#documenting family events

[kizzer55555]

Core Gems

So when a ghost becomes injured, they have a last ditch defense where they retreat into their core. And I mean, injured badly where their body is rip apart to the point they can’t hold a solid form anymore. And they basically go into a hibernation state until they are strong enough to form again.

Ellie, Danny, and Dan are all injured in a final battle against the GIW. The organization was destroyed and the ghosts were safe but the halfas ended up being so injured that they reverted to core form and then went to sleep for a bit. When they woke up, they were still weak but at least recovered enough to gain consciousness. And realize…they are in some kind of auction…in the middle of a heist. It appeared that two furries (one in a bat costume and one in a cat costume) were ducking it out. And they…they were a necklace. All three of them had been turned into a necklace with their cores as gems accompanied by sapphires, pearls, and opals. And frankly gorgeous craftsmanship as the metal was crafted around their cores as if to cradle them and the other gems.

Unfortunately, they were too weak to take a form properly, they could still feel the strain on their bodies. But at least they could still communicate through their auras. Then the cat lady punched a hole in the glass container surrounding them and grabbed their necklace.

However, the bat grabbed the other end and it resulted in a sort of tug-a-war. Meanwhile, Danny, Ellie, and Dan were having a back and form commentary on the situation and what they should do. Completely unheard by the other party.

In the corner of their eye, the three halfas finally noticed a third contender. Some kind of clown who was…hold on…holding a gun?! And it was pointed straight at the two fighting furies who had yet to notice him. The ghosts’ protective instincts went into overdrive and they frantically tried to shout, yell, move. Just do something to warn the two but their cries fell on deaf ears. All they succeeded in doing was faintly glow which immediatly caught the attention of the fighting duo. The two turned to look at the strange necklace but right at that moment, the clown fired and a gunshot rang throughout the auction room. Having no other options, Danny and the others poured every ounce of ectoplasm they had to try and phaseshift, making the two furries intangible as the bullets passed right through them, but in their shock, the two jumped away in opposite directions and accidentally ripped the necklace apart. Gems and pearls went flying and the three cores bounced along the ground.

Luckily, the two finally noticed the clown and went to deal with him and his minions who had appeared. Seemingly putting their fight on hold and forming a temporary truce. The three halfas could only watch as the battle finally wound down, ending with the cops barging into the place and arresting the clown and his grunts, the cat managing to escape with half the scattered gems and pearls from the broken necklace along with a few other jewelry pieces (none of their cores though) and the bat leaving through a skylight.

The auction continued and in the end, despite being broken, their necklace seemed to have caught someone’s interest. A man named Bruce Wayne bought up every piece of the shattered jewelry wear. The auctioneers appeared relived that the item managed to sell in the end and gratefully gave it to him.

Bruce had no idea what happened at the auction, but he could have sworn that some of the gems faintly glowed right before he and Selina were shot. If the necklace was some sort of magical item, then he needed to understand exactly what has been brought to Gotham. It was unfortunate that Selena had taken some parts of the necklace but he utilized his vast wealth to make sure all the other parts ended in his possession. Now he would take them back to the mansion for examination.

[gideonisms]

had just like a wildly bad brain day from morning to night but what's most important is, tomorrow I have leftover Coffee Treat. mercy was literally right the world could be ending my life could be falling apart but I WILL have that delicious coffee like that's my priority everything else is secondary

[dr-lizortecho]

if I’ve not engaged with your creations yet just know I’m going to- just 2024 kicked me in the balls

[g4rchomp]

hmm today I have to bake two cakes + make raspberry jam, be ready at 5 to pick up a gift for my partner's surprise bday party, make him a birthday card, work (🤢) and I picked up disco elysium on switch at the library so I would love to get a moment to play it. and it's already almost noon

[save-mohamed-family]

My campaign is verified and added to the Gaza Donations page with number 192.

Thank you for documenting my campaign from the following accounts:

@sar-soor @heba-20 @el-shab-hussein @90-ghost @soon-palestine@ibtisams @marnota @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @i-am-aprl @northgazaupdates @fallahifag @fairuzfan

I love you all 🙏🙏♥️🌹

I am Mohammed Almanasra, 32 years old, married, and a father of three children: Abdulrahman, 6 years old, Sarah, 4 years old, and Lina, 3 years old.

My story began with the loss of my parents and four of my sisters, who were bombed and lost their lives along with their children after the events of October 7 and the severe war on Gaza. Now, I am facing a severe injury to my leg, which is at risk of amputation if I do not receive the necessary treatment. My wife, children, and I are displaced, without parents or siblings, and my wife is also suffering from uterine cancer.

Recently, I moved to the south of the Gaza Strip, fearing for the lives of my children. We left behind our memories and our new home, for which we had not finished paying the installments, in addition to losing my job. Currently, I live in a tent that does not protect me from the heat of summer or the cold of winter, and without the minimum necessary livinng basics including water, food medical care, clothe and even bedding .

I suffer from a chronic asthma and severe attacks from tightness and an extreme allergy in the ear and I need medicine that are not available, or very expensive .

Under these difficult circumstances, after five attempts at displacement and narrowly escaping death from the bombing, I am trying with all my might to protect my family, the most precious thing I have.

My dreams were shattered, and my house was destroyed, and I found myself living in a tent no larger than 4 square metres. My work turned from a tailor to a street vendor in order to barely buy a few crumbs of bread to feed my children.

Look at what happened to my children because of the intense heat and the insects that thrive in the summer season. Every day, I take them to the hospital to treat them due to poisonous insect bites. I implore every kind-hearted soul to help me protect my children.

My son, Abdul Rahman, has a deep passion for playing football and is a devoted fan of Real Madrid. He always dreamed of playing football at his school, but the war prevented this dream from coming true.

Where are you, Real Madrid fans ?

Help Abdul Rahman achieve his dream.

Every donation will make an enormous difference in helping me save my family.

I feel very sad and embarrassed to ask for help, but I have no other options left. I know that this request is difficult, but I also know that there is still humanity and living consciences and I believe in miracles.

Your support during this extremely difficult time will give us hope in the midst of devastation and despair.

If you have any inquiries or questions, feel free to ask me, please!

To everyone with a compassionate heart,

To all who understand the essence of humanity,

This is a message from my innocent children, who trust that their words will reach everyone who truly understands the meaning of childhood.

We cry out to you, asking you to feel our sorrow and pain, and to extend a helping hand to us in this time when we are in desperate need of your mercy and compassion.

My name is being repeatedly added to many public and private donation campaigns. Please, be a support for me in this difficult situation.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1yYkNp5U3ANwILl2MknJi9G7ArY4uVTEEQ1CVfzR8Ioo/htmlview

Sincere greetings & thanks

Mohammed & the family

[weathernerdmando]

So I've actually been going through and editing, for once in my life, and right now I'm in focusing on one slash two of my star wars fics.

Which, until recently, I haven't really...done. I mean I go back and check for spelling errors but I usually just finish the first thing and then post it because if I didn't i usually didn't end up posting it ever.

But I said screw it, I gotta try sometime so I'm trying to edit/revise.

And uh...it's going pretty well. I think I like this iteration better of the intro. And I'm sure I'll tweak it more, but it's better.

[falesten-iw]

24 Lives Are in Your Hands—Don’t Say You Can’t Help Because You Really Can!

Vetted and shared by @90-ghost: Link.

Verified and shared by @el-shab-hussein: Link

Listed as number 282 in "The Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraiser Spreadsheet" compiled by @el-shab-hussein and @nabulsi : Link

Listed on the Butterfly Effect Project, number 957: Link

Additionally, Al Jazeera News has documented apart of my family's case: Link

As winter approaches and my family is caught in the crossfire of genocide. The constant threat of airstrikes, freezing temperatures, hunger, and the lack of medicine have put my family in a dire situation. I am doing everything I can to protect 24 members of my family—including children who deserve the chance to survive this coming winter.

Despite the verification and support we’ve received, time is running out, and I cannot do this alone. Every donation, no matter how small, can provide the warmth, food, and vital medicine needed to keep my family alive.

Don’t say you can’t help—because you absolutely can! Each of us has something valuable to offer. Whether it’s your art, your friends, your network on Tumblr or beyond, or your unique writing skills. You have the power to make a difference. If the airstrikes, hunger, and lack of medicine don’t claim my family, this harsh winter might. But you can prevent that. yes you can by using your talents and your voice to save lives.

Remember, 24 lives are in your hands so pleease help!

Important note: ** 1050 SEK is just 100$ ** 10500 SEK is just 1000$

@timetravellingkitty @deathlonging @briarhips @mazzikah @mahoushojoe

@sar-soor @rhubarbspring @schoolhater @pcktknife @transmutationisms

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[secretariatess]

As someone who watches true crime, this is just gross. The lack of empathy for the victims' families is astounding. Someone who was loved and held dear by other people, who was their own person with thoughts, feelings, interests and dreams was killed and you're trying to make it about you in some way?

Some of their families and friends had to relive traumatic experiences in court, and you're going to try to make them relive that for your sake?

If you want to solve a case, either become an actual detective, or watch Unsolved Mysteries and call the designated number if you have any tips. Actual tips.

If you want gore, watch gory fiction movies, there's plenty of those.

It's one thing to go through public documents such as trial documents, but it's another thing to hecking contact the families involved.

[acid-ixx]

ch.1: again &. again (platonic! yandere batfam x neglected! gn reader)

directory: preq, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four

read until the end for an author's note.

if there was one thing you hated more than the crime-filled streets of gotham, it would be empty promises.

when was the last time they attended your birthday? or your school ceremonies? or any special event that meant for you to be the center of attention?

plot twist, there was no last time, or a time before that or any day that they were there for you.

not your eldest brother, dick, not your dead brother, jason, of course tim wouldn't be there for you, damian's absence is a given, not even your sisters would come, and most especially not your father, bruce wayne.

you never wrote wayne as your last name. in every test, it would always be your mother's last name. in every document that you had to fill, you would violently scratch in the name of your father, wishing it wasn't required at all so you wouldn't have to hang your head in shame everytime someone looks at you incredulously for having the bruce wayne as your father but never once appearing to be with you.

you can't recall a time you had called him your dad, or even considered him as one.

if you could count the times you have seen him in person, it wouldn't even fill ten fingers. even interviewers and paparazzi have more luck in coming across him than you would, his child.

it sucks, really, how despite having nearly sharing the same age as tim, you never once saw him outside of his room. you thought you would've been the closest to him, but the most you have seen him was when you were watching the news with the "new" robin popping up, or worse; when bruce would be seen guiding tim through the paparazzi and not you. alfred had to drag you away from the tv that day because you were already suffering through a panic attack just seeing those two act so close; ripping your hair out just from watching the news wasn't a good way to cope.

you remember being so jealous of him, of how bruce would always spend time with him and not you. it made you wonder, were you special enough? tim is so brilliant, you could admit. and you were, too, having enough comprehensibility as a child to find out they were vigilantes a year or two after living in the manor— but you weren't good enough like tim. you weren't cut out to be like a detective or a fighter.

it was no wonder why bruce chose them over you.

it came to you in the form of talking to tim that had you discovering that no one ever mentions your name inside the house, proving it to be true when tim had hesitated calling your name and even stuttered through pronouncing it. and then he left after finding you were of no use to help him. alfred had to stifle your sobbing after tim left the room, allowing you to cry on his chest whilst you sat beside him.

(name) wayne was so, so lonely.

you would've accepted their absence long ago, but you were a stupid child who needed care and reassurance because your mother left you for good at the age of five. you were too naive into thinking you would receive the same love from your family just like the other kids in elementary would. you were a child who expected too highly of your father, thinking that he would pick you up from school with that picture perfect photographed smile of his and kiss your forehead and tell you that you did a great job at school today.

it was your teachers who would be the one having to walk you up the stage whenever you achieved an award. alfred would be too busy sometimes to attend your school ceremonies because he had to assist bruce with missions. of course, you understood his priorities. after all, he tried his hardest to make you feel less lonely inside the mansion, it wasn't enough but he was there at least.

it was long ago that you stopped praying for your family to attend at least one of your birthdays.

it's ironic, really, for a child to prep and plan for their own celebration just to hope that a single member of their family to even walk by the kitchen and join them in on their already lonesome celebration.

too bad everybody only goes to the kitchen when alfred cooks for them. who would want to taste sadness in a sloppily made birthday cake, right? nobody, not even you would have the appetite to eat your cake with the knowledge that it was you who had to put all the effort to bake it because you didn't want alfred to feel obligated to. knowing nobody would celebrate birthdays with you, save for alfred, it was expected that you started to prefer cupcakes.

because then you wouldn't be scolded for making such a mess.

you never cooked family meals after the incident where nobody came and to not waste food, you had to bring in large containers to bring to school so you could celebrate your birthday there.

it was there that you find more solace in your small group of friends compared to the desolate rooms of the mansion. your family celebrates holidays together as a whole, but you never once attended after that one time where everybody had forgotten to get you a gift for christmas, save for alfred who gave you a bracelet (one that you cherished deeply). you only smiled weakly and hopelessly, sneaking into your room before the family dinner.

it was alfred again who bought you leftovers and sat on your bed for an hour to encourage you that there's still more christmas's to go.

you never believed what he said. not anymore.

there was a period of time where you hated them more than anything, blamed them for everything and became more rebellious, purposely failing tests, fighting your classmates and disrespecting teachers in hopes that for once your father would bat an eye on you. that only resulted in you being taken out of the school and being transferred into another, for a behavioral reform is what alfred stated to you when you annoyed him for answers.

damian started to bully you a bit more harder after that incident, calling you immature and childish, a weakling, an attention seeker. how someone at your age should've known better. you were convinced that he was relishing in the heartbroken glare you gave him, ignoring the way his eyes widened momentarily at your reaction before sneering and walking away.

alfred gently scolded you, but you were too choked up and instead you almost tripped running inside your bedroom, locking yourself in for what seems like hours.

you don't want to remember the immense breakdown you had that evening too, screaming on your blankets and destroying your things and hurting yourself because... because you had lost your old friends for nothing! your caring teachers, your academic progress, everything! every single thing for an ounce of attention! because he didn't have enough energy to come with you to the guidance counselor and he only had you transfer out so you wouldn't ruin the wayne's reputation!

you hate him, you hate bruce fucking wayne so much and you hate clinging onto their empty promises and sorry's to make it up for you. you hate how their promises were never even said directly to you, you hate how alfred was your only source of hope for a medium of communication.

you hate them all.

and worst of all, you hate yourself for drowning in hope. for wishing you were physically stronger so you could at least bond with them through training. for dreaming about a day where they could surprise you and told you they were just testing you and that you actually had worth inside this manor. for praying nightly that they'll smile at you like the heroes you see in tv rather than that of pity.

you wished there was a universe where gotham was safer, more protected with no criminals littering the streets. maybe then they would have more time to notice you crying every night, writing self destructive entries in your diary, sketching what would've been a happy family. they wouldn't have to wear their silly costumes to fight crime and instead would save you from your own demons.

if...

if you were brutally tortured and killed by the joker, or forced to choke on the fear toxin by the scarecrow— hell, even beaten to near death by some random goons; would they have given you a sliver of their love? would they finally look at you and save you from yourself?

because despite your resentment, you would never lie and say you didn't feel blessed that you were thrown to a family of talented individuals.

your drawings of a complete and happy family holding hands together and a diary filled with rants and fantasies of spending time with them proved just that.

you were blessed with them yet cursed at the same time to never reach the same level to be even considered part of their lives.

you were hopeless. you never amounted to anything. you were just, you.

thirteen years have passed by then, and in those years you were proud to say your development as a person, albeit slow, transformed you from a child that succumbed to neglect to an independent person who managed to maintain a comfortable circle of friends, a scholarship for a college far away from gotham, and an apartment of your own (you were a bit in debt due to having to pay for your own because no way in hell would you ask for your father for financial support).

allowance was scarce, your food supplies weren't infinite compared to back when you were living at the wayne manor, and you weren't greeted to michelin star restaurant meals cooked by alfred— but you were content, and that was enough.

though content translated to nightly breakdowns whilst finishing projects or writing essays, the point still stands! at least you had celebrated your eighteenth birthday with drunk smiles and your friends spoiling you to death when you had opened up about your first lonely years of life. everything was going well for you, truly.

you were so, so happy for the nice turn of events. and you wouldn't have made it so far if you hadn't slapped yourself out of the delusion that they actually cared for you.

look at you now! independent and with a life of your own! you'd give yourself a pat in the back.

you hadn't blocked them at all, but their contacts were empty (save for a few desperate messages that date back years ago) and you were fine with that. it's not like tim or bruce or barbara considered you important enough to be stalked. hah, as if!

alfred communicates with you time to time, reminding you to eat a complete meal rather than those one dollar priced noodles that tasted like pure salt. he told you he misses you a lot, you and your annoying, daily rants about life and school. he misses your awkward smile and when you would help him cook whenever the others aren't around. he misses it when you imitate his posh accent when you taste test his food and give commentary about it.

you miss him, too. growing up, you realized just how much effort alfred would exert just to spend a lot of his time on you.

now, he told you that you are still welcome to the manor whenever, and how he cleans your room weekly in case you'll visit him.

whenever you audio call with him, you'd tear up just a bit at the realization that alfred was more of a father figure than your own biological father. because he at least attended your graduation to make up for the other times he was unable to join you.

what's even better was that he gifted you something you had always wanted for your birthday. despite it being delivered to your door rather than him giving it to you face to face (since you had refused to give him your location and him respecting that decision at least), the heartfelt letter he left you was more than enough to let you cling onto pieces of your past. after all, it was him who greeted you by the door when you were first introduced into the family, bruce being too busy with paperwork that day when you were a measly five year old.

you had started to teasingly call him 'alfie' and a few more nickname after that, which results with a chuckle over the phone every time you had come up with a cheesy name for him whenever you get a wee bit irritated at his own way of making fun of you.

if only this was your life years ago, then maybe you wouldn't have been jealous of all your other friends and pushed them away that day, maybe you would learn that sometimes, family comes in the form of the people outside of your house rather than inside.

that reminds you, maybe you should reconnect with your old friends back in elementary and apologized for your sudden explosive behavior.

you were laying on your bed, phone in hand and opened your inst*gram app to stalk through the names you could remember. well... that was what you should've done, if not for the fact that a notification popped up the very moment you pressed on the search bar and you had accidentally opened a chat with your oldest brother, dick.

you would've ignored the desperate messages you have sent him from the past which all varied from inviting him to eat dinner with you or to at least join you to play in an arcade or anything to convince him to talk to you, all of which were unseen, if not for the fact that it was him who sent you a sudden "hey baby bird!!! <333 long time no see! how are you?!" message, alongside a few more replies that spammed through your phone...

oh!

... that was enough to make you sit up and want to hurl.

dick grayson was a man of many talents. the mature eldest child, the ideal good leader despite his anger issues from time to time, and the same guy who set the standards high for the future robins. he is bruce's greatest achievement.

it was safe to say that if not for the support of many, then he would've suffered so many falls and would've never been strong enough to stand up despite the pain and continue his fights. nightwing was what many superheroes strive to be, an image of light in a grove of darkness such as gotham.

so why was it that he felt like he has failed so deeply right now?

inside your room, dick stands with furrowed brows. it felt too clean to look used. your furniture was polished and look untouched, the lights were too bright and the windows were bolted shut. there were no signs of life other than the notebooks and sketchbooks that were neatly tucked on the middle of the bed and the trinkets that scatter through your desk.

dick stalks through the room, careful to not make a noise as he walks over to the closet, opening it and finding nothing.

he bites his lips at the implication that this was probably the second time he visited your room and how it was also the longest time he remained here. compared to his other siblings, you were the one he noticed the least and... now he feels bad for dismissing you.

didn't he promise to take you out for dinner months ago?

damn it, he was way too focused on his mission that night and ended up ditching and forgetting you! oh god, dick facepalmed and clenched his teeth, seething in some air because no fucking way did he actually remember to feed damian's dog, titus, the same day but forgot to take you out for an important event...

it occurred to him that that was the same day you scored a perfect on "the hardest test of my life!" you had bragged to him awkwardly when he wasn't listening nor looking and you, wanting to celebrate what was a small achievement for dick, chose him to spend time with you!

dick had to carefully breath through his mouth then gulp down the shame he feels right now. he- he has no time to focus on the past but rather the present. he has to find out why the hell is your room so lifeless, yeah... then he'll make it up to you today, definitely.

huh?

is it just him, but why does the room seem so small? it looked like it was meant to be for a kid. clearly, there wasn't enough space for a growing individual like you... did bruce not provide you with a bigger bedroom? ah, dick would definitely tell bruce to relocate you to a bigger room, the current one is too small for even a dog in a manor to sleep in.

dick doesn't want to admit it at all, but... he hasn't seen you for the past few months, or not all, really. sure, he had only recently visited the manor since he's bludhaven's vigilante now, but even through his time in gotham he had never seen you other than the times you pulled his sleeves from back when you were a child.

back when you were a child.

how old are you now? you were so small back then, innocent too. he can recall your curious eyes, your chubby cheeks and the way you stutter through your words as you try to talk to him.

you were significantly younger than jason, and was adopted a week before tim was introduced to the family. he remembers you peeking through alfred's back, gleaming with curiousity and whispering to the butler if it was really the dick grayson. he smiled fondly at your dumbfounded expression, the way your mouth shaped into an "ohh," when he was the one who answered that, yes, it was him. then you whispered again if you can take have an autograph from him, to which he chuckled and told alfred that he'll help accompany you to your room.

when your five year old body tried to waddle closer to his body for an ounce of warmth when he had been guiding you up the stairs, that was also the first time he called you baby bird, with the way you coddled him so closely. his hands find itself patting your head, ruffling your hair and grinning as you both make your path through the halls.

he comes to immediately regret leaving you alone after he had introduced you to your room, remembering his duties as a vigilante than that of a brother.

but despite his early memories of you, he wants to see his baby sibling all grown up now.

had it really been years?

when was the last time you ever had a full-on conversation with him?

was there even a time that he had approached you by himself?

he had always called you baby bird after the first time you meet because of the age gap you two shared. the rare times he acknowledges you, you gave him that look filled with such adoration, like you were proud of him for being your older brother. why did he not notice you?

oh, his baby bird...

dick gulped, trying to ease his shivering by sitting on your neatly folded blankets and taking a worn diary in his hand, one at the bottom stack of books. well, if it was a personal diary then maybe you would've hidden it better, right? he figures since it was all placed on the center of the bed like a piece of treasure that... it would be alright to take just a glimpse.

to confirm if you still see him as your favorite brother.

dick's heartbeat spiked, hoping your entries would be filled with, he doesn't know, anything that didn't implicate some sort of hatred for the family, for him. hoping that despite his lack of attention towards you, that there would still be a spark of love for him. if what he thinks was actually true then... he doesn't know what to do with himself.

he flips through the first page, noting how it was bulkier than the others. the paper was filled with glittery decorations, sequence beads and cheap stickers sparkling at every angle the light hits. it was meant to be a design for the 'front cover' of the notebook, colors blended in a cacophony of rainbows and butterflies and flowers beyond the messy calligraphy that merely states "(name)'s diary!"

dick stifles a grin just from skimming through at the amount of mistakes and erasures, clearly written by the the younger version of you; naive to the world and its cruelty. he commends your creativity, his eyes softening at the few doodles that were written on the corners of the pages.

you're just too adorable for your own good, so much so that the thumping in dick's heart beats louder and louder, ears wringing uncomfortable inside your unventilated bedroom. but he just couldn't rip his eyes away from the diary, daydreaming about how proud you must've been when designing your own diary. he could picture your wide eyes, shy and harmless, and your feet kicking back and forth whilst you decorate your stuff.

everything was what he expected it to be on the first few pages of the diary. all your little rants about your daily life, your eargerness to meet your entire family from your father's side, and the hurt you experienced from your mother's sudden abandonment.

he would've skipped through another diary, one that lacked design and color, save for the name plastered on the front, if not for the grim undertones at every end of your entries despite the child-like manner it was written in.

it all started with "i wish to see my father soon and my big brother dick again!", "alfred told me my father can't come to the parent-teacher conference, he says he's in a veryyy important meeting :( but alfred would come!", "dick told me he can't help me with my science project but he promise he'll help me with something else later!" which halfway through the diary, your style fluctuates and lesser effort was exhausted on the writing.

one entry in particular, written on the last page of your diary, shattered a sliver of hope within dick, his breathing momentarily ceased from reading through your sentences; uncharacteristic of you, too mature for someone at the age of ten to write.

"XX/XX/XXXX.

dear diary, it's my tenth birthday today. i celebrated with my friends at school. they told me i always look down whenever it's my birthday. they think that bruce would throw a fancy celebration for me. i tried to hide my laughter from them. it's a really funny joke. i haven't seen him for months. i told dick that he was invited but i don't think he remembers it's my birthday today. alfred told me to come out of my room, he said he cooked my favorite dinner, that he's sorry he got my present late, but i don't want get out of my room. i heard dick is gonna watch a movie with tim later. i don't feel so good, my chest hurts, but i don't want to get out right now.

i'll eat the cupcake tomorrow."

it had been nearly two hours since dick had sat on your bed, eyes dilating whilst reading through your first diary. the cold season had already pricked his skin, but his entire body felt so unnaturally warm, a warmth that scorches him, searing deep into flesh. a lump had form in his throat, accompanying the hellish throbbing of his heart.

"fuck..." he brought his fingers to his head, carefully massaging his forehead but it relieves nothing. he wants to see you right now— he needs to talk to you. god, he has to apologize, he needs to see what you look like right now, needs to know if you're alright.

you're clearly not.

he has to oppress the urge to punch the walls, reminding himself that it's your room he's in and if he damages your already delicate property, then he's proving himself worse than he already is.

he rushes to grab another diary, the one at the top of the pile, skipping to the end of the page.

nothing. all the entries were months ago, all written in vague detail like you were starting to hide secrets. his teeth grinds against each other, frustration seeping through his veins.

he needs to— shit, he needs to find you right now. he needs to find his baby bird and make up for the all bullshit him and his family had done. if you were gone for months, even years; he doesn't even want to think about it.

but how?!

there were no signs of you. anything written your diary, your drawings, the trinkets on your bedside table— they signal no clues whatsoever, all dating back to months, even years. it's not possible at all, for nobody to notice your disappearance. dick would've noticed sooner. he should've noticed sooner. oh, he doesn't even want to think about the dangers that await you outside the mansion. with how naive you were about the outside world, you wouldn't last at all.

his baby bird wouldn't survive gotham's streets, especially not when winter was nearing.

think, grayson, think...

his phone!

he immediately reaches into his pockets to grab his phone, clammy fingers swifly encoding his password and opening his contacts.

your number was the quickest to find, it was the only one without an icon of you and an endearing nickname. he makes a mental note to change that soon and replaced your default name to your nickname.

then, without hesitation, he typed, "hey baby bird!!! <333 long time no see! how are you?!" sending the message without rereading, foot tapping impatiently against the floor as he scrolls through all your previous messages.

messages that he should've replied to with the same level of enthusiasm as you. skimming through the past, unseen texts as your motivation began to dwindle the further he refused to reply back. he promises he'll never make you feel invisible again.

seconds feel like hours for him, as he blows raspberries to pass the time, too concentrated an ounce of a reply to even notice the entirely new presence inside the room.

it's alright to call you, yes? after all, dick just wanted to check in with his baby bird and see if you're doing swell and dandy and... safe without him...!

his thumbs pressed on the call button before he could think through his actions, his other hand runs through his hair, sweat running down his forehead as if he had ran a marathon.

he waited, and waited, and waited until the call beeped and provided its automated response. he calls you again but the line immediately cuts off, he tries to spam you with more messages but they weren't delivered.

you blocked him.

fuck, he messed up big time. he needs to get to the batcave. he needs to find your fucking location before it's too late. dick needs to see you again before he loses it.

but before he could carefully place your sketchbooks back to its rightful place, he sees a silhouette at the corner of his eyes; short figure, arms crossed, and a sneer on his eyes already tells him who it was.

damian wayne.

he forgot to train with damian today.

but it doesn't matter, damian has to see it for himself— what made dick so disheveled, so delirious. damian has to finally see just how much of a wonderful sibling you are.

reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.

a/n: this was 4,600+ words and it drained the energy out of me. it was supposed to be posted tomorrow but i was too motivated !! i'm also quite proud of this chapter. it was a pain characterizing dick grayson and the reader. i really hope this is as good as the prequel because it's 3am right now and writing dick's part was a pain in the ass ^^' as always, please do comment or send asks if you like it for quicker updates!!!

taglist: @lilyalone, @secretomelettetroops, @earlqurl, @simpingfor-wakasa, @amber-content, @alishii, @ruiroku, @okaybutfullhomo, @trasshy-artist, @obsessedwithromance, @deadinside-09, @jjsmeowthie, @fairy-lenaa (shoutout to her specifically because i got motivated from their comment!)

[ckret2]

Chapter 51 of human Bill Cipher is once more the Mystery Shack's prisoner: Dipper and Mabel try to figure out what the Axolotl's poem means; Dipper gets the hang of astral projection; and... whatever's going on up there happens.

####

Ford and Dipper came back into the shack through the gift shop; Ford didn't want to risk crossing paths with Bill. While Dipper went into the house, Ford went down—returning to the safety of his subterranean study.

Once Ford had put on the old black trench coat he'd worn during his multiversal travels and gotten comfortable at his desk, he pulled out Journal 5 to document the events of the last few days. In a cheap ballpoint pen, he wrote, I've lost my #1 Grunkle pen (and favorite coat) to the waters of Lake Gravity Falls. And then, deciding this didn't adequately express his feelings, he drew a small frown. That coat had served him well for decades, and he'd really liked that pen. It did write excellently, and it had reminded him of his gniece and gnephew.

He spent three pages documenting the eclipse—what happened, what readings he'd taken, what he and Dipper observed—and then another four pages talking about Bill. What he'd told them, why Ford had dismissed it; his claims about a trans-dimensional axolotl distorting gravity with its migration; the statue, the rescue, the breakdown.

The act of writing always helped Ford clarify his thoughts and untangle mysteries; it wasn't until he was writing that he realized the limbs Bill had said he couldn't feel were the ones that had broken off the statue.

He listed the rules of the chess variants he could remember Bill inventing. He drew Bill huddled in front of the board, grim, tear-streaked, exhausted; and then scratched out his face, embarrassed at the thought of immortalizing such a raw moment for his private viewing.

He wrote, There's still a slim possibility that the entire "eclipse," start to finish, was Bill's masterfully-orchestrated scheme to make us pity and trust him; but it's unlikely. Although Bill is fiendish enough, he isn't currently powerful enough, and his lies certainly aren't elaborate enough. If he could pull off such a byzantine ruse, then he could just as easily escape—and if he can escape, why hasn't he? Bill may be insane, but he's never been THAT irrational.

And so, even as twisted as Bill's idea of "friendship" is... for the very first time, I'm convinced that he was telling the truth all along when he said he wants me as his friend. It's not an act. He risked his life to save someone who's an active threat to him.

And at the end of it all—though I'm grateful to be alive in spite of my own stubbornness—do I like him any better for it?

Ford leaned back and shut his eyes, sifting through the inner tumult of anger and old hurt that defined most of his memories of Bill, looking to see if anything had changed.

There was a sore, tender spot in his emotions, a place beginning to rot with remorse; when he prodded at those emotions, he found that it was shame over his own harsh conduct of the last couple of days. But he was only ashamed of how cruelly he'd acted; he wasn't ashamed that Bill was the one he'd done it to.

Outside of that tender spot—regret over his own behavior—nothing else had changed.

No. I still hate him. I'm grateful to be alive, but I hate him. He hasn't undone anything he did to my family and me, and he never will. Forgiveness can't be purchased with favors.

I'm only relieved at the certainty of it. Bill has committed an act that can't possibly be a lie. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he's shown me the truth; and the truth is he'd rather see me alive than dead. Whatever other lies he may tell, I can hold on to that fact.

Bill's miserable eyes peered out at Ford between the scribbles he'd drawn across his face. It was truly a pity that Ford had to hate him. Pity that Bill hadn't been somebody better. He could have been better.

Ford couldn't find it in himself to be embarrassed that he'd filled four pages talking about the monster he'd already wasted so many more on. Bill had been right about him: You might hate me to my face, but behind my back you're as obsessed with me as ever. The only thing Bill didn't understand was that hatred and obsession weren't mutually incompatible.

####

"Hey, Dipper," Mabel said, unfolding the living room sofa bed. 

"Hey, Mabel," Dipper said, passing through living room on his way to the stairs. He climbed up to the attic.

He came back down from the attic. "Mabel. Why's Bill asleep in your bed."

"He really needed a nap," Mabel said.

"Okay but why on your bed?"

Mabel pouted. "Dipper, do you realize he's never slept on a real bed? Ever?"

Dipper tried to imagine sleeping on a couple couch cushions on the floor every night. "Yeah, okay, that does kinda suck." Even if it was Bill's own fault he wouldn't sleep in the living room.

By unspoken mutual agreement, having a Bill in the bedroom followed the same law as finding a centipede in the bathroom. The law was "that's the centipede's bathroom now." So once the folding bed was set up, they sat on it to serve as their hang-out spot for the evening and caught each other up on what they'd done the last couple of days.

After Dipper & Co. had left, Grenda had come over to take advantage of the low gravity to retrieve the kite that had been stuck in a tree near the Mystery Shack since last summer (it was, tragically, too tattered to salvage), and then they'd gone over to Candy's house to photograph each other performing feats of impossible strength. (Mabel would be sending some pictures to their parents to confuse them, and adding the rest to her summer scrapbook.) She'd spent the next day breaking the trampoline world record until Soos came outside and said gravity was probably too low for it to be safe to be up in the air anymore, if Bill's warnings about being off the ground when gravity hit zero were true; at which point Mabel had hung around inside air-swimming until she suddenly slammed against the ceiling, and then the ground. She was fine. She just had a couple of bruises. She showed Dipper her bruises.

In return, Dipper told Mabel about how their quest had gone: the checks for micro-rips, Bill's increasingly frantic warnings, the lake—

("You got to see a bajillion magical axolotls and I didn't?!")

—the cliff, the Axolotl, Dipper's near-death experience, and what he now knew about his out-of-body dreams.

"Seriously?" Mabel hissed, eyes bugging out. "And he had us looking up lucid dreaming books! What a jerk!"

"I know! He could have just ignored the whole thing, we didn't even think it was anything but dreams."

"And I'd thought he was being so helpful, too! Like he was really trying to make up for giving you 'nightmares'!" Mabel laughed in disbelief and flopped down on the flimsy mattress. "All that because he just didn't want us to know how it was really his fault? Biiill, ugh."

His fault. Dipper hesitated, wondering whether he should tell Mabel what Bill had said about Mabel's Fault; then decided against it. Bill had probably been telling the truth when he'd said he only wanted all the credit for Weirdmageddon.

But—Dipper did tell her about Bill saving their lives. He would have felt like a liar if he hadn't—like he was trying to trick his sister into thinking Bill was worse than he already was. He hoped Ford wouldn't mind; but how could he not tell Mabel?

"He could have just let you die and didn't?" Mabel turned that over in her head, processing this sudden shift in Bill's behavior. "Wow. I'm impressed."

He also told her about their previous encounter with the Axolotl. Considering the other lies Bill had told recently, anything he said about them meeting the Axolotl was dubious at best; but Dipper could remember the Axolotl, so maybe some of it was true, even if Bill had twisted as much as he could. ("The Axolotl said hi, by the way." "Aww. Tell him hi back!" "Yeah, I... don't know how to do that.")

Dipper laid out his journal between them on the folding bed, and Mabel read over the couplet a few times. "'Sixty degrees that come in threes, watches from within birch trees'..."

"It's got to be talking about Bill," Dipper said. "Equilateral triangles have three sixty-degree angles. I just don't know why the Axolotl wanted to talk to us about him."

Mabel frowned at the lines. "I think... I remember meeting him too," she said.

"You do?"

"Kinda. Like in a dream," she said. "We were in some kind of futury space race car. And he had a really comfortable beanbag chair."

"Yes! I remembered the beanbag chair, too!" And he hadn't mentioned it in his journal. "This is great! Talking about it must... must cause us to remember, somehow. Maybe since the universe where we met the Axolotl doesn't exist anymore, our memories of it are... detached or something? Psychically floating around between dimensions until we try to remember them?" He took in Mabel's skeptical frown and shrugged. "I don't know!"

She scrunched up her face. "Ugh. Last summer's first-grader time travel was complicated enough. This is like college-level time travel. Maybe we can ask Bill how it works?"

She said it so easily, like she thought it was actually a good idea. Right after she'd heard about the lucid dreaming thing, too. "I don't think he'd help." Dipper lowered his voice. "He really didn't want Grunkle Ford and me to find out about the Axolotl—and he kept telling me not to think about what the Axolotl told me. He's trying to cover something up."

"Oo-oo-ooh." Voice dropped to a whisper, Mabel said, "Do you think it's some kind of Space Axolotl conspiracy?"

"It could be," Dipper said. "All I know is he was trying to tell us something important about Bill. Some kind of prophecy, or... maybe a warning...?"

He trailed off. Mabel had stopped listening to Dipper. She was rereading the couplet Dipper had written, moving her lips like she was murmuring under her breath—but whatever she was saying, it was much longer than the couplet Dipper had written down. Distractedly, she said, "Do you have a pen?"

"Yeah, here." Dipper quickly handed over the pen he kept in his vest.

Mabel clicked it, went to the bottom of the page, and wrote: A different form, a different time.

Dipper sucked in a sharp breath as the words snapped into place in his mind. "That's it! That was the last line! What else do you remember?"

"That's it," Mabel said. "It was free form poetry with a bunch of rhyme pairs."

"I don't think free form poetry rhymes."

"Pbbbt." Mabel blew a raspberry and shoved Dipper's face. "Whatever! You know what I mean." She pointed at the last line. "Do you think the poem's about why Bill's here? He time traveled to the Mystery Shack in a new body..."

"Exactly! Bill must be back here for a reason. He's got all those powers—or, used to, anyway—and he knows more about the multiverse than anybody on Earth... Maybe there's some kind of big threat coming, and Bill's the only one who can stop it, and—and the Axolotl wanted us to know...?"

"I like the sound of that," Mabel said. "That'd basically make him a hero, right?"

Dipper grimaced. "I mean. I guess? But we're talking about Bill. If he does help us stop a threat, it'd be like if a serial killer picked up a hitchhiker and killed him, and then it turned out the hitchhiker was an even worse serial killer."

"That still sounds kinda heroic to me."

"Pfff, okay." He looked at his journal. "But... what is he here to do?"

Mabel considered what they'd already written. "Maybe we can use him to spy on our enemies through birch trees!"

"Thaaat's probably not it."

"No, I think I'm on to something. I can feel it."

There was a lot of empty space between his couplet and Mabel's line. "There's more we're missing, though. Maybe the rest of the poem describes the threat? Or what we need to get Bill to do?"

"I can't remember anything else, though."

"Me neither."

They stared at the page together, waiting for something to come to their blank minds. Mabel looked at the fish tank. "Hey, Primrose! Do you know anything?"

The pet axolotl in the tank ignored her serenely.

Dipper said, "'Primrose'?"

"Yeah, last summer Grunkle Stan said her name is Freakface, but I thought she deserved a cuter name. She's primrose color!"

"Ford says he originally named him Nikola."

Mabel gasped. "Nikki..."

Dipper twisted around to look at the axolotl. "Do you know anything? Do you... get messages from the Axolotl's heralds, or anything...?"

Nikola slowly opened his mouth, and slowly closed it.

Mabel said, "Hey. The Axolotl's one of those dimension-crossy time-travely guys, right? He probably wouldn't have given us a prophecy in the wrong timeline and then made us forget it unless he knew we'd remember it in time in the rightdimension!"

"I guess," Dipper said uncertainly.

"So we don't need to worry about it! We'll remember it when we need to."

"Unless this timeline's going to branch, and the only one where we survive is the one where we put all our effort into trying to remembering—"

"Shhh!" Mabel put a finger over Dipper's mouth. "Uh-uh. No college time travel. We'll be fine!"

Dipper pushed her over. "Okay, but we should at least try a little to remember what the Axolotl told us."

"What if we work on it separately?" Mabel propped herself up on an elbow. "Instead of just sitting around thinking about it. And whenever we remember a line, we can tell each other and see if it makes anything click."

"That might be faster," Dipper said, stroking his chin. "We're already remembering different lines."

"Yeah! And that lucid dreaming book said something about focusing on a problem before you sleep so you can figure it out in your dreams! We can just work on it in our sleep and we'll remember it all in no time!"

Dipper laughed. "What? No way, I think lucid dreaming is just one of those made up pop psychology things. I didn't get it to work at all." Either it didn't work or Bill had deliberately recommended a terrible book.

"I did! I can remember like... eighty percent more dreams. And I can tell when I'm dreaming a lot more often!"

"Huh." Or, maybe Dipper just wasn't doing it right. "Maybe I need to start over from step one. Do you know where the book we were using went?"

"Over here!" Mabel had set a couple library books on the end table next to the sofa bed; she pulled out the second one, which had a glittery pink bookmark with a cat on it stuck two-thirds of the way through. "Just don't lose my bookmark."

"Thanks." He'd reread the first step before bed. "We should probably be getting ready for bed anyway, huh?"

"Seriously?! It's barely bedtime!" And when the adults weren't watching, official bedtime was an hour and a half before Actual Bedtime.

"I'm exhausted. I just hiked up and down a mountain and faced down death."

Mabel pointed at Nikola. "You faced down a big salamander."

"Close enough."

They went upstairs, brushed their teeth, went to their bedroom...

And stopped in the door. Bill was still asleep. "Oh. Right," Dipper said.

He was curled into a ball on his left side, facing the wall, covered with only the zodiac blanket and his borrowed/stolen top hat sitting on the side of his head. He didn't use a pillow; he'd pushed Mabel's pillows and dolls behind himself to form a squishy makeshift fortress.

"Please don't wake him up," Mabel whispered. (She'd already set up the folding bed for herself; she'd clearly planned on this.) "He's had a really really hard time the last couple of days, and I think he needs as much sleep in a real bed as he can get, and it's just for one night, and I'm sure he'd rather sleep than do anything evil—"

"He said something, didn't he?"

Mabel paused. "Yeah. I think seeing his body really messed him up."

Dipper sighed. "We were trying to keep him away from it." He didn't want Mabel to think they'd forced him to stare his own death in the face. "But he did that... eye thing and looked through the trees, and..."

Mabel nodded.

Well. Dipper couldn't kick him out now. For Mabel's sake.

As children, occasionally when they got hotel rooms with a bed too few, their parents would stick them in one bed with a barrier of pillows in between them. At age thirteen and without two crabby parents trying to get them to just go to bed after a long plane flight, they unanimously vetoed that plan. Dipper decided against asking Stan if he could sleep in Ford's unoccupied bed, both because he suspected Stan would just go upstairs and drag Bill out of the room and because he didn't want Stan to think he was scared of Bill. He wasn't scared of Bill. Not anymore. He could handle one measly night in the same room as him. Anyway, somebody had to make sure he wasn't unsupervised in their bedroom all night, right?

Dipper and Mabel quietly set a floor mirror and old lamp next to Mabel's bed, draped a sheet between them, taped on a pink poster that said "WARNING! TRIANGLE ZONE!" and was covered in stickers of triangular objects, and decided Dipper was adequately shielded. If Bill did get up during the night, he'd probably trip through the sheet and wake half the house before he got anywhere near Dipper.

Dipper went to sleep with a baseball bat in his hands.

####

"Okay," Bill said, hands on his sides, "what am I looking at here?"

The feral band members of Sev'ral Timez turned toward Bill, eyes reflecting in the dim light. They were squatting around Bill's petrified corpse like a pack of apes examining a sleek black monolith.

"Hey girl," Creggy G. said.

"Hey," Bill said. He looked down at himself. His onyx black feet hovered over the ground and the yellow glow from his exoskeleton illuminated the clearing. "Lemme cut to the chase, is this gonna turn into a raunchy dream? My corporeal love life is about as cold and dry as Antarctica, I keep hoping one of my dreams will get a little hotter and wetter—"

"Nah, G," Deep Chris said. "Mr. Bratsman got us fixed."

"Aw."

"We're here to pay you reverence for freeing our minds from the chains of the conventional," Greggy C said, gesturing to Bill's corpse. Leggy P was kneeling and bowing to it and Chubby Z was posing for it. "We want to help free you like you tried to help free humanity."

Bill's eye narrowed. He tapped a finger against the edge of one brick as he considered this offer. Finally, skeptically, he said, "Fine. I'll bite. Why should I think you can help me?"

"Because we can give you the understanding your heart's been missing, girl. You're just like us," Chubby Z said. "A horror never meant to exist, born of a dream to construct the perfect golden idol, forced to dwell within an unnaturally-fabricated human shell."

Bill tilted his head thoughtfully. "I'm with you so far."

"We want you to join us," Deep Chris said. "Cavort with us in the silvan night, G. Shun the harsh light of the spotlight for the healing salve of moonbeams. We'll get drunk on the sweet fermented summer berries, uncaring of how the brambles prick our flesh. We'll dance in a frenzy of ecstasy and only sleep when the morning sun lifts the dew from the flowers and the sweat from our skin. It'll be straight Dionysian, boo."

"We can kiss the hot trees," Creggy G said.

Bill grabbed his shoulder. "Oh, you're the human that keeps making out with birch trees! I knew your face was familiar!" He paused. "So... are there any eligible ones around here?"

"Sure, girl, just downstream."

"If I'd known, I would've polished myself first."

"Say you'll join us, Bill girl," Deep Chris said. The band crowded around Bill to either side, posing around him—the backup dancers for the star singer. "You'd be one of us."

"We're already exactly the same," Creggy G said, holding up a mirror so that it reflected his and Bill's faces beside each other. In Bill's human face were two empty white eyes with pinprick pupils and pale blue irises, exactly the same as the eyes of the Sev'ral Timez boys.

He sat up with a gasp, hands flying to his face. There were still green boughs at the edges of his dreaming vision, blending into the wooden boards of the Mystery Shack's attic. Before sleep had fully fled his mind, he seized up the zodiac blanket draped over his body and stared into his embroidered eye.

The eye stared back at him. Through it, he could see his horrified sleepy face, and his normal slitted yellow eyes. His connection to the blanket's eye disappeared as he finished waking up.

He heaved a sigh of relief and flopped back down. He'd been lucid, but he hadn't been in control of that dream. He still needed practice.

He rolled toward the light of the window, groped around beneath it until he found his journal, grabbed up his crayons, and flipped pages blearily until he found the first blank one. He started writing down his dream, pausing only briefly as he tried to figure out how to translate "Sev'ral Timez" before settling on a sufficiently goofy way to misspell "several times" in Plaintext.

He made it halfway down the page before he stopped. Hold on. This wasn't his beautiful journal. These were not his beautiful crayons. He checked the cover and grimaced in displeasure when he saw a pine tree rather than a hand. Dipper's journal. Bill ripped out the page, ate it, and set the journal and Mabel's crayons back on the table  under the bedroom window.

"What was that," Dipper asked, "some kind of Morse code?"

Bill yelped and twisted around. Dipper's soul was hovering above Mabel's headboard, watching over Bill's shoulder.

"Hey! Back, foul ghost!" Bill snatched up Mabel's pillow and swung it at Dipper.

"Ow—Hey! How did you hit me, I'm in the mindscape—"

"I said back!" Bill swung again, chasing Dipper off the bed. "Back into your fleshy tomb!" He climbed off the bed, stumbled into Dipper and Mabel's trap, tripped through the sheet and probably woke up half the house.

He yanked the sheet off and flung the pillow at Dipper by its corner. "Now get back in your body, go to sleep, and leave me alone."

"I don't know how to get back in it. I just wait until it happens by itself," Dipper said, floating irritably over his sleeping body, arms crossed. "Why do you think I just wander around every time I have this dream?" He paused. "Right—it's not a dream, is it."

Bill sighed heavily. "Try putting your body on like..." He almost said like an exoskeleton, remembered his audience, and amended himself: "Like it's clothing. I usually start with the hands. Just like putting on gloves!"

Dipper looked at the cold fingers wrapped tightly around the baseball bat. "How do I put hands on like gloves? There's no opening or—"

"Just try it, would you?" Bill sat tiredly on the edge of Mabel's bed.

Dipper shot him an irritated look, but pressed his ghostly hands against his fleshly ones, passing through the skin until one set of fingers rested inside the other. A fingertip twitched. 

Bill gestured with one hand, continue. "Now the sleeves."

"I know how to get dressed." Dipper laid down in his body, forearm into forearm, shoulder into shoulder—until he was wholly back inside. He sat up, awake. "Huh."

"There, see?" Bill said. "And if you want to take it back off, just do the same thing in reverse. Like degloving your body from your soul!"

"Did you have to phrase it like that?" Still, Dipper tried it, peeling out of his body from the fingertips up. He left his body sitting upright as he hovered over it.

Bill chuckled tiredly. "Lookit your face, staring at nothing. Stupid looking."

"Shut up." He slid back into his body, more quickly now that he knew what he was doing.

"Great," Bill said. "Now that you know how to get back in your body, never do that again." He flopped back onto Mabel's bed and rolled over to face the wall. "It's a pain in my base having you wander around all night."

"Then you should've thought of that before you ripped my soul out of my body," Dipper grumbled. "Can you reattach me to my body?"

"Sure, easy." He lifted a hand to point down at his regrettably human form. "Not like this, though. Wanna help reattach me to my body?"

"Never in a million years."

"Then come back in a million years. There's nothing I can do for you until then." Bill dragged Mabel's zodiac blanket back over himself. "So sorry. Go to sleep. Leave me alone."

Dipper bet Bill could do it and was only saying he couldn't to try to trick Dipper into helping him. But he lay back down—clutching his bat again—and shut his eyes.

After a moment, Bill asked, "Where's Mabel? Sleepover?"

"Sofa bed in the living room."

"Right."

And then there was silence.

Several minutes passed. Dipper nearly fell back asleep. He heard Bill climbing out of bed and creeping across the room; but the footsteps didn't approach Dipper's bed, so he didn't open his eyes.

A few minutes after that, Dipper heard him come back, walking more heavily. He cracked open an eye to see what Bill was up to.

He was carrying Mabel, who was still asleep; his arms were trembling from her weight, but even at that Dipper hadn't known Bill was that strong. With a quiet grunt, he set her on her bed, then haphazardly tossed her sheet and zodiac blanket over her. He picked up his top hat from the bed and put it on; and then he wandered off, footsteps quiet as a ghost, and Dipper heard the creak of the door as he left the bedroom.

That was a lot nicer than Dipper had expected from Bill. Maybe he did care about Mabel in his own way.

Mabel rolled over and latched on to one of her dolls. Dipper shut his eye and fell back asleep.

####

(My favorite part of writing this was Bill dreaming about Sev'ral Timez saying the most absurdly flowery things imaginable. Anyway, let me know what y'all think about this week's chapter! And reminder that I MIGHT skip next week or the week after because the next couple chapters need heavier editing than usual.)

[ilookattextile]

I got a job at a Ukrainian museum.

On the first day someone asks me if I have any Ukrainian heritage. I say I had ancestors from Odesa, but they were Jewish, so they weren’t considered Ukrainian, and they wouldn’t have considered themselves Ukrainian. My job is every day I go through boxes of Ukrainian textiles and I write a physical description, take measurements, take photographs, and upload everything into the database. I look up “Jewish” in the database and there is no result. 

Some objects have no context at all, some come with handwritten notes or related documents. I look at thick hand-spun, hand-woven linen heavy with embroidery. Embroidery they say can take a year or more. I think of someone dressed for a wedding in their best clothes they made with their own hands. Some shirts were donated with photographs of the original owners dressed in them, for a dance at the Ukrainian Labour Temple, in 1935. I handle the pieces carefully, looking at how they fit the men in the photos, and how they look almost a hundred years later packed in acid-free tissue. One of the men died a few years later, in the war. He was younger than I am now. The military archive has more photographs of him with his mother, his father, his fiancé. I take care in writing the catalogue entry, breathing in the history, getting tearful. 

I imagine people dressed in their best shirts at Easter, going around town in their best shirts burning the houses of Jews, in their best shirts, killing Jews. A shirt with dense embroidery all over the sleeves and chest has a note that says it is from Husiatyn. I look it up and find that it was largely a Jewish town, and Ukrainians lived in the outskirts. There is a fortress synagogue from the Renaissance period, now abandoned. 

When my partner Aaron visits I take him to an event at the museum where a man shows his collection of over fifty musical instruments from Ukraine, and he plays each one. Children are seated on the floor at the front. We’re standing in a corner, the room full of Ukrainians, very aware that we look like Jews, but not sure if anyone recognizes what that looks like anymore. Aaron gets emotional over a song played on the bandura. 

A note with a dress says it came from the Buchach region. I find a story of Jewish life in Buchach in the early twentieth century, preparing to flee as the Nazis take over. I cry over this.

I’m cataloguing a set of commemorative ribbons that were placed on the grave of a Ukrainian Nationalist leader, Yevhen Konovalets, after he was assassinated. The ribbons were collected and stored by another Nationalist, Andriy Melnyk, who took over leadership after Konovalets’ death. The ribbons are painted or embroidered with messages honouring the dead politician. I start to recognize the word for “leader”, the Cyrillic letters which make up the name of the colonel, the letters “OYH” which stand for Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN in English). The OUN played a big part in the Lviv pogroms in 1941, I learn. The Wikipedia article has a black and white image of a woman in her underwear, running in terror from a man and a young boy carrying a stick of wood. The woman’s face is dark, her nose may be bleeding. Her underwear is torn, her breast exposed. I’m measuring, photographing, recording the stains and loose threads in the banners that honour men who would have done this to me. 

Every day I can’t stop looking at my phone, looking up the news from Gaza, tapping through Instagram stories that show what the news won’t. Half my family won’t talk to the other half, after I share an article by a scholar of Holocaust and genocide studies, who says Israel is committing a genocide. My dad makes a comment that compares Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. This gets him in trouble. My aunt says I must have learned this antisemitism at university, but there is no excuse for my dad. 

This morning I see images from Israeli attacks in the West Bank, where they are not at war. There are naked bodies on the dusty ground. I’m not sure if they are alive. This is what I think of when I see the image from the Lviv pogrom. If what it means for Jews to be safe from oppression is to become the oppressor, I don’t want safety. I don’t want to speak about Jews as if we are one People, because I have so little in common with those in green uniforms and tanks. I am called a self-hating Jew but I think I am a self-reflecting Jew.

I don’t know how to articulate how it feels to be handling objects which remind me of Jewish traumas I inherited only from history classes and books. Textiles hold evidence of the bodies that made them and used them. I measure the waist of a skirt and notice that it is the same as my waist size. I think of clothing and textiles that were looted from Jewish homes during pogroms. I think of clothing and textiles that were looted from Palestinian homes during the ongoing Nakba. Clothes hold the shape of the body that once dressed in them. Sometimes there are tears, mends, stains. I am rummaging through personal belongings in my nitrile gloves. 

I am hands-on learning about the violence caused by Ukrainian Nationalism while more than nine thousand Palestinians have been killed by the State of Israel in three weeks, not to mention all those who have been killed in the last seventy-five years of occupation, in the name of the Jewish Nation, the Jewish People — me? If we (and I am hesitant to say “we”) learned anything from the centuries of being killed, it was how to kill. This should not have been the lesson learned. Zionism wants us to feel constantly like the victims, like we need to defend ourself, like violence is necessary, inevitable. I need community that believes in freedom for all, not just our own People. I need the half of my family who believes in this necessary “self-defence” to remember our history, and not just the one that ends happily ever after with the creation of the State of Israel. Genocide should not be this controversial. We should not be okay with this. 

Tomorrow I will go to work and keep cataloguing banners that honour the leader of an organization which led pogroms. I will keep checking the news, crying into my phone, coordinating with organizers about our next actions, grappling with how we can be a tiny part in ending this genocide that the world won’t acknowledge, out of guilt over the ones it ignored long ago. 

[resourcesmasterposts]

Verified Ways to Donate to Gaza Directly

(updated Sep 2024)

Donate to a Palestinian family directly:

GazaFunds.com - Spotlights 1 stagnant/struggling GFM each time you visit the page. Donate directly to a Palestinian family in urgent need of evacuation, medical treatment or basic necessities. Site run by Palestinians, all campaigns verified.

(*If you can't decide who/where to donate, simply go to GazaFunds.com. They take the decision out of your hands.)

Masterlist of 200+ verified Palestinian families' GFMs: Operation Olive Branch

eSIMs: (*urgent!)

Guide to buy + send eSIMs to Gaza

Crips for eSims for Gaza: Donate any amount to this team of volunteers who pool funds to buy + maintain eSIMs for Gaza regularly (see their financial accountability document).

Food:

Cruelty-Free Meals for North Gaza: 4 Palestinian friends on the ground in Gaza distributing vegan-friendly meals & water to displaced families in North Gaza. Proof of their work found on their GFM page. (gfm)

We Feed Gaza: Palestinian volunteers in the heart of Gaza distributing food & water to 344+ families. Details & proof in their gfm. Vetted & promoted by LetsTalkPalestine on IG. (gfm)

Other reliable campaigns by Palestinian volunteers on the ground in Gaza distributing food & necessities to displaced families: Care for Gaza, Direct Aid for Gaza

Water: (*urgent and crucial)

Gaza Municipality: The Municipality of Gaza needs funds to rebuild the water pipes in Gaza City to restore access to clean drinking water & waste management. Crucial in combating the spread of infectious diseases e.g. polio.

Help provide tents:

The Sameer Project: Provides tents & transport for families in Rafah who urgently need to evacuate. Has a team on the ground in Gaza who successfully supplied tents to 1% of the displaced refugees in Rafah. Run by Palestinians. (paypal, venmo) (chuffed)

@helpgazachildren: Funds go directly to Hussam, a Palestinian in Rafah who hosts a refugee camp. Funds will cover the cost of tents & transport fuel. Managed by a Palestinian @fairuzfan. (gfm)

Medical Aid:

Gaza Wound Care: Palestinian doctors in central Gaza treating injured/sick children & mothers in neglected displacement camps far from hospitals. Severe shortage of medicines, equipment, & medical supplies. Raising funds to treat diseases in refugee camps. (gfm) (paypal) (gogetfunding)

international charities: Palestine Red Crescent Society, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, Medical Aid for Palestinians

How to help if you can't donate:

Share + amplify Palestinian fundraisers in your irl + online circles

Organize or help to run an online/irl event to raise funds for Palestine

Boycott

Get involved with a protest/strike/direct action in your area

Contact your reps

Educate yourself + others, irl + online

Daily clicks on Arab.org

(Longer masterpost of all ways you can help)

These links focus on Palestinian-run grassroots initiatives that will reach Gazans on the ground, so all of these except eSIMs, PCRF, MAP, OOB are by Palestinians. Donating to international organizations is currently not ideal, as aid is still being stopped at the border. Please focus on Palestinian-run initiatives on the ground in Gaza instead.

Remember, small donations always add up. Any amount counts, even $1!

If you are unable to donate yourself, you can even adopt a fundraiser campaign to regularly boost and make materials promoting it online, or print posters and flyers about Palestinian fundraisers to encourage others to donate.

Poster/graphic about gazafunds.com

Flyers about eSIMs

Flyers about GazaFamilyFunds

[oday-akram]

Don't skip my story please🍉🍉

My name is Oday, and today I stand on the threshold of a new chapter in my life. Just a few days ago, on October 7th, I received my high school diploma. The feeling of pride is indescribable, not just because I completed this stage, but because I did so amidst the daily challenges of living in Gaza.

I would often study by candlelight at night, and sometimes with the sounds of explosions outside. Despite all of that, I had the strength and determination to keep going. I wasn't alone on this journey; my family was always my support, and I could feel my mother's prayers for me.

After receiving my diploma, I started dreaming of seeing my future take shape within the walls of the university, planning to continue my studies and achieve my ambitions. But on October 7th, my university journey came to a halt due to the events that unfolded. It was a sudden and painful stop, forcing me to rethink my path.

Despite the pain and frustration, I realized that this pause is not the end. Life in Gaza may be difficult, but we are used to rising after every fall. I will hold on to hope and my belief that circumstances will change, and I will return to continue my education and fulfill my dreams, even if the wait is long.

The campaign is documented here.

@bixlasagna @everyoneisgay @90-ghost @not-alesha @wellwaterhysteria @norrriey @nyankootaku @nyankootaku @nickwildefan @not-alesha @amvs @alexander @ana-bananya @avacadokin @a-shade-of-blue @gaza-evacuation-funds

[mosabeldali]

Gaza blackout ‼️

‏No communications in Gaza anymore ‼️

‏There is currently a complete blackout of communications and internet in Gaza due to ongoing bombardment and damaged infrastructure, leading to the total isolation of the area from the outside world. Telecommunications and internet services have been severely affected due to power outages and airstrikes that have hit communication towers and networks.

‏Humanitarian organizations and journalists are facing extreme difficulty in communicating with residents, providing aid, or documenting events.

Now you will not be able to communicate with anyone in Gaza and also the Gazans cannot communicate with each other .

.

** I am able to connect to the Internet because I use a E SIM on Israeli networks **

‼️🚨 ‏Your help, no matter how small, could be the turning point for my family. Join me in rebuilding our lives.🚨‼️

@el-shab-hussein @nabulsi @moayesh

[temis-de-leon]

He has a nightmare where he rejected you

Characters: Lucifer and Mammon (x gn!reader, separately)

Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5

Main Masterlist

CW: very OOC since they'd never reject you to begin with, but hey, that's why it's a nightmare

A/N: the rest of the brothers, as well as the dateables, will have their own part too, but I'm writing the requests and the fics for the 500 followers event at the same time, so everything will take some time <3

.

Lucifer – You weren’t his first choice

Under the fear and the mistrust, you showed a clear interest in him since the beginning.

He couldn’t blame you; he was handsome, after all, and he knew his attitude was attractive to most.

And while he found you beautiful as well, you meddled too much in his family’s business and your defiance to him only felt irritable.

You were a nuisance. A threat to his Lord’s wishes.

He made sure to keep you at arms’ length except the few times he felt the need to threaten you.

Surprisingly, the more you forced him to know you, the more he couldn’t say no.

Your shared time turned enjoyable and you soon started to hang out in his office late at night or, if you were an early riser like him, in the morning during breakfast.

He should’ve expected your romantic feelings towards him, something he saw before you had the chance to tell him. The way you looked at him or blushed when he paid you attention, how you searched for his presence more and more.

He rejected you before you could even talk to him about it.

It was brutal, in a way, cold and straight to the point. He didn’t bother to pour his heart into his apology.

He had his duties to Lord Diavolo, to his family and the kingdom.

The attraction he felt for you, the love that could’ve been, wasn’t enough for him to stay.

There were two types of pain in his chest when he woke up: the pressure in his sternum caused by the sharp edge of the desk and the sting in his heart from the hurt in your eyes.

He didn’t do that, did he?

He accepted you, he accepted your love with open arms, gave his in return. Lucifer could remember the smile in your first kiss just as much as the sincerity in your voice each time you reminded him the depth of your feelings. He always opened his ribcage like you would with a book to show his reciprocation.

Staring at his paperwork in horror, the pool of saliva slowly drying under his distress, Lucifer searched for memories that could prove the existence of your relationship. Your weight on his lap, your scent in his clothes, the last message you sent him, the last time he treated you on a date.

When was that?

How many days ago?

Weeks? Months??

His fingers trembled when he pushed his hair back and he knew the sting in his eyes wasn’t due to fatigue. Now gasping, eyes wide open in panic, he got up and paced around the room, the false reality of his dreams thankfully fading away and letting him see himself pouring two drinks while you stared at him in adoration, setting you on top of the table to kiss you carelessly or letting you drag him out of the office for a good night sleep.

 “Dear Diavolo” he mustered to himself, taking his coat off and letting it fall to the ground before breathing deeply. “How stupid… Stupid…”

Although not entirely, the embarrassment of suffering such despair for a nightmare washed the panic away, making him thank everything that would listen that none of his brothers were there to witness his fear and desperation.

It was the last thing he needed.

However, still hating the oneiric sight of your heartbreak, Lucifer refused to stay in the office. Reading official documents and signing them with his beautifully practised handwriting seemed like proper torture now and he knew that going back to his work would only give him more suffering dreams.

Would you hug him for the rest of the night if he asked or would you rather have the roles reversed, as it usually was? Oh, what he would do to feel your fingers through his hair and your heartbeat under his cheek. He’d stay awake forever if that meant never letting you go the way he did in his dream.

.

Mammon – He wouldn’t admit the truth

He thought so lowly of you during your first week in the Devildom that once he caught feelings, admitting them was simply mortifying.

The second born, Avatar of Greed, falling in love with a human? It was embarrassing at best and pathetic at worst.

Yet, he followed you every step of the way. Going to classes, to the cafeteria, back to the house once the day was over...

As days went by, he even spent more time in your room than his; watching a movie, taking a nap, studying or just hanging out.

And when he wanted to do something else? Something more… illegal and underground?

Oh, you followed. You followed him just as blindly as he followed you.

It was painful, yet wonderful.

How full his chest felt whenever you smiled or even looked at him, the complicity in your conversations, the comfortable silence you shared.

The quiet sobs that closed his throat each time he insulted you because he accidentally showed too much of himself, the horrifying emptiness of his room that engulfed him when you finally had enough and wouldn’t let him visit you out of the blue anymore.

Your feelings for him were as clear as the ones he had for you, but none of them were spoken about.

Yours came and went, first hopeful and then neglected.

His stayed.

He still followed, you just didn’t look back anymore.

He woke up crying, body hyperventilating and sweating and mind still in the horror that his dream had created.

He recognized the sheets as the ones from his bed, but everything else looked blurry and too dark to pay attention to. However, Mammon could feel the spot next to him still warm and the silhouette of your figure was visible on the mattress. A quick glance at the door and the lights of the bathroom shining through helped set his heart in a steady pace.

You were there with him, unavailable for just a couple of minutes, but soon to return to the comfort of his arms. Your clothes were mixed with his on the sofa, he was charging his DDD with your charger because his was in your room.

Even if it was hard to say out loud, Mammon loved you too much to ever let you go, as did you.

There was no possibility of that nightmare ever being real.

“Did I wake you up?”

There you stood, above him, hair completely dishevelled, eyes half closed, either from grogginess or the temporary blindness from light exposure, and hands reaching out for him. Your fingers intertwined with his as soon as they found each other and your lips slowly came down to clumsily kiss the corner of his mouth.

“What was that?” he softly laughed, quickly forgetting about the nightmare.

“Shut up, I can’t even see you”

He could only observe in tenderness and relief as you climbed over him, ignoring your side of the bed in favour of his entire torso, but, just when you were settling in, you licked your lips and stared at him, even if you weren’t entirely able to see.

“Baby, are you crying?”

“No, I’m not” he immediately answered in a defensive stance, blushing in embarrassment.

How could you know being blind as a mole?? Did you taste his tears when you kissed him?

“Mammon”

You tried to look serious, but the exhaustion betrayed you, turning your glare into a pout. He could’ve laughed at you, and he would’ve in any other situation, but the feeling of being too late to freely love you still crushed his heart and the only thing he wanted to do was to keep you close and hope you were still there by morning.

“I’m not crying” he insisted, this time in a softer tone.

That seemed to reach whatever was left of your consciousness, so you finally let your head fall on top of his chest to continue your slumber, talking one last time only to say what he needed to hear the most.

“I love you, Mams”

“I love you too” he sighed.

He’d tell you again once you were awake. And once more after that, just to make sure.

.

.

[rafecameronssl4t]

Ok, question, fem! forced marriage au - how would Rafe react/feel if she brought up ANYTHING about separating, weather that’s flat out divorce or doing it in secret - happy to the public but living in diff spaces/diff lives/maybe even having affairs(?)

Tied bonds || Rafe Cameron x fem!reader

A/n: don't mind me going off slightly in the beginning when its talking about the legality side of it, i was literally studying trusts and estates law a couple days ago lol

Warnings: angst galore!

Word count: 2,801

MASTERLIST (forced marriage au masterlist)

divider by @h-aewo

The heavy oak doors of the estate’s study shut behind you with a quiet but resolute thud, isolating you from the rest of the world. The room, with its high ceilings and ornate furnishings, exudes both the security and suffocation of wealth. The scent of polished mahogany and aged leather permeates the air, a sensory reminder of the legacy you're bound to uphold and the responsibilities weighing on your shoulders.

The dim light from the tall windows casts long shadows across the room, making it feel as though the walls themselves are closing in, urging you to act before time runs out. You sit across from your lawyer at the broad mahogany desk. He’s a man in his 50s, with silver-threaded hair and sharp, calculating eyes. His demeanour exudes quiet authority, the kind of calm that comes from handling the complex finances of wealthy families like yours for decades.

A briefcase sits open beside him, documents meticulously laid out in front of you. These aren’t just numbers and figures on a page—they represent your children’s future, your security, and the small corner of independence you’re desperately trying to carve out for yourself. “Now, given the scale of your family’s assets,” your lawyer begins, his voice smooth and professional, “it’s prudent to separate certain accounts. Some in your name, some under irrevocable trusts for the children. This will not only shield them from potential claims but also provide financial protection in the event of....unforeseen circumstances—marital or otherwise.”

You glance down at the papers, feeling a mixture of relief and apprehension. This was necessary, you remind yourself. You need some semblance of independence, some safeguard for your children. With Rafe’s unpredictable behaviour and the constant pressure from both families, you can’t afford to let everything slip from your control. Your lawyer pulls out another document, sliding it across the desk.

“We’re talking about setting up separate trusts for each of your children. These funds will be distributed to them upon reaching a certain age—18 or 21, depending on your preference. In the meantime, control of the trust can be vested in you alone, ensuring that no one else has access to or influence over these assets, including your husband.”

“And what about Rafe’s side of the family?” you ask, your voice quieter than you intended. “Would they have any legal claim?” The lawyer shakes his head firmly. “No. Not if everything is properly structured. The trusts would be irrevocable, meaning no one—not even your husband—could alter them once established. His family would have no legal right to interfere, regardless of any financial entanglements between the two of you.”

You take a breath, the enormity of it all settling in. This is exactly what you wanted—an impenetrable safeguard. A plan that ensures your children’s future remains under your control, untouched by the unpredictable tides of Rafe’s influence or the demands of your family. “Thank you,” you respond softly, your fingers tracing the edge of the document, the weight of your decision pressing heavily on your chest. “I want everything arranged quietly,” you say softly, your voice carrying the weight of your decision.

“No one else needs to know about this… especially my husband.” The lawyer gives a small, understanding nod. “Discretion is key, as always.” You sign where indicated, feeling a mixture of relief and unease as you watch your name inked onto the page. This is the right thing to do, you remind yourself. For your children, for their future. Yet as you rise from the desk and collect your things, a sense of foreboding lingers.

The heavy oak doors creak open as you step out, and the estate feels impossibly vast around you. Despite the careful planning, you can’t shake the feeling that keeping this from Rafe will lead to complications far greater than you anticipate. With every step you take, the sinking feeling grows. You only hope Rafe doesn’t find out before you’re ready to tell him.

~

The moment you step through the front door of your home, the tension in the air is palpable. You pause, your coat still in hand, as your eyes land on Rafe. He’s leaning casually against the doorframe, arms crossed, an almost relaxed posture, but the intensity in his gaze betrays any notion of calm. His sharp blue eyes follow your every move, calculating, probing.

"You have a nice little meeting today?" His voice is cold, deceptively casual. But you can hear the edge in it—the suspicion lurking beneath the surface. Your heart skips a beat, anxiety pooling in your chest. Of course, he knows. Rafe always knows. You hang your coat on the rack, avoiding his gaze, trying to maintain some semblance of calm. "I had a few things to take care of. Where are the children?"

You answer nonchalantly, hoping to steer the conversation away from any confrontation. "With Astoria, they wanted to play with their cousins," Rafe answers, his gaze sharp as he pushes off the doorframe, taking a slow, deliberate step toward you, his presence overwhelming as always. "Answer my question," His tone hardens, suspicion fully creeping into his voice now. "I know you met with your lawyer. What are you up to?"

Your pulse quickens as you hold Rafe’s gaze, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. He’s already jumping to conclusions, constructing a narrative that fits his fears. You knew this confrontation was inevitable, but the reality of it still unsettles you, the tension in the room thick and suffocating. "It’s nothing that concerns you," you respond, keeping your tone as even as possible, despite the way your nerves fray under his scrutiny. "Just some family matters."

Rafe scoffs, the sound harsh and filled with disbelief. His jaw clenches as he steps even closer, his towering figure casting a shadow over you, blocking any hope of retreat. His presence is overbearing, the heat of his anger palpable in the air between you. "Family matters?" His voice is dripping with accusation, dark and biting. "Don’t play games with me. I heard enough to know this wasn’t just about your parents or your siblings."

His words cut deeper as his tone drops, low and dangerous. "You’re setting up trust funds. Inheritance management. Without telling me. What the hell are you planning?" His words slam into you, twisting your stomach in knots. His paranoia, the sharpness of his accusations, stings in a way you hadn’t fully prepared for. Of course, you knew he’d react like this, but hearing it out loud—his anger, his distrust—it’s worse than you imagined. You steady your breath, trying to keep your composure.

"It’s for the children, Rafe," you say, your voice soft but firm, though the tightness in your chest makes it difficult to breathe. "I want to make sure they’re taken care of, no matter what happens. That’s all this is." But even as you say it, you can see the suspicion lingering in his eyes, the doubt still gnawing at him, twisting this simple act of protection into something more sinister in his mind.

Rafe glares at you, his eyes dark and intense as they search your face for the slightest hint of deception. His presence feels overwhelming as he steps even closer, the space between you disappearing in an instant. Without breaking eye contact, his hand moves down deliberately, resting on the swell of your belly where your third child grows. His touch, firm and possessive, sends a chill through you.

"You don’t trust me with that?" His voice is low, almost a growl, laced with an edge of disbelief and wounded pride. "You think I wouldn’t look out for my own kids?" His words sting, but it's the subtle accusation in his tone that cuts deeper, as if he can’t comprehend why you would feel the need to act independently. Your frustration bubbles to the surface despite your best efforts to remain calm, your emotions swirling between anger and exhaustion.

"That’s not what this is about," you snap, your voice sharp as the tension between you flares. You're trying to hold it together, but the weight of his misunderstanding—of him always assuming the worst—pushes you to the brink. "I’m doing this to protect them. To protect us. You can’t control everything, Rafe." For a split second, something flickers in his eyes—hurt, maybe—but it vanishes quickly, replaced by his usual defensiveness. He steps closer, his voice lowering, cold and accusatory.

"You’re doing all of this behind my back," he growls. "And I’m supposed to believe it’s just for the kids? You don’t set up secret meetings with lawyers for something as simple as trust funds. It looks more like you’re preparing for something else. Like maybe you’re planning to escape this all." His breath is hot against your ear now, the venom in his words unmistakable. "Is that it? Are you getting ready to leave me?"

His accusation hits you hard, knocking the air from your lungs. The vulnerability behind it cuts deeper than you expected. It’s not just anger simmering in his voice—there’s fear too, buried beneath the suspicion, fear of losing control, of you slipping away. His jaw tightens, but his hand remains firmly pressed against the swell of your stomach, as if anchoring himself to you, to the life you’re carrying.

“And have our children without their father?” you ask, your voice sharp. There’s a flicker of something more beneath the surface—hurt, uncertainty. His eyes search yours, almost pleading. You blink, stunned by the weight of your own question. “Rafe…” you begin, your voice barely a whisper, incredulity lacing your words as you try to make sense of what you’ve just implied. “I’m not leaving you.”

The tension in the room feels suffocating, as if the walls themselves are closing in. You take a breath, steadying yourself, as you step closer, your gaze softening despite the frustration swirling inside you. "This isn’t about that,” you say gently, trying to reach him through the haze of his suspicions. “But I need some control over my life, Rafe. Some protection.” Your voice wavers slightly, but you press on. “I’m not just here to be controlled or managed. I need to know that I’m not just a piece in this game.”

You can feel his breath against your skin, heavy with unspoken fears, and for a brief moment, the façade of his strength cracks. The fear of losing control, of losing you, is palpable, and it clings to the space between you like a storm cloud ready to burst. He exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair, pacing in frustration. "Control. Protection," he mutters under his breath, his movements sharp and agitated. "You think I’m the threat here? You think I wouldn’t protect you? Protect our family?"

You shake your head, stepping back slightly, trying to maintain some distance from the intensity of his emotions. "I never said that," you say, your voice softer now, trying to calm him. "But this is something I need to do. For me. For them." For a long moment, the two of you stand there, locked in a silent standoff. His breathing is heavy, and the anger in his eyes slowly shifts into something else—something more conflicted. He turns away from you, pacing a few steps before running his hands through his hair again.

"This isn’t how marriages are supposed to work," Rafe mutters, more to himself than to you. The words cut deep, piercing through the fragile layer of calm you’ve been clinging to. It’s a painful reminder of what your marriage has become—what it’s always been. The expectations, the compromises, the strain. This life… it’s not what either of you envisioned. You feel the urge to retort, to let loose the frustrations that have built up over the years, but you bite your tongue. Now isn’t the time for that argument.

"I know," you whisper, though you’re not sure if he hears you. The admission feels hollow in the tense silence that follows, the weight of your reality pressing down on both of you. The room feels unbearably heavy, the air thick with unsaid words. Rafe exhales, his broad shoulders sagging ever so slightly, as though some of the fire inside him has been extinguished. He turns his back to you, the physical distance a reflection of the emotional chasm that has been growing between you both.

For a brief moment, you consider stepping closer, reaching out, bridging that gap—but the weight of your decision, of everything you’ve been trying to secure for yourself and the children, holds you back. It’s a boundary you can’t afford to cross right now. "You should’ve told me," he finally says, his voice quieter, but still taut with lingering tension. There’s hurt there, beneath the anger, beneath his instinct to control everything around him.

Your throat tightens at his words, the soft accusation lingering in the space between you. "I didn’t want this to turn into a fight," you admit, your own voice subdued, drained from the confrontation. The fatigue in your bones echoes in your tone. "I just needed to make sure everything was in place. For the kids, for their future." You pause, the weight of your decisions settling on your chest. "I wasn’t trying to hide it from you."

Rafe turns back to face you, his expression a mixture of frustration, hurt, and something more vulnerable—something he rarely lets show. "It feels like you were," he mutters, the edge of accusation still present, though softer now. His blue eyes search yours, looking for answers, reassurance, something to ease the fear behind his suspicion. You hold his gaze, trying to convey the truth behind your words. "I need to feel like I have some control, Rafe," you say gently, your voice steady but laced with an underlying sadness.

"Our lives… they’re not easy. And I know you want to protect us, but I need to protect them too. In my own way." Your heart beats heavily in your chest, each word an attempt to bridge the gap between you, a gap that seems to widen with every conflict. Rafe’s gaze lingers on you, the tension between you both crackling in the air. You take a tentative step forward, closing the physical distance between you, hoping it will ease the emotional one. Just as you stop inches from him, his expression softens slightly.

He reaches for your hand, his grip firm yet tender, and before you can say anything, he brings it up to his lips. The moment feels suspended in time as he presses a kiss to your knuckles, the warmth of his breath brushing against your skin. It’s a gesture so gentle, so unlike the earlier confrontation, that it catches you off guard. The vulnerability in his eyes flickers, almost as if he’s silently asking for forgiveness or offering an unspoken truce.

You feel your heart ache, the gesture disarming you in a way his words couldn’t. It’s as though this kiss is his way of telling you that, despite his anger, despite his suspicions, there’s something deeper binding you together—a love neither of you can deny, even in moments like this. “I’m not the enemy, Y/n,” he repeats softly, his voice rough but sincere, the earlier accusation tempered by this quiet moment.

His lips linger on your skin for just a second longer before he lowers your hand, though he doesn’t let go. You swallow hard, your chest tight with emotion, your voice a whisper as you respond. "I know you're not." The air between you feels different now—quieter, softer, though still tinged with the weight of everything unresolved. For that fleeting moment, it feels as though the two of you are in sync again, even if just barely.

Rafe’s hand remains wrapped around yours, and though the tension between you hasn’t fully dissipated, it’s no longer suffocating. The kiss to your knuckles feels like a promise, fragile but meaningful. As he finally lets go and turns away, you watch him disappear down the hallway, the memory of his lips on your skin lingering long after he's gone. The weight of your choices still presses down on you, but somehow, in that brief exchange, it feels a little lighter.

You know this isn’t over. Rafe’s suspicions won’t vanish overnight, and your need for autonomy remains unresolved. But for now, the confrontation is over. The weight of your decisions, the strain on your already fragile relationship, presses down on you like a heavy cloak. You did the right thing, you remind yourself. This is about protecting your children, about securing a future for them. For now, all you can do is hope that, in time, he’ll come to understand why you did this. Why you needed to.