#damaged update

[runraerun]

Steddie Amnesia Fic: 1/3

-> Part 2 | Part 3 | AO3

cw: lots of head trauma/brain injury/recovery stuff.

Steve wakes up in the hospital with someone snoring loudly on his leg, mouth open, drool getting soaked up into the scratchy hospital blanket over him.

Steve just stares.

It’s… Freddie? No, that’s not right... Eddie! Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson, known delinquent and drug dealer… resting his head on Steve’s lap.

What the hell…?

Steve reaches up with a wobbly, IV-ridden hand to clumsily pat along his head, but instead of meeting messy hair, he meets a thick wad of bandages. He flinches when he hits an especially tender spot.

It’s not much but it’s enough to wake Eddie Munson up with a jolt, and a random jumble of words that sounded something like, “the dice have spoken!”, but Steve can’t be sure. Not with the sharp ringing still going off inside his skull.

“Steve? Steve! Oh thank fuck, Jesus H. Christ, you scared the ever loving shit out of me.” Eddie stood and grabbed at one of Steve’s shoulders, shaking him enough to elicit another wince.

“Oh, damn, sorry. I’m like a fucking bull in a china shop here, man. There’s way too much expensive, breakable shit here. I’m not used to it. I accidentally ripped your IV out the other day... Fuck. The nurses hate my guts.” Eddie chuckles, eyes wide and solely on Steve, talking like they were old friends or something.

But that can’t be right. Steve doesn’t remember saying more than two words to Eddie Munson during the entire time he knew he even existed, and even then it was just to discuss weed prices.

“For real though, talk to me Harrington, how you feelin’, hm? Loopy? Gonna yak again? Apparently they got you on the good stuff,” Eddie flicks a liquid filled bag hanging above Steve and shakes his head, “but they keep cutting you back. Dicks.”

Steve’s eyes try and follow Eddie’s erratic movements but his eyes ache the more he moves them. He blinks against the harsh fluorescents and tries to open his mouth. And thank God, Eddie Munson seems to take this as a sign and shut up.

“What happened?” Steve finally croaks.

One of Eddie’s brows jumps. “You don’t remember?”

Steve gives his head a small shake. Did Eddie hit him with his car or something? Is that why he’s sleeping at his bedside and talking to him like they’re buddies?

“You fell, Stevie.” Eddie makes a whistling noise and mimicks something falling with his hands, then makes a crashing sound when his hand lands on Steve’s bandaged head. “Like a coconut out of a tree. Landed right on that big ol’ melon of yours. There was blood everywhere. It scared the shit out of me and the kids. Especially when you wouldn’t wake up.”

Steve’s throat feels like sandpaper, but he manages to swallow, his throat clicking as he did, and gets out, “The kids?”

Eddie seems to notice, even before Steve can ask, and reaches for a water bottle with a straw already in it, and half chewed. Eddie’s own, no doubt. Against his better judgment, Steve accepts it when Eddie offers it to him. He was just so goddamn thirsty.

“Don’t worry, they’re all fine. They were just shaken up. I’ll radio the little gremlins and give ‘em the good news in a sec.” Eddie’s smile falters a little, seeming lost for words. Like he wants to say something, but can’t quite get it out.

Steve finishes swallowing his few, meager gulps of water before he asks, “What is it?”

“Don’t freak out—“ Eddie begins.

And, okay, that’s exactly the thing you tell someone before they freak the fuck out. Steve’s stomach is subject to a growing, sluggish panic. “What? Dude, tell me—“

“It’s your hair.” Eddie seems genuinely pained at having to deliver this crushing of a blow to Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.

Steve can hear the beeping from the monitors he’s hooked up to begin to pick up speed as his heart begins racing. “My hair?”

“It’s okay! It’s okay, it’ll grow back! They just had to take a little bit off where the stitches went, you can hardest notice it—well, that’s a fucking lie, you could spot that landing strip from space—but I think if you part it to the other side it won’t look so… y’know.”

“No, dude, I don’t know.” Steve says, eyes wide, brows pinched.

“Like a drunk toddler took a pair of rusty kitchen shears to your mop.” Eddie says, huffing out a nervous sort of laugh.

Steve groans, half due to the bastardization that’s happened to his favorite feature, and half due to the migraine that’s looming on his horizon.

“You’re still pretty, Stevie, don’t worry.” Eddie grins, eyebrows raised, like he’s trying to be cute or something.

That weirdest part is, it’s kind of working.

Steve must have hit his head really, really hard.

The doctors eventually come in and perform all sorts of tests, and he tries his best to comply with them and jump through whatever hoops they make him jump through. He just wants to get the hell out of this hospital bed.

Unfortunately for him, Steve hadn’t exactly aced any of the tests.

In fact, he had failed most of them pretty fucking dismally. He couldn’t remember the date, who the president was, where he lived, couldn’t say the alphabet backwards… although, who the fuck can do that? He stands by that failing grade.

A couple of CAT scans later and it’s clear that Steve’s brain got smacked around a little more than they had originally thought.

Among a pile of other stuff, the thing that sticks out the most to Steve is his diagnosis of something called short term amnesia. They explain it like the past 2 to 3 years has just been wiped from his brain. The last clear thing he really remembers is getting the shit beat out of him by Billy, and then it all sort of gets jumbled. Fragmented. The doctors explain that this is pretty typical for head trauma patients.

He’s a head trauma patient, now.

It’s normal for memories of trauma to link, creating spiderwebs throughout your brain.

Which, that’s great. So when he gets beat up again, there’s always a chance his brain will try and erase his easy, happy years and revert back to a trauma default. Really helpful brain, thank you.

And the thing that sucks the most is that his years after the Billy beat down sound pretty great. Traumatizing, sure, but great. Once the Upside Down shit was locked up, with every scary nightmare fuel monster inside of it, life in Hawkins didn’t sound all that terrible.

He lived with Robin, who’s his best friend, (his ‘platonic soulmate’ even, as she explains it), he’s working a retail job, (also with Robin), and coaches the high school basketball team during the evenings. He’d even been talking with Hopper about joining the force.

Well, he was. Now he’s more or less useless, working full time at re-learning his life, along with a couple of fine motor skills that got glitchy after the fall.

And then there’s Eddie.

Eddie, who’s apparently also his best friend, only their soulmate link isn’t platonic at all.

The strange and weirdly exciting reality was that Steve Harrington had woken up from his 3-day medically induced coma with not only a full fledged relationship, but a boyfriend.

It’s a lot to digest, and part of him still doesn’t even know how to process it, but hearing the stories being told around him, seeing how Eddie is practically living in his and Robin’s two-bedroom apartment, and just… the way Eddie looks at him?

It’s with love—Steve can see it. Feel it. Eddie’s practically vibrating with it.

What’s even crazier is that when Steve looks at Eddie, he feels the exact same way.

It’s like looking at the stars. Steve’s heart skips a beat when those dark eyes of hit him, and Steve wants nothing more than to make Eddie smile—no, better than that, to make him laugh, just so he can watch Eddie’s adam’s apple bob up and down and hear that manic, unhinged cackle. It’s downright delightful. Steve loves being in relationships like this, where it’s all consuming.

Steve may not have the memories of falling in love with Eddie, but he has all the feelings.

No one talks about it with Steve, of course. Maybe they think it’s going to be too heavy for him to process that he’s into dudes now, but Steve isn’t a big dumb baby. Sure, he’s got a pretty severe brain injury, and yeah, alright, it takes him a minute to remember people’s names sometimes, and he has a harder time controlling his emotions, but he isn’t a complete invalid. Only a little bit of one. He’s working on it, dammit.

And Eddie is so painfully, frustratingly patient with him. He never pushes. He’s clearly letting Steve retrieve his memories before he makes a move, because despite his whole outward appearance, Eddie Munson is a goddamn gentleman. He never so much as reaches for Steve’s hands, but Steve can tell by the way their pinkies graze when they watch movies late at night that he wants to.

Steve can tell by the way Eddie teases him, the way he’s there with him through his recovery, that he doesn’t ever make Steve feel stupid when he asks the same questions over and over again, when he cries at the drop of a hat or when he gets sort of confused about the lay out of his apartment—he doesn’t care about that of that.

Because he’s in love with Steve. It’s so painfully romantic, it brings a painful lump to Steve’s throat every time he thinks too much about it.

The two of them are driving to one of Steve’s therapy sessions, Eddie in the driver's seat, Steve in the passengers, listening to a low racket of some kind of heavy metal music. Eddie always keeps the volume low now, for Steve.

He’s just been so intensely good about everything that Steve needs to try and do something good for Eddie in return. He needs Eddie to know that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel that they’re both currently lost in.

“I’m sorry about this, y’know.” Steve says when they finally pull up the building that has ‘Brain Injury Recover Center’ written on the front. So all the boys and girls with scrambled eggs for brains know where to converge.

“Don’t worry about it, man. I work the evening shifts, remember? My days are free.” Eddie explains, and Steve wonders if he’s had to be told this bit of information a couple of times now. Sometimes it takes a few times before something sticks to his brain now. His short term memory is still majorly flighty. But no, Steve remembers that Eddie bartends at a local bowling alley most evenings. He’s gone a few times. Not to bowl, of course—too much hand eye coordination involved—but just to hang out with Eddie. He’s pretty decent at Ms. Pac-Man though.

Steve shakes his head. He knows his mind must have wandered because there’s been a lull where no one’s spoken. Eddie never seems to care about that though. “I don’t mean about the drive. I was talking about… y’know.”

“Wha’dy’mean?” Eddie mumbles as he backs into his parking space, hand on the back of Steve’s headrest.

Steve sighs and decides to just come out and say it: “I mean having your boyfriend forget everything about you and your relationship. I just… that must be really tough.”

Everything in Eddie Munson comes to a jarring halt, hand frozen over where he’s turned to ignition off.

It’s sort of unnerving—Eddie is always moving, fidgeting. Damn near bouncing off the walls. But now it’s like someone hit the poor guy with a freeze ray gun.

Steve chuckles softly as he reaches out and touches Eddie’s arm, giving him a playful jostle, to loosen him up a little, “it’s okay, Eddie. I know. You don’t have to keep going easy on me. I’m gay! Or, bi-sexual. Whatever.” Steve shrugs, “see? Not falling apart. I can handle being in love with another dude. You don’t need to keep babying me.”

The side of Eddie’s mouth twitches into a downturned smile that he seems to be trying to hide.

“I know, I know. Not just any dude.” Steve rolls his eyes, a smile still firmly on his face. He takes Eddie’s hand from the steering wheel, and Eddie seems to watch it go in a detached sort of awe. Steve wonders if Eddie’s proud of him for being so cool with it all. “In love with you.”

“Steve, I don’t think—

“Wait, just let me finish.” Steve asks, and Eddie blinks and works on closing his mouth. Knows it’s important to let Steve get his thoughts out quickly, lest they be lost to the giant black hole inside of his beat-up brain now. “I know that I don’t remember any of the important stuff with us. Our first date, or our first kiss or, y’know, any of our other first firsts. So maybe it feels like you’re cheating on the old Steve with me? But… Eddie, I know it’s crazy but even though my brain forgot all of the specifics; my heart didn’t. I look at you, and it’s all there. I’m still so into you, dude. I can feel it, even though I don’t remember how I got here. I’m in l—“

“Steve! Stevestevesteve wait, holy shit—!” Eddie’s eyes snap up from his intense stare at the place where their hands are linked. “Steve—”

“Yeah?” Steve prompts when Eddie doesn’t seem to be able to find the words. He runs his thumb gently over Eddie’s knuckles. It feels so nice to finally be able to hold his hand again. They fit together so well, and Steve wonders briefly if it’s some kind of muscle memory.

Eddie opens his mouth a few more times before he remembers how to make the words come out.

“Steve. Buddy. We’re… we’re not dating.”

Steve’s face falls, and he can feel a lump form in his throat, but he keeps a firm hold of Eddie’s warm hand in his own. “Yeah, I know, I know. We haven’t had any time to be a couple. And it’s probably been torture for you, man. You’re so busy taking care of me and making sure I don’t freak out over everything that you’ve clearly been neglecting your own hierarchy of needs.”

Eddie raises a brow.

Steve chuckles, “Shut up. It’s a therapy term.”

Eddie laughs in his throat. “Steve, you gotta slow down and listen to me.”

He turns his shoulders so that he’s fully facing Steve while he reaches his free hand over and tugs at one of his earlobes. “Got your hearing ears on?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he nods just the same.

“We… we weren’t dating before your accident,” Eddie speaks slowly, his voice warm, gentle. “Hell, I didn’t even know you were, y’know, into dudes like that. Much less me.”

Something throbs dully behind Steve’s eyes. It’s the start of a migraine—the one that makes it hard to process much of anything. Steve squints, trying to make sense of what Eddie’s saying. “…you’re not my boyfriend?”

Eddie shakes his head very, very slowly. “No.”

Steve snatches his hand back like he’s only just now noticed how burning hot Eddie’s hand is.

He settles back in his seat, staring out the front window. The sounds from the outside world are muffled, and everything feels far away and sort of… Made up. Just like everything he’d imagined was going on between him and Eddie. Not real.

He feels painfully detached from reality. Unmoored. Maybe this was the disassociation thing the doctor mentioned might happen…

“Are you sure?” Steve asks, risking another glance over to Eddie, who hasn’t taken his eyes off him for a second.

“Pretty fuckin’ sure.” Eddie snorts.

“Oh, God. This is… I’m—sorry. I’m so stupid. Fuck, I gotta—“ Steve suddenly attacks the door handle with a clumsy fury that has his hand fumbling with the handle for way too long. Fucking busted up, bruised as fuck fucking brain-!

“Steve, it’s okay, dude,” Eddie says from behind Steve, but that’s easy for him to say; he didn’t just humiliate himself in front of his not-boyfriend, definitely-crush, possibly ex-friend—“Steve, wait!”

Steve flees the van on unsteady feet, not daring to look back.

[legendofzoodles]

How to traumatise the Hero of Time:

Art credit @linkeduniverse :)

[kekkuda]

this project is gonna be the death of me it is never ending but I’m locking in we ball

[a-space-lizard]

The young wolf when they learn cayde is back: ah fuck I gotta catch up with crow before they get into a fight

[they arrive to find cayde and crow already making out]

YW:

YW: this is worse

[tartppola]

an assortment of rollo chams to appease the gacha rolls

edit : i sensed something amiss and it was that i forgot to add his falsies,,,also edited his lips a bit

[asexual-shelly]

hi *throws this at you and runs headfirst into a lamppost*

[casscainmainly]

Cassandra Cain Meta List

Ones without a credited author are from me!

Disability

Cass' Disability Throughout the Comics by dailycass-cain

Cass' Ableism Towards Barbara by but-a-humble-goon

Why Disabled People Gravitate Towards Cass by but-a-humble-goon

Something To Be Proud Of by but-a-humble-goon

Cass and American Sign Language by fantastic-nonsense

Cass Using ASL Might Be Ableist by jupitermelichios

Cass is Not Mute by fantastic-nonsense

Gender & Sexuality

Cass and Asexuality by aingeal98 and mysteriousbeetle

Lesbians! (Ft. Kon) by aingeal98

Gender/Sexuality in Batgirl (2000) 1

Gender/Sexuality in Batgirl (2000) 2

Gruff With a Heart of Gold by theflashjaygarrick

Race

Cass and Asian Stereotypes

This is Not a White Saviour Story by theflashjaygarrick

Race and Perception in Batgirl (2000)

Cass Needs Asian Writers by deadletterpoets

What Ethnicity is Lady Shiva? by dragcnlady

Morality & Beliefs

Batgirl #19 is About a Hate Crime by lilacsandlillies

Nobody Dies Tonight by aingeal98 and magnetoeisenhardt

Punishment Vs. Redemption by magnetoeisenhardt

Might is Right by but-a-humble-goon

Remorseless Killers by but-a-humble-goon

Cass is Pro-Crime by but-a-humble-goon and littlemissonewhoisall

Mothers & Fathers

Parental Love and Batgirl #37 by aingeal98

Cass' Devotion to Bruce by fantastic-nonsense

The Person Or the Mission? by aingeal98

Cass and Her Mothers by but-a-humble-goon

Cass Has Two Mothers by teleportationmagic

Cass & Jason

Let Things Be Messy by fantastic-nonsense

Murder Victim and Murderer

Cass and Jason Are Foils by celestialdevils

An Extension on Jason by aingeal98 and tumblingxelian

Parallels by trust-and-jump

Miscellaneous

Why Batgirl (2000) Was Cancelled by dailycass-cain

Why Dick Was a Dick in Batgirl (2008) by dailycass-cain

"Stop!" by anniebuddy

Cass and Helena by gracefulplant

Cass and Tim by bitimdrake

Cass and Dick

Cass, Damian, and the Batman Mantle by marinsawakening

Cass and Onyx by mysteriousbeetle

Cass in Gates of Gotham

The Batgirl Mantle by franollie

Thank you to @sasheneskywalker and @but-a-humble-goon for helping me find a lot of these!

[hurlyburlytopsyturvy]

huh? guar— whuh???

↓↓ up close guardian spook below ↓↓

[alicelufenia]

WE DID IT GAMERS

EDIT: Since this post has been getting a LOT of attention, please see my other post about how to successfully knock her out (it's trickier than you may think)

EDIT2: With Patch 6, Larian has made it so you basically just have to literally knock Minthara out (no need to mess with that "Temporarily Hostile" bit), so I'll use this space to link to any and all tests I've done to confirm this.

EDIT III: As of hotfix 21, the game will no longer forget you defeated Minthara if you long rested after knocking her out but before defeating the other goblin leaders. Feel free to rest up before taking on Dro Ragzlin now!

Test 1: KO at the Grove Battle

Test 2: KO after initiating combat through dialogue

[patar-fuifui]

Guys.. I'm glad you guys are eagerly awaiting the updates for SEB, but please understand that I am just one artist working on this comic and this will take time. Time I barely have because hey! Life is a thing.

Comics take time, even more so when you have to do virtually everything on your own. There's writing, storyboarding, drawing the whole thing out. Polishing takes time. While I do have an editor with me onboard and my friends to throw in their input, it's still me alone who has to do everything else. Not to mention I was busy packing my belongings including my PC because of the big move that happened this past year. And then I got COVID. It fucking sucked being out for nearly two weeks because of that.

I have to stress that with each answered inquiry over the timing of next volume, I receive 4 more in its place. Scourge Eternal Blackout is a passion project that receives no monetary gain and I would like to keep it that way. However.. as of late I've noticed it has been reuploaded on other sites without my permission. In future uploads, all pages will have a watermark on them. Thank you for taking the time to read my post, and thanks again for understanding.

[crowaes]

Slow Damage - Skytube - Towa: Blood Transfusion Version - Color prototype

Originally posted by Yamada Uiro on Twitter (with an additional photo I can't include Tumblr.) Caption below.

スカイチューブさんのトワ輸血Ver.（仮)の彩色監修しました。服、脱げます、肌の色と傷の生々しさがとてもいいです、肌を見ろ！輸血パックもみて！展示とかあれば着衣バージョンがみれるのではないでしょうか、続報を待て！

[captainshyguy]

has no one else seen the new lethal company guys yet?? the little, mostly harmless friends?? ;-;

[celestisnothere]

Did one for ch251 I NEED TO DO ONE FOR CHAPTER 252

Because WHAT THE FUCK

VERY LONG POST AHEAD!!

HEAVY 252 SPOILERS!!!

LIKE WE DID HAVE SOME ANSWERS ABOUT THE WHOLE ALLEN SITUATION

BUT THE FUCK YOU MEAN "LAVI" WAS THERE?????

IS THAT "LAVI" OUR LAVI?

Like knowing the power Apocryphos has and how that's how Past!Allen became our Allen w/o remembering. It could very much be that it was Our!Lavi and just shared that same fate bc he got hit in the aftermath when trying to save Past!Allen as this chapter just showed us

But also since "Lavi" is just a name Bookman gave to their successor for the mission, it could be they aren't the same Lavi.

BUT it's too much of a coincidence both "Lavi"s had the same name when meeting their respective Allen's so....... The Bookman knew what he was doing when he gave Our!Lavi the "Lavi" name for the Black Order mission, that Old Man.

ALSO if it turns out to be Our!Lavi and just got hit (which would explain why the Bookman spent years finding the "new" successor).

LIKE IT WOULD MAKE SO MUCH SENSE!

Bc we saw that other!Lavi (to call him something) didn't wear a eyepatch and had a huge scar over the eye that Our!Lavi covers with an eyepatch.

Bc we know form the previous chapter that the Bookman took Our!Lavi as successor when he saw his eye (the eyepatch covered one) bc it had some sort of marking (almost literal words) that marked him as the Bookman Successor.

So the years the Bookman spent looking for his new successor, he was actually looking for the same successor and when he saw Our!Lavi as a kid, he actually saw the scar and *realized* that the kid was the successor that deflected all those years ago (since the other!Lavi deflected after meeting nea and wanted to offer himself as his new host).

BUT IF ALL THAT IS TRUE IT STILL DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHY THERE'S A 20-SOMETHING YEARS GAP (35years in our current timeline minus Our!Lavi's age) BETWEEN THAT HAPPENING AND THE BOOKMAN FINDING OUR!LAVI AS A 6YO AND TAKING HIM IS AS THE NEW SUCCESSOR

NOR THE ALSO 20-SOMETHING GAP (35years in our current timeline minus Our!Allen's age) BETWEEN IT AND OUR!ALLEN BEING AT THE CIRCUS AS RED (SINCE HE WAS AROUND 5YO IIRC).

Because the whome de-aging only took moments (minutes at most) or so it seemed.

Unless that's what seemed to us and it actually took several years just in stasis for some sort of Innocence wacky explanation.

AND NOW I HAVE TO WAIT 3 MONTHS OR SO FOR MORE ANSWERS?????

EITHER WAY NO MATTER WHAT A WIN FOR ME SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE

LONG HAIRED LAVI IS CANON!!!

ALSO LET ME POST A SIDE-BY-SIDE OF OTHER!LAVI AND OUR!LAVI BC I AM STRAING AT THE SIMILARITIES

And the SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH THE OUR!LAVI LOOK THAT MSKES ME THINKS THE POSSIBILITIES LF THEM BEING THE SAME PERSON ARE VERY HIGH

LIKE AM I BEING CRAZY OR DO THEY LOOK VERY VERY SIMILAR DOWN TO THE FUCKING EARINGS????

[batfambrainrotbeloved]

Have any of Tim's pigeon spies fallen victim to feral cats? Like, are they his number one enemy when it comes to keeping eyes in the sky? (If you answer this before you finish writing the next chapter, I'm going to wait an extra couple of days before sending the drawing of Wisp.)

Oh several- but he has trackers for their chips and usually just rebuilds them a new body after recovering it. He's made sure the new model chips are practically indistructable.

His number one enemy is actually stray bullet fire since they happen to hang close to crime scenes- idiots shooting at the sky to "show off" forgetting bullets gotta come back down.

(Im already waitin and ive been DYING to awnser)

[verysmallcyborg]

WE ARE SO BACK (REAL)

waiting for penumbra to work again before i use the item that adds in their other piercings, horns, and tail. ouughhbh...... handsome.... me when she, you understand

[chocochipclaire]

in honor of the all the times I’ve tried drawing geralt carrying regis out of tesham mutna, I just wrote a 9k fic instead - (this is) the thing

includes: survivals guilt, hansa remembrance, oblivious geralt, and a lot of touching