to not wreak havoc on unintended targets.

...

"What do you mean?"

He'd admit, this was not his finest hour. You weren't supposed to answer a question with a question, at least not in a way that didn't make you seem all mysterious and wise.

"I..." She trailed off. "I mean, I feel dead people all the time. Brushing past me, being all chilly and stuff. Since I'm gonna be joining you guys soon, I just wanna know...how it's like." The corner of her mouth twitched; either a grimace, or an attempt at smiling. "And you feel nicer than the others. Warmer, too."

He was no god of medicine, no matter how much he wished he could be one right now. Yet he could see the flames of her three souls, dimming with every passing second, as well as the blocks in her Qi flow, with one right behind her eyelids. Her sight was already gone, and in a week, these flames would go out entirely.

Sickness, he could heal, but not a passing ordained by the Book of Life and Death. As tempting as it was to pull a Sun Wukong, if he was to remove the name of one person, what was stopping him from removing another? And another? Before he knew, he'd be striking the name of every good person off it, and only chaos could result from that.

His gaze shifted to a small charm, fastened onto the bedframes with red strings. Made of peachwood, glowing gently in his vision, accompanied by the wisps of a prayer. Please watch over her, and take away her pain. Please don't let her face this alone.

Slowly, he extended a hand towards her, a tiny spark of pink flame dancing on his fingertip. If there were still ghosts in this room that hadn't fled when he first came in, they were definitely gone by now, as the darkness dispered in a surge of Yang-aligned Qi.

"...Wow." She visibly relaxed, with a sigh. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Are you...also a kid, when you...you know? You sound like one."

"Yeah. But I've been dead for a long time. Long before this hospital was built." He let out a dry laugh. "I guess you could say I'm a professional at this whole 'death' thing."

"Huh. I thought after a while, people just...move on."

"They do, if they aren't trying to avoid the ghost cops. The Heibai Wuchang," he said. "Nowadays, they dress like cops too, but they show up for everyone, to take them to the Underworld. Not just bad ghosts that need to be arrested."

"What's the Underworld like?"

"Dunno. Never been down there." This was partially true. At the time of his death, the Underworld bureaucracy did not exist yet. Most of his knowledge of its workings came from chatting with Huang Tianhua, whose father was deified as the King of Mt.Tai, former head of the Ten Kings. "But you seem like a good egg, so they would send you straight to the Naihe Bridge, and onto your next life."

"That's...good to hear," she said. "I wanna know more about the, uh, ghost part, though. Does it stop hurting when you die? I've been...hurting for so long, I'm starting to forget what it's like, before...this."

"Yeah, the pain stops," he answered, "but so does everything else. You just stop feeling things altogether. Smell, touch, warm and cold and all that jazz." He paused. "Being a ghost is very, very boring."

"And you still don't wanna go with the ghost cops?"

"Well, I killed myself, and that gets you stuck in the City of Wrongful Death." He blurted out, before realizing that this was the worse moment to be honest, and braced himself for the awkwardness to come.

"Sounds like an awful place."

"Pretty much. They said it was just full of depressed ghosts, being depressing together," he chuckled. "Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. I think I'll pass."

"Glad I didn't...go through with it, then." She said, then quietly added, "I nearly did, when the pain got too much, and the cost just kept rising."

Well, that wasn't quite what he expected. But he wasn't too surprised, either.

...

They thought his suicide was an act of despair. It was insulting, honestly. Both to the strength of his will and spite, and his unconventional problem solving skills.

See, when people said that your body and skin and hair were given to you by your parents, the implicit message was So you can't do anything to them, and They own you, every bit of you, and above all, Obey.

You weren't supposed to give them back, not so flippantly. Yet it was the simplest, most obvious solution, in the same way beating up the dragon king who tried to sue you was. (Guess he really was Taiyi's student.)

At the heat of the moment, it was quite thrilling. Almost liberating. Like a snake shedding its skin, a baby bird breaking out of its eggshells. As the raging storm and roaring tides drowned out Fate and Destiny's ever-tolling bells, for a second, he really felt like this was the end.

No more Spirit Pearl, no more unruly child, woe of his mother, doom of his lineage. No more Li Jing, no more questionable advices from Taiyi, no stupid dragon kings, and none of that Vanguard of the Zhou Army crap. Just a kid sacrificing himself, laughing and laughing until he chocked on his own blood.

Just Nezha.

But obviously, things didn't end here. Death rarely was the true end, nor did it tie things up neatly, like cutting through a knot with a sword. It was more akin to what you got when you broke a lotus root in half, full of sticky, near-invisible threads, stretching on and on between the scattered pieces.

...

Believe it or not, this wasn't the first time he had to deal with suicide, kids, or suicidal kids. Especially after gaining one of his more recent domains. He is the protector of all young people, regardless of who they fancy or whether their bodies match their souls, it was just that those who didn't fit the common denominator tended to get a lot of shit for existing.

(As annoying as the "Third Princess" nickname was, he had no problem with people finding strength and comfort in his legends, in severing ties, defying norms, and blossoming inside a changed body. After all, that was what gods were; a mirror that reflected the worshippers' beliefs and needs back at them.)

A few decades ago, he was summoned by a teen, standing on the bank of a river, holding a stick of incense. Dunno where, just that it was a Hokkien-speaking area and one of his temples was nearby.

They gave him a hopeful look when he showed up, emerging out of the water like an actual lotus plant, yet remaining miraculously dry. As hopeful as someone in their circumstance could manage, at least.

"Is it okay if I ask you to curse my parents?"

"If that's what you want, you are praying to the wrong god," he replied. "And the kind of gods who accept such requests will make you pay a price you are never ready for."

"Damn. Guess I'll just have to come back and haunt them myself, then."

They knelt down to stick the incense into the mud, then started wading their way into the shallows. He sighed, and they were promptly dragged back by his red sash, struggling furiously.

"Let go of me!" They screamed, muddy water splashing beneath their sneakers. "W-Why? I don't get it! Why are YOU stopping me? You, of all gods! The child who hacked himself to pieces, and tried to kill his asshole dad——"

"And got a burning pagoda dropped on him for his troubles." He said flatly. "Need I remind you that it all took place a thousand years ago, and I'm no longer out for his blood?"

"Oh, so they'd beaten it out of you! Good for you, I guess." They snapped. "But not me. Why would you even care if a freak like me died or not?"

"gin-na, you just admit you are gonna become a vengeful spirit. And I literally have 'subduing demons and harmful spirits' in my job description. So maybe, maybe, I'm gonna have a problem with that?"

"Even if they totally have it coming?" They retorted. The first two buttons of their collars had come loose in the struggle, exposing the ugly patch of bruised purple around their neck, as well as implications of worse things. "I thought gods were all for karmic justice."

"Especially if they have it coming," he said. "Which is why I'm stopping you. It's not gonna work."

"What does that even mean?"

"Ugh. Look. Suppose I let you drown, without alerting any ghostly officials. Suppose that you come back, haunt your parents night and day, and don't get yourself exorcised. Suppose that you inflict on them the same torment you were subjected to, and drive them to madness or some other gruesome ends." He said. "Then what? What are you gonna do afterwards?"

"I'll just...move on, I guess."

"To do that, you 'll have to cross the Naihe Bridge. And the Underworld officials won't let you off the hook that easily, not after you've accumulated all this negative karma by haunting the living." He shook his head. "I heard they take 'Hell is other people' quite literally, and punish people who hated each other by throwing both parties into the same Minor Hell, giving them a pile of lethal weapons, and resurrecting whichever side that gets killed. Over and over again."

He leaned closer. "Is that what you really want? Getting stuck in the same pit with your parents for centuries to come? Mind you, even if you get tired of the violence, you are not allowed to quit until the Underworld officials let you."

Came to think of it, that was the War of the Investiture in a nutshell. No one was allowed to quit, not even in death.

"...No," they mumbled, after a long silence. "But it's still tempting. At least I'll get to do something to them."

"Well, here's a thing you can do to them."

"What?"

"Live."

"That's it? Seriously?" They stared at him in disbelief. "Because I own it to them? Because my very existence is a mistake or something?"

"No. Because you own it to yourself," he said, "and it is only a mistake if you believe so, and if they think you are a mistake, there's no better way to prove them wrong and rub it in their faces than keep existing. Think of it like this——you ain't gonna help them get rid of you, are you?"

"Well, if you put it that way..." they paused. "But I'll still be depriving them of their favorite punching bag, at least."

"Is that what you think you are?"

"It's what I have been for the past few years."

"Yeah, sorry, but hell no. You can be way, way more than that." He grinned. "Why be a punching bag, when you can be their worst nightmare instead?"

"I thought you don't want me to haunt my parents?"

"Oh, no. You are gonna drive them nuts in a whole different manner: by growing into a successful, well-adjusted adult they no longer have any power over," his grin widened, "And watch them age into bitter, miserable old farts who'll die alone and forgotten, knowing that the moment they die, they'll be dragged straight into one of the Hells in chains, suffer for untold eons, and probably spend their next life as ants."

"That is...satisfying, not gonna lie." They bit into their lips. "But until then, I'll still be stuck with them. Thanks for the reassurance, though."

"Does that mean if I let go of you now, you aren't gonna dash into the river?"

Upon receiving a nod, he whistled, and his sash loosened around the teen, floating back onto his shoulders. They staggered back; he prepared himself, watching out for tensed muscles and all the little tells of someone who was going to make a run for it. Thankfully, he spotted none, as they retreaded their steps back onto dry land, one muddy footprint at a time.

He wasn't entirely convinced that they wouldn't change their mind later, but it was a good start. And he had just the idea to make it an even better start.

His fingers started twisting in a mudra, weaving together threads of pink and golden light into the shape of his signature seal. No, he definitely didn't enjoy the kid's quiet gasp of wonder, as a lotus-patterned token fell out of thin air and right into his hands. It wasn't like he was a show-off or anything, unlike that ape.

"Here. Take this. Go to—" He paused and cursed himself. Dammit, he kept forgetting that mortals couldn't just sense temples and their giant beacons of faith. "Do you know there's a temple over there?" He pointed east, "Like, in that direction?"

"You mean Taizi Gong? Yeah." They nodded. "Grandma used to take me there."

"If you ever need a meal, or a place to stay the night, just show this token to the staff, and they'll help you out." He narrowed his eyes, and said the next sentence very slowly. "Also, if your life is ever in serious danger, like, no-time-to-call-the-cops danger, just hold it tight, say my name, and point it at whatever is threatening you. Do. Not. Use. It. Lightly. Understood?"

He intentionally let out a bit of his killer aura, as he uttered the last few words. Not hard to muster, considering the circumstances that first drove him to develop this token system. It was always awful when he was too late in his interventions, but he swore to the Three Pure Ones, if anyone ever triggered the spell with a prank call, when he arrived at the scene, they'd wish they got caught in the explosions instead.

They paled and nodded in quick succession, then started to turn away. Before remembering something, and coming to a halt mid-step.

"I...I don't even know how to thank you." They shook their head. "If it was too early for that. If 'Thanks' is even enough. But if you are right and I do find my way out of this mess, I'm building you a temple, Third Prince."

...

A temple. Build me a temple, mother. Build me a temple, mother, for I'm cold without a body, hungry without a stomach. He remembered himself crying out, once. Build me a temple so I can be back at your side again, isn't that what you want? What you said you would give up everything for, as you picked up my pieces and buried them in a shallow grave?

Build me a temple, or you'll never know peace again.

The most frustrating part wasn't how much he sounded like the sorts of ghosts he'd beat up later, a lot, as Marshal of the Central Altar. It was the lack of context. As in, there was no memory of the before and after. Just words echoing in a vaccum, with neither pain nor sensations attached.

It was the same whenever he helped a mortal. It was the feeling he got when, twenty years later, he stood in front of a temple gate, watching the person in a suit cut the red ribbons during its opening ceremony, and thought, I've done something like this before, long ago, inside my first temple.

But I can't remember what it was, or for whom.

He knew that was how ghosts became gods. Three souls attracted by the fragrance of incense, seven spirits nourished by the ashes of burnt offerings. Ten shades of a person, molded back together into something more than the sum of its parts, by countless mud-stained, callused hands, clasped together in prayer.

He'd watched it happen before, on the coasts of Fujian. Little Lin Mo Niang, disappearing beneath the waves, only to rise out of the tides later as Mazu, guiding fisherfolks and sailors to shore with her gentle red light, just like she did in life.

Or maybe he had more in common with Guan Yu. The fugitive, the warrior with the might of a thousand man, the loyal companion. Who, despite his promise in the peach garden, did not die on the same day as his sworn brothers. Specifically, how his vengeance and fury used to hang over Jingzhou like a plague, how his name was once whispered in fear, before it became the synonym of loyalty, brotherhood and martial virtue.

Perhaps ghosts became gods when mortals poured pieces of themselves into them, filling up the holes in their psyche. Making them more human than they ever were, and could be.

Thanks to Li Jing's destruction of his idol, he'd never know.

That——that was what sent him onto his roaring rampage of revenge, right after reviving in his lotus body. After everything else had been bled dry, rage was all he had. Like thick black tar, sticking to the bottom of a broken jar.

...

"What stopped you?" He asked, without really knowing why.

"My legs. Literally. They don't work anymore. And I'm...gonna die anyways, it's not really worth the effort..." Her breath hitched in her throat, yet she still managed to squeeze out the last few words, "Then my mom came back."

"I...I'm still a little mad that she left in the first place, like, long before this. But she had a nice singing voice, when she wasn't crying, and," she sighed, "didn't start arguing with dad again. She said I had a new little brother, and showed me the photos...and I was just like, hey, he looks like a raisin, and they laughed, and I haven't heard either of them laugh in a long, long time..."

She was starting to look dazed, stuck in that liminal space between dream and awakeness.

"And I, I wouldn't mind hurting a lil' longer, if it means I get to have more moments like that."

What if you don't? A part of him wanted to ask. What if those moments are no more than baits on a straight hook, carrots on a stick, making it so that you are willing to hurt longer and longer until it's not even fleeting happiness you seek, just the mere promise of release?

But that was the bitterest, crueler part, and it could fuck right off.

"I'm sure they are glad to have you, too." In the end, that was all he managed to say, in a whisper she might or might not have heard, and only got a small yawn in return.

"Well, you sound like you're about to doze off. So I won't keep you up any longer," he said. "Any last questions, before I go?"

"What do you...look like?"

"Huh?"

"When I die, I'll get to...see things again, right?" She asked. "And you can't be the only kid here. Just...wanna...go over and say hello, before the ghost cops come."

"Oh, I'm very recognizable. You don't see a lot of folks with twin hair buns nowadays." He laughed softly. "And I promise you, when the time comes, I'll be right here, inside this very room."

"Thanks," she nodded. "G-G'night, ghost friend."

"Farewell, and sleep tight."

...

When did you stop being fun? Sun Wukong asked him, once.

When you started being nothing but jokes, he wanted to scream back. When you shut yourself in your cave for five hundred years to take a depression nap, while I drain just as much power answering the prayers of mortals as I get from their worship, and my true body is stuck guarding the fire that burn away worlds. When Yang Jian had stopped giving a crap about everything that happened outside of his precious Sichuan, me included.

When I grow the fuck up, monkey. We all do, sooner or later, yet you never seem to.

But then he remembered the look on Sun Wukong's face, as the mountain came down. A look he had seen on the faces of so many souls, as they were called up the Terrace of the Investiture.

It was Ao Guang clutching onto his son's tendons with trembling, scaly hands. It was his mother kneeling in the dirt, begging for his life and unlife. It was him handing Huang Tianhua's head back to Huang Feihu. The eldest of Zhao Gongming's three sisters, muttering a quiet "Sorry, brother" before she was swept away by Lao Tzu's scroll. Guang Chengzi looking Yin Jiao in the eyes, as they dragged his plow up the hill.

It was a monk postponing his Buddhahood in favor of the path of the Bodhisattva, swearing a vow that, for every life, he should learn the meaning of compassion anew, and teach it to others.

A pig who was once a marshal, too weighed down by his desires to attain enlightenment, who nonetheless went on to live a good life, full of good food and few regrets.

A soldier made into a monster after one simple mistake, who decided he was better than that, and, with quiet determination, followed his brother and master into samsara as their guardian.

It was a white dragon, destined to set things aflame and be consumed by flames, yet burning brightly all the same, a goofy grin on his face.

So he just gritted his teeth and kept on fighting. It was what he was made for, what he always did.

And it wasn't enough.

...

But when was anything ever enough? When did Fate or Destiny ever pat anyone on the head, and tell them they did a good job, and they'd be free of suffering, just like that?

When were there ever easy answers, for mortals and gods alike?

Azure Lion thought there would be one, that the right person on the throne could magically make it all better, and he shattered trying to make himself into that person.

One step at a time. One answer at a time. A promise kept, a visit made. That was how you do it.

After all, the great lump of molten colors Nüwa used to seal the cracks in the sky——they were but little pebbles too, once upon a time.

...

"Told you I'll be here." That was the first thing he said, as he unsummoned his wheels and sat down in midair, cross-legged.

"Oh. Well. I," The translucent girl let out a small laugh. She tried to scratch her head, before realizing she couldn't anymore. "I certainly wasn't imagining this, when you said 'twin hair buns'."

"Do you have reasons to, though?" He asked. "People usually don't see the Third Lotus Prince on their deathbeds."

"No. But it's pretty obvious in hindsight, with the warmth and all these little hints." She shook her head. "Dangit. Now I just feel kinda dumb. Still, it's good to see you again, sir...Third Prince?"

"Nezha would do. I suppose I make much better company than the ghost cops, right?"

Behind the hospital screen, the man wearing a tall black hat grumbled something about people not appreciating their jobs, before being cut off by a "Ha! Checkmate, Lao Fan!"

"Yeah. It's a little distracting when you were dying, and two guys were just having a chess game five feet away," she said. "The cheerful one is a better player, though."

"Only because you keep giving him tips!" The man snarked back. "How does it feel like to cheat via a dying kid, Xiao Xie? I bet you feel real proud of yourself right now."

"How does it feel like to lose to a dying kid?" His colleague laughed, sticking his tongue out way further than any living humans were capable of, or comfortable with. "She gave you tips too, you just aren't good enough to use them well. And she's good. Real good. This one thinks she may just be a chess champion in her next life!"

"Thank you, Mister Xie. I learned it from my grandpa."

It was such a blessing that these two didn't exist yet, at the time of his death. As grim and thankless as their duties were, Xie Bi'an and Fan Wujiu were also the most annoying pair of ghosts he ever met, the former taking nothing seriously and the latter taking everything way too seriously.

"Hey. You two, shut up and show some respect." He snapped, before turning to the girl. "I'm sorry you have to endure their presence."

"That's right, Xiao Xie! Even the Third Lotus Prince tires of you and your constant jesting!"

"This one thinks if we pay our proper respect to everyone that has ever died, we'll have no time to actually do our job." Xie chuckled. "Besides, he is clearly talking about the one who is constantly yelling, and incapable of losing gracefully. But alright, this one shall do as you command."

"...Let's go talk somewhere else." He sighed. "These two clowns are giving me a headache."

She giggled a little, as the screen parted with a wave of his hand, revealing the two psychopomps sitting on the nearby bed. "Their hats do look like clown hats."

"The clowns can hear you, you know?" Fan snarked, before picking up his baton and making a gesture in their direction. "Whatever. Begone. And remember our deal: you have four hours. Not a second more, not a second less. Understood?"

"Did you just admit to being a clown too?" Xie grinned. "This one does think a red nose will suit you well."

"Sometimes I seriously wonder why I ever agreed to become your sworn brother, Xiao Xie."

He led the girl out of the room, just as medical personnels started coming in, carefully concealing his presence from the mortals' eyes. The girl made a face when her hand passed through the doorframe, but quickly recovered.

"Where are we going?"

"Anywhere you like." He replied. "Your home, your old school, that really cool arcade or amusement park you never get a chance to visit...and you don't have to choose one. Distance is not a factor at all," with a blaze of pink fire, his wheels were back under his boots again, "when I'm the god of speedy drivers. So take your time."

"Hmmm. I think," she said, after a long silence, "I wanna go see my mom, and my little brother first. Is that okay?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Let's be on our way, then."

"Alright. Leeeego!"

#lego monkie kid #lmk fanfiction #nezha #lmk nezha #journey to the west #investiture of the gods

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sunspray-peak · 1 year ago

Text

Ch. 57: The Things We Deserve

CW: Mentions of a Suicide Attempt

TUESDAY - WINTER 9

Lewis’ curses from the Festival of Ice had not gone entirely unanswered. Though a day late, the temperature had plummeted overnight, and the townsfolk of Stardew Valley woke to a frigid, ice-encrusted wonderland.

Poor news for Achilles, who despised anything under 20 degrees. That being said, he was anxious to get out of the house, which he feared would seduce him back into the dregs of depression from which he was still struggling to break free. Unwilling to break anymore bones in his body jogging on the slippery sidewalks, he opted for a second day at the spa.

*****

It was slow going—he wasn’t the world’s greatest swimmer, and never would be, but that was… fine. Just something to keep his body moving, his mind occupied. One stroke, two strokes, red strokes, blue strokes…

“Achilles?”

He emerged from the waters to see Alex standing at the opposite end of the pool, 25 meters away, backlit by the pale blue fluorescent lights glowing softly through the steam.

“Hey! There you are, I was looking for you.”

A prickle danced down Achilles’ spine—but perhaps it was merely a draft blowing through cracks in the walls, cooling his damp, warmed skin. He raked his fingers through his hair, buying himself a second before paddling back towards the shallow end where Alex was waiting. “Hey yourself.”

“I stopped by the farm. You weren’t, um, answering your phone. But I ran into Maru, she told me you might be here.”

“Oh yeah? She tell you that before or after you broke into my house again?”

“I didn’t break into your—I promise I’m not a stalker, man, I only did that because you were MIA for a week.”

“I’m joking, Al.” Achilles had reached the edge. He rested his arms along the wall, a few inches away from a pair of well-worn blue sneakers, and looked up at the man standing above. “I just left my phone in the locker. What’s up?”

“I, uh. Well. I got the job.” With an uncharacteristically shy smile, Alex extended his arms to the sides and performed a little squeaky spin across the wet tiles (“That’s so dangerous, what kind of lifeguard are you?”). “Thought you should be the first to know. Or, I guess, third, technically, but my grandparents don’t really count…”

“A thing like that! Congratulations, I do believe this calls for a celebration.” In his excitement, Achilles half-lifted himself out of the water before thinking better of it and dropping back down with a small splash that splattered the fleece of Alex’s grey joggers. “Ah, sorry. I’d give you a hug if I wasn’t all wet.”

“A hug? An actual hug? From the Achilles Robinson? Wow!” Alex chuckled and squatted down to better meet Achilles’ eye level and return the offered the fist bump. “Nah, it’s ok.”

“Well, I’m not surprised. I knew you’d get it.”

“Did you, though? Did you—”

“Yes. Yes I did.”

They exchanged grins, and with another laugh, Alex shifted to a more comfortable position, taking a seat on the tiles and leaning back on his arms as Achilles continued to wade in the water.

“I’m excited. Even without the overtime, I’ll be making more money, so my grandparents are also excited… but I’m excited to really swim again. With all the extra time and an actual schedule now, I’ll be able to really get back into the routine of it all. Really try to take it seriously, ya know?”

“Yeah! Artemics XXXX, here we come, baby—”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m old for a swimmer…”

“You’ll be 26 going on 27 when it rolls around, you won’t be that old. If Peter Lee can win gold at the age of 35, why can’t you?”

“When did you become an expert in Artemic gold medalists?”

“When you decided you were going to make a run at it again. Or should I say a swim at it?”

Alex smiled at the rather lame joke and scooted criss cross applesauce closer to the edge.

The lights were buzzing. Achilles hadn’t minded it while swimming, but in the silence that sat between them now, the noise felt obtrusive, suppressing the unspoken words and unsaid wants that otherwise may have found their way to a home well received.

“I wouldn’t have done it, you know. Without you.”

Achilles sent a light splash over the wall. “What’d we say about kissing my ass? You would’ve handled it fine. It was an interview, it’s just talking, you’d have figured it out.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Alex wrapped his finger around his shoelace. Gave it a little tug and watched it unwind before repeating the process again. “I don’t think I would’ve even gone for it without you. Any of it. The promotion, swimming… I mean, I always knew there was more out there. I just… never realized I could actually go for it until you came along. Never realized I could try again. Just needed a kick in the pants, I guess.”

Ah…

That was enough sentimentality for today. Already, the words were grating his conscience, the remains of his own sense of self. Achilles dove back in the water, reemerging in the middle of the pool.

“Come. Join me. Alex’s Return to ProSports Training Session #1—”

“I didn’t bring a change of clothes.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to walk back home in wet underwear, it’s cold.”

“Okay, then don’t? Go commando, bitch.”

Alex laughed and stood to kick off his shoes and socks. Achilles was denied a full striptease though (for which he was slightly disappointed, though he would never admit it to himself), for Alex only rolled up his sweatpants to his knees before returning to the edge of the pool to soak his feet.

“How have you been feeling lately, though?”

“Oh.” Me again, huh? Always me… “Fine. It… comes and goes.”

“Yeah? You want to talk about it? Are we coming or going right now?”

Achilles had to bite the inside of his cheek. “Coming. Kind of. That’s why I came out here, actually, was feeling a little… well, I thought perhaps a little change in scenery would be… nice. Something warm, some peace and quiet…”

“Oh, do you want me to leave?

“It’s a public place, Al, I can’t tell you to leave.”

“But do you want me to?”

“No, stay. Please.”

There was another beat of silence that only the lights filled. And when Alex’s curious gaze became too much, Achilles dove back into the water and continued his swim.

*****

He should’ve felt happy for Alex.

And he did—really, he did. Happy, excited, vindicated, proud—he was all of it. It’s what Alex deserved.

But why couldn’t he be only it?

Why did he also feel like shit?

Well, it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, this gut wrenching twist that always accompanied someone else’s good news… This was how it’d always been for him, even though, as he reminded himself as he had countless times over the past season, he knew his friends’ success had no bearing on his own.

The paths you tread are parallel, not shared. One person’s accomplishments shouldn’t get in the way of your own growth.

Wise words from his father, once upon a time. But logic never did manage to trump the clinging stench of jealousy.

Aye, just get over yourself, my dude…

Easier said than done of course, but nevertheless done easier when he finished his final lap. Twenty or so minutes after Alex’s arrival, Achilles slowly made his way back to the shallow end of the pool, now ready to return to the real world, away from the voices bristling inside his head.

And seeing Alex at the edge of the pool, his nose slightly scrunched as he held his e-reader an inch from his face, his lips parting slightly as he muttered the words, further dulled the edge of Achilles’ bitterness.

You deserve everything you want, he thought, as he treaded slowly forward.

“Bit of a role reversal, wouldn’t you say?”

“Huh?” Startled, Alex looked up from the tablet.

“Me swimming. You reading.”

“Oh. Haha, yeah… more like trying to read, I guess. My brain is woozy. I’m just trying to finish before the new season drops. 700 pages! Books shouldn’t be allowed to be over 300, man…” Alex set the tablet aside. “Slow progress, but hey, it’s progress. Look at you, though! The rate you’re going, you’ll be competing against me soon enough. Who’d have thought you were scared of swimming just earlier this year?”

“Oh, I was never scared of swimming specifically…”

Was it something in his tone that gave it away?

He watched as Alex tilted his head every so slightly to the right. It wasn’t confusion, nor necessarily concern, that lined his face… no, it was something more akin to a… reserved sort of anticipation, Achilles decided. Atop a thinly veiled curiosity. Like a judge waiting for a confession to only confirm what he perhaps already knew.

Would it be too much to say what he wanted to? Too heavy? The words were on the tip of his tongue for the first time ever, demanding to be spoken aloud, and tasted of longing and desperation.

Would it ruin the mood?

Would it ruin what they had?

Achilles steadied himself against the wall, choosing to sit perpendicular to Alex’s line of sight. No, it was never swimming that he feared. He remembered the frigid waters, the dull buzz of a motorboat, the flash of sirens…

He took a shallow breath, and said, as nonchalantly as he could, “They say I tried to kill myself that night.”

Alex, to his credit—it was not unlikely he had already put it together on Spirit’s Eve—didn’t flinch. “Were you?”

“Eh. Depends on who you ask.”

“Mmm, and if I ask you?”

“I don’t know. No, really, I don’t know—I mean, you saw on Spirit’s Eve. I put a life jacket on. I feel like that piece of evidence does point to one version of the story. My therapist always insisted it was an ‘unconscious cry for help.’” Achilles tone was casual, his shrug and dry chuckle unforced.

He thought back to what the Shadow King had said to him. It had offered, if not the total truth, at least clarity. “Personally… I don’t think I cared much one way or the other.

“Apparition had come out. It was, as you know, received somewhere between panned to lukewarm by the literary community.” Here, Achilles gave a mocking little bow alongside a twitching, self-aware little smirk. “Finally had an Eddie Bloomsbury review in Gilliterate—what I had always wanted—and it was 2 stars. I felt like shit.

“I just thought it was so funny, what you said earlier about learning not to give up because of me, because like, come on. I’m a huge fucking hypocrite, man. Swore off my whole career—one that I really loved—over one badly reviewed book.

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to write anymore, I felt like I didn’t deserve to want to write anymore. Leave it to the professionals, Achilles. The people who actually had the talent and the skill. People who weren’t coasting on their family name. Of course, not being able to write just pissed me off even more. I was angry. I was aimless. And then I was depressed.

“I didn’t know what to do anymore. I thought I had my whole life, my whole career, figured out, and then almost overnight learned I wasn’t actually cut out for what it was I wanted, and, well, you’ve see me when I have nothing to do. It drove me crazy.

“So my friends took me out one night. Took me to a club, tried to distract me, cheer me up. They were a good group of people. I got drunk, managed to slip away. You can’t blame them. It was dark out, it wasn’t hard. Scurried away to the pier…

“I don’t know why I went for the water. Maybe because it was quiet. Maybe because I was just drunk and tired and wanted to nap and the boat was the closest thing to a bed. Maybe because I thought that being out there, away from the lights and the music, you know, just me and the ocean and the stars in the sky, I would… find something. A sign? From the universe? Clarity? I don’t know. You know how it is. That feeling, when you’re so desperate for answers. The hope that maybe if you just… connect with nature, connect with the universe, some… thing will lead you to answers…

“But next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital with zero answers and my mum and dad crying by my bed. That hurt like a bitch, having to see that, let me tell you… They sent me to the nicest fucking clinic money could buy for a month. It was great. I was high on meds half the time and I didn’t have to cook! Ever!”

A moment of only somewhat manufactured levity. Achilles waved his arms gleefully in the air until Alex managed a snort.

“Well, maybe not great. But not… baaad. I got out, and I did feel somewhat better—like logically, I knew I was in a better place. Or ought to be. I had a therapist, still. Eva was great. But there was this… constant bottomless pit in my stomach, and I felt that if I just stopped for long enough, I’d… I don’t know. Fold into myself? Or collapse into myself, maybe, and I’d just get lost and fall and drown in it all. I mean, clearly I needed something to do. I’d take anything.

“Well. You know what happened next. Went to BRLO. Lived my best life until I could finally admit to myself that it wasn’t really my best life. And then I came here. Gotta say, it hasn’t really been my best life either, but for a bit I think it was still a pretty good one… the end of Spring admittedly blowed, but Summer got better, and Fall ever more so. Until the mines.

“Maybe it was inevitable. Everything crashing back down. After all, I had never quite solved the problem that had sent me allegedly jumping off a boat in the middle of the ocean in the first place. I still have no idea what I should be wanting to do in life. But for a bit, the Valley seemed to trick me into forgetting that it mattered.

“But down there, in the mines… and Spirit’s Eve, too… the things I saw…” Achilles voice grew flatter as he remembered the terror of the mines, the screaming spirits pounding against his skull, and the Shadow King. He didn’t want to dwell on it. Not now, not even with Alex. Perhaps he never would. “The things they said… They brought it all back…

“And even now, it’s just… everyone else is doing so… well. Abigail’s living her best life, Elliott’s got his book, Leah’s art is taking off, you’re…” He tossed Alex a small, sad smile. “You’re doing great. And I just feel like I’m falling behind—which I know is illogical, and I’m really happy for all of you, I swear that I am, Alex, I’m so, so proud of you, and you deserve it. But…”

He clasped his palms together, entwined his fingers as he leaned against the wall of the pool.

“Everyone is doing what they want to do. What they’re meant to do. And they’re all happy, and I’m not. I’m not doing anything. And I know it’s petty and it’s not right, and I know it’s selfish and stupid, it’s like I’m six fucking years old, but I can’t help it.”

Achilles, his face now glum as he stared into the waters below, gave his feet a halfhearted little kick.

Alex’s tone, however, sounded oddly cheery given the conversation at hand. “You considered getting back into advertising, didn’t you? You said you had some offers. You said maybe you would try again, that you thought it could be better this time. That’s definitely something!”

“Ahhh…” Achilles glanced over to see Alex mirroring his kicks in the water. If he was honest, Alex’s support for his Hyacinthian corporate career was just a bit disheartening, even if it was clear the words were being wielded only to support. “I turned them down. All of them. Yesterday.”

Oh.

The sharp jerk of his head was almost imperceptible, the raise of his eyebrows only but the tiniest inch—but even so, these minuscule motions that signaled Alex’s apparent enthusiasm at Achilles’ reveal were not missed. And each was an arrow through Achilles’ racing heart.

“Yes, despite the alarming pile of evidence to the contrary,” Achilles drawled, continuing off of Alex’s wide-eyed blinks, “I do still think the Valley’s been… good to me. I don’t think it’s time to go just yet… But I’m just… scared, Al.”

Achilles shook his head in an attempt to stave off any unwelcome emotion. “I don’t have any regrets, I think, turning it all down. At least, not yet. But I’m scared that I’m wrong. I was good at it, Alex, shouldn’t I want to go back? I just… I don’t understand why I’m so caught up with wanting what I know I shouldn’t want, why I insist on living off of daydreams I can’t even bring myself to fully commit to. I can’t even finish writing a goddamn outline.”

He forced himself to laugh. “It’s just… you saying what you did earlier? About how I pushed you, or whatever you said? I just thought it was so funny. Because I’m such a hypocrite. Right? Like seriously, how pathetic I am, how easily I give up on everything when it doesn’t go my way. I know I’ve got my farm and my arrangement or whatever with Shane—that sounded strange, disregard— and Penny mentioned possibly doing some substitute teaching, but I just… none of that is a life, right? None of that’s living for me, it’s just… something to do.

“I miss having a… mission of sorts. Goals. Direction. A larger purpose. I want to be… I want to be important. And I know that’s stupid, and I know the whole fame and glory is ridiculous and stupid, but I mean, I don’t know how to stop wanting that. I mean, that’s the whole reason I wanted to go down the mines even though I knew it was a stupid fucking decision—”

“No you didn’t.”

“What?”

Alex gave a little matter of fact shrug. He was still kicking his feet in the water like a kid, sending droplets careening back into his own face. “You just said you wanted to go down the mines, but you didn’t. I remember you telling me that morning, you didn’t want to go. And you weren’t lying, I could tell. It wasn’t glory at all, you only did it because you had to.”

“But the Shadow King—” Achilles stopped himself short.

What had the Shadow King said? That Achilles had wanted to go down—wasn’t that right?

A tiny piece of glory peaked its head and you had to jump on it.

Yes. And he’d allowed himself to believe it.

But Alex was right. That wasn’t quite true, was it? In fact, if he were honest with himself, he had never truly wanted to go down at all. It’s not like he had been that busy during the Fall, Yoba knew there was nothing preventing him from joining Abigail if he had truly wanted to. If he had wanted to, actually wanted to, he would have dived right into training alongside her—but no, he had always found excuses. Up until the last minute when it became clear he no longer had a choice.

He should’ve wanted to go down—he remembered the conversation he’d had with Alex at Abigail’s birthday. It was, mortal danger aside, on paper, right up his alley. And clearly the Shadow King had chosen to latch onto the thought. But the truth of it all? The price for the promised glory in this instance was never one he had wanted to pay.

So what did that mean?

“Maybe…” Achilles spoke slowly as the thoughts came to him. “Maybe I need to stop waiting around for something to want. Maybe that’s the lesson here. It doesn’t matter what I fucking want. It never did. Maybe that’s the way to finally start a new life—”

But Alex quickly interrupted. “I mean… I don’t know. I don’t think so, Ash. I don’t know… sometimes you just have to do things you don’t want to do. For you, that was the mines. But that’s… that’s like, different. You didn’t have a choice then. But you do now, in… what did you say? Starting your new life? You have a choice now.”

Hmm. Achilles gave his head a little shake. “I guess I just wish I had a thing again, you know? You know. Like the rest of you. Specialization of labor, that’s what led our ancestors to like, ditch hunting and gathering or something, right…”

“You’re asking the wrong person, man.”

“I wanted to be a scholar of sorts, but I suppose I was destined for agrarian society all along…”

“Achilles, you’ve lost me.”

“You never took a world history class?”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Ash, I’m stupid—although, yeah, I did, actually now that I think about it… but really, you expect me to remember anything from it?”

They both chortled. It was nice, Achilles thought, as he watched and counted the seconds it took for the ripples from Alex’s flutter kicks to reach his chest. How casual this was. He didn’t need an intervention, or overly concerned gazes and hinted, indirect questions that only served to close him off even further. He just wanted an ear and a friend.

“You miss writing, don’t you? You miss that being your ‘thing?’”

“I don’t know. I’d like to think so, but I mean, I just wanted to be fucking famous, didn’t I? So is it really the writing I miss, or the book signings?”

“I think you miss it.”

“I shouldn’t.” Achilles sighed. “Every time I picked up a pen this past year, I just couldn’t stop thinking about the last time I tried. And what happened. The humiliation. How it ended. The fact that it did end… That’s a sign in and of itself, isn’t it? Where my priorities lay? All my talk, but I can’t commit. I just want to let go. Let go of the… wanting of it all.”

Alex withdrew his feet from the pool and stood, making his way to the little cart of towels nearby. “For what it’s worth, Ash… I don’t think you’re a hypocrite. And by your own standards, I don’t think you should think that either… I mean, you know you better than I know you of course, I don’t mean to speak for you…”

“No, by all means, Alex.”

“I just noticed you keep saying “should,” Ash— ‘should want,’ ‘should miss,’ ‘should do…’ and I just… I don’t know. I don’t think you’re really… listening to yourself. Or something.

“I think you just have… never felt like you really deserved to write again. I mean, you just said it yourself. You feel like you ‘shouldn’t’ want to do it because the universe sent you a sign in the form of Eddie Bloomsbury six years ago that this path supposedly wasn’t for you.

“I think that’s why you never let yourself commit to it this past year, in the way that you always encouraged me and Elliott and Leah to go after what we wanted. Because in your eyes, the things we want are the things we should want—things we’re good at, things we like. Things that other people appreciate. That’s what you told me once, right?

“I think your… problem… was just that you were… I don’t know, so focused on finding what you thought you were supposed to want, instead of what you actually wanted. I don’t think it’s ever been a question regarding your commitment, Ash. The past six years… I think it’s always been a question regarding what it is you think you deserve.”

Achilles clambered out of the pool—was it his imagination, or was Alex following the line of his bare body as he padded across the tiled floors?

“How did you make peace with your past, Alex? The shit your dad said to you, how did you learn to move on?”

Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought up his dad. Although, then again, Alex himself had never shied much from the topic, had never spoken of it with shame or embarrassment. Even now, Achilles studied the faint smile of Alex’s lips, the gentle curve of his neck as he gazed pensively up at the ceiling, taking a minute to gather his thoughts.

“Time.” Alex gave what looked to be almost an apologetic shrug. “I wish I had a better answer, but honestly, that’s most of it. I mean, I still struggle with it sometimes. Feeling worthless. And stupid. But, you know, I haven’t seen him in like 13 years, and I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with better people since then.

“To be honest, I think I’ve actually made a lot of progress just this past year, even. With… you around. Going back to what I was saying earlier, how you’ve… helped me this year. Pushed me.

“I don’t know, I forget when it was, but there was just one day I was feeling kinda blah. Maybe we were going for a run or swimming or something, but you were just… saying things, and I don’t know. It was kind of eye-opening. Just thought to myself, well if someone I admired so much, whose opinion I really respected, found it worth their time to help me and believe in me and care about me, then why couldn’t I do the same for myself?”

“Do you believe in me?” The words slipped out by accident. A pathetic ask. One bound in longing and a need for affirmation, and in that moment, Achilles wondered if he had truly always yearned for fame and glory or whether it’d just been this right here all along.

Alex smiled in response, a soft twinkle in his eyes as he tied the laces on his left sneaker, then his right. “We all do, Ash. Hey, think about Elliott—he’s in your line of work, you always said he was a good writer. He clearly respects you. Admires you. Trusts you to read his stuff. Don’t you think that means something?”

But Achilles didn’t want to think about Elliott right now.

I want to hear it from you.

Perhaps there was something in his eyes—a childlike yearning for approval, an obvious desperation for confirmation, for acceptance, for acknowledgment—for Alex’s gaze softened to something more tender as Achilles neared.

“I believe in you more than anyone, man. And not just because you’re my best friend. But if we’re real, it doesn’t matter what I believe if you don’t listen to me when I say it.”

The words—or was it the steady way Alex was watching him?— seemed to flood his body with a warmth far surpassing that of the spa’s heated waters. For a moment, his anxieties grew silent, his dissatisfaction dissolved, and he felt at peace.

This he wasn’t imagining. Alex unrolled a towel from the cart near him, ignored Achilles’ outstretched hands to sweep it over his shoulders himself, clutched him closer, raked his fingers through his wet hair, brushed it out of his eyes —

“Oh thank Yoba you two are still here.”

The charge between them splintered like ice.

Maru had suddenly arrived, huffing and puffing, her red braids bouncing as she skidded into the spa breathless. “I came to warn you—there’s a storm blowing in. Folks are stocking up, I’d get to Joja asap. They say it’s coming in really fast, and it’s coming in bad.”

*****

Aware that his ability to handle the cold was significantly worse than the rest of the town’s, an alarmed Achilles quickly changed, ready to race for supplies and beat the storm.

Alex, on the other hand, was unperturbed as he half-tackled the front doors, tumbling out first to face the fierce winds already beginning to blow. The clouds overhead were thick and dark, thundering between shades of grey and pale gold, but the snowless grounds indicated they had not yet unleashed their fury upon the Valley.

“Some storm,” he called, rubbing his gloved hands together. He gave an anxious Achilles, who was waiting on the other side of the glass still in the lobby, an encouraging nod, even though Achilles could clearly see the branches of the surrounding pines violently swaying back and forth. “This is nothing, we’ll be fine, come on—you didn’t see this coming, though, weather boy?”

With a huff, Alex wrenched the door open again, allowing a sweeping wind to blow Achilles near off his feet as he stumbled out into the biting air.

“Oh fuck me—‘this is nothing,’ my ass—”

“Ah heck, I forgot you’re from, like, desert country—”

Alex removed his scarf and tied it tightly around a violently shivering Achilles’ still-damp hair. “Why didn’t you bring a hat?”

“Sorry, m-mom. I’ll do b-b-better next time—”

“You need a thicker coat, dude.” Only Achilles’ rapidly numbing limbs prevented him from shoving Alex off as the man proceeded to also remove his own puffer jacket and gloves. “No one told you the Winters are a lot colder here than they are in both Monstera and Hyancinthia, huh? Figured you would’ve researched the climate before moving… Now don’t you freeze on me, you weenie, I’ll race you to Joja.”

*****

Alex, naturally, sped ahead, but an unlucky tumble sent Achilles slipping across the first falls of sludgy snow and careening twenty feet down the mountain.

“You know, fuck this shit, maybe I really am better off moving back to Hyacinthia,” he grumbled, seizing Alex’s offered hand and clambering up from the icy mud.

“No, it’s too late. You already said no, I’m afraid you’re stuck here for forever, bud.” Alex swiped at the clumps of snow sticking to Achilles’ leg—rather dangerously close to my ass, Achilles thought, somewhat torn between waving him away and letting those hands continue to reach for his pants. What a shame the motion was accompanied by Alex’s high-pitched attempt at a Muppet impression. “Please don’t leave me, Ser Achilles, I couldn’t bare it for even a second.”

Achilles twisted to both avoid Alex’s artificially wide-eyed plea and to better examine the damage. A clammy, wet streak of mud was now smeared along the back of his thigh. “Fantastic. I look like I just shit myself.”

With a click of his tongue, Alex straightened back up rather abruptly. “Pretty picture.”

“Almost as pretty as you.” And with an exaggerated wink, Achilles hurtled down the trail back to Pelican Town.

*****

“You sure you don’t want to stay here the next few days?” Alex yelled over the winds as they heaved bottles of water and canned vegetables into the Mullner household.

They had had to battle their way through JojaMart. The tourists trapped at Sunspray Peak who had been unable to book a room at the saloon had made the drive down to stockpile for the upcoming days. Shelves were bare and lines were long, but through it all Alex and Achilles had bickered and bantered to pass the time.

It wasn’t a totally unwelcome offer, hunkering down with the Mullners—the snow was falling thick now, swirling through the open front door as they returned back out to the porch, and Achilles didn’t much fancy the trek home.

But he shook his head. Never mind the prospect of being snowed in with George—he wasn’t sure how well he’d be able to resist snowbound temptation, anyway, not in his fragile headspace and Alex looking the way he did in that stupid ass old letterman of his. “I couldn’t leave poor Voltaire all alone, no, the poor cat has already suffered enough this season.”

“You sure? You can bring him back here, maybe there’s still time. Dusty won’t mind. I just don’t know if I trust you not to freeze to death.”

“I’ve got a fireplace.”

“Sure, you’ve got wood?”

“You got me there. Okay. I’ve got a heater. I’ve got two tubs of arugula. What more can a boy need? But thanks for the offer.”

Achilles knelt to grab the aforementioned two tubs of arugula, along with additional groceries and cat food. Already, visibility was frighteningly low, the snowflakes large and wet as they clumped quickly along the cobblestone paths.

As he bent down, the tail of Alex’s puffer coat slipped up at the exact moment a speck of snow decided to drift its way down across the exposed strip of his back. The chill was electrifying, and he instinctively jerked up, only to slam his head into something hard—

“Ow! Achilles—”

“Fuck! What the—”

He stepped dizzyingly backwards to see Alex bent at the waist, cradling his nose.

“I’m sorry—shit. I’m sorry! Yoba, why’d you bend down—”

“I was trying to help you—”

“I can manage two bags of groceries, Alex—”

“Man, now you’ve done it. I think you’ve broken it.” Alex straightened to dab his nose with the back of his pointer finger and check for blood.

“It’s not broken, it’s not even bleeding—”

“You don’t know that. I could be bleeding internally, that’s even more dangerous they say—”

Achilles couldn’t help but laugh—he leaned against the door frame, doubled over as Alex continued to milk his pain. God, he felt good, but oh, he really ought to head back…

“—and it’s the best part of my face—”

“That’s a joke right? How many women have I had to witness fawn over those green bean eyes of yours—”

“—and in the middle of a snowstorm. Gonna have to walk a whole two minutes to Dr. Harvey now—”

“Good luck getting that guy to answer his door during off-hours—”

“—why’s your head gotta be so dang hard, huh—”

“If I kiss it will it make you feel better?”

A beat of silence, then Alex dropped his hand. Shot him a narrow-eyed, rueful look.

“Maybe.”

Achilles hadn’t expected an affirmative. Well, semi-affirmative. Then again, he wasn’t sure what he had expected at all. Whatever it was, he’d been prepared to laugh it off and head home, but in that moment, Elliott’s words from the day before crept into his head.

Can you meet him halfway?

He leaned forward, arms stiffly at his sides as they each clung to a Joja bag, and for the barest fraction of a second, brushed his lips against Alex’s nose before taking an abrupt step back.

“That’s all you’ll get from me right now, you can send the hospital bill to my secretary. You stay warm now.” And, refusing to wait around a second longer for Alex’s reaction, Achilles tore down the ramp and sprinted home.

*****

Oh.

Oh?

Alex stood frozen on the porch, watching Achilles hurtle through the already four-inch thick spread of snow. He should’ve let him go sooner—what were you thinking?—the storm was growing worse with every second and it was nearly two miles to Strawberry Farms. Thank goodness for Maru! Without her warning, they’d have really been in trouble…

Heck, he should’ve offered to help him carry back his groceries, it was already starting to get dark.

Man, what’s the matter with you? For shame!

Even after Achilles’ tracks were the only trace of him that remained in sight, Alex continued staring across Pelican Town, a small furrow in his brow, his fingers tracing the bridge of his nose.

“Shut the door, boy, what are you doing? It’s freezing. Come now, help your grandma set the table…”

With a jump, Alex bolted inside to the kitchen.

Dinner was a quiet affair. Evelyn had cooked his favorite meal, honey garlic salmon, to celebrate his promotion, but he found he hadn’t much of an appetite. Even George had noticed his lack of chatter, had asked if everything was all right.

But Alex had only shrugged, smiled wanly.

“I’m ok! Big day, you know. I’m just tired.”

As if.

He felt like champagne.

#llnks #alex stardew valley #sdv fanfic #stardew valley fanfic #alex sdv #sdv alex #farmer x alex #sdv farmer #sdv oc

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freezethebeez · 2 years ago

Note

Actually I would like to ask about catalyst schlatt! Cschlatt has always struck me as a man spiraling seen from the outside. He’s very much a man hurtling down to rock bottom with no safety nets because his neuroses include an ideal of masculinity that is unhealthy independent and that’s why I think ctubbo needs has issues with toxic masculinity connected to his need to be useful and threatening as a route to safety

i think catalyst!schlatt would have been a much better person if he had been given time to figure himself out.

tw/cw for alcohol abuse, mentions of suicide, and internalized homophobia below the break

and this is by no fault of tubbo's own. tubbo was given to schlatt by his mother when tubbo was three and schlatt was about to turn 18. schlatt's sister (tubbo's mother— because schlatt is technically tubbo's uncle but tubbo called him dad because that's what he's always called him) promised that she'd be back for tubbo as soon as she could— no more than five years— and schlatt thought "i can do five years. the kid'll be eight by then. that'll be fine."

but then five years turned to six, then seven, then eight, and there was still radio-silence on his sister's end about when she'd be coming to get tubbo back. for all schlatt knew, she could have died in those past few years— which also kept him awake at night and wasn't beneficial at all for his spiralling mental health.

those years were long and fucking awful. schlatt had just recently graduated high school when tubbo came along, and he was looking for universities to attend. he put applications off for a bit to take care of the toddler. schlatt wasn't great at it by any means, but tubbo didn't get sick too often and he wasn't dead so schlatt thought he was doing a pretty good job.

problems began to arise when tubbo started school. schlatt applied and got into a university when tubbo started grade school. the schedule was a little hectic, admittedly, finishing classes and then running over to tubbo's elementary school to pick him up. schlatt would often find himself doing assignments while making meals or cleaning up tubbo's messes. he'd switch between doing calculus and basic addition to help tubbo with his math homework.

during schlatt's uni days, through parties that he'd let himself go to because he deserves them for all the shit he'd had to put up with, he met quackity. it was kind of love at first sight, but schlatt was sure it wasn't— it couldn't be, he was straight— he was so sure he was straight because he never got the time to go out and experiment— never got time to figure himself out because was so busy trying to raise tubbo.

quackity was a very important of schlatt's life. not only was he able to help raise tubbo, but he was also able to help schlatt sort through all the shit was dealing with. years of taking care of a child you didn't want, coupled with university courses that he was trying to get by in, along with trying to convince yourself that you're straight and that you definitely don't want to kiss this friend that you're also sort of raising your niece with— it was a lot and it piled up fast, and without much way for release...

schlatt turned to drinking to cope. it was easy, accessible, and it worked.

but it make him an awful person.

it made him feel better in the meantime, but he became much angrier and more aggressive, both towards tubbo and quackity— each for different reasons (the anger he showed tubbo was more directed to his sister than tubbo himself, and the anger he showed quackity was a result of frustration, confusion, and self-hatred).

schlatt drank in excess because it got tubbo to go away (he never found out about tubbo's own problems with drinking), and it helped him feel better about himself and his sexuality— he only ever kissed quackity when he was drunk.

on the outside— while sober— schlatt was a good person. the inside was good, too, but there was so much turmoil, and he couldn't keep it in when there was alcohol in his system. he'd inflict all the hatred for himself onto others. when he'd sober up, he'd remember all of this, and instead of dealing with the consequences, he'd just drink again.

at his very core, he was good. he wanted what was best for himself and what was best for tubbo. he wanted the best for quackity, too. but instead of getting the time to get his bearings in the world, he was thrown into single parenthood— something that he wasn't ready for, nor did he want.

he loved tubbo as a niece, not as a child, and he loved quackity as a lover, not just a friend.

and he never quite got the change to figure all that out.

if you were to speak to him now— ghlatt, for example— he wouldn't resent tubbo for what he did. sober, now, he'd almost thank him for it. he was miserable. he was on the brink of death anyway— whether it be by taking himself out, or suffering a heart attack. it's almost poetic, being killed by the very thing you tried so hard to love. it's punishment for him. he deserved it. he treated tubbo like shit and he deserved every part of it.

if schlatt could go back and retry his life again, he wouldn't refuse to take on parenting tubbo. schlatt knew his sister was really struggling, and knew that tubbo would be safer with him. he'd wait a little longer to apply for universities— finish raising tubbo first— and then he'd take time to figure himself out— come to terms with who he is and what he likes.

schlatt was a good person, but he was not good to the people around him. tubbo won't forgive him, and schlatt accepts that. he understands, and he doesn't ask for forgiveness— not from tubbo, quackity, or really anyone.

he's happy tubbo killed him when he did. he's afraid of how much worse he would have gotten if things had gone on any longer.

but yeah, that's all for the catalyst!schlatt backstory. tubbo's grandparents were also kind of shit but they died young so he thankfully never had to meet them.

this was so fun to write btw. and any other questions about any other characters are greatly welcomed ^_^

#catalyst #people asking me things

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airplanelanding · 4 years ago

Note

For the Angst April Fic: 25 - Immortality

YES THIS WAS ONE I RLY WANTED TO DO TYSM HELL YES THIS IS GONNA BE AN ANGSTY ONE (also loving the new post editor on desktopppp [i have beta on])

Tysm for sending me this one ohhh I'm so happy you sent this one

cw: temporary character death, (technically) suicide (but in the context of proving immortality & bc he knew he'd survive, not because he was suicidal)

Fic below the cut

Immortality

Merlin breathed out slowly, the air leaving his lungs with a sigh.

His eyes fell shut, drooping slowly lower and lower until they closed, and his grip on Arthur began to loosen.

Faintly, he heard a panicked voice stumbling through words he couldn't understand.

He could feel his heartrate slowing. One... Two...... Three...... Four...... Five...... Six......

Slower, slower, slower...

His name, he heard his name being called. A choked sob. A tight grip around his body. Then, nothing...

Then...

Merlin inhaled sharply, his eyes opening abruptly. There was a harsh, stinging pain in his stomach. He ignored it for the moment, as he broke out into a coughing fit, desperately gasping for breath between coughs.

He didn't—what just happened? He was sure he had—

"Merlin?!" The voice ripped him out of his confusion as he quickly turned his gaze to the man cradling his body in his arms.

"Arthur...?" Merlin asked, his voice rough from coughing so much.

"Merlin, no, but you were..." Arthur's grip on Merlin loosened, his confusion clear as day. "We have to get you back home, back to Gaius."

Merlin just groaned softly, leaning his head against the King's chest. "'m tired..."

Arthur slowly stood up, lifting Merlin in his arms as he did so he was carrying him.

"Don't fall asleep, Merlin, dammit, you're such an idiot..." Arthur muttered as he began to walk, "we're lucky we're close enough to the edge of the forest, the attack spooked the horses... You can't just keep jumping in front of me like that, sorcerer or not, one of these you're going to—I thought this time you had..."

The sorcerer just groaned again and shut his eyes.

"I did..." He whispered, trying his hardest not to let sleep take him. He felt Arthur tense, stumbling in his step slightly.

"No, no you couldn't have, because you're alive," Arthur sounded more like he was trying to assure himself rather than Merlin. "You just lost consciousness for a few minutes. That's all."

Merlin frowned but didn't argue, not having the energy. Instead he just hid his face in Arthur's shoulder. He knew he died... He felt it. He felt himself die, his heart stop... Yet, he was alive. He was breathing. He was exhausted, and his entire body ached and his stomach burned where he was struck, but... He was alive.

How was he alive?

"Merlin... Merlin, my boy, I need you to open your eyes..."

Ah, Gaius, he must be home... When did he fall asleep? Slowly, Merlin opened his eyes.

"Gaius...?" Merlin groaned, looking around for the man as he blinked a few times to clear his eyes, "What happened? I—I died... But I'm alive."

When his eyes finally landed on the old physician's grim expression, a feeling of dread washed over him.

"Merlin, I'm afraid you're not going to like what I have to tell you," Gaius sighed, before sitting down on the edge of the sorcerer's bed. "Arthur brought you back, with a fatal wound in your stomach. He told me what happened and I am certain that you did not just lose consciousness, I am certain you died..."

"I did, I felt it happen, but, Gaius, I am alive," Merlin insisted, propping himself up on his elbows with a wince.

Gaius' mouth drew into a thin line. "You are, indeed. So, I did some research while you were out these past three days—"

"Three days?!"

"—and I discovered something... Something about your name to the druids," Gaius continued as if Merlin never interrupted him. "Emrys, it... Means immortal. And these events are leading me to the conclusion that they don't call you this for no reason."

Merlin's heart dropped. Immortal... He's... Merlin shook his head.

"No, no, there must be another explanation," he laughed, but he was not at all amused. Gaius sighed softly and placed a hand on his wards shoulder.

"I'm afraid there's not... I consulted Mordred, and he confirmed my suspicion. You're immortal, Merlin."

Merlin slumped down onto his magic. He felt ill... Oh gods, he felt so sick.

"But I can't be..."

Merlin took a deep breath as he paced the King’s chambers, waiting for him to arrive back from a council meeting.

How was he supposed to tell Arthur the truth?

He couldn’t lie—he promised, they promised. No more secrets, no more lies. But dammit, this was… This wasn’t just something like he had magic, or he’d ripped his favourite shirt.

He was immortal.

Oh, it felt so wrong to even think…

How do you tell someone you’re immortal? How do you tell someone you love that you’re going to live forever, that you’ll have to watch them wither away and die along with everyone else you know…?

Merlin took a nervous breath and let himself drop into a chair at Arthur’s table. He was going to have to watch everyone he’d ever loved die…

He was forced to live on for eternity while everyone he cared about struggled with mortality.

A cruel fate… Yet, the druids dared to call him blessed.

Blessed. That was a good joke.

How could one be called blessed when condemned to such a life?

Merlin ran his hands through his hair. He’d be alone… Never able to grow attached to someone, too afraid of losing them like he knew he would… A lonely life, he’d be sentenced to. Should he start pushing people away now…? Save himself the pain?

No, he couldn’t. That would be cruel to them, as well as himself…

“Merlin?” The sorcerer nearly leapt out of his skin at the voice to his right. “Merlin, you’re awake! And, up! How are you feeling?”

Merlin dropped his hands and looked over to Arthur, who looked so happy and hopeful at the sight of him. Here he was, about to crush that…

“I—” Merlin hesitated, and Arthur’s brows furrowed in a frown.

“You? You what?” The King pushed, concern flickering on his face a moment, “are you alright? You look like you’re about to be ill. Should you be out of bed yet? Gaius said you only just woke recently…”

A tense silence hung between them, as Merlin contemplated how to say the words that had been weighing on his chest. Finally, when Arthur looked like he was going to give up, Merlin found the courage to speak up.

“I can’t die,” he forced out, the words nearly getting caught in his throat. Arthur’s eyes widened impossibly wide, as he stared incredulously at his friend and lover.

Arthur opened his mouth, then closed it again, hesitating.

“…What?” He finally got out. Merlin gave a weak smile, knowing just how crazy it sounded.

“I can’t die,” he repeated, his voice breaking slightly as the reality of it hit him, this having been the first time he spoke the words aloud. His eyes stung, but he blinked away the tears as he stared at Arthur, holding eye contact. “I…I’m immortal, Arthur.”

Arthur let out a breath, stunned by the revelation.

Merlin expected him to laugh, to claim him lying, or even to leave the room or tell Merlin to leave. Even after all they’d been through, after the months they’d been together after finally getting their heads out of their asses and confessing… Merlin was shocked, only minorly but still so, when Arthur suddenly grabbed and pulled Merlin into a tight embrace.

He tensed a moment, startled, but slowly relaxed and returned the hug, burying his face in Arthur’s shoulder.

“I don’t really know what to say,” Arthur murmured, “what do you say when you find out your soon-to-be husband is immortal?”

Merlin huffed out a soft laugh. “I don’t know… I didn’t think we’d ever have to deal with that.”

Arthur hummed softly before falling quiet. They stood there, in each other’s arms for a few minutes, just…silent. Until, finally, Merlin pulled away with a shaky breath.

“Hey,” Arthur sighed, raising a hand to the sorcerer’s face and cupping his cheek, “we’ll get through this together, yes?”

“There’s not much to get through, Arthur… I’m going to have to watch everyone I’ve ever loved die before my eyes,” Merlin muttered, before leaning into the touch, “but yes, I won’t turn down your support…”

Arthur frowned at him a moment before exhaling and stepping back to stretch. “Let’s take your mind off this. I have some new legislation to review, come assist me.”

Merlin laid in Arthur’s bed that night, unable to sleep. His mind raced, and his heart ached as he laid on his side, staring at his betrothed.

Before, Destiny had weighed him down with the possibility that he’d be forced to watch the man he loved be taken from him. Now… Now, it was inevitable. He would watch as Arthur faded from life, no matter how he died. He’d have to watch him… He would lose him and he could do nothing.

It wasn’t just Arthur, either, he realized with a pang of hurt.

Gwen… Morgana, Leon… Elyan, and Gwaine, and Lancelot… Percival… Everyone. Everyone was going to be taken from him.

Gaius… His mother.

Merlin choked back a sob, closing his eyes tightly. Everyone. Everyone.

He could never have children.

Oh, gods, he could never have children… He—he’d be condemned to watch them grow old and die.

Was this really what fate wanted for him? What destiny planned?

How cruel. How unnecessarily, unbelievably cruel. What was the point of it? Why, why do this to him? Did they simply wish to see him suffer? Did the gods believe they were granting him a favour? Did they believe they were rewarding him, by subjecting him to a life of eternal loneliness and heartache?

Did they think it amusing?

“Merlin?” Arthur’s voice, thick with sleep, snapped him out of his spiral, “why are you awake, cariad? It’s the middle of the night…”

Merlin quickly wiped away the tears that had slipped free, as Arthur blinked open his eyes slowly and yawned. “Couldn’t sleep…” He mumbled, “what about you? Did I wake you?”

“Mm… Technically, no, but I could feel your eyes on me.” Arthur shifted closer and pulled Merlin against him, resting their foreheads together. “What were you thinking about? Oh, no, I know…”

He paused, yawning again, before continuing. “The immortal thing, hm?”

Merlin’s silence seemed to be all the answer needed, because Arthur sighed softly and pressed a tired kiss to his nose.

“You’re spiraling, aren’t you? It’ll be fine, Merlin,” he assured, sounding way too confident for someone who’s words were slurred, “we’ll figure something out… We always do. You won’t be alone… won’t let you…”

“I appreciate that, Arthur…” Merlin said truthfully, “now, get back to sleep… You have things to do tomorrow.”

Arthur hummed, closing his eyes again.

“You sleep, too…” He ordered as he drifted back to sleep.

“I’ll try,” Merlin promised, closing his eyes and tightening his hold on Arthur.

It was a sennight later that Merlin wandered the castle corridors with a frown on his face, eyes searching a head of blond as he walked.

Arthur had been acting strange since they discovered Merlin’s immortality, and now… Now he was just gone?

Merlin had searched the castle three times, and no one had seen him all day. He woke up without the King in bed beside him, the knights knew nothing, the servants knew nothing, Gaius and Gwen knew nothing…

It was like he just disappeared!

How does a King disappear?

Merlin took a deep breath, calming himself. He was worried, yes, of course, but he was also growing slowly angry.

How dare he just disappear without a word?! That man had better have been kidnapped for his sake. After another few minutes searching the castle, Merlin finally just stalked back to their chambers.

Arthur had better have a very good explanation when he got back, Merlin decided as he flung the doors open and stomped over to the bed before flopping onto it. Or else he’d getting turned into a toad. A big, ugly, slimy, wart-covered toad. And Merlin’s not changing him back.

Merlin groaned loudly into the duvet in frustration.

Stupid, stupid prat.

How dare he just disappear like it was nothing and leave Merlin there to worry like a mother hen over her eggs all day! He probably didn’t even realize how concerned Merlin was now.

It wasn’t like he was worried for no good reason, either, because that damn man knew how to get into trouble in any situation, and how the hell is he supposed to help Merlin deal with the fact that he’s immortal if he’s deadthanks to his own idiocy!

Merlin’s stomach turned at the thought, and he rolled over onto his back before sitting up. A frown creased his forehead, and he tugged his bottom lip between his teeth anxiously.

What if he really was in danger? What if he was really in danger and Merlin was here, thinking bad about him?

He should go look for him again.

He’s immortal, after all (yay), he doesn’t have to worry about dying protecting Arthur! Arthur, on the other hand, was a fucking beacon for assassins and danger. Right. That decided it.

Merlin pushed himself to his feet and quickly made his way to the door. Then, right as he moved to open it, the door opened to reveal the very prat he was leaving to save, and his heart calmed. He was safe.

“You’re safe…” Merlin sighed, visibly relieved. Arthur frowned in confusion and nodded.

“Yes… I am,” he agreed. Then, it hit Merlin.

He’s safe.

Merlin narrowed his eyes into a glare. “I’m going to turn you into a toad and squash you beneath my boot.”

Arthur’s eyes widened a fraction, before his lips pulled up into an amused smirk.

“Well, that’s rather messy—and graphic.”

“You deserve no less, where have you been?!”

“I was, with the druids, actually,” Arthur cleared his throat, looking away, “Morgana took me to see them.”

Merlin frowned, his glare disappearing to be replaced with a confused look. “What? Why were you with the druids? What took you all day with the druids?”

Arthur took a deep breath. “I… Needed their help with something. Look, it’s better if I just show you.”

The warlock raised an eyebrow, but let Arthur usher him into the room further, before sitting down at the table.

“Okay, go ahead, show me. What was worth making me worry my ass off?” Merlin leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. Arthur gave him a nervous smile before pulling a small phial out of his satchel and uncorking it.

Merlin tilted his head, frowning deeply. What was he…?

“Merlin, I’m immortal, too,” Arthur told him softly, and Merlin couldn’t help it. He snorted, laughing in obvious disbelief.

“Right, and I’m a god.”

Arthur sighed and hesitated, then raised the phial of liquid to his lips.

“Here goes nothing,” he murmured before downing the contents. Merlin watched, growing more and more confused by his betrothed’s actions.

It was only when the phial slipped from Arthur’s hands and shattered on the ground as his skin began to pale and hands began to tremble that Merlin realized what was happening, and panic filled his body.

“Arthur? Arthur!” Merlin was on his feet in seconds, grabbing Arthur by the shoulders as he began to go limp, the—what Merlin now recognized as—poison taking action too fast for Merlin to think of a solution. He didn’t even know what he took! How could he help?! Arthur knew he was shit at healing magic, which was ironic considering he worked with Gaius for so long! “Arthur! Dammit, what are you doing?! Fuck, what did you do?!?”

Merlin’s heart was pounding and tears were filling his eyes as his breath quickened. “Fuck! Arthur, you bastard!” He snapped, unsure what to do, as Arthur’s body slumped in his arms.

He felt the King stop breathing in his arms and he swore his own heart stopped. Then… There was a gasp. A loud, sharp gasp. Then, a fit of coughs wracked Arthur’s body, his shoulders shaking.

Merlin was frozen, stunned. He… He was… But now he was… He really is—

“Arthur, oh, Arthur what did you do?”

Once he had stopped coughing, and Merlin had walked them over and sat them on the bed, Arthur took a deep breath and smiled stupidly.

“I had the druids show me how to use the cup of life,” he explained in a murmur, “I didn’t want you to be alone, for eternity. Now you won’t have to be.”

Merlin stared in silence at his betrothed for a few moments, shocked speechless. Arthur glanced away, coughing a bit more.

“Remind me, to never take Hemlock again,” he muttered rubbing his throat.

That snapped Merlin right out of his daze and he cuffed Arthur upside the head.

“You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place! What in the hell were you thinking?!” He demanded to know.

“I was thinking you wouldn’t believe me if I just told you I was immortal!”

“I would’ve if you just told me you used the cup!”

“Oh…”

Merlin let out a high laugh, shaking his head.

“Yes, oh!”

Arthur bit his lip, before looking away sheepishly. “Sorry… I suppose, I was just eager to tell you that you wouldn’t be alone anymore…”

A soft sigh let Merlin’s lips, and he ignored the way his heart flipped. “You’re an idiotic prat, you know? A massive cabbagehead. But… You just gave up your mortality for me… And while part of me hates that you’ll now be subjected to the same pain as I will be when our friends’ times come… I can’t help but feel so…”

“So, what?” Arthur pushed gently, laying back on the bed. Merlin shook his head and laid back beside him.

“I love you… And I can’t believe you love me so much, as to literally give up your mortality for me.”

Arthur smiled and looked over at him, his eyes drooping sleepily (probably tired from dying).

“I’d give up anything for you…”

#angst april #april angst prompt #one shot #bbc merlin #merlin #arthur #merthur #angst #hurt/comfort #fanfiction #prompt: immortality #temporary character death #cw: technically suicide but only because he knew he would come back #not because he wanted to die

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as-a-matter-of-whump · 3 years ago

Note

Oh but depressed Jonah with volume controlled shock colllar

CW: shock collar, conditioning, mention of former mouth whump, self-harm of sorts, implied depression, implied suicide ideation (blink and you'll miss it, but I'll tag it just in case)

It had been a week since Vincent had locked the new volume-controlled shock collar around Jonah’s neck and ever since, things had gone south. He knew that he was technically still allowed to talk, but he didn’t know which speech volume would trigger the collar and he certainly didn’t want to find out, so he had accepted his fate and stayed silent most of the time, only talking to Vincent if it was inevitable, his voice barely more than a whisper whenever he couldn’t answer a question by nodding or shaking his head.

His captor had been very pleased at first, but over time he had started to notice that Jonah had changed; he avoided eye contact, barely stayed in the same room as Vincent and went to bed early, though he never looked like he got enough sleep, with dark circles forming under his eyes.

One day, he took him aside and made him sit down next to him.

‘What’s wrong with you, darling?’

‘Nothing,’ Jonah whispered hoarsely and turned away.

Why was Vincent asking anyway? Was he just teasing him, trying to upset him so he would speak up, only to writhe in pain seconds later?

‘I thought I made it clear that you are allowed to talk as long as you don’t raise your voice.’

He muttered something Vincent didn’t understand and turned his head away again. He was so tired, he hadn’t slept in what felt like days because every time he closed his eyes, a strange feeling got hold of him, something…vague and intangible… a feeling of dread, fear maybe, but…different. It made his heart race, made it hard to breathe properly…and made it impossible to fall asleep.

Vincent seemed to have noticed this too.

‘Go to bed,’ he whispered, ‘get some rest and come back whenever you feel like it…’

Jonah nodded. Everything was better than this, even if it was lying awake and staring at the ceiling.

~*~

With a scream, Jonah woke up and immediately pressed one hand onto his mouth to keep the whimpers in as the shock made his muscles tense up. He must’ve fallen asleep eventually, only to be confronted with the terrible nightmares that had been haunting him ever since that fateful weekend at Domenic’s. He thought he had finally come to terms with the things that happened to him, but now those dreams were back, dreams filled with the memory of blood, and darkness and… his arm shot up and he shoved his fist into his mouth to keep the whimpers locked in his throat. Why did his mind have to come up with this again? With trembling hands, he touched his lips, traced the tiny scars left from having his mouth stitched shut. It had gotten infected so badly that he had barely eaten for almost a week. And now the scars would remind him of all those things whenever he saw them, making sure he’d never forget what happened to him in Domenic’s house; he had avoided looking into the mirror ever since, but the memory could never be erased.

He reached up to touch the collar once again. It didn’t look much different from his old one, but other than the remote-controlled one, this one had turned out as the perfect device to finally shut him up, without the disadvantages the stitches had brought with them. He was so worried about involuntary noises like the scream that had found its way out of his throat… He had to prevent his body from betraying him in the future or he would never get a wink of sleep again. His legs were still shaking as he walked over to the bathroom to retrieve something he knew for sure was still there…

~*~

‘Jonah…?’

He was curled up, his back facing Vincent, his arms wrapped around his fox. The older man walked around the bed to get a better look at his face - and froze.

‘Jonah, what have you done?’

With trembling hands, he reached over to remove the duct tape sealing his lips. Jonah grabbed his wrist and tried to stop him, but soon he realised that it wasn’t worth the effort; Vincent always got what he wanted and he couldn’t stop him - why should things be different this time? Why should he let him keep something that would help him stay quiet to avoid another shock?

‘Why did you do this?’ Vincent asked once again.

Instead of replying, Jonah pointed at the collar.

‘I don’t think I understand…’

‘Nightmare,’ he whispered. ‘Screamed.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I’m sure we could’ve found another solution…’

‘Why?’ Jonah whispered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why am I… forbidden to speak?’

‘You’re not. You’re only forbidden to scream and curse and-’

‘How am I supposed to live like this?’ Jonah yelled, only to be shocked seconds later.

With a pained expression and tears streaming down his cheeks he buried his face in his pillow. All these words, all these emotions - they would stay locked in his head forever. And that was something he couldn’t cope with any longer.

Vincent lay down next to him and started stroking his back.

‘Come here, my darling, it’s okay…’

Covering both of them with the duvet, he snuggled up to him, resting his chin on the younger one’s shoulder.

‘Let’s see if you can get through this without another nightmare. If you do - if you stay quiet until tomorrow morning - the collar will come off. Okay?’

Jonah nodded silently. Maybe things could get better again. Maybe. Maybe…

#thank you anon!!! :)#asks #anonymous #shock collar #conditioning #mention of former mouth whump #blood #scars #implied depression #self-harm #implied suicide ideation #jonah #vincent #written in blood #my writing

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magniloquent-raven · 4 years ago

Text

more trans billy fic! read my first two here and here (not necessary for context, but they are technically a series)

(cw: talk of past suicidal thoughts/suicide attempt)

billy's never been with anyone who didn't ask about his scars.

if it wasn't their opening line—fake concerned bullshit, trying to get in his pants by pretending to care, it only worked on the days he was feeling especially low—it would always come up later. some people's idea of good pillow talk. like the fact that they'd stuck their dick in him meant they were entitled to his life story or something.

once, a guy made it a whole three weeks before he asked. he'd picked the dude up at a bar and kept around because he was good with his hands. then kicked him to the curb because he was shit at minding his own business.

everyone seems to think him wearing low-cut shirts that leave the twisting ropes of scar tissue over his heart on full display means they're allowed to pry.

everyone except steve.

they knew each other for months before they started dating, and he never brought it up. and now. he's seen all of billy's scars and he hasn't asked about a single one.

and billy's starting to wonder if he wants him to.

they're laying in bed together one morning, the sun streaming in through half-drawn blinds, dappled on the bedspread and lighting up the honey coloured highlights in steve's hair.

hair that's tickling billy's nose, but he can't bring himself to move. not when steve is so comfortably draped across his chest, breath warm against his collarbone, fingertips absently trailing up and down, caressing his side.

another first for billy, truth be told. he didn't date much before steve—wasn't really the boyfriend type—and the people he did date never did this. never wanted to just...exist together in an easy silence, sharing soft touches with no intent.

it should make him antsy, the stillness, the quiet, but he's found himself enjoying the lie-ins just as much as the mornings he coaxes steve awake with lazy kisses and a thigh pressed between his legs.

on really good days he gets both.

but today...today steve's lips trail down billy's chest, following the sunburst lines of scar tissue, and. billy stops him. with a hesitant hand on steve's shoulder. and steve looks up at him, a question in his wide brown eyes.

"you've never asked," he says after a moment, holding steve's gaze but shifting nervously.

"asked?...if you want to—oh god, did you not want me to—shit, billy, if you aren't in the mood you can just say so, i—" steve starts to pull away, scrambling, looking absolutely mortified, but billy shakes his head immediately and pulls steve back to his side wrapping his arms around his waist.

"not about that, jesus."

a relieved sigh ruffles his curls, and steve relaxes into his embrace, "alright, then...what?"

billy chews the inside of his cheek. "the scars, steve. you're not even a little curious?"

there's a pause. "what? i mean, i thought, uh...guys like you usually get, like, surgery right?"

"...you thought—" billy chokes on a strangled noise that's almost a laugh. "what, that i got my tits hacked off with a chainsaw or something?"

steve snorts against his shoulder, smushing his face further into the crook of billy's neck with a groan, "maybe? shut up. i dunno how it works, okay. didn't figure it was polite to ask." he shifts his weight around, wriggling into a position that lets him look at billy's face without detangling their limbs.

"ahh, country club etiquette, shoulda known." billy smirks at steve's eyeroll. "next time just ask, baby."

"okay." he worries at his bottom lip, brow furrowed, gaze darting between billy's face and his chest. he puts a hand over the worst of the scarring, palm flat over billy's sternum. "so..." his voice is soft, suddenly, hesitant, "what happened?"

he expects regret. irritation at himself. shame. he expects to feel himself closing off, second guessing his decision to invite the questions. but.

he covers steve's hand with his own. lets out a breath. lays there and feels nothing but the warmth of steve's body next to his, and a slight twist of trepidation in his gut.

"i was kind of. a fucked up teenager," he starts, and grimaces. "used to jump into any fight i could find. and when i was eighteen...i stumbled across...something. all i know is there was some little girl about to get kidnapped or worse, and i. well. i blacked out most of it, but. she got away. and i woke up in a hospital a few days later all..." he pauses, and gestures vaguely at his chest. "and there were all these people tellin' me it was a fuckin' miracle i survived, but..."

his blinks away the tears threatening to fall, turning from steve's wide-eyed concern, but steve puts a gentle hand on his cheek and guides him back. "but what?" he murmurs, brushing curls away from billy's face.

but he never wanted to wake up in the first place.

but every time someone told him what he did was brave he just got a little angrier, a little more bitter.

but no matter how much better staying at the hospital was, away from neil, away from max, always trying to be his sister, no matter how many times he told himself his life was better now, he still felt hollow and lonely and...

he's never talked about it. any of it. not with the shitty hospital-mandated therapist they assigned him when he was still bedridden. not with the psychiatrist he went to a few years later when he was trying to get prescribed testosterone. not with any of the friends he's made here.

he doesn't know why the hell he decided digging up this particular skeleton was a good idea now, but he can't exactly rebury it at this point.

steve's hand is warm and solid and his thumb keeps softly rubbing his cheekbone and making his heart flutter. and he supposes that's the why of it. love has made him an idiot.

he sighs. leans into steve's touch. "i hated it. all of it. there was this article in the local fucking paper and everything, about what i did, calling it heroic. and people constantly telling me i should be grateful to be alive but i didn't want to be." his breath catches in this throat, voice breaking, "i didn't save that kid to be a hero, i did it because i wanted to die."

steve makes a wounded noise, low in his throat. "billy..."

"i don't anymore," he says quietly. "i—it hasn't been that bad in a long time."

there's a moment. a pause. a silence that has billy holding his breath as steve watches him with a pinched frown, his eyes shining with unshed tears. and then he shifts, slips a leg over billy's and rolls on top of him, rustling the sheets and knocking the air from billy's lungs.

it takes billy a second to realize what's happening, that steve's buried his face in the crook of his neck again, but this time hugging him with his whole damn body.

"...steve?"

"m'sorry," he whispers, muffled and quiet, breath hot against billy's skin. "sorry i wasn't there."

billy's heart clenches. painfully, bittersweet, swooping like he's been dropped from a great height. he tightens his hold on steve's waist. "you're here now. and i'm okay." he pauses, and turns his face to rest his cheek against steve's dishevelled head. "better than okay."

steve hums. kisses his collarbone. slips his hands more securely under billy, wiggling til his palms are squished between billy's shoulder-blades and the rumpled sheets. "you're sure?"

"yeah, pretty boy. i'm good."

"...good enough to make me pancakes?"

billy snorts. "i can't when you're laying on top of me, steve."

"lies. i know you can lift me."

he snorts again, dissolving into helpless giggles that entirely ruin his ability to respond with a clever retort. steve lifts his head and meets his eye, smiling softly. he presses that smile to billy's mouth.

and they have their pancakes. later. much later.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #trans billy hargrove #a raven's writing desk #just to be extra clear yall there was no mind flayer in this universe but he still has the big yeah-that-shoulda-killed-you scars

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yellowocaballero · 4 years ago

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hi i know it's been the hottest of seconds but director's cut for the prophetic spring if you're still doing these? 👀

Sure! I’ve spoken a lot about the prophetic spring, but I’m fairly certain I could give some meta information about my intense life-long obsession with Tim Drake. Dude has been showing up in my fics since I was 14.

But actually, the ficlet I wrote ages ago might be more interesting? So here it is. Exploring a dynamic that was WAY underserved for how important it is: the Steph, Cass, Tim dynamic!

No CW that haven’t appeared in the prophetic spring, but specific mention for drug addiction and drug depiction, as well as references to molestation, abortion, torture, and suicide. Story under the cut.

Tim stared down into the toilet bowl. It was a little yellowed. He needed to clean it.

He stared at the small baggie of pills in his hand.

He visualized dropping it into the bowl, flushing it. Possibly mutating an alligator, or giving the race of mole people that lived in the Gotham sewers a nice surprise.

Tim sighed, and pocketed the drugs. Maybe tomorrow.

A month after the incident with a runaway foster kid and a, in retrospect, kind of embarrassing fake fight with his older brother, Tim got a text from an unknown number. To make matters worse, it was at an insane hour of the day - noon.

Texts from strangers were hardly uncommon. Tim had an extensive contact network, growing larger by the day, but he had set up a Google Voice on his computer so they were all routed through a program there. Being bothered at all hours of the day on his phone was hardly his idea of a good time. The only people who really had his real number were his bullshit ‘friends’ and his asshole ‘family’. He hadn’t even given his number to his ‘friends’ - he had given it to Kon under strict confidentiality, and then Kon had given it to all of Young Justice. Asshole.

405-555-1998: dropping by in three hours so make sure ur presentable :)

As Tim had just woken up, most of his brain was occupied by a single whuh?

Just as his mind swirled in sleepy confusion, his phone buzzed again.

405-555-1998: B1706XQE45

The code checked out. It was an ally, not an unknown or an enemy.

Tim groaned, covering his eyes with an elbow. He needed coffee.

****

The coffee was a new thing - rather, it was something he had drunk plenty of growing up, because there had been nobody around to inform him that coffee was bad for developing brains. Growing up completely unsupervised was probably why Tim was a drug addict now. He could totally blame this on his parents never loving him.

Not a drug addict, Tim thought to himself anxiously as the coffee sputtered into the extra large gallon pot. Just someone who...uses drugs...in an unhealthy way. Substance abu - substance user, who just used it maybe as a bad coping mechanism. Not that Tim had good coping mechanisms, but it was better than sawing off heads or becoming a drug lord. When you thought about it, it was either being a serial killer or doing drugs, so logically it means that he should do more drugs to decrease the amount of fun little murders he does -

Tim made toast.

The coffee was a new thing, because he was trying to use it to replace the drugs. He had cut back. The stupid little sorority that called themselves the Birds of Prey had been talking to him about it. He had agreed to try. It was best to set expectations low, so he couldn’t disappoint. Actually, Tim loved disappointing, maybe he should set them higher. Maybe he could make inspirational speeches about how he was a good guy now? Ha ha.

The three hours had been a deft move. The texter knew noon was his average wake-up time at best, and the three hours gave him enough time to sober up if he had been high or drunk at the time. Tim didn’t like to start popping the minute he woke up, but - well, sometimes he did. Or sometimes he was awake at noon because he had been on an all-nighter drug binge. They hadn’t given their name, either, which meant that it was somebody who he wouldn’t want to see.

He could bounce, escape to some corner of Gotham until they gave up. Except he had the sense that whoever had gone through the effort to get his number wasn’t the type to give up. Almost nobody Tim knew was the type to give up. His ‘friends’ and his ‘family’ never gave up. On anybody but him.

A voice in his head, not quite yet suffocated, sounding altogether too much like the Replacement, echoed in endless attempts to get him to come back. Oh, whatever. Kid was a try-hard. He needed better taste in made up families.

Over the next three hours, he debated his tactics. If he wasn’t escaping and the texter was playing the buddy card, then the situation probably wasn’t dangerous. He strapped in his armor under the baggy pyjamas that he never took off anyway, and spitefully made no effort to control his hair. He did put on make-up, an old hand from keeping CPS off Bruce’s trail - man, he should have pretended Bruce was molesting him, that would have been funny as fuck - to hide the bags under his eyes. No use looking pathetic.

He hid a few more weapons around his apartment. He anxiously checked his phone, staring not at the new texts but at Harley’s offer sent a week ago. He still hadn’t replied. He didn’t know what to do with it.

As if he could ever feel safe sleeping under the same roof as her?

As if he ever felt safe anywhere?

Maybe he had nothing to lose. That was the greatest part about this, the most wonderful aspect of what he had done to everybody in his life. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. That’s freedom, or so Janis had always told him. She knew what she was about. Overdosing on heroin at 27 - that was understanding what it meant, to have nothing. To be free. He was almost jealous.

At two on the dot, a polite knock echoed through the apartment. Tim looked up from where he was relaxing on the couch, with all of the possible entry points in his line of sight. That wasn’t a knock he had memorized, and he had memorized everyone’s knocks.

Nothing for it. He’d have to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Maybe he can pull the insane sociopath schtick again; that had always been effective in ditching his parents. Tim sighed, walked over to the door, swiped his thumb against the keypad, undid the three deadbolts, and opened door only to see -

Stephanie Brown, hands propped on her hips and smiling widely. Cassandra Wayne, standing right behind her, serene as ever.

Tim closed the door - or he tried. Steph had expected the move, and the minute he had opened the door her foot had jutted out and blocked him from closing the door. Effortlessly, she wrenched it back open and stepped into his apartment, forcing him to press against the wall and scowl as insane women infiltrated his space.

“Wow,” Steph said loudly, “this place looks like a wreck!”

Tim groaned.

***

The thing with Steph and Cass was this:

How to describe it?

The sister he had never expected, the best friend he had never thought he would have. Cass was his twin, Robin’s shadow, the other side of his mountain. Bruce had adopted Cass barely five months after he became Robin, and Tim had unabashedly resented her for stealing Bruce’s attention so quickly. He had always liked her more, but Bruce had liked everyone more than Tim, so maybe it was no surprise. She was sweet, kind, gentle, and no trouble. Tim wasn’t any trouble either, but he couldn’t be the rest of it if it bit him in his ass.

Robin was the brain. Cass was the muscle. They were a team so closely linked, conjoined at the hip, that Tim couldn’t remember a patrol ever done without her. Bruce had let them start patrolling alone at fourteen (“You didn’t let me work alone until I was fifteen, and I was an assassin,” Damian had spat), and they had been an unbeatable team. Robin’s hand-to-hand was weak, but nobody ever got through Batgirl. Batgirl struggled with technical knowledge, reading and writing and investigating and chasing down leads, the only area where Tim had ever excelled. Together, they had almost been as good as Batman. Sometimes, Tim had let himself think that they might be better.

They had been so similar. Everyone had always said so. They’re both so quiet, the Justice League had said. Emotionless little freaks, the Rogues had said. Neither of them blink, their schoolmates had said. But there had been nothing to say, not between them: they could have a conversation without words, without even Sign. Cass had known every twitch of Tim’s body, had understood him down to his core. Nobody else ever had. Everybody had always called Tim inscrutable and impossible to understand - but to Cass, Tim had been an open book. She knew every inch of him. And she had loved him anyway.

And Steph! When Steph had found them when they were fourteen veering on fifteen, and from then on it was as if she had always been there. She was so big, so smiling, so much, and she had never apologized for any of it. Nothing scared her. To Tim, that was the perfect vigilante - somebody who was scared of nothing, who never hesitated, who was good.

Not even Bruce could intimidate her. When Tim was fourteen, he had thought that was the most amazing thing in the world. Bruce intimidated everyone, but Steph had just stuck out her tongue and kept badly backflipping off roofs anyway. Through twin convincing, Tim and Cass had convinced Bruce to give her a chance, and Spoiler had slot into their dynamic perfectly. She was their best friend, always.

She wasn’t good at hand-to-hand at first, but Tim had improved by then, and they could cover her. She improved faster than he had, and judging from the reconnaissance footage Tim had frantically consumed after he came back to life, she was amazing now. She was wickedly smart, practical and down to Earth. If Tim was better at hacking into a computer, Steph was the one who found the post-it note with the password stuck under the desk.

But more than any of that, she had brought the social skills. She had brought the calming presence, the sweet hand to victims and civilians, and her good humor was infectious. Steph was good with people. She was a born leader. Resilient. Brave. Everybody liked her. Everybody loved her. Tim had. She had loved him too. She could have done so much better than Tim and Cass, weird little societal rejects, but she had chosen them as her family.

It had been the three of them. For as long as Tim’s life had meaning, for as long as he had been loved, they had loved him. Tim had grown up alone, in a world of one, and they had infiltrated it. They had expanded it, and they dragged his life into more than just Tim. Into Tim-and-Cass-and-Steph. Into Robin-Batgirl-Spoiler. Into meaning, and love.

Tim hated them. And he wanted them to suffer.

“That’s the Stephanie Brown I remember,” Tim sneered, closing the door behind him. Steph had quickly thrown herself onto Tim’s couch, clearly somewhat surprised at how comfortable it was, and Cass had perched daintily on the arm. Cass had always refused to sit like a normal person - she would rather sit on the backs of sofas, or on the arm, or perched on chairs like a bird - “If I had known you were coming I would have jumped cities.”

“We would have chased you down and you know that,” Steph said cheerfully, like she said fucking everything. “Besides, if you had known we were coming you would have gone into witness protection. You’ve been avoiding the fuck outta us.”

“Wonder why,” Tim said, injecting as much mean-spirited sarcasm into his voice as possible. “I need more coffee, don’t go through my shit.”

The apartment was small, and the kitchen had a cut-away wall where he could see through into the living room. Stephanie hated nothing more than being ignored or looked down upon, and if he dismissed her and didn’t react then she’d grow infuriated with him and leave. He couldn’t fight with her, because if it came down to a battle of rhetoric or emotions she’d win single-handedly. She was so good with words. Cass...had no weaknesses.

Which was inconvenient, because it was Cass he absolutely had to get rid of as soon as possible. She was very emotional, and more than a little sensitive. Especially to rejection. If he was cruel enough to her, she’d start crying and leave. There was only one problem with that.

As he jammed more grounds into the machine he watched the girls out of the corner of his eye. They weren’t talking or whispering to each other, both fully aware of how well Tim could read lips. They weren’t even having one of those body language conversations they could only have with each other, aware that Tim could crack that too. Instead Stephanie was casually sprawled on his couch, looking for all the world like a middle aged dad watching the football game, looking around the room. Cass, as usual, was zoning out. Or, of course, looked like she was zoning out - Tim could tell that she was waiting for something to happen, and was preparing herself for it.

Shit. Tim fought the urge to gnaw on his fingernail. Cass was going to be a problem.

He risked another glance backwards. She could see him, so she knew. Fuck. He had never been on the other side of her mind reading. It was fucking inconvenient. Psychics should be shot on sight.

The coffee sloshed into the biggest cup he could find in his kitchen, and Tim began draining it immediately as he leaned over the cutaway. He kept the cup held up to his face, obscuring it. Face covered, everything under the elbows covered - best he could do without preparation.

“This little field trip sanctified by Sgt. Brother?” Tim asked, sipping the scalding hot coffee. Not hot enough. He needed - he needed - they’d see -

“We’re nineteen, we don’t need his permission for everything we do,” Steph said, amused. So she was going to speak for Cass - hardly unusual, as whenever they were all together Steph tended to be the only one who spoke - but seeing as Tim was Tim then it was definitely a strategy.

“He lets his precious baby sisters knock on the door of drug lords for fun?” Tim sneered.

“If they’re incompetent and retired, sure!”

Tim gritted his teeth. Don’t rise to her bait. Don’t. She was the best person in the family at getting a rise out of their enemies. He didn’t stand a chance.

“What do you want?”

“We thought we’d take you roller skating at the rink,” Steph chirped.

Tim stared at her.

“Or the pool,” Steph said, faux-thoughtfully. “Or just the mall?”

Fuck this. Tim headed for the door, ready to walk out of the building barefoot in his pyjamas. He tugged at the doorknob, only to find that it wouldn’t open.

Tim breathed in through his nose, then out through his mouth. There were other exits. He was not trapped. Had his apartment always been so small? He could have sworn that it was bigger.

He turned around slowly. Stephanie was grinning at him, twirling what looked like a small plastic cylinder. Tim recognized it instantly - fancy League tech. Overrides all electronic locks and controls them. They all used it to trap perps and heighten their fear tactics. Tim jammed his thumb on the keypad. Nothing happened.

Cass glanced at Steph, and made a small motion. Tim couldn’t interpret it. Why couldn’t he interpret it? Did they have a new code? It was Cass. When nobody else had understood her, Tim always had. Now they had their own language, one that Tim couldn’t interpret anymore. Tim was lost in translation, always drifting.

“We aren’t bringing you in,” Steph said, just as light as ever. No trace of pity or caution or gentleness in her voice: just relentless cheer. “Literally all we want to do is talk. Play a board game, maybe?”

Tim’s eyes flickered to the hidden panel in the wall next to him where he had stashed a gun and a sword.

“Bro,” Steph said, “you really don’t want to escalate this.”

“Do you think you can take me?” Tim asked curiously, letting his hand drift to his arm. He shook his long pyjama sleeve down to cover his wrist. “That’s pretty cute. Last time I checked, you’re the shittiest at hand-to-hand in your team.”

But Steph just rolled her eyes. Shit, wasn’t he supposed to be ignoring her? He couldn’t, not so long as she kept pushing and pushing. Not so long as she was in his house. “Leave off. Just because Jay and I are the last people in the fam who weren’t trained in Mystical Ninja Arts doesn’t mean I’m incompetent. Hands in the air, by the way.”

Stephanie was overly sentimental. New tactic. He raised his hands slightly in the air, caught reaching for the weapon hidden in his armor. “Incompetent enough to let me die.”

There. Finally. Thank god, Tim thought he was losing his touch. The muscles clenched in Stephanie’s jaw, and just a twitch of her eye - banishing a bad memory. “Everybody’s been saying you’ve turned rude. I guess you’ve just been avoiding us because you don’t want to hurt our feelings, right?”

“I didn’t remember a lot when I was first resurrected,” Tim said casually, despite the fact that he had never told anybody about the first awful six months. Something about Steph and Cass just pried it out of him, like invasive surgery. Or an autopsy. “I remember everything about those six months, though. Homeless. Practically retarded. Brain damage does that to you, you know. I lived on the streets, did you know that? It was a miracle I lived through it.” He gasped, as if he was remembering something. “I slept on 34th street! You lived near there, didn’t you? Maybe you even walked by me.”

Steph went white. Cass’ expression froze. He was pushing hard, but these two wouldn’t react to anything less. Steph could trade barbs better than he could, even now.

“It’s a good thing Talia found me,” Tim continued. “She was the only one who cared.”

That did it. Steph tensed, leaning forward, and even Cass stiffened. “Is that what she told you? How can you believe her?”

Tim just shrugged, walking back to the kitchen and hiding his body language again. He took an extra loud slurp of the coffee, just to be annoying. “Talia never lied to me. She said that nobody cared enough to save me. And guess what!”

Steph’s jaw clenched again. She was a hot head. A fierce temper, an impulsive girl who jumped in feet first and sanity second. Woman, now. When had that happened? “Cut that shit out. We all know what you’re doing. You’ve been doing it to everyone. Did you think Connor didn’t warn us?”

Snitch. Tim slurped his coffee again. “Connor’s been telling everyone to give me space.”

“Yeah, everyone but us.” She stood up now, ignoring the flicker of a frown on Cass’ face, and folded her arms. A challenge against the world. Against Tim. It didn’t matter. “You don’t believe half the shit you’re spewing. You’ve never believed your own bullshit, Tim. You’re just saying it to drive everybody away. It’s not going to work on us.”

“Why?” Tim asked innocently. “You’re too thick?”

“Because we love you!” Steph cried. Tim rolled his eyes. As if he hadn’t heard that one before. “Saving Richie proved it, you aren’t as insane as you keep pretending you are. You know what you’re doing is wrong, you just don’t care.”

“Wow, you caught me.” Tim took another long swig of his coffee. It was making his hands jittery. Good. “Local genius aware of his actions. Call the press. Call Uncle Clark, he needs a scoop.” He arched an eyebrow at Steph. She hated that expression of his - she had always found it so aristocratic and pretentious. Joke’s on her, he was pretentious. “Do you mind if I go do a line? I’m not high enough for this conversation.”

If she had told him who she was, he would have done a line anyway just to spite her, and she knew it. “You don’t want to try,” Steph said stubbornly, “but you’re trying. You don’t want to care, but you care. You don’t want to feel it, but it hurts so much you can’t bear it. You can’t get anything past us, Tim. It’s always just been us. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Doesn’t that mean -

“What that means,” Tim said, and he found the words scraping his throat. He found himself talking a little louder than he meant to. The coffee, you know. Made you jittery. “is that you should have saved me. If you loved me so fucking much, you would have been anything other than useless. You’ve always been the most useless girl in the world, Steph. You couldn’t save your crook of a dad or your junkie of a mom. You couldn’t save your baby and you couldn’t save me. You’re ghetto trash putting on airs, and everyone can smell it on you.”

As soon as he said it, he tensed. He shifted his stance, ready to throw the coffee and spill the scalding liquid on her. Obscure her vision. It would take a second for her to vault the cover, so he could duck down. From there he could get the gun, shoot the window, jump out the window. She couldn’t win. Tim had the most powerful weapon in the world in his disposal and that was his infinite, burning hate. His hate for Steph and Cass burned him to the ground, and his world with it, and he was going to burn them to cinders because he couldn’t do anything else.

But Steph didn’t move. Cass got off the sofa. She walked up to Steph, and gently pressed a hand on her shoulder. She squeezed. Steph exhaled, long and shaking, and nodded at Cass. She walked into Tim’s bedroom - hey! - and shut the door.

Then Cass stared at Tim, and there was no more need for words. Not between them.

Tim vaulted the cut away wall, aiming for her feet first. Cass didn’t dodge - that would imply that she moved like an object moved. She moved like water moved - swift and supple, with such infinite grace and precision that it was like she wasn’t human at all.

But he had gotten better. He didn’t spend two and half years trained by the League of Assassins in crochet. Tim lashed out with a foot, she dodged again. He threw a punch, she moved. He feinted, clearly leaving her an opening, and she didn’t take it.

Bitch.

Cass shoved away his coffee table, sending it skidding across the floor and opening the floor space. The rug became their arena, tight and intimate, no room for maneuverability. Tim acted and she reacted, Tim lashed out a sweep kick and she jumped over it, Tim tried to grapple and she broke his hold. She never threw him to the ground, never pinned him. She just moved.

She was good, but not good enough to toy with him and win completely. The way to win against Cass was to leverage your height - Tim was taller than he once was, although that wasn’t saying much - weight, and strength against her. A couple good hits and she was down.

The issue, of course, was hitting her.

He got a hit in. It was much easier when she wasn’t even fighting back. She rolled with it effortlessly, taking the impact to gain a little space between them. She breathed deeply, sweat rolling down her neck. Tim used to take a cold compress and press it to that neck. She used to smile at him. Thank you.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Cass said.

“Too bad,” Tim said.

Fights weren’t like in television, long and choreographed extended scenes to entertain and thrill. When Ro - Tim was in a fight, a real fight, it was typically finished in less than a minute. The only way that a match can get long is if the other person was deliberately tiring you out - a risky strategy - or if you were of completely equal strengths with similar fighting styles. Or if it was a spar.

As Tim tried to hit her again and again, he realized that it was a spar.

No, not even that. It was a conversation.

Tim grabbed her wrist, and said: I want you to hurt. Cass broke the hold, telling him that he can’t. Tim leveraged the motion and kneed her in the back, telling her that the only goal of this fight was pain. Cass let the impact take her down to the mat, an incredibly disadvantageous position, but rolled out of the way just as Tim tried to exploit the opportunity. I’m not scared of you. Tim hit again, and again, and again, failing every time. I want you gone, Tim said, and this is the only way I know how to do it.

This is what Tim said: as much as I once loved you, I now hate you. The infinite depths of my love, my twin sister, how we moved in perfect sync. I hate it all. As much as I cared, I now hate. Feel this hate. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Cass said.

They moved in perfect sync, even now. Cass couldn’t predict his movements before he made them, like she used to - his training was different now, developed and refined. But Cass knew the League of Assassins too, had been trained by them just as he had, and they were written into her bones when they were only carved into Tim’s. After his third patented Talia move, she adjusted to fit his style, and their fight metamorphosed into more of a dance. Like they used to.

“Why not!” Tim screamed, the stupidest possible thing to do in a fight, but Cass didn’t take advantage of his exhale. He lashed out a fist to cover the opening, but it was lazy and over-extended, and she dodged easily. “I’m going to kill you!”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Tim desperately tried to call the green to his vision. It was so easy. All he had to do was tap into that rage. Talia had called it blood lust. Said it was normal, even good. But it wouldn’t come. Where was it? It was his only friend.

Desperately, Tim went in for another punch to the face - Cass’ jaw was the weakest part of her body, an old injury - but he over-extended again, and this time Cass took the opportunity. She grabbed his arm and pulled him forward, dropping him to the mat. She didn’t try to twist him around, instead landing him on his back. Bad move for her.

She kneed him in the chest, putting her full hundred and thirty pounds on him. She twisted his hands behind his back, pinning him, and Tim could do barely more than wheeze.

He looked at her in the eyes for the first time. They were infuriatingly calm. Her hair was tangled and clumped with sweat, but she wasn’t breathing hard. Her expression was placid and serene, as if she was watching one of her stupid fucking nature documentaries instead of pinning her brother to a hard and scratchy rug in a shithole apartment, three years after he was tortured to insanity and shot himself in the head.

So much time had passed. So much had happened, nasty and festering and putrid, and Tim had let it happen. He had made it happen. There was a rot in Tim, and it had eaten him up until there was nothing inside. If you cut him open, would it spill out? Would it infect her, infect Steph? Could he make them suffer?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Cass repeated. “So don’t be scared.”

“Scared?! I’m not fucking -” Tim wheezed, cut off by the lack of air as Cass pressed down.

“I’m sorry you’re scared. I didn’t mean to leave you alone. But I did. I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to kill -”

Cass pressed down on his chest again, cutting him off. She had finally done the one thing nobody in Tim’s life had ever figured out: how to make him shut up. “You can be as mean to me as you want. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’ll stay.”

Tim wheezed. In that, maybe, Cass heard something, because she continued as if he had spoken. Or maybe she just wanted the chance to talk. It had been stolen from her for thirteen years, and it was valuable to her.

“You do not have to be kind. You do not have to hug me, even if I want you to. You do not have to be my brother. I know it hurts too much. But you are me. I am you. You do not even have to try for that. I do not have to give it to you. You have it.”

Tim couldn’t help it. He cried a little, and then he couldn’t stop.

Cass got off him, but she kept her promise. She didn’t hug him. She just propped him up against the sofa, holding his hand, and didn’t speak. At some point the door creaked, and he felt Stephanie next to him.

This is why, Tim thought hysterically, he had been avoiding them.

He knew this would happen. There was no hiding from Cass. There was no posturing, no pretending. She didn’t want anything from him. She never had. There was nothing he could say that would drive her away, because Cass did not listen to the words people spoke. She spoke only for clarity, when she could not afford for her words to be misconstrued, and for the comfort of others.

Cass knew that he had been lying out of his ass. Cass knew that he wasn’t as insane as he pretended, as cruel as he wanted to be.

He couldn’t make Cass hate him. Shit.

None of them said anything. Nothing needed to be said, not between the three of them. Cass might be having a silent conversation in Sign with Steph, but he didn’t care enough to open his eyes and look. When they had first met, it used to make Steph so mad that Tim and Cass were having ‘secret conversations’. She had poured over her dictionaries, learning as quickly as physically possible so she could keep up. Everything Steph had, she had worked hard for.

Steph was in college now. Premed. She wanted to be an ER doctor. Steph wasn’t a genius, she had to study hard. She wouldn’t be able to superhero in med school, so she was ready to hang up her cape for a few years until she achieved her dream. Steph said that she could do just as much good as a doctor as a superhero. She hadn’t always wanted it. When they were kids and Bruce used to ask her what she wanted to do when she grew up, in his awkward faux-dad way, she had always shrugged and said that she might be a nurse.

“Why not med school?” Bruce had suggested, between sleepy spoonfuls of oatmeal. She used to spend more nights at their place than at her own. Her mom hadn’t noticed.

Steph had just shrugged awkwardly, nibbling her whole-wheat organic toast that she would stare at suspiciously. Rich people, she would say, sighing. “I would never be able to afford it. And no way I’m smart enough.”

“You’re good enough,” Bruce said, which was the closest he ever came to praising somebody. “I’ll pay for it.”

Steph had gaped. Cass had eaten her Lucky Charms smugly. Tim had rolled his eyes. “An in-the-know doctor for the vigilante community would be invaluable,” he had informed her, pretentious and callous. “We could use you.”

“You deserve it,” Cass had signed.

“You have a bright future, Stephanie,” Bruce said, buckling under the panic of being a responsible adult. “I would hate to see you waste it.”

He would hate to see any of them waste their future. He had hated to see what Tim had become. He knew that. The last time he had ever seen Bruce, it was just to disappoint him. Bruce was the only parent he had ever had, and his standards were so sky high it was impossible to do anything other than disappoint.

The fact of the matter was this: he loved Cass and Steph more than he loved Bruce. He could hate Bruce. He could hate himself. But Cass and Steph…

Bruce had ear-marked a lot of money for Steph, both for whatever continuing education she chose and for her future. It had raised a lot of questions among the lawyer team, but ultimately she had been written off as another of his strays. Tim had left her a lot of money too. There probably wasn’t any point: when she married Cass she’d have equal access to the fortune. Rich people, Stephanie used to whisper in awe, looking at organic toast.

Cass was majoring in dance. She wanted to be a ballerina.

Tim’s future...Tim’s future…

“Or we can watch a nature documentary,” Steph said out loud. “If we all promise not to say a fucking word.”

Incredibly, unmistakably, irrevocably, Tim groaned. “Not the fucking bee one again.”

“I like the bees,” Cass said serenely.

“If you aren’t going to get out of my house can I at least smoke up?” Tim asked miserably.

“I brought gummy bears,” Steph said, chipper as ever, “which are way better.”

“I’m going to the fucking bathroom,” Tim grumbled, which everybody knew was as good as a yes.

“If you take anything I’ll know,” Cass said serenely, and also threatened.

“Fuck you, bitch.”

Steph and Cass high-fived, and Tim sulked angrily to the bathroom. He took a second to look at himself in the mirror - looking for Tim Drake, failing, as always - before opening it and grabbing his baggie of pills.

He looked at it. He looked at the toilet. He looked at the baggie.

He didn’t flush them. He put them back in the medicine cabinet. Tomorrow. He’ll do them tomorrow. Not today. He can hold out for 24 hours. It’ll be fine.

For a wild, stupid, insane second, Tim wondered if he could say that tomorrow too. If tomorrow he would look at them and say: maybe tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that…

If there was a future, for a fuck-up like him.

The faint strains of Cass’ stupid fucking bee documentary began playing through the thin walls of his shitty little apartment, and Tim turned out the lights of his bathroom and closed the door, locking it securely behind him.

#i write a lot of shit i don't post and i don't feel the need to post it a lot of the time #but sometimes im like. ah yeah that does exist maybe they'll care #my writing #tim drake #batman #batfam #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #do not FUCKING get met started on tim cass and steph im OBSESSED

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likecastle · 4 years ago

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Witcher Noir AU, pt 16

More Witcher noir AU! Previous parts here. The song Jaskier is singing here is this, and if you haven’t had the pleasure of watching a Busby Berkeley number before, you should do yourself a favor and check it out.

CW for discussion of suicidal ideation (not graphic, not acute), and self-destructive behavior.

When the doctor has come and gone, Yennefer appears in the open doorway with a pile of clean clothes in her arms. Jaskier, who sat through the doctor’s examination in nervous silence, now springs to his feet as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“These should just about fit you,” Yennefer says, setting the pile of clothes on top of the dresser. “What’s the prognosis?”

“You’re not rid of me yet.” Yennefer arches an eyebrow, evidently waiting for a more comprehensive answer. “Just a few bumps and bruises.”

“He forgot to mention the possible concussion,” Jaskier cuts in.

“I don’t have a concussion,” Geralt snaps.

“You don’t know that!” Jaskier’s voice is tense, bordering on panicked. “You’re not a medical expert.”

“I’m an expert at getting the shit kicked out of me,” Geralt says. “I’m fine.”

Jaskier scoffs. “Oh, all right, I’ll just take your word for it, then, and ignore the advice of that very respectable looking doctor who just examined you. He had a beard and little glasses, so he’s clearly much cleverer than you are. To say nothing of the fact that Yennefer probably paid a small fortune for his services. But I suppose you don’t care about wasting her money, because you know better than everyone else, don’t you?”

Yennefer glances between the two of them, looking perversely amused in a way that makes Geralt want to leave his body immediately.

He settles for glaring at them both. “Jaskier, would you go get me a drink?”

“Even if I knew where to find the bar in this place, I’m not going to let you drink when you have a—”

“Go get yourself one, then,” Geralt says, at the same time as Yennefer says, “First room to the right as you come down the stairs.”

Jaskier’s smart enough to see he’s being dismissed, but he obviously isn’t happy about it. He hovers for a moment longer, his fingers flexing nervously, before he marches out of the room with as much dignity as he can muster.

“He seems very . . . loyal,” Yennefer says, her tone deceptively mild.

Geralt tries to find some way to explain how the circumstances of the past few days have conspired to bring the two of them together, but he can’t find any words that convey something greater than the sum of its parts. Two days ago, Jaskier was just a witness Geralt needed to question, and now—well, he’s not really sure what to call this thing between them, but it’s more than he could have ever anticipated. All he can offer is, “It’s been an odd couple of days.”

Despite Geralt’s evasion, the look Yennefer gives him is knowing. “Does he care about you enough to stop you from sacrificing yourself?”

Geralt lets out a frustrated growl. “I’m not—”

“Aren’t you?” Yennefer interrupts. Her smile is more of a sneer. “I saw how you were treating your injuries on your own, Geralt. I suppose intentionally running headlong into danger to save Cirilla is preferable to drinking yourself to death, but I won’t watch you kill yourself out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.”

“Would you stop calling it that?” he snaps.

“What would you call it, then? Because it certainly looks to me like you don’t care whether you live or die.”

“It’s not . . .” Geralt breathes out a sharp breath, longing to look anywhere but at Yennefer, but she won’t let him off the hook even if he did. “If I can’t do this—if I can’t help her now, when she really needs me—then what good am I? What’s the point of any of it, if she’s not—” But he can’t go on, can’t even entertain the possibility of failing Cirilla again. He doesn’t know if he’d survive it. He doesn’t think he’d want to.

Yennefer’s expression softens, marginally. “You always were an idiot,” she says, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside him. “Cirilla needs you, that’s true enough. But she doesn’t just need you right now.” Her hand comes to rest on Geralt’s thigh, her weight barely even a pressure as she leans forward to look him in the eye. Her violet eyes are brighter than he remembered, clear like stained glass and just as cutting. “She’s going to be needing you for a long time to come, so you can’t burn yourself out in the here-and-now. You’ve got to be playing the long game, from now on—for her.”

“Yen, I . . .” Geralt doesn’t know how to tell her how badly that prospect terrifies him—how he can’t convince himself that’s something he’s even capable of, let along figure out how to do it. And isn’t that the hell of this whole mess? Can’t live with himself if he fails, can’t see how he’ll ever manage to succeed. Instead of trying to tell her, he leans forward and kisses her, the springtime scent of her perfume a reminder of a time when he thought he knew what he was for. She melts against him for a moment, before her hand comes up and she pushes him away.

“Don’t do that,” she says, and there’s a note of regret in her voice that makes him ache. The hand on his chest pushes him further from her, until he’s lying back against the pillows. “You need to rest. One day. Tomorrow, I’ll let you go and you can pursue whatever hare-brained scheme you’re cooking up to find Cirilla.”

Just then, Jaskier returns, and it’s Geralt’s turn to freeze up like a kid caught misbehaving. Jaskier, however, just holds up two glasses and a bottle of whiskey and says, blithely, “He hasn’t shared the particulars of his plan with me yet, but I can almost guarantee it’s exceedingly reckless.”

Yennefer glances over at Geralt as Jaskier pours out the golden liquor into one of the glasses for her. “You do know Geralt, then.”

Geralt finds he wants Jaskier to look at him in that moment, but Jaskier’s gaze is fixed on his own glass as he says, “I think I’m starting to.”

“Well, if your plans are as foolhardy as Jaskier seems to think, that’s all the more reason for you to rest today.” Yennefer downs her drink in one swallow and Geralt’s throat burns in envy. She sets the glass down on the nightstand and turns to Jaskier. “You’ll watch over him tonight?”

Jaskier nods, still not looking up at them. This more subdued side of Jaskier troubles Geralt, and yet he doesn’t dare ask what the matter is.

“In that case, I’m turning in for the night.” She stands, smoothing down her skirt, though it falls flawlessly around her hips. “You two can make your plans for Cirilla’s safe rescue without me. But you know that if there’s anything I can do—”

“I know,” Geralt assures her. “I will.”

Yennefer nods and leaves them, shutting the door behind her. The silence that remains seems to fill every corner of the room. Jaskier sits back down in the same chair from which he watched Geralt’s examination—as if he wants to be at a safe remove.

After a while, Jaskier takes a fortifying sip of whiskey and says, “Well, you may be a terrible patient, but you’d better believe I’ll be an even worse nursemaid.” He flashes Geralt a wicked little smile that’s only a shadow of his usual grin.

“Will you sit with me, at least?” Geralt asks.

“I shouldn’t,” Jaskier says, in a tone that says he would very much like to. “You need to rest, Geralt.”

“There’s plenty of room.”

Jaskier considers him seriously for a moment, but can’t seem to resist the invitation. “You’ll shove me off if I jostle you too much?”

Geralt absolutely will not. “Hmm,” he says, and Jaskier must take this for agreement, because he toes off his shoes and climbs onto the other side of the bed. He stretches out on top of the coverlet, which is disappointing, because Geralt thinks he’d rather like to lie tangled up in Jaskier’s limbs again.

“So, should I sing you a lullaby, or something?”

Geralt is pretty sure Jaskier’s kidding, but it doesn’t seem wise to encourage him. Besides, he’s hardly going to need any help getting to sleep. With Jaskier’s warm weight beside him, he can feel the tension beginning to seep out of him, and sleep closes around him with surprising ease. The last thing he’s aware of as he drifts off is Jaskier humming quietly, a dreamy rendition of an insipid number from one of those musical extravaganza pictures from a few years back—which is, Geralt realizes with a drowsy smile, technically a lullaby.

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essaysfromthedeep · 4 years ago

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Wash, rinse, repeat.

A little bit about being Southern, gay, and estranged.

CW: Suicide mention

Where I am now is exactly why I didn’t want to come out in the first place. I was terrified as a teenager that I would have to leave my family behind to be happy. It turned out to be true.

I figured out when I was 17 that I was attracted to girls. I had a boyfriend. It wasn’t going well. It wasn’t his fault, of course. I tried and tried to be okay with dating him, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt three months in that I didn’t feel the same way about him. I just didn’t know why for another few months. Or I didn’t want to admit why. I’m not sure the distinction matters at this point.

I remember which class I was sitting in the first time I wrote down “I think I like girls.” It was almost lunch time, I had no friends in there and no one was paying any attention to me. I put it in a journal I later burned. It was terrifying and imprinted itself on my memory. It was also a truth I couldn’t outrun any more.

I wasn’t expecting that coming out would be so similar to the stages of grief. I remember being so angry. I tried to kill myself. An expression of anger, fear, and disappointment.

I tried to kill myself on Valentine’s day because my boyfriend so desperately wanted to spend time with me, but I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I knew exactly where I’d rather be and why. I couldn’t take it any more.

I took, what I thought to be at the time, a lot of pills, and drank, what I thought to be at the time, a lot of alcohol. And laid down to go to sleep. I started feeling very ill and couldn’t fall asleep. I remember praying. “Okay God, if I survive this, it means you want me to be gay. And if I don’t well, I guess I’ll find out if you’re going to send me to hell for it.”

I threw up all night. The next day I felt like death warmed over, but I was alive. Now came the hard part, figuring out how to be gay. It took me 6 more years to come out in any kind of public way. I told my closest friends in high school, but that didn’t go so well. I came out as bisexual. Which, I am not. But I couldn’t be a full on lesbian yet.I wasn’t ready to give up.

I was still desperately hoping some boy would come along and fix me. Someone, anyone! That they would love me enough somehow and, even though I would never feel the same way about them, that it would be enough. It didn’t work out.

My first few years of being out to myself were full of this kind of bargaining. “I’ll just be alone forever and that will be fine. I don’t need a relationship.” I had resolved to stay in the small, rural town I had grown up in and just be the person my family wanted me to be. But the idea of being forced to be alone became unbearable. I had finally let go of some of my self hatred and honestly I wanted so badly to hit on women. Being a lesbian sounded amazing, if I could just figure out how to do it!

In college it still took awhile for me to come out, again.

I was technically bisexual at that point, so the assumption was this was a phase. I was so tired of the implication that I’d just eventually like a dude! I knew I wouldn’t. I kept pretending. Latching on to dudes left and right because I assumed (rightly) that there was more to lose when I let everyone know there would be no more men for me.

I tried to date exactly one guy in college. Attempting to be the person he wanted me to be was like cutting off parts of myself. I kept trying to make myself into something that I wasn’t to make men happy, when I was already pretty sure that I wasn’t at all interested in men or making them happy. I ‘broke up’ with him after four days.

I wish I could say that was the end of my misadventures with men, but it wasn’t. It was the last time I tried to date one. Everything else was just drunken mistakes in an attempt to try to make myself into a straight girl.

I finally gave it all up when I was 23. I had been fighting and fighting and fighting for years. I slept with one woman and it’s honestly laughable to me at this point that I ever thought I was straight.

That’s the only reason I decided to come out to my family at all.

After stumbling upon the (finally sober) realization, that I was decidedly uninterested in men, I realized that I would need to tell my family.

I didn’t want to, but I’m a terrible liar. And honestly, I was so tired of being afraid of them. To be clear though, when I came out I was still terrified of them. My timing could have probably been better, but that’s not how life is.

I decided to come out the weekend I graduated from college. I was sure, certain, in fact, that it would be alright. We would be riding the high from my accomplishment (2 degrees!) and they would love me regardless. I would tell them and then we would have a nice Christmas.

I have not been to a Christmas with my family since then.

I graduated right about the same time as all that Duck Dynasty nonsense where that guy said really homophobic stuff in GQ back in 2013. Well, my sister spent the entire weekend talking about it. Agreeing with him. Being angry because the show got dropped. “Gay people need to learn their place.” I could still direct you to the booth we were sitting at in Steak’n’Shake when she said that. There are some things that just stick with you. All gay people were going to hell anyway, why should it matter that he said it! And how dare A&E cancel them!

I left after that. Saying I was tired and didn’t want to go back to the mall. I had some friends to hang out with. Whatever excuses I could come up with. Really I went to my apartment and talked with my girlfriend for hours and hours about what I should do. I didn’t feel safe going home with them at that point. My family isn’t known for solving these kind of disagreements peacefully. And my family disagreed with my existence. What’s a girl to do? I ran away with my girlfriend for Christmas.

And this is where the Southern part of my story starts rearing its ugly head. My girlfriends parents were not sure about hosting me. I should be at home with my family. I didn’t know how to tell them, I didn’t feel safe with my family.

There’s this stigma about not being in touch with your family. Like it’s some kind of easy choice to cut them off. I already knew what my family thought of me, why am I required to open myself up to further abuse? Why am I required to submit myself to them for in-person derangement.

After the fact, when we were discussing it my mother said to me “Were you scared I was going to shoot you?” And yes. I was. That’s the thing. I know how my mother reacts. I react in similar fashions sometimes. A blind rage. You can’t see anything but your anger. I felt I was taking my life in my hands if I went home and came out. And who would know if they killed me and buried me in the back yard? Who would care? There are lots of pig farms in Arkansas. There are lots of places to hide a body.

Perhaps this is horrifying for me to say, but it was a natural conclusion for me. There are many people where I’m from who would have understood why my family did it. A jury of their peers wouldn’t convict them.

After that we tried for a few years, but the problem is I wanted it all.

I can read my parents like a book. They were so uncomfortable in my presence.

Growing up my father only referred to gay men as faggots. I had only ever heard gay used as a slur until I was in high school at least. It definitely wasn’t truly de-stigmatized for me until I was in college.

And about three years after I came out to my parents, I was tired of being tolerated. I didn’t want them to think I was disgusting. I wanted them to be able to look at me. I wanted them to be able to say the word gay and it not be a slur. And so I confronted them about it.

And my mom told me that she can only accept my relationships that are ‘biblical.’ She will never accept my marriage. And so I decided that I wasn’t going to live my life in pieces, and I told her to contact me when she could accept me for everything that I am, and that includes being a lesbian.

And now I don’t know what to do.

My family always made it very clear that if you didn’t talk to them in life, you shouldn’t show up at their funerals. I don’t know whether to grieve now, later, or both. I assume both makes the most sense.

This is excruciating, but it’s still better than sitting across the table from my mother and seeing the disgust in her eyes. The fear. Knowing that she thinks there’s something wrong with me.

My mother’s love is conditional. She loves in the hope that it will make me change. That I will repent and be born again, again. That it can save me. That she can make me straight.

After being the ‘sinner’ that’s been ‘loved’ for so many years, I have to say it feels less like love and more like coercion.

I feel like I’ve chosen the lesser of two evils. Trying to maintain contact with my family is destabilizing. So I’ll live with the guilt and the shame of not talking to the people who conceived me. I’m not sure what I continue to owe them though.

My mother left me a voicemail last week. She claims she doesn’t know what she’s done to “upset me.” She thinks I’m just punishing her because I’m mad. I’m not mad. I’m painfully aware of how little there is left of me for her to love. I won’t change. Why do I have to expose myself to her obvious disdain? What obligations do I owe her?

She brought me into this world, but the truth is she doesn’t want me. She wants whatever version she keeps of me in her head.

It’s much harder to love people as they are. And what I am now is so far removed from what she wants, I just don’t see why I have to keep trying. She isn’t going to meet me halfway, and I have to give up everything I am.

There’s no voice I can turn my mother to that teachers her to love me. The people my mother respects hate me. They teach I’m the reason why Jesus will soon return and wipe people like me from the face of the Earth and put us in hell where we belong.

I’ve heard “Blood is thicker than water” so often that I can’t help but feel like the asshole in this situation. Oh, what I’m doing to my poor mother! Have we considered what she’s done to me?

I’ve always been aware of how tenuous my relationship with my parents was. I knew there were parts of me they could never love. I’ve been keeping secrets since I was a child, hoping that I could be good enough one day that they’d like every piece of me. I’d settle for like, I think.

I grieve for my childhood. I wonder, often, what it’s like for kids who’s parents love them unconditionally. It’s difficult knowing that is something I will never experience.

I can’t blame my mother for it. I don’t think it was something she was ever capable of. It’s about as useful as being mad at the rain. There’s nothing I can do to change it.

I always want these kinds of things to have a lesson. I would like to wrap it up nice and tidy, but this is all messy ends and unfinished work.

The anger has run out of me and all that was left to do was this. Hollow myself out so the pain and sadness can’t grow and fester until they try to kill me again. You face them, you name them, you find a way to get up the next morning. You do things that make you happy. You wait for them to make you happy again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

#lgbtq #southern culture #suicide mention cw #cw suicide mention #writing #mine #wlw #lesbian #gay

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cosmitasiarts-moved · 5 years ago

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I wrote a depressing as shit fic about Tony after having a mental breakdown (as in, he had the breakdown, not me) it’s on AO3 at “works/21358624″ (I love that tumblr hides links from tags/searches) but I’ll put it under a cut as well.

(CW for: implied/referenced self harm, suicide attempt, and vomiting)

Slowly fluttering open his eyes that had crusted over with tears, Tony woke from a vacant, dreamless sleep, still in his wrinkled uniform he hadn't bothered taking off the night before. There he laid, still alive, still feeling. An anchor was wrenching at his chest, holding him to the surface of his lonely bed. He steadily sat up, his entire body aching, but still not as much as his heart. He hadn’t been looking forward to the morning he’d be faced with. At this point he knew it was inevitable, but part of him still hoped it wouldn’t come.

An unpleasant, sickly feeling was rising in his throat, he knew exactly why. He slid off the bed, his legs shaking under his own weight, and staggered over to the small trash can near his desk. He retched as quietly as he could manage, trying his best to make sure no one could hear. A disgusting burn that tasted of chemicals lingered in the back of his throat.

He eyed a stain left on the floor from the coughed up pills he failed to swallow, which now resided in the garbage underneath what he just threw up. Maybe, just maybe, those would have finished the job. At the very least, he might as well clean that spot off the floor, a slightly more productive use of time than sitting around and waiting for the next urge to vomit.

On one hand, he was disappointed. Disappointed to be awakened to the same old excruciating weight dragging in his stomach, a pit continually being dug into his chest. On the other hand, he was somewhat relieved. Relieved only because now no one has to be inconvenienced by a corpse.

After cleaning up his little mess, and hiding the brand new, recently opened bottle of over the counter painkillers that had been drained suspiciously into his dresser, he looked to the desk for the note he left behind. He retrieved it to compulsively reread it again, as if he hadn’t read it again and again several times the night before.

“Dear Jeff whoever this may concern,

I apologize for any mess or problems this may cause.

I thought this would be for the best, or me and everyone else.

I’ve been falling apart, I can’t do anything on my own, or anything at all...

I don’t know what else to do about it anymore,

but everything around me has only been going downhill.

I’m all alone and I can’t fix it any other way, but I don’t even know if

anyone actually cares. The silence is excruciating, I’m sorry.

Love, Tony”

He was snapped out of his fixated rereading of the note by the sound of his phone ringing. It’s been so long. He shakily picked up the phone to hear that familiar, comforting voice that he had missed so much.

“Hey, Tony!” Jeff greeted, he was very evidently tired, but still sounded as sweet as ever.

“Hi, Jeff…” Tony croaked out.

A small pause. “... Tony, are you okay?” The question coming from Jeff’s soft, sympathetic voice made tears well up in Tony’s eyes.

“Oh, yeah.” Tony sniffled and wiped his tears, practically forcing himself to sound like his usual enthusiastic self. “I’m just feeling sick, is all.” Which wasn’t technically a lie.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

“... All right, I hope you feel better soon.”

“Thanks…” despite it all, when talking to Jeff, Tony couldn’t help but smile. “Um- well how have you been?”

“Oh! Yeah. I was gonna apologize for not calling for a while, something really strange happened.”

“Oh, it’s okay…” Tony stared down at his own note for a moment, then crumpling it in his fist and tossing it into the trash as he spoke. “Please, tell me about it.”

#Earthbound #mother 2 #tony earthbound #jeff andonuts #mother series #tw suicide #tw vomiting #cosmitasia writes

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mahouproject-one · 6 years ago

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Picasso’s Blue Period | Miyu | Trial (re: confession, Joon’s murder)

[ CW: Suicide ]

Was this the ending they deserved? For all the ways they had wronged the class and each other? Maybe it was. The villains didn’t get their happily ever after.

“You jackass. You said you got rid of the cake, not that you just… left it somewhere. Zoya-chan would’ve had you covered – she’ll kick people out of certain areas if they try to taste or touch something toxic. You had a flamethrower – and I’m sure you didn’t even bother hiding it because you wanted me to find it. Could have destroyed it with the flamethrower instead. Or left the cake in the closet covered in ammonia. Or just… not made a huge goddamn cake instead of a controlled portion size.”

Mitsuo brought up many, many good points, not that she could bring herself to voice any explicit agreement to them. The plan had allowed a brief but crucial window of time that ended up killing Shiba. The plan hinged on actually leaving enough time to investigate their leads – though, admittedly, whatever happened to Takako and Joon was completely unexpected, and a better day would have led to the discovery of Kris and Sollith’s farewell letters very early into the investigation. Even then, someone could have informed the others as soon as the investigation began. Someone could have informed Miyu. They had every chance to tell Miyu.

Abruptly, furiously, she waved up two memories, both of them set in that room filled with chrysanthemums, the sight that greeted anyone who passed through the central pensieve. Both memories showed a table adorned not with multicolored keys, but with tea and cookies. In one memory, she was having some sort of solemn discussion with Shiba and Sollith, as well as with Holy and a smiling woman in intricate formal clothing. In another memory, she was alone with Kris, holding his hands as she tried not to look at the tears streaking his face or the nearby door glowing gold.

No one had told her anything, even though they knew all along that Kris had been planning something like this, whether it was with Shiba’s support or Sollith’s.

Even if Miyu would not explicitly acknowledge Mitsuo, she could find inspiration in his anger, riding off the energy as she ignored the pain in her throat and began her rant in full.

“…You know giving you that ring was never about getting it back home to my family, right? Yes, it was something passed down my mother’s line, but that wasn’t what I cared about. You know it was supposed to be your promise to me, right? That you would make it out of here. That you wouldn’t do something like this! Shizuka, you know that people without magic aren’t supposed to become ghosts! We’re only like this because Otohiko’s magic rubbed off on us!

This island doesn’t inherently have magic: It’s all her! Even if we somehow get rid of her, the magic goes away with her. I go away with her. Me, and Agatsuma, and Miwa and Izumi, and all the others like us. You know there’s a chance we might not even exist anymore when this is done. Is that what you wanted, Shizuka? You wanted to be with me and Miwa when that happened? You wanted to…”

Like a veil had been lifted away, her anger abruptly subsided and melted into a look of stunned horror.

“…you did want this, didn’t you?”

Kris had assured her during the investigation that he really did want to live. Miyu hadn’t believed him then, and certainly didn’t now. Even if he was telling the truth, she had been subconsciously considering that idea for a long time. Her interpretation remained firm.

For all that Miyu wanted to rage against the world that shaped them into the tools they were and the dragon that had tempted them into acting on those instincts, as the realization settled into her like ice in her lungs, all she could do for a few seconds was break. She choked on senseless words, and despite her best efforts to hold back, several tears spilling over.

She had always found what little she knew of Otohiko’s personal motivations to be begrudgingly familiar. But in this instant, Miyu completely understood why a person would ever want to destroy a world that hated them, a world that had forgotten them.

They weren’t allowed to forget.

…but Miyu wasn’t allowed to forget, either. She had agreed to Clove’s terms, and she had tried to honor Sollith’s request. For all that she wanted to end this trial right now and rip off the bandage and run away into the flower field to lose herself in her memories and never come back – she was needed. She could delay that for just a while longer.

Miyu rubbed at her eyes with her wrist, coughing once more to try and clear her throat. She really didn’t want to be here anymore. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to be right now. But she was here, and she would have to try.

“…d-does anyone know of Shiba-san’s whereabouts this morning? Need to know if they were all alone, or if someone was with them. There was icing and glitter under their nails; I presume the glitter was theirs. But I h-have yet to find any suggestion that someone else was involved in retrieving that cake for them, or that another incident caused their bleeding. If… it was just them and no one else, then I think that… that Shi-Shizuka is the correct vote. Even if the cake killed someone else… he created it with a specific purpose. I think it registers as his fault.”

Granted, it was his fault. This was more about what the technical verdict should be.

“Unless you c-can dispute me, let’s go back to Joon and Imai.

A long while back, Joon mentioned he and Imai were considering visiting the baths together. All of Genbu was present to hear this, as well as Izumi-san, Inoue, and Ueno – not that I think they’re involved, just being thorough. Also, the foliage in the gardens was damaged, like someone had charged through and trampled them, and some of the twigs had white and red threads snagged on. The path led out to the cliff.

I think that a chase of some kind happened from the baths to the cliff. Problem: I don’t know when anyone would have time to get the cloak from the cliff back to the bathhouse, not with the explosion killing Joon. Unless.”

She blinked.

“Unless the explosion was just a cover-up. Imai said she dove off the cliff before the explosion. Did Joon, too? He was ahead of her. He could have… survived the fall, initially. And the stain on the cloak is grey, not green.”

#mahouichi #chrono #chapter five #trial #miyu #submission #suicide cw//

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kittenfemme27 · 4 years ago

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The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

I don’t know about you, reader, but it’s been actual years since I was able to properly sit down and finish a book. My last one was Lovecraft Country in 2018, and many, many years before that. Reading used to be a big passion of mine, I loved to get lost in the worlds. I loved the movie that played out in my head as I read, as if it was projecting itself into my mind more-so than i was actually reading the words themselves. For a kid who didn’t always grow up with the internet or video games available, Books from my local library were a great escape.

So, having found myself getting more and more into horror around 2019 in all forms of media I consumed, I was more than happy to bookmark a tweet from a horror artist I follow on Twitter who had a list of all the horror books he’d read that year. This would be my chance to get back into reading, finally!

Cue.. 2 years later, and I’ve finally started on that list. The top of that list, “The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires“, was something I found immediately intriguing from the title and cover alone. I’m now regretting that decision so much that I’m not sure I’ll bother with the rest of the list.

(CW: R*pe, Gore, Racism)

“The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires” is an awful book. The only compliment I feel I could accurately give it is that it’s not written incompetently enough, from a purely technical standpoint, as to be unreadable.

The story stars Patricia Campbell, a housewife in the 1980′s-1990′s that is more apology than character, and her rag-tag group of similarly middle-aged, middle-income southern white wine sipping housewives who do, and I cannot stress this enough, almost nothing but test each other’s and the readers patience for nigh on 310 out of 357 pages. They bicker, they fight, they treat Patricia as crazy when she repeatedly shows them evidence that children around them are dying, and most of all they refuse to do absolutely anything, leaning more into pure disbelief until the problem has literally violated one of them. The book club women don’t lead interesting lives, either. They’ve got husbands who are not in love with them, children who hate them, and friendships with each other that can be broken by what feels tantamount to bringing the wrong wine to a meeting. Throughout the story, Patricia is accosted by the resident Vampire-like creature, more akin to a human mosquito than any sort of real “Vampire”, that moves in after his aunt dies. A man named James Harris. He smoothly worms his way into everyone’s lives in the charismatic way a vampire does and convinces everyone that Patricia is more or less insane for ever suspecting him of being a vampire after she watches him feed on a child. This leads to her attempting suicide after being pushed into a corner by her doctor husband who seems to have been ripped straight from the 1950′s and thinks women should be Seen and not Heard. She gives up and more or less goes comatose as a character for roughly 3 years until finally she snaps to her senses after seeing a ghost of her dead mother in law who knew the Vampire when she was a small child, who leads her to one of the bodies he’s got stored in his attic, and convinces everyone else in her book club, who has routine abandoned her at this point, to help her kill James. They do, chopping his body to bits while it taunts them and then throwing the bits into a fire. Patricia divorces her husband at the end and somehow that makes her children lover her, happy-ever-after ending.

That’s the rough synopsis, but it doesn’t really do the grossness of this book any justice. That first child James kills, is a black 9 year old named Destiny who later kills herself as it’s revealed that the Vampire-like creature’s bites feel so good and so sexually pleasurable, that if you are deprived of them after becoming addicted you’re likely to just commit suicide. This is AFTER she’s taken away from her mother by child services because they assume the bite marks are syringe injection marks and that her mother must be a druggie. She’s not the first black child to die this way either. In-fact, by the time Patricia becomes wise to James’ ways, she’s the third. They’re all from a poor black neighborhood that is literally described as shady, dangerous, and being full of “Super Predators” called Six-Mile, which is the de-facto feeding ground of the Vampire for a good 75% of the book, as well as the home of the literally only surviving named black character, Ursula Greene, who herself is nothing more than a “wise old negro” trope along with being a maid to these rich white people who think of her as trash. This is probably the biggest overarching problem in the book. It tries, in the authors words, to explore the relationships between the white, rich women who brag about how their cul-de-sac is so safe and pure that nobody even locks their door, and the poor black characters from Six-Mile. The book thinks its clever, because Mrs. Green constantly points out that the white characters let the black children die callously so that their white children would live, to which they can only reply about how guilty that makes them feel and how they’re sorry. I’m not sure what the author hoped to accomplish by pointing out the institutional racism of the 90′s, but whatever he hoped to accomplish, it fail flat on its face in the most racist way it could.

I wish that was where gross things ended for this book, but its not. At one point, the Vampire-like creature rapes one of the book club members and she is more or less outright stated to be pregnant with a monster from that rape and it is also revealed that the rape gave her an “Auto-Immune Disease” that the characters husband immediately likens to AIDS and that is very quickly killing her. This information causes her to choose to have her body cremated so nothing can spring forth from her corpse when she dies. The implications this has are frankly appalling. The books decision on whether or not a woman who gets pregnant from rape is worthy of life is to resolutely and proudly say no and treat that as if its a feminist answer. That if you’re raped, it’s akin to something like AIDS and life simply isn’t worth living. it’s one of the grossest things I’ve read in a long time.

It’s not even the only shock value the book uses to make it’s events feel real and scary, others include Patricia’s son “Blue” being obsessed with Nazi’s, for genuinely seemingly no reason. He just brings them up to make you, and everyone in the story, uncomfortable. There are constant overwrought descriptions of gore or simply gross scenarios, such as an indepth description of Patricia’s ear-lobe being ripped off, or rats gnawing the flesh off on a old woman, or a cockroach crawling inside someones ear. There is also the repeated child murder or child suicide, which doesn’t really serve a purpose other than to shock the middle-aged mothers this book was meant for, with multiple sentences in which Patricia thinks about how much it would hurt if that were her children, inviting the reader to do the same with their own.

And we couldn’t forget that this book is just unrepentant in its horniness. It’s outright stated that being fed on is the most sexually pleasurable thing one can feel, which makes it all the more awkward when you consider that the Vampire’s first set of victims are children, later Patricia’s teenage daughter who she walks in on in the middle of being fed and who she has to stop from literally masturbating in that moment while attempting to punch the Vampire off of that same teenage daughter. But, of course, it doesn’t end there. It’s a book about almost entirely women written by a Cis Male Author, which means there are constant depiction of female bodies in the nude or in violence. It’s no “She boobed boobily”, thankfully, but it’s not much better than that. Describing pubic hair, breast shape, and even making it so that the Vampire-like creature drinks from a penis-esque proboscis that extends from it’s throat and right into the upper thigh of it’s victim, which is mentioned twice to be right next to the vagina. It even goes so far as to try and sexualize its own rape, aswell as having Patricia tell the rape victim how good it feels with this section between the two. Something I’m including here in its entirety because no amount of words I can write describes how gross this passage is, in context.

“Grace already... told me,” Slick said, opening her eyes, pulling her mask away from her face to speak. “I made her... give me all the details.”

“Me too,” Patricia said. “I was out from what he did to me.”

“How did... it feel?” Slick asked.

Patricia would never have said this to anyone but Slick. She leaned forward.

“It felt so good,” she breathed, the immediately remembered what he’d done to Slick and felt selfish and insensitive.

“Most sin does,” Slick said.

I think the thing that angers me the most about this book is that it’s tricked a lot of people who read it into thinking its a fun, feminist read. All of the main characters are overworked mothers who struggle with being that overworked, and then come out on top anyway because of their motherly intuition and love for their kids. It’s the kind of book that a single struggling mother would read and think “Yeah, I’d do that, that’d be me! I’d save the day!” and it makes them feel good about themselves, and about being a mother, and about how hard it is to make the kids lunches and clean the husbands dirty underwear and make sure the house is clean and dinner is on the table by 6 PM all while looking hashtag fabulous and like a girlboss. A quick trawl through any review site will show roughly the exact type of single mothers this book is written for giving it 5 stars and calling it hilarious and empowering. And y’know, I don’t have a problem inherently with prose written for that demographic. But this book gets away with a ton of racism, sexism, and outright disgusting content by hiding itself under that veneer and I think that’s just awful. It should be held to scrutiny for what it is, for how bad it is, and it clearly never was.

Don’t read this book. It sucks. It sucks so fucking much. I want my night I spent reading it back.

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winterywitch · 7 years ago

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one of my partners made a random oc ship generator and it gave a kind of interesting result so i wrote a fic of it

[CW: pedophilia mention, abuse mention, suicide mention]

Desiderius did technically give him all the time in the world to try and dry off by the door, but because the Mermaid King had already started walking down the hall to one of many dens in the castle that was now nearly a stranger to him, Nana felt obligated to not take a second longer than he absolutely had to without worrying that he’d slip and fall on the hard floors.

That’d leave another unsightly mess to clean up, and in the past 40 years, Nana had found he was no longer the kind of man who left his messes around for other people to take care of. And he found it unforgivable that he ever was in the first place.

So what this meant was that the cruelly soft, warm chair Desiderius had led him to was now getting wet, and it was another thing Nana felt sorry for. After all this time, he didn’t know if he remembered Desiderius as a man fastidious and concerned with the appearance and wellbeing of his furniture, or as a man too tired to care about the newest stain in this or that sofa. The fact that Desiderius wasn’t saying a word about it did not point to either theory being truer than the other, and that was frightening.

But Nana, no longer a king but a mere wandering knight, learned that it was best to keep quiet when something was troubling him. And between the small talk that was traded between the two and what Desiderius had just said, Nana wasn’t sure which was more troubling.

“… You let me. You let me take the blame. Remember that?”

With downcast eyes, Desiderius spoke thus. Desiderius spoke as a man who had only just learned it was alright to talk about such things, who had only just learned it was alright to cry out when he was struck.

How unfair that it had taken this long.

Of course, Nana knew exactly what he meant. He remembered Desiderius’ ‘confession’ to this day very well.

He knew you all would have done the same if you had the chance.

He knew it was wrong, but.

He wasn’t even sure if he was sorry at this point.

(How sorry could he be when he hadn’t done it in the first place?)

… All Nana could do was nod, and see what Desiderius would say next.

And next indeed, Desiderius said “You didn’t make me do it,” in a conspiratorial tone that could have only suggested that he’s thought about this, turned it over quite a bit in his head since then, “You just… Didn’t stop me.” Laughing softly to himself, he added, “You seemed so caught up in how you felt that you just weren’t thinking about it, but… I wonder if there was really something else going on there.”

. . .

Then he looked Nana straight in the eyes, and asked, “Do you even have anything to say for yourself?” He was smiling, but it wasn’t right at all.

. . .

Desiderius couldn’t have wanted an apology. What good was ‘sorry’ by this point? That sounds just like something Nana would have said all those years ago. Just a ‘sorry’, as he cowered into his chair, unsure if he was more afraid of hurting someone’s feelings or of getting caught.

And answering that age-old question aloud, Nana said, “I didn’t know what I would do if everyone knew I did such a horrible thing. I wouldn’t have said it was wrong then, but I believe I knew. On some level, I want to say I knew it was wrong, and I thought it was just too late to stop. Or maybe I just didn’t care, I remember feeling that I knew best – better than society as a whole.”

Judging by the look on Desiderius’ face, he wasn’t expecting an answer like that.

“I have very little that I can say for myself,” Nana continued, “I can’t defend the indefensible. There’s only one thing I can do.”

Loath to take such a seemingly learned response at face value, Desiderius leaned back in his own chair across from Nana, taking that statement for the challenge he thought it was.

“And what would that one thing be, O… King Nana of the Stars?” Asked the Mermaid King, hardly bothering to hide his contempt with one elbow on his armrest and that hand lazily folded over the sneer on his face.

What Desiderius heard was sanctimonious bullshit, to put it delicately. He heard ‘I’m good now! Please believe me!’ And he’d be damned if he was going to believe another word out of this old snake’s mouth after all he’d been through.

“… I can answer the question of ‘Why did you do that?’, and that is all. The past is far beyond my reach, but perhaps I can give you some… Sense of closure if that’s what you desire. Some—sign that yes, your perception of the events unfolded was correct. It was just…” He paused a moment, eyes darting away, “It was just me. Not letting you know that.”

With a scoff, Desiderius fired right back with an “Alright, He-Who-Has-Been-Redeemed – who was Nana of the Stars, if you are so sure you aren’t him?”

Of course, Nana never claimed to be separate from his past sins. But he could see why Desiderius would have gotten such an idea, and he didn’t dare debate that.

“I would call myself a child, but that would only muddy the nature of what was so wrong,” he said, “A man did these things. Not a boy. I would call myself foolish, but that wouldn’t exactly be true—I was quite intelligent. What I lacked was wisdom, but I thought I had acquired plenty of it, and so it was everyone else around me who paid the price for that lacking. I thought I could—do no wrong, I truly believed I had all the answers. Nana of the Stars was—I was a manipulator who can only promise that he loved himself.”

“So he never loved Arya Kurosawa, then?” Desiderius asked, eyes heavy as he smiled, “I suppose that sounds about right. That wasn’t real love, you’ll tell me.”

Nana knew Desiderius well enough to know when he was laying a trap. So he stepped aside.

“He loved Arya Kurosawa, yes,” Nana said, feeling rather outside of his own body. This, above all other things, was always the hardest memory for him to make sense of. “And that was certainly love. I—I cannot change the definitions of words to tailor this scenario in just this or that way – But it was wrong. And he knew it was wrong—but—not in the way I would—suppose he—I would.”

Desiderius slowly quirked one eyebrow.

“He knew it was a social—it was a taboo in some way. He even knew there was probably a reason for that taboo to exist. He was just—” Nana gave a brief sigh, clearing his throat and trying to seem as calm as possible, “I was convinced my way was right. I was so sure I was right, that age was such a negligible block in the road, that any argument to the contrary would have fallen on these deaf ears.”

To that, Desiderius had no clever retort. It certainly wasn’t that he was convinced, it was rather – he heard something he liked, and decided he ought press further, with more caution.

So next he asked, “Who was Hachi of the Clouds?”

“A monster of my own design,” Nana said. And he said it very quickly, like he knew that answer front and back. “If I were out of the picture, I know for a fact he would not have felt half as empowered in his…” Nana grimaced. ‘Antics’ wasn’t the right word. “His actions. Yes.”

“Really?” Asked Desiderius, tone flat as he started tapping his nails against his lips. A nervous habit? Nana couldn’t tell for sure.

“Yes. Really. Hachi quite openly took me as inspiration for what he ought do or not do, so I—can’t help but feel responsible for. All of it. For Annie’s leg, for Kyuun’s…” Nana found he was speechless suddenly, but he fought himself valiantly. “Wasn’t there a mortal man he—”

“Yes, Augustine Kaur was his name. Committed suicide thirty years ago.”

Nana grew pale. “… How do you—know so much abou—”

“You aren’t the only one who feels responsible for Hachi’s mess, Your Highness,” Desiderius said through grit teeth. “You remember very well how the both of you roped me into all that, against poor Kyuun no less when he needed a friend most.”

“… Yes,” Nana said, relaxing again – more for Desiderius’ sake than his own – “I do. The both of us ganged up on you in situations like that. And I think my audacity fanned the flames of his as well. We, ah… Fed each other in a number of. Despicable ways.”

Desiderius paused again, his face still cold and stern. But he nodded. Seemed something about that satisfied him.

“Who was Kyuun of the Woods, Sir Knight?” He asked, crossing one leg over the other.

This one took a little more thought.

“A poor boy I should have left alone,” Nana said, hands growing tight at his armrests, “I… Thought I was fixing him of his asocial habits, but even then I. I must have known, the only pleasure in brutal honesty goes to the honest man. I told myself I was performing some act of charity, though I knew I was only molding him in my image – as if my image was a proper mold for everyone. I knew he wasn’t hurting anyone simply being who he was. He wasn’t hurting me. But his shyness annoyed me.”

“That’s very honest,” chuckled Desiderius. “I didn’t think you’d be opening yourself quite this much.”

“It’s only the truth,” Nana said, looking a bit pained, “And it’s an awful truth to confess. But the truth is always to be confessed, regardless of the confessor’s ‘feelings’. Kyuun of the Woods was… He was a harmless man simply living as he knew how to, and instead of encouraging him to treat himself well, I bullied him further and further into his shell. And because I did, Hachi did as well. And he—he took it further than I thought he would. And still, I defended him, and still I made you stand by him right alongside me.”

Nana figured he knew what was coming next.

“Who was Yukai-toki, Nana?” Desiderius asked, looking as though he might burst into tears any moment.

“… He was.” Gods, was Nana beginning to forget? That couldn’t be true. “He was… He was. The man who should have been in my place from the very beginning.”

For a moment Desiderius looked horrified. Was he suggesting Yukai-toki should have been Arya’s lover?

“Let—Let me explain myself a moment,” Nana stammered, sensing this in Desiderius, “He should have been the one who had that much influence in Arya’s life. He should have been Arya’s king and caretaker, he would have been the father—older brother—what have you—that I always should have been. And I should have.

I should have been the one to be sealed away for my rebellion.”

Desiderius looked no less floored.

“Because I—I would have been jealous of him. Cruelly jealous, I would have told myself he was infantilizing the poor boy—and he was only jealous of me because I was abusing Arya’s innocence, and yet Arya loved me still. He – he only wanted to give Arya what he deserved, Desiderius—a family that cared for him whether or not he succeeded or failed, a family that didn’t… Make him think he was so mature and precocious that anyone would—”

Nana stopped there, and could go no further. But he felt Desiderius deserved an explanation for that stopping.

“… I. I disgust myself so deeply I can hardly stand it. And that is my burden to bear. Not yours, not anyone else’s.” And he said nothing more on that, not trusting himself to stay put-together.

Desiderius had been looking into the fireplace for a while now. He looked weary, but no matter how Nana searched his face for some trace of annoyance or hatred, he couldn’t quite find it.

He thought maybe he wasn’t looking hard enough.

After a few seconds, Desiderius sighed through his nose and said “I see. In that case, I have one more question for you.”

“Yes. Anything.”

Who was Desiderius of the Sea? Nana knew that was coming next. And he was prepared. Desiderius of the Sea was a saint—

“Why did you leave?” Desiderius asked, voice crumpling up into a whimper he couldn’t control.

. . .

“I… I’m sorry?” Nana asked, unsure he heard Desiderius right.

Desiderius hid his face, ashamed of the tears soaking up his sleeves. “When Arya left, you just. Ran away. How can you sit there, acting like you were so brave and noble to do all this soul-searching when all you did was run away from the people who needed all this honesty DECADES ago?”

Nana didn’t claim to be brave. He certainly didn’t claim to be noble either. But again, he did not argue with Desiderius. His truth didn’t matter right now.

… Or. Well.

“I am not brave or noble at all, my king,” Nana said, feeling his own throat tighten a bit too as he heard Desiderius give a sob right after he was referred to with such reverence, “All I can say I am is learning and trying. You’re—you’re right, when you say I ran away. I…”

… He did truly realize that just now. It seemed his cowardice ran more recent than he thought.

“I supposed the best I could do for you, Kyuun – anyone left in this castle with some sense of decency – was disappear. I couldn’t imagine you would have wanted me to stay and explain myself.”

“I waited—YEARS for you,” Desiderius gasped, voice ragged as he cried, “I thought you were never coming back, that you’d never make all this right again, and now forty years later—here you are! YOU made me wait all this time, and you just. You just. Showed up.”

He stopped making sense right about there, and in his frustration, he could only hunch over and cry.

Nana and his poison skin sat right where they were, knowing better than to reach out to Desiderius. And he had to pause and breathe, to be sure he wouldn’t join Desiderius in those tears. Desiderius didn’t deserve such a display of weakness at a time like this.

“WHY WON’T YOU EVEN LOOK AT ME?!” Desiderius cried, and Nana then became aware that Desiderius was watching him through those long sleeves. “WHY WON’T YOU COME CLOSER?! COMFORT ME! WHEN DID YOU—” Hiccupping, his voice lowered again, “When did you become so incompetent?”

All those years ago, Nana would have come closer, he would have dragged his chair right over to Desiderius and held him, stroking his hair, cooing in his ear, letting him let out everything he needed to let out.

That’s right, he was a very affectionate friend back then, wasn’t he?

But Nana was a different man now.

So instead of dragging his chair over there, he simply stood up, walked over to Desiderius’ chair and kneeled before it.

Genuflected, his head lowered. He was in the presence of a king, after all.

… It seemed Desiderius had stopped watching him, because it took him a couple seconds to make another sound or budge an inch. “You’re—You’re—”

Once Desiderius fell into silence again, Nana spoke, his voice deep and soft.

“Desiderius of the Sea was a colleague of mine. He was kind, intelligent – a genius when it came to other people – who… Rose proud, tall, out of a past that tried to break him. I—I am sad, because he never knew this about himself. He never knew his own worth, because the men around him only ever used him like a toy, or bullied him into submission. So he was so tired and sad himself, that he often couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. He must have… Thought there was no point. He must have thought no matter what, he would never be able to change his fate as a mere chess piece of men greater than him.”

Desiderius sniffled.

“But that wasn’t right. Those—those men were not greater than him. They were lowly, cowardly worms—they only thought they were greater than him because they’d figured out how to keep him uncertain of himself. And there was nothing right about that. He, as a thinker, a friend, a king, a man… Ran circles around all of them, and he did so with such ease, without even trying, that they thought he was foolish. Easy to manipulate and use.”

By this point, Desiderius was curled up in his chair, hugging himself as he so desperately wished on every star he could name, against all logic, that Nana would do.

“… If he were in our places—if, he had as much influence and clout in this kingdom as we did… It would have been a much kinder place.” Looking up at the despondent Desiderius, he said, “I stood in your way. I was the one who should have been so unsure of myself, so scared—That would have been fair for someone like myself. I-I can only apologize that nothing was particularly fair then, and that was my fault. I am to blame, not you, nor the silence we forced upon you, nor… Anything on your end. This I can swear, on every holy thing I know.”

Not thinking much of it, he added, “And you are a king I would be proud to serve, had I the pleasure of doing so.”

It was at this point that Desiderius gave up wishing, knowing the stars to have no interest in making him happy. He sat up in his chair again, then stood, and knelt to Nana’s level.

“No,” he murmured, eyes red and puffy, “Don’t put yourself below me. Please. I can’t handle that kind of power over other people. I-I don’t want you to be my servant.”

“Right—Of course, I didn’t quite mean it that way, I will go at the soonest moment I possibly can—”

“No—Nana, please,” Desiderius stammered, breathless, “Not that either. Don’t leave.”

… That was probably the first time in years Nana had heard anyone say that to him.

“… Then I. Will not leave,” Nana said, taken aback and trying to let his brain catch up to his mouth. “If that is what you ask of me.”

Desiderius nodded. He nodded for a couple seconds, very fervently, praying that he got across the point that that was precisely what he was asking, and he didn’t think his heart could take it if the stars refused that request, too. Sensing that, Nana felt he couldn’t just snub Desiderius’ begging for physical touch any further. It was painful and odd, but… His arms found their way around Desiderius one way or another.

“Please don’t go,” Desiderius whimpered, “Not again. Don’t run away this time.”

“I won’t. I won’t.”

There was an unfortunate side of Nana that seemed to wake up with Desiderius in his arms. It was warmer, it was comforting and it was desperately trying to make up for all these lost years and gods it was so helpless to Desiderius in that moment. All it wanted was to make this man smile again, and it would do anything to make that happen.

As it turned out, what that needed was a good half hour of just sitting there on the floor, cuddling by the fire. It was horribly unlike anything Nana thought he would be doing in this castle that used to belong to him, but when Desiderius stopped crying and started smiling, he didn’t think too hard about it. His smile was enough.

“… Please. Just. Stay for a couple days,” Desiderius said, now stable enough to speak sturdily, “That’s all I ask for. Just a couple days.”

“I will. I—I’ll stay as long as you ask, I don’t want to hurt you again,” Nana replied, looking sheepish. “And. If it ever does happen that I… Have to go, for some period of time—”

“Come back to me.”

Nana blinked.

“Yes—yes, that’s what I was going to say. I will come back to you. I promise.”

… Desiderius really was certain of what he wanted.

#kara's best fanfichsun #w@tchtower grotto #kara's charas #desinana #like god now im into it. god damn you toc

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jiemba · 8 years ago

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Sanvers Week Day 7 - Soulmates

Cw: some mentions of violence, homophobia, sexual harassment and suicidal ideation. In English they were known simply as Blackouts, but in Portuguese they were called As Apreensões – The Fits – because even though science had determined years ago that they weren’t technically seizures, people afflicted with them were known to jerk violently, to roll their eyes back in their head, to wake with injuries they’d never fallen asleep with. Nobody really knew why people got the nightmares, but Maggie’s Tia had a theory. She’d always said that God showed people the worst of their soulmate’s past, their absolute darkest memories, so that they would truly know to treat their heart tenderly, to never hurt that person more than they’d already been hurt. Over the years Maggie fell in love, almost too easily, always too messily, but through it all she slept soundly, never quite understanding why when she’d dream about girls, she’d dream only beautiful things.

Alex had given up waiting. As a teenager she’d wondered, with a mix of dread and curiosity, what she’d see from the memories of the man who’d one day kiss her children goodnight. She’d heard of people going to sleep and seeing car crashes, seeing abuse, seeing irreparable mistakes, seeing eating disorders, seeing loss, seeing heartbreak – but never their soulmate’s face. Jeremiah once said that his nightmares of her mother were the strangest and most painful things he’d ever felt, but they’d taught him to love his wife before he’d ever fallen in love with her. So for years, whenever a beautiful boy, a sweet boy, would show interest in Alex, she’d toss and turn in her bed, wondering if this was finally the night they would wrestle each other awake until the morning light. When Alex and Maggie first meet on the tarmac, neither of them expect the following night to be so sleepless. But all month both women wake in sweats, wake sobbing, wake with blood in their mouths from where they’ve bitten their tongues, the insides of their cheeks, in pure anguish. The first night, Alex hears cupboards slamming. Screaming. She doesn’t understand the shouts, but a child’s sobs are splattering against the walls like splashes of paint. Alex sees the young girl being dragged across the kitchen floor, dragged by her hair, and she’s screaming something that sounds like “Papi” as a grown man tosses her out the front door like she weighs nothing at all. Outside, there’s blood on the pavement. The girl lets her forehead rest against the concrete, and she’s shaking, she’s wailing, her palms are scraped, and god she’s so small, but before Alex can see her face she’s already scrambling down the driveway and into the nearest cornfield, burying herself so deep that maybe no one will ever find her. In the shock of early morning, Alex is wrenched back into her body with a scream caught in her throat, frantically checking her own palms, her own knees, for blood, and her bedroom smells like dirt, and she can still hear the scrambling rabbit heart of this kid, this tiny girl, and she doesn’t know why. From her own apartment, Maggie finds herself treading water on a quiet beach right as the dusk burns down to night. There’s a girl straddling a surfboard, facing the horizon, head in her hands. Maybe fifteen or so, but she seems older. Darker. There’s no sound but the squawking of gulls somewhere off, the tumble of the waves, and yet Maggie can hear every thought in the girl’s head. How her father didn’t even have the fucking decency to leave her a body – how pieces of him were scattered somewhere across this very ocean. Metacarpals lost among shells. Chunks of scalp. Teeth. How she’d see a wave coming up at her in a violent white rush and think, bodies. How she’ll never forgive herself for not being with him at the end, but maybe, maybe, she can be with him now. The girl casts her eyes to the riptides, and thinks of how it would be easy, how at the bottom there’d be no mother to disappoint, no sister to fail, no father to disgrace. There’d be nothing at all. A plane passes over their heads, and Maggie holds her breath as she watches the girl implode at the sound, scrambling off her board and under the water, where she finally lets herself scream, and scream, and scream. Maggie wakes so drenched in sweat that she almost feels like she’s still in the ocean, the blankets bunched around her kicking feet, sucking in air like she herself had been swallowed up in the black deep. The next time, Maggie watches from behind as the same girl, now a grown woman, stabs another woman in the back – desperately, fearfully – seeing the frightful relief in her friend’s eyes as she saves his life, but all she can feel is the slick heat of blood over her knuckles, and Maggie throws up as soon as she wakes. Elsewhere, Alex is in the back seat of a beat-up old car, a young girl sobbing into her hands in the front as an older Latino boy is dragged, bloody, across the side of a highway by two cops, and she’s screaming stop, please, he didn’t do anything, only forcing herself quiet after one of them points his gun directly at her and growls for her to shut up, just shut up. Later, Alex sees the girl being chased down a school hallway. The next night she’s older, maybe in college, and there are beer bottles thrown in her direction, strange men’s hands up her shirt without permission as they tell her, Come on, babe, you know you’d like it if you tried it. Maggie sees the woman in her dreams wake in a boys’ dorm with a splitting headache and stale tequila on her tongue, scrambling to find her clothes and wondering how the hell she got there. She sees a blonde girl tell the woman that she never loved her – that they were never truly family. She sees her again as a young girl, slapped hard across the face and told what the hell were you thinking, how can I trust you to take care of your sister when you’re so careless, so selfish, so untrustworthy, your father would be so disappointed in you, you stupid, stupid girl, and it takes a moment after Maggie wakes to realise she’s been hitting her own face. They both see crime scenes they wish they could look away from. They both see deep down the barrels of guns. They both see nights so crushingly lonely that there’s nothing to do but sob in the shower. By the end of the month, on opposite ends of the city, Maggie and Alex have the same thought as they try to slow their breathing enough to maybe get a moment’s rest. They need a fucking drink. Maggie gets there first. M’gann already has her two shots deep by the time Alex walks through the door, wondering what could have possibly been driving the detective into sleeplessness too. She baulks a little, hanging at the entrance before Maggie can notice her. Those couldn’t have been the dreams, right? That didn’t make any sense. Why would she be dreaming of a girl? No. No. That can’t be right. But Maggie feels it in her gut. As soon as Alex sits by her, darkness wearing the skin around her eyes as they look at her a little too long, a little too closely, she knows exactly what the woman saw, and has to turn her face away because the reflection of it is too much to bear. And even though she’d never seen the face of the longer-haired girl on the surfboard, she knows, instantly, that it was her. “Can’t sleep?” she hears Alex ask as M’gann places a bottle on the counter and leaves it there. Maggie tilts her head, smirks. “Sleep is for the weak.” Alex chuckles out a sigh, rubbing her eyes after the burn of bourbon claws down her throat. “Well since we’re here, you wanna play pool?” When Maggie looks back at her, she sees the woman’s face is all soft, all kind, and she finally understands what her Tia was trying to say. Because Alex clearly hasn’t put it together yet, but they’ve already seen the darkest parts of each other. They’ve learned the things nobody knows. They’ve seen each other bloody, and raw, and hopeless. But together, maybe they can see each other through the night. Every night. For the rest of their lives. She wants to cry. Dear God. She’s found her. The woman who’s here to help her heal, in a way that a non-white, non-straight, abandoned little girl from the middle of nowhere would never have truly believed she deserved. But Alex starts shifting unsteadily under her stare, and Maggie can tell she’s not ready to know. So for now she stands, tries to smile, offers Alex a nearby cue. “Thought you’d never ask, Danvers.”

#sanversweek #day7 #sanvers #soulmate au #maggie sawyer #alex danvers

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purify-orre-blog · 6 years ago

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Epilogue: Start

TW / CW : Major Self-Loathing and Self-Worth Issues , Mentions of Past Sexual Assault (This is crossed out so it’s easier to skim past), Mentions of Past Child Abuse (Also crossed out so it’s easier to skim past, the same incident as the other one, actually), Suicidal Thoughts and Plans

TL:DR; Michael’s in the middle of a really bad depressive spiral. He knows it’s the periodic depression talking, but since it is bad right now doesn’t care. He just wants to repay his debts.

Also, I know Caelum in the past was kidnapped in his backstory, but Michael sure doesn’t. Major points of interest are that Michael feels stupid for being all gung-ho. He didn’t know Junpei and Caelum wouldn’t come back. Or the upperclassmen ghosts either (since those ones were data apparently???). When it was said it was a simulation, he assumed everyone everyone would come back.

And when he talked about GAMEs and SAVING. That was dumb too. And thanks to Celebi messing with Michael’s memories, we live in Schrödinger's canon. The textboxes are real and how Michael and the people of Orre see the world. SAVING is up to you, and the mods. But mostly the mods. (Aside on SAVING, and Undertale Headcanons here) (Aside on Michael’s hallucinations I never had the chance to mention here) What else goes on? Michael acknowledges that SAVING could be fake, because Celebi did take Hope’s Peak (except some kisses and hugs from Yogi… and also Michael talking to Jovi about Halloween Costumes and how he almost stabbed Rocky... and a few snippets of groupchat conversations between him, Eve, Espella, and Zacharias about teen stuff) from Michael and maybe added some new stuff about SAVING and GAMEs in. I mean, it’s not impossible. Celebi was willing to do anything to be free of the TIME FLUTE that Jovi had. If GAMEs were real there were points in his adventure where someone (points to self) was very much controlling him against his own will, further adding to his ‘maybe-I-didn’t-do-anything-to-help-anyone’ mentality. But if they weren’t, Celebi’s just pretty messed up.

He’s also afraid to talk to Jovi, and afraid to visit the UNDER, because he thinks it will give him his wartime memories back (and it could, possibly, I mean, regaining memories after amnesia is not really guaranteed, especially since Celebi also took removing Hope’s Peak memories to mean memories made during the time he would technically attend Hope’s Peak) and also is afraid to see his old family. And he’s afraid to meet Yorgi’s family (the people from Circus). So there’s a lot of fear going on. And self-hatred. Can’t forget that. He really wants to kill himself. And he’s aware it’s the mania and delusions and paranoia and his anxiety but he’s just not doing well.

Accompanying Music: Phenac City (You’re Running Out-Of-Time To Repay Your Debts, Michael)

It was over. It was all over.

Michael could hear the quiet music again. Michael could talk loudly again. Michael could feel with his fingers again. His new scars were gone.

And so were the people behind the whole hostage situation.

He forgave them. Just like he said he would. And he didn’t blame them. They wanted to end a war. And to most, especially people like Michael and Junpei, who had seen kidnappings and hostage situations first hand before this one, well, another one could seem like a good idea. They brought people together, and split others apart. But only in theory was it partially good. But spending time honestly talking things over was just as good, if not leagues better! No, definitely better! Because even in a simulation, the whole thing was messed up beyond compare. Michael forgave them, but he would never discount how bad it was for the others. He would never try to protect their actions.

To Michael, Forgiveness did not mean blind acceptance. Forgiveness meant an attempt in understanding. Forgiveness meant realizing everyone came from somewhere else and their actions could have been your own were the circumstances right. It was knowing that people sometimes committed atrocities, but they were not all bad. That everyone was worth kindness. No matter how bad. Even murderers. (But not people, Pokemon, or animal haters. Not those that saw others as less-than-human or inferior. Those people sucked.)

Junpei - who Michael saw himself in - and Caelum - who Michael always overlooked, always trusted, never once actively suspected - were both gone. And the ghost upperclassmates too, probably.

So now, Michael knew why Mugman got violent. And why that Marie person was so angry. Not existing was terrifying for most other people. He didn’t understand when he talked to her or Mugman what was going to happen. He felt bad for showing his stupidity and arrogance. He WISHed he had paid some more attention before just speaking recklessly. There were probably hints he overlooked. He was usually so careful not to instigate people clearly in pain that wouldn’t benefit from REVERSE MODE. And blaming the anniversary of those 5 weeks on his actions was cheap. He only blamed himself. But stooping low was expected of criminals, and so he didn’t feel too bad about his actions. Only how badly he hurt everyone. (They wouldn’t see him for much longer if he played his cards right. And that would help make up for it.)

Especially Mugman and Osborne. Hopefully he only hurt them for only that moment. His attempts to distract went in vain. He should’ve talked about the weather or something, anything instead of bringing up the upcoming deaths and trial. He showed his stupidity, and even though he paid for it (but not enough, just like with Phenac he could never pay enough), he knew it would hurt them forever, maybe not what he said, but definitely Junpei and Caelum’s deaths. It was selfish of him to think he could help, and stupid to try and treat them like Pokemon that could understand Michael’s motives and would bite back instead of showering him in pity. Even Mugman was too gentle with him, too kind and too forgiving and it made Michael feel sick.

On top of that, he wasn’t sure if he should tell them GHOST, PSYCHIC, and DARK types could see other GHOST types when invisible. That maybe that could apply to real ghosts. He didn’t know if that would help more or not.

It was bad timing- sure - and more than easy to fall into old habits when he didn’t have any other memories or choices, especially when it came to acting within videotaped crowds (Crowds loved performances! And if Michael performed well enough! Everyone else would eventually probably get half a slice of bread a piece to eat for the next week! Like Snattle promised to Michael when they were alone before he had Michael- That wasn’t important. It wasn’t. Important. It wasn’t and Michael had said no 5 times before Snattle had almost forced things further but Michael used SPARK and it didn’t work because Snattle was wearing rubber gloves and pinning Michael down but Michael got away because crying pitifully and snottily trying to apologize because the others needed to eat he’d do anything he was sorry. But the whining made him unworthy and childish and immature and useless. Snattle was one of the first to actually say that out loud. And he was right. He also kicked Michael to the ground, calling Michael a common harlot. And Snattle said continuing to put on a show would work just as well to build the other’s ego as- That wasn’t important. Michael was 15 then, he was maybe 19 to 21 now, it was in the past. It was okay.). He didn’t mean any of what he said when he talked about being in a GAME again. When he talked about being in a GAME and on SAVING and it being exciting he was really just terrified.

GAMEs were awful. Terrible. Michael hated GAMEs. He knew Arrow had been listening for certain once he died because of course Jovi would realize the loophole the same as he did and he was terrified of that too. Arrow had heard everything he said when he thought he was unseeable. And Jovi probably knew too.

He knew regardless of the future, his family would visit and be able to talk to him, but now that he was alive, everything was so much worse. (He didn’t want to go wherever he had been before Dynamo and him traveled to destroy Oswald bots. He said how proud the UNDER folks would be of them both in-between a successful HYDRO PUMP. He didn’t know what the UNDER was. He didn’t want to know.)

Especially since Junpei had been a HERO too. He probably had an idea how SAVEs worked. Maybe his were different? Junpei’s were tied to dying. Apparently. He called it time-traveling, but maybe it really was SAVING?

((SAVE nonsense starts here

For Michael, the deep-blue SAVE menu never took you back timeline-wise, because he didn’t know how. His just. Came with a feeling of rightness, like he was true to himself. The overwhelming feeling that he was following in his father’s footsteps and OVERWRITING Wes’ adventure for the better, changing the terrain and people of the world usually offset the rush of wrong and unearned integrity that came flowing through.

Unlike Wes, Michael never figured out SOFT RESETs. His father was always so brave, citing a feeling of similarly wrong kindness and wanting to help when he SAVEd. Wes once told Michael he went went through the same fights over and over again, but never had to worry about permanence because there was always someone else to go back and help. Unlike his father, who could go back to a previous SAVE when he wanted to do something different, Michael never knew himself well enough to figure out what would bring him back. He had the idea, though! Integrity was tied to sense of self. So if he thought about a time he acted out-of-character and wanted to fix it, that was probably the ticket. But, he never had much of a sense of self. And if his guess was correct, you had to match the feelings of whatever your SAVE was to go back. Like Wes had to want to help, or think about how doing something different could help make things better in one way or another. Michael’s team was always decently leveled and nothing - except Phenac which he did wrong - ever went horribly wrong. He never felt like he wasn’t himself in an action because the whole adventure he had never done anything for himself. There wasn’t anything to go back in change because it was never about what he wanted to begin with.

And no one from Orre that Michael knew of other than Wes, Michael, Gonzap, and Jovi had ever seen the SAVEs. Or at least talked about them. Maybe because only a HERO could see their own SAVE POINTS. And everyone’s SAVEs were different. Michael’s were Deep Blue Spinning Quavers, Wes’ were Green Flames, and Gonzap’s were Yellow Stars like Jovi had seen but only used once. Plus, they went away forever after the GAME ENDED. Not even Eagun ever saw them. And the text boxes and YES and NOs were a staple of ORRE for everyone, HEROs and otherwise. Wes’ adventure was in ORRE and Michael’s adventure was nearly the inverse of that. Gonzap’s had been his stay at HPA. Wes SAVEd at Pokemon Center PCs, Michael SAVEd anywhere when he checked the MENU of his PDA and had actually done something for himself (so not very often… maybe only 23 times that he could recall), and Gonzap at the time SAVEd whenever he touched one of the stars apparently placed around the HPA’s campus.

His own GAME ended when he returned the SNAG MACHINE and along with it, the SAVEs. To know he had been an NPC in another GAME made an already awful week even worse. GAMEs were bad and if you were unlucky you started to feel like your actions weren’t your own. Like you really were a tool without even a choice to speak back. (Not all the time… Not everyday, and certainly not during nights when he was the freest, in Michael’s experience.) But the small pull he had felt when on his journey was enough to set him off.

And it didn’t start that way. Only after returning the Professor home, did he feel a pull. Michael was more than content to just send Bow to Grandpa Eagun and have him PURIFY the bear Pokemon, but… Instead he found himself saying he would do it. He found himself agreeing to help every SHADOW POKEMON without actually thinking about it. (He would have anyways, not knowing what he was getting into, but the fact he was aware he was being led around, being watched, made everything different. Worrying. If the force knew he knew, it might make him hurt someone for a fun reaction.)

Once, he remembered wanting to talk to Jovi after visiting the Outskirt Stand to return a Togetic (because despite what her OT said, she had wanted to evolve a long time ago to prove she loved her adoptive daddy and Michael was willing to help), but he physically couldn’t. He had been walking towards her and then took the elevator. His feet had moved on his own. And when he tried to talk to her after talking to the Professor - which he didn’t want to do, he didn’t like that man because that man thought Michael could do at 13 to nearly 17 what his dad did at 19 to 20, he didn’t want to talk to him alone; Jovi had promised she would help Michael talk to that man and Michael was planning to ask her for help - but the force pulled him aside. He tried to wave his hands and at least say goodbye to Jovi on the way out, but found his arms rooted in place, like a preset walk animation. At that point he just let the force make him do whatever it wanted. He wasn’t the leader of his team, even as a figurehead from that point, because he wasn’t the one walking around. And it was acting. It was entertaining. It was fine. He was fine.

He had been elated to ‘die’ because that meant he didn’t have to fear the cameras that where everywhere - even outside, it let that force watch and control him during his GAME - and had always been then even since before First House, even though Rui tried to say different. But Michael knew the true nature of their world. Whatever force Wes had told Michael and Jovi about growing up as scary stories was very real. Something was always watching everyone. But not at every time, only during the lens of a GAME. It affected everyone, because Michael was pretty sure everyone was a HERO of one GAME or another at some point, even if they didn’t know it. He had seen Jovi play games without SAVING before. He had seen her speed run games without ever opening any menus. He knew it was possible. And it was more than probable. He was pretty sure Jovi’s GAME was during the time they lived at First House. She had once mentioned seeing a floating yellow star on the floor of their attic. She had never used them more than once, she told Michael. She had been filled with an uncontrollable anger after touching that first time, and broke a lamp in frustration because Michael was 8 and she was 5 and real kids went to School and could see the Outside World. Michael remembered Arrow and him covering for her. They got time out and Lassiter and Aureolus did too because they thought Michael was learning to use his MOVEs with Arrow and tried to explain it to Rui. But everyone was okay. It was okay.

((SAVE nonsense ends here

And all of this could be major delusions. And once he asked Jovi and she inevitably told him the truth that he was wrong because he was always wrong about everything except knowing he loved other living things - it wouldn’t be the first time Michael’s family had been able to prove his delusions were just delusions - it would continue to be okay. Like when Rui ate takeout for the first time Michael had seen and didn’t die the next day. Or when Lassiter and Wes helped Michael be calm enough to get his first big boy check-up at Grandpa Kaminko’s lab. And, there was the fact he knew the Agate Celebi messed with his memories.

It was why he didn’t remember Hope’s Peak and probably never would. Jovi was nothing if not true to her word and there was no doubt they were out one of the two ever TIME FLUTES to exist. Agate’s Celebi had known the world was ending and true to form was eager to destroy any means of calling them back to this time in addition to leaving for good. And since Michael couldn’t contact them, there was no telling what the well-meaning fae added, only what was taken away. If Michael thought he was never in control, it would make him feel better about Phenac. If Michael really thought he was a HERO of a GAME and that everyone was in their own one for a little bit, it would contextualize his adventure into something positive. It would make it easier for past-Michael to agree to being in the simulation at all. There was no way to tell if it was real. He knew the SAVING had been real at least to him, because he had seen and felt them. But he might just have been hallucinating those and what he had seen might just be relying on false memories. And the possibility that his family was humoring him was very real. They had lied to him about a lot of things to make him feel better and this could be just the same.

He knew the people of ORRE were part-toon for certain, he knew Pokemon were real. He knew his adventure was real. The Aura Reader was proof of that. His SHADOW HEART GAUGE was proof of that. But SAVEs? The nature of his memories surrounding that? Could just be the Celebi implanting false memories to further connect him to his family so Michael felt less alone. Was probably the Celebi trying to help the only way it knew how. Just like how Michael only knew how to be the butt of the joke. To be the joke. To be used.

And his classmates didn’t understand him or his need to help. They still thought he was joking, even then, probably even now. (He was the joke, not his actions or thoughts. He would forever be useful to anyone that asked as long as no one but him got hurt in return.) They would probably never understand him, and honestly speaking, he was okay with that. He would be fine as long as Yorgi let him stay by his side. He could live the rest of his life happily with Yorgi and his family (or friends that were family? Michael only vaguely remembered his boyfriend mentioning Circus, which Michael knew sponsored Nyanperona) instead of going back to Old Home or UNDER Unknown Home. Ideally Jovi would visit them now and again. But he would never go back. Going back might make those memories return (because Celebi’s orders were to get rid of Hope’s Peak and only Hope’s Peak) and Michael didn’t want that either. If his extended family (Wes, Rui, Gonzap, Naps, His Cousins, His Grandparents, That Man, and That Woman) ever wanted to see him, they could visit a Nyanperona performance. Arrow, Jovi, Emili and his Pokemon friends could visit anytime.

Yorgi was still too nice. So most everything was back to normal. To how it was when they first met… Second met? But now two people were gone forever.

Michael wouldn’t have been able to save them anyways. (He only got lucky when he caught himself. And he was conscious the whole time. Besides, If they had just been in a coma or something and Michael’s code was faulty, if he killed them too? He’d have to face the wrath of people he might have cared a little bit about more than standard, speaking truthfully.)

So Michael added 2 more people to his tally of… over 63 accidental malpractices. He had voted a few times, after all, so it counted. How many hurt living beings did it make if he counted in just the people he hurt through his words? … He didn’t know. Did Oswald bots count? Did Phenac count? Did all the times he broke Jovi’s heart count? Did the Eve and Espella and Zacharias he still couldn’t remember count? And what about the people of Orre who watched the whole time? What of his TEAM? What of Arrow who he no doubt let down? What of Devant and Allegro and Mimi and Pluplu and probably some others?

Did anything count anymore? He didn’t know what would happen next. When Jovi arrived (because it was a matter of when) she’d try to keep Michael alive. She’d give him his Snag Ball and probably try to get him to tell Yorgi what it meant, maybe. No matter what happened, it would go over okay. It had to. Yorgi had all but showered Michael with understanding and acceptance and love and it made Michael feel worthless. Their relationship was all take-take-take and Michael was afraid Jovi would mention it and that would make Yorgi realize how bad Michael really was. (When they first seriously talked after they died Michael had thought maybe asking Yorgi to open up to him would help Michael feel better about their situation, but then Michael started getting nervous about the Anniversary, which meant so far it really was all take and no give and Michael wasn’t sure if his boyfriend would want to be with him after seeing him continue to fall so badly. Michael really wanted some sort of actual reassurance. Like his SNAG BALL back.)

Even if Yorgi did love Michael and would let him stay by his side forever, Michael still knew practically nothing about the others. He had the rest of their lives to learn, but it was still scary to think about. And he was so excited to be dead, to not have to be used anymore, to have his own freedom. And he had pledged himself to Yorgi then, still was pledged to him, would forever be pledged to him even if they ever broke up because they were friends before boyrfriends. And it wasn’t like Gonzap or Jovi or his parents wherever they were or anyone else could make him do anything ever again, but that was under the assumption he would live forever and never have to meet Yorgi’s family.

Now he would.

And if they watched the hostage situation they knew Michael was a tool of a monster. Michael was meant to be used and these were strangers, they could use Michael all they wanted and Michael would be okay with it. But he also knew love now and Yorgi seemed to not want Michael to be useful to just anyone who asked, which was okay. Michael might not actually want to help everyone that asked for it, truthfully speaking. It was also getting less scary to think he might just love Yorgi the most of everyone and would rather be with his boyfriend than helping someone else. But what if making his own choices meant they didn’t like him?

They had seen the simulation, probably, what if they already hated Michael?

What if they hated Michael enough to say he wasn’t good? Or thought he was no good for Yorgi? They probably thought he was a risk, even Michael’s own family kinda’ treated him like an uncapped grenade.

Or worse, what if they weren’t nice to Yorgi like Michael’s family was sometimes a little tiny bit rude in how and when they used Michael because he would actually do whatever was asked of him. Michael wasn’t sure if he could convince Yorgi of anything if that were the case. Michael wasn’t good with people. People could be blinded so easily when in bad situations. Michael knew he could! And Michael was really good at knowing how bad things were and also pretending they were okay, so…

But those were worst case scenarios. And even if Yorgi’s Circus didn’t like Michael, he would stick around as long as he could. He was ride-or-die.

But that was assuming he made it past November. Because the thought of leaving was very tempting.

If Michael was fast and careful during the next week or so when he still felt brave enough, he could use the Aura Reader by himself and end it. The time limit was Jovi’s arrival and any inevitable orders. Yorgi would never recover and be sad if Michael left. Which would be bad. But Michael could start to repay his debts through that action. Which would be good. And the timing would be perfect. And his brain would be happier.

He would be much happier.

Everything would be better. He just had to be careful. Unless Jovi had his Pokeball. He needed that back. And he would trade his one shot at a fast end for it. (Smashing it would do nothing to him physically. Just release him. But Michael didn’t want to be released. When he woke up and found his new OT was his boyfriend, he was ecstatic. And Yorgi would probably find it weird and ask him to change it. So if Michael had it, and Yorgi didn’t know, Michael could stay officially as Yorgi’s knight. And okay, maybe the idea was a little hot in addition to being just what Michael needed to feel worthwhile, so call him a Zorua using the Trickster ability to be tall enough to grab a berry off a tree.)

He needed his SNAG BALL back more than he wanted to stay with Yorgi, but Michael couldn’t stay by his side as is for very long, not when the trial’s anniversary was coming up and he had killed, actually killed. Michael killed technically 6 people, even if it was officially 3 people directly. Not like Yori when he put Honoka down because she was sad. (Michael had done that to a few particularly sad GHOST and PSYCHIC types over the years. Heartbreak was a killer. Michael had had to put down a lot of Pokemon and animal friends over the years for other reasons too. He didn’t like thinking about them. But his own death would be the same. Ugly, but necessary.) More than he wanted to prove he was worthy of being someone’s friend, more than he wanted to love and be loved, in this moment as it was still November.

And he wanted to die.

His quiet mania told him on repeat that he needed this. It was what Michael really wanted, despite any tries at refutation. It would make it up to at least Justy, if no one else. An arm for a life. Fair deal.

The ROUND upon ROUND of ENCOREs would cease after about November 19th, but they would come back next year around October 2nd. They always did. And if he spent the whole five weeks coping, he would be more-or-less okay. And the ENCOREs would be annoying and draining more than convincing like they were now. After all, he skipped this year. As far as he knew he skipped every year he didn’t remember. Which meant... Maybe 3? Oh, but the war was a year probably too. Maybe longer. Did he graduate Hope’s Peak? And How old was he, really? He remembered turning 18, he knew that. So, maybe he skipped 4 years. Or maybe just 3. Or maybe 5. It was hard to say.

Which meant the guilt that had subsided when he ‘died’ had come back and was much much worse now.

He just hoped Jovi wouldn’t be fast enough to have Yorgi stop him. He didn’t want to force his boyfriend’s hand.

#epi

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