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kashimos-hajime · 4 years

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homestretch of the hard times | g.t.

summary: the eve days of your potential death kinda spurns things to move forward: for takemura, it means confessions. for you, it means making exceptions. and drinks. ‘cause takemura’s the pickiest fucking eater you’ve ever met.

WARNINGS: small spoilers for act 1 of cyberpunk 2077 and references to non-spoiler texts between takemura and v, just fluff, small angst, swearing, idk what else is going on so if there are actual spoilers thats completely coincedental ndlnskfsldnf pairing: goro takemura x fem!street-kid!v word count: 2.6k

a/n: so cdpr did us dirty for not allowing us to romance him (to my knowledge) but he has my mind, heart and everything else so :) listened to the bones by maren morris w/ hozier

part of the tales of a two-bit thief series

It starts with something straight out of a romance movie: A car crash, saving each other’s lives (well, him more than you) and “Wait, V, I need you.”

You don’t know how you got here, to be precise. There were a chain of events, some absolutely stand up fucking moments on your part, and just… fuckery. So much fuckery and life went to shit.

All you know is the ticking time bomb’s only ticking louder and at this point, the only thing that can silence it at all is the man beside you. Not even the meds Misty gave you can help you now.

You’re sitting in his car because you called him and he had answered and now… now they’re on one of the off ramps looking over Night City like they own the fucking place.

Maybe you did, once. Ha, maybe back when everything seemed more job to job and not life to life. For a moment, maybe you were in the big leagues.

Takemura doesn’t say anything, even though you can tell he wants to. His hair still pulled into that man bun, collared shirt with not a single wrinkle in sight. Weird how he never looks out of place, not really. Not even with the car crash. Shit, he always looked good.

You think you’re actually gonna miss that. That one semblance of someone being put together that gave you the hope that maybe you could stick it too.

You think you’re gonna miss a lot of things about him—from his stupid complaints about the food here, to his stupid random philosophy texts in the day, to the fact that he eats the ramen you buy anyway without complaint, even though it’ll never compare to what he has in Japan.

The thought that counts.

They don’t even have the radio on, just the dim lights of the car, a window rolled down. You don’t smoke but you feel like you should be tapping a cig either way. You haven’t had the time to just fucking breathe—not with Silverhand breathing down your neck, corpo rats swarming you on all sides.

Everyone wants a piece of you, it feels like.

You look at Takemura.

Almost everyone.

“Thank you,” you tell him quietly, with difficulty. It’s hard to get through your words without thinking Silverhand’s behind your back, mocking you. You’re so fucking tired. “It hasn’t been easy.”

He doesn’t respond. He’s too busy looking at one of the cars nearly collide with a pedestrian. You could’ve laughed. You used to make fun of the shitty drivers in Night City, knowing full well you’re one of them.

You get chased by a couple of cops, rules start to bend.

You used to wonder why you never left.

Then, you actually left, and you realized that hell, you can take the person out of Night City—can’t take the Night City out of a person.

Atlanta fucking sucked, but maybe you should’ve stayed there.

But then, a tiny voice whispers as you look out the window to the fresh night wind. You never would’ve met him.

It’s funny, you think. To come back and get a brain tumour in the shape of a rocker who can’t fucking touch anyone who loves him, who he loved, only for you to fall in love with a corpo you can’t fucking touch at all because… because there is no time left. It just isn’t fair.

“I used to be a corpo kid,” you confess, looking at him with a wry smile again. That catches his attention. He looks at you with those eyes that scrutinize you, interrogate you, peel you apart to your bare essentials and you have to look away before you can’t control your face anymore. God fucking damn it. “Not when it mattered, obviously, but… I remember what it was like. Grew up hating every single on of them.”

“Your parents were Arasaka?”

“Mhm. Security division.” It’s like your eyes are magnetic to his because when you blink, you find yourself regarding him again. Your fingers play at your lips. “Counterintelligence. I was supposed to go into that, too. Big dreams.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, then my parents were tried for treason and murdered, so I got thrown out. That’s it.” Your hand falls away. You pick at the chipped nail polish on your thumb. “Never told anyone that. ‘Cept…” Jackie. Well, he’s fucking dead, now. “‘Cept you, now, I guess. Guess some corpos aren’t so bad.”

The corner of his mouth pinches up like he’s flattered and you can’t help the pleased warmth spreading through your chest.

“Should I be honoured I am one of the few exceptions you have made?”

“Well, I don’t make exceptions often, so…” You grin slyly. He looks away just as you catch a flash of his smile growing. It’s a nice smile. You wish you saw it more often before the end of the road. Maybe it’s one of the regrets you have, too. “Yeah, maybe you should feel special.”

“Hm.”

“C’mon, Takemura. Humour the walking dead, yeah?” You stretch against the leather of his car seat with a pleased sound. “I’m spending what time I have left with who I want to. Can’t ask for much better than that.” A quiet hangs in the air as you melt against the black leather and you look at Takemura who’s staring at the wheel with an intensity you don’t often see. It makes your gut squirm.

“And I? I am one of those people?”

You lean on one hip and look at him, bending a knee and resting an ankle on your thigh. He looks at you with an uncertainty—an uncertainty you’re sure echoes in your eyes.

It was business, then it wasn’t. Maybe it never was.

“Yeah. You’re one of the few on the short list.”

“Exceptions again.”

You laugh. “Yeah. You’re an exception to most things, I think. Weird, that.”

“How so?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I’ve had family—still do, ones that matter, you know. Just… no one ever like you, Takemura. Drives me crazy.”

“The feeling is mutual. Your mocking brings you onto thin ice, V.” His fingers tap against the steering wheel. The engine’s off so it seems more fidgety than anything. Weird. You never noticed he fidgeted before. Maybe he’s nervous?

About what?

“I must ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“If you have a future, what do you see for yourself?”

Your eyebrows shoot up. You frown and pick at your flecking nail polish even more, looking at your hand and focusing more on that so you don’t have to answer your question. His eyes burn into you and you swallow, trying not to act like you haven’t thought, in regret, at night, about a hundred million fucking times the possibilities they could’ve had together.

You’re not about to say all that.

Instead: “Settling down with the family. Mama Welles, people at the Coyote.” You blatantly don’t look at him when you add, “Others. This has been enough action for a lifetime.” You rest your hands on your lap and chance a glimpse at him. He’s looking away from you, out the window on his side, and you shift in your seat. “How about you? You must’ve… had dreams. Before all this shit went down. You make it out of here and then what?”

When he looks at you, your heart nearly cracks at the sadness in his eyes. He smiles, but there is no strength, and his eyes are darker than the night surrounding them.

“I would go to the countryside, just as I’ve always wanted. Leave this, all of this, behind. Rural Japan is beautiful, so a small town would suffice where everyone knows everyone. We do favours for one another. It is community. Nothing like here.” His lips pull into a tiny frown. “When I was a younger man, I wanted a daughter,” is all he says. “I believe I could have been a great father, so perhaps… perhaps one day.”

“A daughter? Not a son?” you ask curiously, and he almost chuckles. You can’t help the faint smile on your face.

“If my daughter grew up anything like her mother,” he explains with a slight glance towards you, “I would have more hope than a son who was like me.”

You frown. “You’re not a bad man, Takemura. Any son like you—with your code of honour, your shitty selfie skills—no one’s gotta a chance.”

He merely scoffs in response. Again, with the you mocking him. It’s a wonder he lets you.

“But really, that sounds… nice. A daughter, a wife.” You drum your fingers against your knee and his eyes dart to yours, click like they were always destined to meet, and your lips part. Words stall on your tongue and you want to speak but in the dim lights, you are lost in the darkness of his eyes. Something comes, something goes, and you barely croak out, “Whoever marries you will have to deal with so much of your shit that the kids have to turn out alright. The complaining, for one. Picky eater for another.”

This time, he does chuckle and you swallow a breath at the sound. “Dealing with it comes with practice, V.”

“Is that so?”

“Shouldn’t you know?”

“I—“ For once, no funny retort, no witty quip shoots out of your mouth, and you realize that there is an implication—an intricate dance where they’re struggling not to step on each other’s toes and nearly failing at every turn, yet somehow, it works because they’re dancing, and it’s quiet, and it’s… it’s peaceful.

Shit, you’re getting a load of this. When’d you become a poet?

“I guess I should know,” you finally say. “Never understood why I got so giddy whenever I saw your texts, you know, seein’ your name flash on my phone.” You laugh bitterly. “Guess I know why, now.” He’s silent and you don’t look at him. You look at the dashboard where you’ve kicked your feet up a dozen times, the glove compartment that still has your sunglasses inside.

Shit.

“Thank you for everything. Shit’s a little… more bearable, I guess. When you’re around, that is.” The words come out stilted, awkward, but your heart is so heavy in your throat you feel like you’re going to choke. You look into your lap, your whole body incinerating under what you’re sure is the most judgemental glare of your life and you just hope to fucking God this man says something, does something.

Holy shit. You’re going to die of embarrassment. Didn’t even think that was possible.

Then, a loud sigh. A sigh you’ve heard often enough beside you right before a gunfight or when he has to eat the food you ordered for him or even the nights when they’re exhausted, bruised, and just plain tired right before going to sleep where they lay on the floor.

It’s exasperated, a how on earth did we get here, a very annoyed again, you’re so fucking stupid, and you’re still running through your list on what this particular sigh can mean before a hand gently takes hold of yours. Your eyes dart to his, blinking and he stares at you like you’ve just stabbed him. Your heart is fucking racing in your chest, pounding like thunder. His fingers fold over and you realize, as you interlace fingers, that his skin is burning at your touch.

Or maybe, it’s the other way around.

They sit there in silence, not looking at one another, looking out windows, parts of the car, everything but each other, and when he squeezes your hand, you close your eyes and swallow your heart.

It’s over.

“V,” he murmurs, voice so deathly quiet and raspy in your ears that your gut clenches. You turn to watch him. “Tell me that you will not stop fighting.” You swallow your breath as his eyes flicker from your own to your parted lips. He inhales quietly and you swear you can feel his heartbeat pulsing in his fingers in your grip. “That this is not all for nothing.”

“It isn’t.“

“Then I was right.” His eyes flutter back to your gaze and he tilts his head. Wisps of fine hair escaping his manbun brush over his nose and you reach up on your own accord, swiping it behind your ear. You lean over the console, your elbow digging into the leather and, tentatively, you trail your fingers down his jaw, hold his face in your hand. “I am… what is that phrase you use so often?”

“SNAFU?”

“No.”

“Assblasted.”

“No.”

“Royally fucked?”

“We need to expand your vocabulary.” You smile nefariously as his other hand reaches for your chin. He pinches it lightly, thumb stretching up to brush over your lips and your face freezes at his touch. “But yes. Royally fucked. I wasn’t wrong when I said I needed you.”

“I think that meant a whole something else back then,” you whisper rawly and he smiles sombrely. His thumb leaves your mouth to brush your cheek, his eyes fixing on you as if he’s trying to memorize aspects of your face: the arch of your nose, the bow of your smile, the way your brow wrinkles. “Meant more business-like.”

“I did. And now, I believe the terms have changed.” He arches an eyebrow. “Are we at a mutual understanding, V?”

“Yes.” And I hate that we are. Your hand along his jaw lifts to wrap around his wrist. “Consider that feeling mutual, yeah? It goes both ways.”

“I will.” Another small smile graces his lips. It makes him look younger every time and you rub your thumb over the back of his hand.

“Do you wanna grab something to eat before you drive me back home for some shuteye?”

“The choices here are atrocious, V.”

“Then, drinks,” you propose, letting go of his wrist. He lets go of your chin, and turning to face the front, you kick up your feet on his dash. He stares at you for a moment then sighs because there really isn’t anything he can do about it. Nor, do you think, he wants to. You squeeze his hand and send him a silly smile. “How about drinks? I wasn’t hungry anyway.”

“Are you paying?”

You eye him incredulously. “Who do you take me for? You?”

He snorts and the engine roars to life with a flick of his wrist. He grabs the wheel dominantly and you swallow at the way his fingers wrap around the handle. “The Afterlife, then?”

“Or, we could make it rustic.” You pull his hand into your lap playfully and run a thumb over his knuckles. His eyes flit over and you send him a smirk. “I know Mama Welles doesn’t like you, but the Coyote’s serving cheap. Happen to like me there.” He begins to pull out of their little overhang and he nudges their joined hands into your abdomen, silently telling you to buckle in. Rolling your eyes, you mumble out a ‘boomer’ underneath your breath before letting go of him and following orders.

He settles a hand on your thigh and squeezes. You hang an arm out the window.

The wind’s running through the car, he has the radio on low, and they’re easing through onto the highway.

Your chest is lighter than a feather, mind’s quieter than a ghost.

You’ve seen scarier deaths, dealt a lot more. You know that silence is a bigger killer than most bullets.

But here you are now…

“I’m changing this,” Takemura says. “This music is terrible.”

…Shit, maybe life isn’t so bad, ending the way it is.

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the-darklings · 4 years

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—𝐭𝐢𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞;

⤫ pairing: johnny silverhand x corp!v(ermillion)

⤫ summary: Usually, they’re a calamity together—destructive and volatile as each other. But right now, just for a second, there is only music and them.

⤫ word count: 2.3k+

⤫ warnings: spoilers for act i & side mission the ballad of buck ravers, third person but can be read as RI ig, swearing, written in one sitting so who knows what the final result is - certainly not me.

⤫ notes: let me leave my clown shoes outside.

It starts out the way it always does.

One ring leads to another and she suddenly finds herself running or driving around the Night City with little to no rest, pulling one job after another. The more jobs she closes the more she seems to be in demand.

Good for business. Good for making a name for herself, too, but not so good on her overall being.

She’s been running. Like a fucking coward. Filing her days with meaningless shit while trying desperately not to think about her ticking clock. About Jackie.

Guilt gnaws on her bones daily. She should have done more, been better, more careful. Jackie never should have died. It was stupid and blind ambition that drove them both to try and pull this near impossible heist in the first place. Her own reckless drive has blinded her, and now the person closest to her in this fucking city is nothing more than a cold corpse.

Fuck.

She should have sent him to his family instead. She only wanted to spare them from the grief of having to see Jackie in the state he was in but now Araska has his body and god knows what those assholes might be doing with it.

And now…

Well she has nothing to lose, does she? She’s already dying, already hunted, her only close friend is dead. She promised to make him proud. Make it to the big leagues or make a league all on her own if that’s what it takes. Bleed this city dry if that’s the price to pay for what she wants.

Back when she worked for Arasaka she wanted knowledge which led to power. Then she wanted guns and money and a roof over her head.

Now she wants something more. After coming face to face with her own fragile morality, she has begun to realise how meaningless things like money and power are. Now she wants to surpass that. To become something immortal—something that will outlive her body. Maybe even outlive this city.

Jackie should have been one of such people.

“You look like you’re about to shit yourself,” a voice drawls from beside her, a crackle filling the air as a too familiar silhouette of a man appears in her sight. “Or cry.”

“Fuck off.”

V turns away from one Johnny Silverhand because it’s hard to look at him and not be reminded of the fact that she’s slowly dying and the construct only she can see and hear is the one doing the deed.

“This self-pitying bullshit needs to stop,” he says, ignoring her vicious words. “We share a brain, remember? I feel what you feel. It’s downright depressing in your head right now.”

Her jaw clicks at the reminder. Everyday she wakes up and feels like they’re linked by a bridge—he stands on one side, and she on another. When they come closer, she can feel it—feel him. The overlap is near dizzying, overwhelming, even a little addictive. But it’s always followed by agony because she fights back, tries to shove him away. If not, he will consume her, but she will get him out of her head before that ever happens.

You share a brain now, Vik had told her only days prior, his eyebrows knitted tight and—albeit subdued—but clear worry in his low voice, senses and memories, even perception. Eventually it will become impossible to tell whose who anymore.

The worst thing is the fact that he’s right.

She can feel Silverhand rooted inside her; a constant, a presence that is persistent to a point she knows she’s not alone even if she wishes to be.

An echo of a being deep inside her.

“Then get the hell out,” she bites back, fighting to keep her temper leashed so she doesn’t burst out at him like she did at the diner. She can still remember the wary stares she received from the diners when she started shouting verbally at a figment only she could perceive in the first place. “I didn’t ask for a parasite to make himself home in my brain.”

Johnny scoffs under his breath, raising a cigarette to his mouth, and she’s nearly overcome with need to remind him that he’s fucking dead, and can’t smoke. That, and the fact that she would prefer him to leave her the fuck alone.

“You did the job, didn’t ya? You sure you didn’t have this comin’?”

Flipping him off, she storms past him, her jaw clenched to appoint it aches and eyes narrowed. Just her luck not only to get stuck with a human tumour but for the said tumour to be a bastard to boot.

So much for being buddies.

Sun has set over Westbrook hours ago yet Chinatown is as busting with life as always. Overflowing with conversations all spoken in different languages, smells, distant gunshots, and people from all walks of life just trying to survive. Even during her years with the Arasaka, she never quite got used to the vastness of the Night City—not even when she was sure she was at the top. The way this city seems to breathe and fester day in and out; a living beast full of dangers and potential is unique.

Lost in the crowd, it’s almost easy to forget who she is aside from another face in the said crowd. She’s not a merc, not an ex-corp working counterintelligence—she’s not anything.

Her optics catch sight of several Tiger Claws lingering around the market, and she makes sure to give them a wide berth, especially when she notes the impressive list of their stats. She’s not stupid enough to attack outright when they outclass her—for now—and there are several of them around. With the market this busy the only outcome to that fight would be a bloodbath with police on her ass when that’s the last thing she needs right now.

Despite that logical part inside her steering her well clear of the gang members the need to blow off some steam bubbles under her skin. An ache starts to form against her temple soon after, making her focus blur around the edges as she wanders from vendor to vendor aimlessly.

“Hey, V,” a rumble of a voice cuts through her thoughts—and she hates how she can’t quite ignore his voice unlike everyone else—and turns her head in the direction of the call. She had foolishly assumed he was going to give her some peace of mind for tonight at least. “Check this guy out.”

Walking up a dimly lit staircase, she had barely noticed a man sitting on a rickety chair and playing a guitar. Much like her, others walk right past him, ignoring the man altogether.

Johnny glimmers into sight, squatting in place and oddly intent on observing the old man while he plays.

She entertains the idea of walking away simply to piss him off. If something is of interest to him, then she wants to ignore it so hard it gets under his nonexistent skin. Petty, perhaps, but ever so satisfying.

Hearing no reply or receiving much reaction at all, Johnny slants his head her way, nodding once towards the man, “What do you think?”

Squinting, she drags her gaze towards the guitarist, crossing her arms over her chest while she listens. She’s not even sure why she’s bothering but…

The melody is slow, near drowned out by the bustling sounds of the nearby market and chatter of people walking past.

“He’s...fine?” she offers lamely. “I mean he’s pretty good.”

A slight smirk crosses over Johnny’s mouth—gone in a blink but the focus he places on the man who seems to be unaware of her or the silent second spectator surprises her.

“Loses tempo more than he keeps it,” he comments, almost absently, and she feels her eyebrows arch in another show of bewilderment. A quiet spells falls over their little nook, and Johnny listens more, thoughts rolling inside his head if his body language is any sign. “Sloppy on the technique but he has feeling in the way he plays. Can’t teach that.”

“If only you didn’t die,” she sighs softly, closing her eyes in mock sympathy. “This could have been you.”

He surprises her again by laughing at that. It’s a deep rumble of a sound, and she can almost feel it echo between them and their mental bridge. “You’re kinda of a bitch. Has anyone told you that before?”

Her teeth flash in the dim orange glow of the neon lights. “And you’re sort of a dick. Anyone tell you that before?” she wonders with a charming, practiced smile.

He flickers out of sight and she’s about to call it a mental victory but a tickle of electricity kisses across the bare curve of her shoulder and neck, and she shivers when he appears beside her. His arms are crossed as well, and he glances her way briefly.

“Seems to me like we’re two peas in a fuckin’ pot, then,” he points out easily, and shakes his head, seemingly amused by his own words. “I might have tried to kill you a few weeks ago but look at us being chummy, Ver.”

Her throat closes up at that, expression tightening. He notices of course. Or maybe it’s the unease that slices through her mind at the casual way he uses her nickname.

“What? Am I not allowed to call you that or somethin’?” he wonders curiously, seemingly entertained by her reaction. Asshole.

“Only my friends call me Ver.”

Jackie was the first.

That thought makes her swallow painfully, a dull ache clawing against her heart. One would think that years being a corpo would have wiped whatever humanity still lived in her but Jackie’s death had been a stark reminder that she couldn’t be further from the truth if she tried.

“Why?”

She gives him a flat look. “Because my full name is Vermillion, but people tend to find it a mouthful so…”

“Vermillion,” he repeats, his intonation dry, and she shoots him a quick glare, daring him to make an issue of it. Naturally, his next words don’t surprise her, “That’s a stupid fuckin’ name.”

“Oh, because Johnny Silverhand is so much better.”

She expects him to say something snarky in return, argue maybe, but he only snorts. His metal hand lifts, pushing his aviators down slightly as he glances at her over them.

“You got me there.”

Usually, they’re a calamity together—destructive and volatile as each other. But right now, just for a second, there is only music and them. Shadows and life of the Night City holding them both suspended in this moment. No arguments or biting comments. No guilt, either.

A slight smile tugs across her mouth as she continues listening to the man play his downbeat little tune. Her shoulders loosen, drooping slightly and she lets herself breathe for a moment. Just the one.

“Used to be just like him,” Johnny speaks up suddenly, his voice more subdued, lower, and taps his fingers against the cigarette he’s holding. “But better. Used to play everywhere we could. Garages, bars. Anywhere that would have us, and we always had an audience.”

She hums, offering him a brief glance. “You mean you were actually good?”

She can’t see his eyes in the darkness of the street or through his tinted shades. But despite that, she can still feel his glare and the mental bite of chagrin/irritation/why is she so annoying? and deeper than that a spark of amusement/little shit thinks she’s funny.

“What’s this?” he muses, his words sarcastic. “A corpo rat that actually has a sense of humour? Colour me surprised.”

“No can do,” she shoots back promptly, fighting back a wider grin. “You’re too dead for that.”

He tsks, throwing his cigarette to the ground and she almost rolls her eyes. “Can’t wait to be out of your damn head, princess.”

“Can’t wait to be rid of you, either, so the feeling is mutual.”

Their words might be stringent but she can almost taste the faint amusement trickling between them and under that bridge that connects them.

“There might still be some bootlegs of those old days,” he muses thoughtfully. “People used to record everything back in my day.”

She drags her gaze his way, lips thinning into a firm line, “I’m not becoming a fan, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“Afraid you’ll hear real music and won’t be able to go back to this modern garbage I hear everywhere?”

There is challenge in his words and she bristles. Maybe this is what she needs. She may not be able to put holes in some Tiger Claws with her sniper rifle but she sure as hell can go on a scavenger hunt and see what she finds.

Besides, it might help her to understand the man nested inside her mind a little better.

So when an hour later the old, wrinkly vendor asks her why he should give her his oldest, most precious Samurai vinyl, she tells him the truth.

A twisted truth.

But truth all the same.

“He’s with me every step I take, every move I make,” she confesses softly, something deep down breathing awake at that admittance. “Johnny’s like my conscience. My eternal, infernal moral compass.”

She doesn’t miss how the man in question doesn’t appear, doesn’t say anything even after hearing that. She would have figured he would be the first in line to offer her some mocking, snarky comment but there is only silence.

In fact, she can barely feel him at all. The tether between them is still and quiet.

And his silence says a lot more than he probably realises.

an: hello. guess whose not dead and kinda back to writing. dunno how much of cp77 you should expect because coa is still my priority but maybe occasional fic for these dumbos is on the cards. oh, and takemura because cdpr are cowards for not giving us that enemies to friends/partners to lovers romance. also I know this isn’t strictly RI and I honestly considered writing it as such but saw...no point? since the premise still would have been the same, so something a little different today ig.

#cyberpunk 2077 #johnny silverhand #johnny silverhand x v #johnny silverhand x female v #keanu reeves #johnny silverhand imagine #johnny silverhand fic #cyberpunk 2077 imagine #cyberpunk 2077 fic #c: vermillion #s: get out of my head

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seoultrippins · 3 years

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focus | pjm | 01

Summary: Park Jimin is an extremely accomplished con man who takes an amateur con artist under his wing. What he did not see coming was you and him being romantically involved and with Jimin’s profession of being a liar and a cheater for a living, he realizes that deception and love are things that don't go together. Or could it?

Pairing: Reader x Jimin

Genre: Crime, Conman!Jimin, Conartist!Reader, Smut, Fluff

Word Count: 2851

Warnings: Cussing, Slight groping

Status: 1/?

A/N: Hey! It feels nice to be writing on tumblr, I've always wanted to. I 've grown accustomed to publishing my writings on AFF but I thought it'd be pretty cool to start publishing here. I hope you enjoy reading and I am not too sure how many parts there would be but either way don't be a silent rider. The smut in the next chapter will be intense however, so bless me.

From the lazy spin of the fans, to the recumbent light of eventide that will soon be starlit black, the bar soaks in the ambiance of this good night. It's a bar, in a hotel that has a name you could barely pronounce but everyone is attempting to appear proper in their high end suits and attire, as you are. Fidgeting through the skin tight dress you had on, you rested your arm on the bar countertop as you analysed the surroundings. The bar is hundreds of conversations told in loud voices, all of them competing with the live jazz music that dominated the atmosphere. The crowd had a mixture of the young and the old and it was perfect. Perfect to source out for your very next victim. However, as you searched the throng, you felt a strong warmth around your waist and turned around as your eyes met with a desperate pair. Dressed in a suit two sizes bigger than required, the sloppy looking man insisted he had you in his arms. You wrinkled your brows as you realized where this was going, and it was destroying your good mood. Nervously, you removed the man’s hands away but his persistence remained. Whispering filthy nothings in your ears, your hands reached out to push the man away. Frustration boiled through your veins as you desperately thought of ways to remove yourself from the dreadful situation.

“Okay, you know what,” You chuckled nervously. “My boyfriend could be here any minute.” Your hands were busy pushing his persistent hands away as he laughed.

“Yea? I don’t see anyone. C’mon baby, no point lying..”

Rolling your eyes, you eyes scan through the crowd. Eyes evidently searching for someone you could confide in and that did it. Your eyes landed on the gentleman feasting on his dinner. Your eyes widened, handsome is a state of soul that carries through that man. He had that kind of face that stopped you in your tracks. He must get used to that, the sudden pause in a person’s natural expression when they looked his way followed by overcompensating with a nonchalant gaze and a weak smile. Lips curling into a soft smirk, you tug the annoying man harshly, eyes meeting his as he pulls away in shock.

“Look, he’s there.” Your index finger pointing to the handsome gentleman who caught your attention confidently. “Fuck off, really.”

Walking past the bewildered drunk man, you breathe your nerves away as you approach the gentleman. You watch the way he sits with such elegance - so poignant and dignified. His white suit was tailored to his frame, and his unbuttoned dress shirt allowed his flawless skin to breathe while his fingers were adorned with precise lines of metallic rings. Fingers wrapped delicately around his wine glass as you watch his eyes shift towards you when voluntarily slip into the seat in front of him. Placing your baguette bag to your lap, you watch him raise his eyebrow in question as you lean forward to explain yourself.

“Could you -” You stopped, turning around to look at the creep still standing by the bar countertop looking right back at you before whispering. “Do you mind being my boyfriend? Like just for a minute.”

Staring at the man in front of you, you watch him smirk behind his glass before gently placing the drink down as he leans back against the soft cushion of his chair. Extending his long, toned legs into a manspread, he leans his face against his fingers as he watches you. Growing confused, you began to fidget in your seat.

“You - you’re not a serial killer are you?” You asked.

He stares, fingers playing with his rings as he shrugs. “That depends. How many times does it take to get to “serial”?” He shoots back.

Your face contorted into a genuine thoughtful expression as you answer. “Uhm..five..?”

“Oh then, no we’re good.” He leans forward as he answers you with a straight face.

This man was something else. You thought to yourself as your lips curled into a smile upon hearing his response. Hand stretching out, you introduced yourself.

“Y/N”

“Jimin.” His fingers slip comfortably into yours as he shakes your hand. It was brief, friendly even - but the way his attractive gaze stayed on yours made it oddly intimate.

“Ha Ha, funny.” You mocked, as you took a sip of the red liquor swirling in the shiny glass. “I only came to you because you seemed awfully lonely. Eating your dinner like that, I just felt so so bad..”

“Yea?” He prodded you with an eyebrow raise. “Then that’s also the reason why you’re here alone, waiting for a non-existent boyfriend you can use to chase away creeps?”

Okay he had a point.

“Hey!” You frowned. “A girl needs time alone alright? Also, you started this unnecessary feud on how you were the best choice in this damn bar. I was just trying to avoid ending up in the newspapers as a missing person.” Your frustration is evident in your tone as he watches you intently.

Not long, the both of you were bursting into bits of laughter as you recount the trivial conversation. Your eyes shifted to your wrist, taking note of the 30 minutes you’ve spent conversing with this stranger and everything seemed oddly perfect. Too perfect even.

“Thank you,” You said as he rested comfortably on his chair. “Thank you for saving me.”

His lips curled up slightly as he nodded. “Yeah, yeah we definitely showed him.” He says as his head points to the creep. The only difference was that he was knocked up, completely unconscious on the countertop.

You laughed. “Damn, was that what I was missing out on?”

As he laughs along, you watch him shift, toned body leaning forward and you couldn’t help but take note of the way his necklace dangled over his neck as he stares at you. “Can I walk you somewhere?”

The air in your lungs became stuck in your throat. This guy was extremely beautiful. His voice sounded like melted honey and it took all you had not to lean forward and take his lips in yours.

“Um,” You began. “I’m actually staying here, upstairs.”

“Really?” He says but you watch the way he fidgets in his seat, hands adjusting his rings and he runs his fingers through his hair - throughout, his gaze is fixed on you.

“Let me walk you there then.”

"Fuck." Jimin was nestled under you, your hips grinding against the evident arousal between his thighs as you drag your lips down his neck.

You shivered, feeling the way his hands travelled down your frame to your ass, squeezing the thick flesh mercilessly as forcefully grinds you against his arousal.

"Fuck Jimin, fuck do that again.." You whimpered.

Lips intertwined, you heart drops to your stomach when you took sight of the way he smiles between the kiss. You nearly forgot why you brought him up here in the first place. Not until the loud sound of your hotel room door crashing open did you remind yourself that you had a task to perform. Rolling your eyes, you switched into character.

"Oh fuck! It's my husband." As you watched Kihoon enter the room, you sprang into the area next to Jimin. Kihoon's fingers gripped tightly on the rifle as he pointed it towards Jimin's face.

"Kihoon wait-"

"Shut the fuck up." Kihoon groaned, his eyes gleaming as he faced Jimin.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Jimin voices, palms up as he surrenders himself to the situation but you couldn't ignore the slight tint of smile in the corner of his lips as he does so. Is this man a fucking psycho?

"Just let him go Kihoon."

"You fucking cheated. No way, he's fucking dead." Kihoon screams, lines of veins bulging out his reddening neck as he does so. You noted the sweat crowding his forehead. "Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn't do it."

At this moment, your heart was racing. You knew there was no intention of shooting Jimin, and it was aggravating to see the man next to you undisturbed by the scenario. His surrending palms were now resting comfortable under his head as he watches you. You sighed internally, coming up with a respond to Kihoon but Jimin cuts you off.

"I'm drawing a blank." He says, eyes shifting away from you to Kihoon.

"What?" Kihoon mutters, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"I think you should shoot me." Jimin continues, smile creeping onto his handsome face. "Let's be honest, you've been aggrieved."

"Don't mess with him Jimin. He's done hard time." You tried to salvage the situation as you fidgeted in your spot.

"Yea man, I've done fucking hard time!"

Jimin chuckles, eyes lazily shifting as he stares at you. "Man, if you had any idea what I was about to do to her-"

"Shut the fuck up!" Kihoon yells, his rifle still pointing at Jimin's face, but this man remains unconcerned.

"Please, come on, shoot me." Jimin urges. "You're really doing me a favour. Cancer. Tumour, the size of a peach." He lifted his hand to offer a visual representation as he chuckles. "Shoot me, you'll see."

"Fuck!" You groaned, rolling your eyes as you aggravatedly run your fingers through your hair. "He's onto us, Kihoon. Wake the fuck up."

You watch Jimin sit up slowly as he rolled off the bed. His eyes fixed on you as he fixed his blazer. "Just give us the money Jimin."

"Or?" He challenges.

"He'll shoot you in the neck."

Kihoon falters, eyes shifting to you. "I can't shoot a guy with cancer. My grandma had cancer.."

"He does not have cancer, you idiot!" You groaned. "Get out man."

Your perked up when you hear Jimin laughing as watches the situation unfold. "You guys suck."

He leans forward, sinful hands slipping into his pants pockets. "First of all, you gotta wait till she gets my pants off." He says as he walks to rest against the wall nearest to the door. "Then you gotta give me a chance to run, that's how you get the money and you should never drop the con. You never break. Die with the lie."

"How did you figure this out?" You asked.

"When you stole that creep's wallet before you came to me."

You heave in wrath and fury, you feel your ego breaking through your spirit. Frowning, you questioned. "Then why'd you come up here with me then if you're so smart?"

Jimin shrugs. "Professional curiousity." He walks towards the door before turning around. "Also, I love ass so I figured it's a win-win."

You groaned. "Fuck off Jimin."

"You suck baby."

The cold night was all around as you stepped out of the hotel. Tugging onto your sweater, you hugged your shivering frame as you made your way home. You feel the chill in your blood, coldness bringing the synapses of your brain to a stand still. However, you were still perplexed by the failed operation, and your thoughts kept replaying the scene in your brain. You groaned internally. All you wanted was to get home and sulk on your own.

Until -

"You really should be more aware." You ears perked up at the familiar melted honey voice. Rolling your eyes, you caught sight of Jimin walking up to you from behind, his hands stuffed in his pants pockets. "I've been behind you for two blocks."

You stayed silent, footsteps hurrying but he prods you. "You didn't see me?"

"I don't have eyes at the back of my head." You responded.

"Well, if you're gonna play this game you might wanna grow a pair."

You turn to face him. He was the kind of handsome that got into your bones. He was handsome from the depth of his eyes to the gentle expressions of his voice. Nonetheless, you brushed the thoughts away as you rolled your eyes. "I can take care of myself Jimin."

Shaking his head, he stops you. "No, you're going to get hurt." and when you don't answer, he offers. "Let me buy you coffee."

"I don't drink coffee." Hoping that would make him piss off, you failed, yet again, as he stood across you - silently staring at you. Groaning, you walked away. "Fine.

As he grabbed for the glass door, the two of you strolled side by side, stumbling onto the nearest café. You looked up to see his eyes already locked on you as he reached out to guide you inside the café, and the warmth of it sent an electric chill down your spine. As you took your seat, you gazed out the window at the to watch the thick blanket of snow that had blanketed the grounds. An icy serenade, a coolness to bring out the warmth within. As promised, Jimin comes back to the table with coffee cups in his hands.

"Thank you." You muttered softly, hands reaching for the cup as you caught his staring eyes.

"So, what's your thing?" You began, curious eyes finding his intense ones. "Inside? Roper? You can tell me."

He smiles, taking a sip of his coffee. "Everything. Been in this game for so long."

"Your story. I wanna know all of it if that's okay with you."

He nods, placing the cup onto the wooden table before leaning against his seat. Your eyes lingered over the spread of his toned thighs but chastised yourself for getting distracted.

"My grandfather used to run a crooked game in Busan." Jimin began. "Eventually, my father started shilling for him. One day they get burned. Mobbed-guy catches them throwing signals. Everybody's guns come out. Standoff. No way out. Except one."

Your eyes glued to the man in front of you, completely focused. "The Toledo Panic Button."

Your frowned. "What the hell is that?"

Jimin's chuckles and you don't think you'd ever get used to the sound of that. "You shoot your partner. Proves you're not together."

Mouth agape, you internalize the way Jimin casually spills horrid, explicit details on the world he's associated with. "So your grandfather killed your father?"

"That's the world you're in. Dabblers get killed." He shrugs, raising an eyebrow as he sips on his coffee.

God, was he hot.

You sighed. "Look, I wasn't born into this like you. I was a dyslexic foster kid. No prospects, no future. I mean, it's a minor miracle I'm not a hooker right now."

Jimin smirks at that as he leans his elbow against the armrest. He can't deny that the picture of your delicate hands wrapped around a poll accompanied by the dimmed lighting indeed piqued his interest. Hands grazing his jaw gently as you catch the way his eyes scans your frame. Brushing that act off, you lean forward. "Tutor me, Jimin."

"No." He shakes his head.

"Why not?"

"Why should I?" Jimin shoots back.

Groaning, you reach for your bag as you pulled out a leather Birkin. "Well, look, I could pay you, if that helps ."

Jimin crosses his arms, lips curling into a smile before eventually transcending into a contagious laugh. "Y/N, whose wallet is that?"

"Um," You flipped the wallet open, tugging onto an identity card. "Dr Kim Wooshik?"

He does not reply immediately but stares at your hopeful face.

"I'll see you tomorrow." Jimin says before you could register. Head whipping up to the man in front of you, you watch the way his tongue swipe between his lips, wetting his lower lip as he awaits your response.

"I- are you serious? How do I contact you then?" You stood up when he did.

Your breath hitched in your throat as he closes up on you. Handsome face leaning towards yours as his supple lips lands on your right ear to whisper, "I'll call you."

As he leans back, your eyes catches sight on his hand lifting to your face with your watch in his hands. Eyes widening, you lifted your wrist to find it empty.

"How-"

"I'll see you tomorrow. Stay safe." He walks away, turning around briefly to flash a smile as you stood alone, baffled.

#jimin #bts jimin #kpop smut #bts smut #jimin smut #jimin fluff #jimin x reader #jimin fanfic #park jimin #bts #bts series

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misssophiachase · 4 years

Note

Sequel for how to save a life please

Sorry for the delay nonnie. You got it, here goes...For anyone who didn’t read part 1 you can catch it on AO3 HERE - Let me know what you think.

In the last part Caroline showed up hungover for her first day as a surgical intern only to discover her drinking buddy and one-night-stand is none other than her attending and famed neurosurgeon, Dr Klaus Mikaelson.

Original Synopsis from nonnie’s prompt: Caroline as Meredith Grey and Klaus as Derek Shepherd.

How to Save a Life - part 2

Monday 6am

“I’m going to kill him,” she growled, holding her syringe precariously so it looked like she was cocking a firearm instead.

It had been a twenty-eight hour shift so far and she decided to blame it on that if they decided to report her for malpractice or for ‘accidentally’ killing an attending.

“Easy, tiger,” Kol offered, lowering her arm in the process. “I’m only an intern but maybe we should be conserving the life saving drugs for the actual patients. You know, just a thought.”

“Cute,” she drawled by way of response. Caroline wasn’t hungover this time, which was definitely a bonus, but it didn’t stop Doctor know-it-all from sharing his opinion more than a few times throughout her never-ending shift.

“No Dr Forbes, not that way Dr Forbes, listen carefully Dr Forbes,” he’d chide, except he sounded so sexy and authoritative when he called her Dr Forbes. And that was every shift, not just this one. If he didn’t have such a pretty face, she’d most likely slap him, even if it was frowned upon in the workplace.

“Trust me, I’ve been in your position too many times to count and letting him get to you is not the way to handle things,” Kol broke into her Klaus Mikaelson trance, which was probably a good thing.

But then his words caught her attention. Too many times to count? It was only day nine. What exactly had Kol done to earn his wrath in that short amount of time?

Caroline looked at him curiously, besides his first name she didn’t know much about her fellow intern, except the fact he liked to talk a lot when most people weren’t interested in hearing what he had to say. He’d also taken an instant liking to Bonnie which definitely hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“Who are you?”

“Just your friendly, fellow intern who has impeccable hygiene,” he offered, sending her his most dazzling smile. “And while we’re on the topic.”

“Of you having impeccable hygiene?”

“Yes,” he answered. Caroline, meanwhile, still had no idea where this was going. She consulted her watch to hurry him up given she knew how much he liked to talk. “I understand you have a room for rent and I happen to be looking for a place to stay.”

Obviously word of her mom’s large house had made the rounds. Yes, she’d been looking for a third roommate but didn’t expect it to be Kol. Given both Bonnie and Kat were living in her upstairs bedrooms, Caroline wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.

“Kol, now’s not the best time...”

“I can pay you three months of rent in advance and my share of the utilities?”

Now, that proposal caught her attention. Caroline needed money and fast. But at the same time who was this guy? And why did he have so much money to spare? Most of them were struggling to get by given the hefty school loans they had to repay.

Which brought her back to his proposal and how much she needed it. She’d just have to explain to Kat and Bonnie that she had no choice and surely they’d understand her dilemma. Well, hopefully.

“Okay, fine,” she relented. “But we’ll do it on a trial basis. Four weeks and, if that hygiene isn’t anything short of spectacular I’ll be kicking you out much sooner.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he saluted. Caroline figured most responsible people would interview someone and at least get one reference but she was far too distracted by the attending to focus on proper process.

As if on cue, Enzo was already bellowing at them from down the hall to get their asses into gear. Caroline wondered just what the patients must think of the spectacle.

“Hang on, what’s your last name?” She asked, thinking she should probably know that if they were going to be living together, but he was already making his way dutifully towards the sound of the dictator’s voice.

She’d get to the bottom of that once her shift was over. As well as drinking a much-needed glass of wine or six, her memories of that recent hangover after doing the nasty with the overbearing attending well and truly forgotten.

Until next time, of course.

“Nice of you to join us, Forbes,” he barked. “Dr Mikaelson has requested you join him at MRI.”

“Me?”

“I don’t think anyone else goes by that name, Forbes,” he growled, emphasising her surname for added effect.

“Maybe someone else could..” she could see Bonnie and Kat trying to silence her with their eyes. She wouldn’t hear the end of this after their shift.

“If you don’t get up there right now I’ll send you to do that enema. Remember Mrs Jones from last night? You know the patient that hasn’t...” Caroline didn’t need to be told twice given just what she’d have her hands elbow deep in.

“Took your time, Dr Forbes. I’m just glad this wasn’t an emergency.” He hadn’t even turned his head and was too busy consulting the on-screen images.

Rather than trying to explain herself and the fact she’d run from the ground floor ER to MRI in record time she decided to keep her thoughts to herself. Professionalism and all that, even if he was an ass.

She made her way by his side, trying to ignore just how good he smelled from this close proximity. It was a problem she’d experienced too many times to count.

“What do you see?” He asked, finally turning to look at her.

She was momentarily caught off guard given the way those navy scrubs brought out his eyes. Caroline closed her eyes briefly reminding herself that this was too important. This was work and he was her superior. Nothing else.

If only memories of their night together weren’t still so vivid and causing places to stir that really shouldn’t be stirring right now. Caroline was pretty certain if her mother was looking down on her right now she’d be extremely disappointed.

But she needed to concentrate for the patient’s sake.

“There seems to be a tumour in the left hemisphere of the cerebrum,” she noted, pointing to the screen.

“Can you tell if it is cancerous or benign?” She looked at it again closely wondering if he saw something she hadn’t, he was the neurosurgeon after all. It was too easy to second guess herself but Caroline knew she needed to own her diagnoses.

“I can’t tell from the scan.” She really hoped that was the right answer, especially given she’d been awake over 32 hours straight.

“So, based on that diagnosis, what is the required course of action, Dr Forbes?”

“Biopsy surgery.”

“And what does that entail?”

“Obtaining brain tissue samples to diagnose whether the tumour is cancerous or benign.”

“Good work, Dr Forbes,” he murmured. “I want you to scrub into the surgery.” Caroline looked at him incredulously. Trying to figure out if he had a motive but at the same time really hoping he didn’t.

“You deserve this,” he murmured kindly. Not like everything she’d experienced so far in his presence. “As much as I like to give you a hard time on the floor, you are a quick learner and you work hard. But, not gonna lie, that attitude needs some work.”

“Okay,” she replied quietly thinking the attitude was probably sexual frustration but didn’t want to share that with him. “But I fully expect you to tell me when I’m not doing a good job. I happen to be a lot more resilient than you think I am.”

“And that’s why I like you.”

Caroline decided she needed to leave the room quickly before she said or did something she might regret. Like throw her arms around him or kiss him. She was still learning how to deal with a superior she’d done the nasty with after all.

“I’ll see you in surgery,” she offered, walking out of the room, not bothering to respond or look back. She decided it was safer that way.

9 hours later...

“My butt cheeks have gone to sleep,” Kat groaned, her head hitting the bar. “I was tasked with just watching someone and that shit hurts, let me tell you.”

“Consider yourself lucky, Pierce, have you monetarily lost your hearing due to the wailings from the patient in 3A?” Kol shot back, tipping back a whiskey for his trouble.

“No, I was too busy trying to pretend I was professional during that x-ray of someone sticking random things up his, well you know what,” Bonnie shared, albeit quietly.

“You do realise you’re a surgeon and a doctor so anatomy is not a dirty subject...”

“Call it a professional courtesy,” she huffed.

“I think Bon Bon here is definitely in the wrong career, just saying.”

“If I needed your opinion Kol, I’d ask for it,” she growled.

“For the love of god, Kol,” Caroline groaned, swirling the red wine in her glass and trying not to fall into its hypnotic tendencies. “I’m barely alive here.”

“Says the girl who scrubbed into surgery today.”

This is what Caroline was worried about, the fact her friends would think it was blatant favouritism. She didn’t sign up for that. At least they didn’t about what happened with Dr Mikaelson and for that she was grateful.

“Yeah with Dr McYummy”

“Who?”

“It’s what all the nurses call him,” Kat shared. “I really think it could take off hospital-wide.”

Caroline wasn’t sure if she wanted it to and weirdly Kol seemed freaked out at the prospect too given his outraged expression.

“Or it could be one of those things that you accidentally blurt out during surgery. Like ‘here’s the scalpel, Dr McYummy’ and that’s just asking for trouble and a demotion for being unprofessional.”

Trust Bonnie to see the sense in it all.

“I’m with you Bonnie,” Kol offered. “Better we don’t equate any names with any of the attendings.” Seems like the two most expected to disagree had finally agreed on something. Hopefully that would soften the blow when Caroline decided to reveal they were all rooming together.

Caroline was still trying to get her head around everything she’d done the past ten hours, glad that she had a day off before her next shift to properly focus. And to finally get some sleep. Until it happened.

“Kol!” She looked up towards the sound.

“There goes my reputation,” her fellow intern muttered.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Caroline was trying to reconcile the intrusion in her half asleep state. But when Klaus approached their table she knew things were unfolding and not in a good way.

“And you wonder why I was so glad to move in with you,” Kol whispered before their attending appeared in all his glory. Something she wasn’t expecting and was trying to .

“So, you two know each other?” She asked, probably against her better judgment.

“Siblings,” Kol offered gingerly.

“And you two?” Klaus asked, his expression telling her he was trying not to show his jealously but killing his brother wouldn’t be out of the question.

“We live together.”

If this was supposed to feel awkward then it really did now.

#klaroline fanfiction #klaroline fanfic #klaroline #how to save a life #misssophiachase

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baelonthebrave · 3 years

Text

suicide tw, mental illness tw //

I know I’m probably just being an arse for the sake of it but does anyone else hate when mentally ill people or people who have killed themselves are referred to as ‘fighting demons’ or having ‘lost their battle with the dark side’? I think that language obscures what’s actually happening

depression, anxiety, bpd, ptsd, it’s all illness. it’s a serious hormonal imbalance in a person’s brain. it’s something that is totally absent in a healthy person’s body, the same as malignant tumours are totally absent in a healthy person’s body. ‘fighting demons’. sounds like mentally ill people are fighting the same struggles that everyone else has to (financial, emotional, w/e) except we’re doing badly at it. that misconception is dangerously common.

I know it’s hard to explain mental illness to people who don’t have a history with it or a medical/scientific background but I just feel like a lot of the education that’s happening around it right now is just bad.

we’re ill. it’s literally in the name. stop speaking like it’s our fault when we don’t beat an illness.

#fully aware i might be getting pissy over nothing but sksjsks #suicide tw #mental illness tw #depression tw #anxiety tw #bpd tw #mental illness #mental illness awareness #ptsd tw

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little-miss-dumpsterfire · 4 years

Text

I think I made you up in my head - chapter two

Ah, yes, here it is. Part two of the total drama horror anthology no-one asked for. This chapter has already been posted on Wattpad (as have two others) but fuck it, I like it here.

Fair warning, it does get pretty deep pretty quickly. So, let’s get into it.

Chapter Two - I stared at my mirror; the mirror stared back

Trigger warning - eating disorders, self-harm (mentioned briefly) and blood/gore.

If you're not comfortable, please skip. 💛

******************************************

Axel's complexion lightened as his eyes bulged from his head. His head was spinning, and the confined basement he was in was not making the situation any better.

"Someone... someone else's turn? What are you going to do to me? Fuck, I didn't tell anyone I was coming out here. Oh god, oh god. No-one's gonna find me..." Axel panted, his body aflame with anxiety as he felt his heart pounding in his head. The slight weight of a dainty hand on his shoulder broke his haze and brought him back into reality. He shook her hand off, backing away from Izzy slowly with his hands held up in surrender.

"Don't touch me! Please... wha- what do you mean? What do you want from me?!" he pleaded, his earlier arrogant façade cracking to reveal a vulnerable, scared young man.

Izzy looked at him, the flicker of the flame reflected brightly in her dull green eyes. She sighed before backing up to the brick wall, sliding down before falling in a lump on the cold floor. Her thin index finger traced over the scars on her wrist she had hidden behind her jacket and whimpered.

Izzy spoke softly, barely audible to her frightened guest. "They never stop screaming. I try to close all the doors in my brain to silence them but they still haunt me. Slowly creeping... like a dense cloud blocking out the sun. Nothing will stop them, at least nothing I do will stop them."

She raised her head again, eyes obscured by dishevelled strands of copper hair. Axel stared at her quizzically as if he had wandered into the psych ward accidentally. Clearly, he was standing in the basement of a schizophrenic hoarder who couldn't let the past die, and he wasn't going to stand for it.

"Listen, lady," he started, regaining his air of arrogance, "I've about had it up to here. I make a podcast about cursed movies and conspiracies to earn money, not to end up in a knock-off Warren's Occult Museum."

"You don't understand. You don't feel the darkness we felt," Izzy replied, staring over at the shelves. "The paranoia, the pain, the conviction that we lived in a sick man's simulation. But everything in here was bathed in the depravity of Total Drama, and like a cancerous tumour it infected us all."

Their eyes met - soulless against suspicious - and Axel took a step towards Izzy, crushing a fragment of broken glass in his wake. Kneeling to her level, he roughly took her chin in his hands and raised her face to look at him.

"You killed them," he accused Izzy, malice dripping from his voice.

Weakly, she responded, her voice getting caught in her throat. "N-no. I didn't. But I know what did."

She lifted her slim arm and gestured towards the shelves. "Those relics are tombstones. Go and pick your poison, if you really want to know what happened."

Axel stood up, wiping the glass fragments from his knees and cautiously wandered over to the winding labyrinth of shelves. His fingertips barely grazed the aged wood of the shelves, tracing the grooves and divots with his index finger. In the corner of his eye, a dark shadow passed him by, and he quickly whipped his head around to investigate. Turning to the shelf in front of him is when he saw the imposing dark figure: himself. Situated in his eye line was a sparkly pink hand mirror intricately embellished with golden sculpted roses. He leant in closer to the mirror; his reflection was a shell of himself, with black pits for eyes and a pitiful smile.

"You ought to be careful with that one, kid," Izzy warned him, rising to her feet and dusting the grime from her pants. "If you look too long, the darkness grows eyes. This I know all too well now."

Izzy walked up to Axel, slightly caressing the edge of the mirror. She sighed deeply.

"We all knew she was the prettiest from the moment she stepped onto that dock... But in a world of lions, you didn't want to be fresh meat."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was no secret to anyone that Chris didn't cast Lindsay for her personality. The shark had smelt blood when he saw her audition tape. Looking back on it now, her fate was sealed in those fleeting seconds.

Lindsay sat atop her bed cross-legged, her dog perched in her lap. Her hair had been brushed to be its silkiest, and the photos on her dresser cemented the point she was making.

"I have bikinis for every season, even the ones not listed on the calendar," she chirped, reflecting her archetype of the dumb blonde.

She was the dream girl for any man: honey blonde and curvy. Her 'assets' warranted attention from creeps shrouded in anonymity behind their computer screens and TV executives alike. Unsolicited strokes and caresses were handed to her regularly, and she lavished in the attention that her looks had bestowed onto her. The early bloomer with the IQ of a thumbtack was a thirst trap for the reality TV crowd, yet the elephant in the room was never addressed.

No one seemed to care that she was sixteen.

For those of us in her different teams, we witnessed these infidelities and stood idly by, our mouths wired shut by clauses, contracts and never-ending fine print. Lindsay may not have been the brightest bulb in the bunch, but the correlation between her body and the positive attention she was receiving was crystal clear to her. She felt the pressure of public scrutiny if she gained weight, had a pimple or even covered up her chest. It was during Action that the red flags appeared... I'd give anything to go back and change it all.

Half-empty bottles of lip gloss were scattered on the bunk bed as Lindsay struggled to find a colour that brought out the highlights in her hair. In her left hand, firmly grasped, was an antique hand mirror that she had repainted herself to match her personality. She applied a liberal layer of rosy-pink gloss onto her lips and puckered them together, staring at the shine in the mirror. A sharp gasp escaped from her lips as her blue eyes widened like saucers. Her gaze was transfixed on her mirror as she moved it around, attempting to shake what she saw away.

"Um, guys..." Lindsay started, a slight panic present in her voice. "There's someone in my mirror."

A bald girl scoffed and rolled her eyes, resettling her focus onto her nails. "No shit, Sherlock. It's supposed to be there. That's a reflection."

A faint, obnoxious voice could be heard from out the open window of the trailer.

"Actually, the presence of a reflection is due to photons coming off of an object to strike the smooth surface of the mirror, which subsequently causes them to bounce back at the same angle, ergo creating a person's reflection." Harold corrected from afar.

"Shut it, dweeb!" Heather called out, throwing a hairbrush at the boy.

"That hurt, GOSH!"

Lindsay became visibly more and more terrified by what she was seeing. Small tears began to pool in the outer corner of her eyes as her lips trembled fiercely. The mirror slipped between her fingers and landed with a muted thud on the orange carpeted floor as the blonde held onto her face protectively. A hairline fracture snaked its way across the glass, briefly eclipsing a dark smudge that quickly disappeared.

None of us girls took Lindsay's claims to heart. She always said that someone was looking at her through her mirror; hardly a surprise from the girl who couldn't remember her boyfriend's name. Something in Lindsay changed that day, and all of us were in the dark. She still fell victim to the paedophilic adoration of Chris McLean and his lackeys - submitting to every squeeze and fondle - but something in her eyes showed that her comfort in her own skin had dwindled.

The water tap squeaked as a thin stream of water dripped out, moistening her toothbrush. She brushed violently, minty foam spilling from her mouth as she desperately washed the taste away. It had consumed her waking thoughts; her mind constantly flashing back to what she had seen. Fear enveloped her in its heavy blackness, picking at her deepest insecurities. Her throat burned from the acid and the bitterness of the bile seemed to stain her tongue.

She stared at her mirror and shook her head, lightly tracing the crack on its surface.

"I can't become fat like Hannah. I'll never win my trip to Paris that way."

In the mirror, her reflection began to warp and distort, but Lindsay placed it back on the counter face down. Her hand wavered over the handle for what seemed like hours, and when she tentatively picked it up again, etched in what looked like blood spelt out an ominous message: EYE OF THE BEHOLDER.

In the weeks following Action's conclusion, images of Lindsay in her Wonder Woman costume were plastered on every tabloid site, every fan page and in every pervert's special photo folder. Her next two seasons played out very much the same, with sideways glances from the production crew eye-raping her on every occasion and her appearance being flaunted for more ratings. Gone was the girl with the backbone of steel who had stood up against Heather in a passionate act of defiance. In her place was an airhead overcome with fear and self resentment.

The click-clacking of her boots against the pavement was all Lindsay could focus on as the world went by around her. Wolf-whistles and cat-calls plagued her at every corner she walked past. She would usually stare into every shop window she passed by, gazing dreamily at purses on sale or new makeup products, but nowadays she scarcely looked twice. Not because she wasn't still obsessed with fashion, as she would always be. She never looked at her reflection because 'it' would be there. Every mirror, every window stared back at her.

She sat anxiously in the waiting room, fiddling with the hem of her skirt as she avoided the stares from the man next to her who was blatantly looking down her top. Her chest, whilst still well endowed, had shrunk, as had the rest of her body and it was starting to become obvious to those closest to her.

"Lindsay Marriott?"

Lindsay rose from her chair silently and followed, being lead down a short hallway into a room. Posters of the food pyramid and anatomical models were plastered on the walls as the strong scent of sanitiser attacked her nostrils. She sat down lightly, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders and forehead. The usual small talk took place before the woman placed the cold diaphragm of the stethoscope onto Lindsay's back. Her vertebrae were prominent through her skin, sticking up tall like mountain peaks. The doctor breathed out a small sigh before sitting down across from her.

"Lindsay, would you mind standing on the scale for me?"

She timidly nodded her head, rising and walking towards the scale. Lindsay removed her shoes and stepped onto the scales, the doctor over her shoulder writing down the number. Settling back into their seats, the doctor stared into the eyes of her patient and how their bright blue hue was a stark contrast to her fatigued, gaunt face.

"Honey, you've lost five kilograms since your last visit. You're bordering on becoming dangerously underweight. I think it's time we seek psychological intervention. When was the last time you ate a proper meal without purging?" the doctor asked, an air of concern apparent in her voice.

Tears began to drip down Lindsay's cheeks as she spoke between sobs. "Months... I can't eat... it won't let me eat."

"Who won't let you eat?" the doctor looked quizzically at the young girl who was averting her eyes now.

"The person in my mirror," Lindsay answered matter-of-factly before lifting her head. Behind the doctor's head was a wall-mounted mirror, where she could visibly see herself and the back of the physician. A slow ripping sound filled Lindsay's head as the back of the doctor's shirt split into letters written by an unknown force.

"Lindsay, are you okay? You've gone quite pale. I'll take your blood pressure."

As the doctor turned around, red, pointed letters were emblazoned on the doctor's back.

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER.

Lindsay jumped from her chair with a yelp and ran for the exit, bypassing the crowd of people in the waiting area.

That was the last anyone saw of Lindsay in public before... well... it's hard to put a word to what happened. Text messages to her phone went unread as she slowly slipped into her own self-imposed isolation. Her sister Paula would visit weekly and give us updates, but they were never anything to ignite our hopes or positive outlooks. On her last visit, she recalled that the stench of vomit would follow you around as plates of fly-blown, half-eaten meals were stacked up on the benches. Any mirrors in the apartment had been covered with blankets or covered with masking tape and the windows were blacked out with newspapers. Something had gotten its claws into Lindsay's head, and it was not going to let go.

The porcelain was cold against Lindsay's exposed thighs as she sat on the edge of her bathtub. Her pink mirror sat just within reach on the edge of the counter. The abyss. She had been holding in her hands the view into the abyss. Slowly, her skeletal fingers reached for the mirror, clumsily grabbing it before raising it to her face. Time seemingly stopped as she stared into the mirror, analysing her face; the sunken eyes and teeth slowly yellowing and corroding from the years she had spent purging. Before her eyes, the mirror once again warped until it showed what years ago her peers thought she had falsely identified as her own reflection.

Staring back at her was a decrepit woman with a face as bloated and waxy as a waterlogged corpse. Brown matted hair was plastered onto its face, slightly obscuring its eyes. Two large white orbs with pinpoint black pupils bore into Lindsay's soul as a grotesque smile crept upon its face, stretching its width from ear to ear. A silent scream left Lindsay's lips as black liquid began to seep from its eyes, nose and mouth, pooling at the base of its chin. In front of her was the shadow that had haunted her since she was sixteen, staring at her endlessly in every reflection, punctuating how ugly she perceived herself to be. Edging closer and closer towards the mirror, Lindsay couldn't tear her eyes away, paralysed in terror as faint whines wafted from under her bathroom door.

Paula found her three days later. The poor thing, I don't think the sight has ever left her, and in God's graces, I don't think it ever will. There's not enough therapy on this fucking planet that can erase that from the human psyche.

Paula walked into the apartment, distracted by a low buzzing sound. As she walked towards her sister's bedroom, calling out her name, the sound began to crescendo and a singular fly flew past her head. A distinct smell of rot and decomposition filled the air as she advanced slowly to the closed door of the bathroom. Her perfectly manicured hand gripped the knob strongly as she turned it, opening the door slightly. A swarm of flies buzzed through the open door, obscuring Paula's vision in a haze of black. As her eyes settled, they landed on what the flies had been inhabiting: Lindsay's corpse. Paula tried and failed to suppress gags as she saw her sister's dead body, eyes gouged out by her own hand in an attempt to stop what she had seen. A tacky layer of old blood surrounded Lindsay's head as hundreds of squirming bugs wriggled around in her empty eye sockets. Laying ornamentally atop the pink hand mirror were two eyeballs; their blue sparkle dulled and glazed over.

Scrawled in lipstick all over the walls of the room was one simple phrase.

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. EYE OF THE BEHOLDER.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"In my head, Lindsay didn't fall victim to herself," Izzy concluded, staring at her appalled guest, "she fell victim to the industry. The sharks in suits who groomed her and fed her insecurities until the societal norms of beauty ate her from the inside."

Axel stepped wearily away from the shelf, in way over his head now. What had started as a cash-grab to use as a clickbait-eqsue podcast had now escalated to a trip to hell... and once you're in hell, only the devil can help you out.

#total drama #td lindsay #sorry it got a bit deep

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wonderofasunrise · 4 years

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A Land Without Compassion

A/N: I was a bit frustrated at how little the show explored Susan dealing with Mark’s death, as I had expected something more considering how they were each other’s person for a long time. And so this fic was born, with a few elements taken liberally from my headcanon—namely that Susan never left Chicago, and the reason why she couldn’t reciprocate Mark’s feelings was because she fell in love with Kerry.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Featuring an excerpt from “With Me Stay” by The Corrs.

-----

A melting pot of paint stirred slowly to the boil We had a radar, now it’s gone

This is a cruel, cruel love I stood on the dark side of love This is a cruel, cruel love I stood on the dark side alone

***

Susan Lewis has lived in Chicago almost all her life, but the city has never felt so suffocating as it is tonight.

Sitting on the front porch of her house, she feels as if everything around her was moving closer towards her, ready to strangle her in an instant as she makes yet another effort to comprehend the events of today. She takes a deep breath and exhales before her eyes wander aimlessly around her surroundings and the street in front of her house, and that’s when it slowly begins to come together for her—the fact that the city will never be the same.

The words from Elizabeth’s letter to the ER this morning escaped her, and unsurprisingly it took her a good few hours to fully comprehend the news the letter delivered: Mark is dead. Her best friend is gone, brain tumour having taken him so cruelly and prematurely, and her world will never be the same again.

Her first reaction was to leave the admit desk, and while making her way towards the ambulance bay she half-expected that at least a drop of tear would fall down her face once she was out. But it didn’t, and it hasn’t.

She wants to cry. She wants to grieve properly, as she should upon the death of a beloved friend, to let everything out through her tears instead of holding it all inside until it explodes at the most unfortunate moment. But nothing comes out. She wonders if it’s a sign of denial; after all, it’s the first stage of grief, and having seen deaths firsthand almost everyday for years does not automatically make her immune from it.

She is still unable to cry anyway, and she hates herself for it.

***

Susan never regrets how her life has turned out, as she is at her happiest that she has been in years with the person she loves the most, but at times she does wonder about the what ifs and what could’ve beens all those years ago when Mark declared that he loved her.

She loved him, she told him in response, but it was altogether a different kind of love from what he had for her. She made sure he knew she was in love with someone else, and upon learning who the person was Mark’s first reaction was to ask, “How?” Still, he congratulated her, thanking her for trusting him with the revelation. Despite that he looked so defeated at the time, and she couldn’t help but kiss him. Neither was sure what it was supposed to mean, though it seemed like the right thing to do. It was pleasant enough for her, but there was no way of knowing what it was like for him.

She thinks about the kiss. She was not sure what it meant then, and she still isn’t sure what it means now. One thing for sure, it’s another reminder of what could have happened between the two, and while there is no regret on her part, at times she finds herself wondering how hurt Mark was at the realisation that his love for her was unrequited.

They never talked about it since—partly because of her desire to keep her relationship secret, and partly because he did not want to make things more awkward than they already were. While it did work well for both of them, she starts wondering if he ever needed closure, and if he needed to be convinced more as to why they would never be together.

Did she fail him this way? Did she fail to provide closure when he needed it the most?

Either way, they never talked about it, and they will never have a chance to.

Sure, he eventually found someone else, and she was beyond happy that someone was Elizabeth, but part of her now wonders if he ever suffered because of her rejection, and—if he did—how deeply hurt he was after she kissed him and told him she was in love with someone else. The same woman she is still very much in love with, and the woman who brings her happiness in place of all the what ifs.

***

Kerry Weaver has known Susan Lewis for years, and it is one of the reasons why she gets so frustrated every time she fails to read Susan and find out what to do with her in a difficult time.

Susan has been quiet since they arrived home, and she maintained a considerable distance from Kerry and everyone else at work earlier in the day. While Kerry finds it understandable, given how much Mark meant to Susan and how they were pretty much each other’s person for a long time, it still frustrates her that there is so little she can do to comfort Susan. Much to Kerry’s chagrin, the best thing she can do for now is let Susan keep her distance for as long as she needs while she is figuring out all the hows and whys she has been wondering about since the revelation in Elizabeth’s letter this morning.

In a perfect universe she would allow herself to hold Susan in her arms and let the younger woman cry her heart out instead of letting her figure things out on her own in a world Kerry knows she can never enter. She isn’t even sure if she has seen Susan cry since the news broke out, and the thought of how much pain it must be causing Susan shatters Kerry’s heart. She is so used to knowing the answer to everything, yet she has failed to figure out what to do with Susan at the moment, and the best thing she can do is wait. Wait and stay still, as much as deep down she is dying to do the exact opposite.

How Susan is coming to terms with everything is the main priority now, and Kerry’s desire to provide comfort and assurance—however she intends to do so—will have to wait.

Kerry understands perfectly that if there was one thing that Susan demanded absolute respect from everyone it was her friendship with Mark. It was a relationship built very steadily over many years of working and struggling together, which started long before Kerry came into the picture, and it is something she knows she needs to respect.

And so she does, because that’s how much she loves Susan. She loves her so much it hurts.

***

Another hour passes, and Kerry figures out now is the best time to finally make her way towards Susan outside.

She opens the front door quietly, and as soon as she does so she catches the sight of Susan sitting on a chair on the porch with her head down, her expression unreadable. One thing for sure, Kerry thinks, Susan looks lost. Well and truly lost.

And it frightens Kerry, because of all the things she understands and has learned about Susan over the years, it is not something she knows how to deal with. Without a word, she takes a seat next to Susan, and as soon as she rests her back against the chair Susan turns to her. Contrary to Kerry’s expectation, Susan’s expression shows no sign of surprise whatsoever, as if she had been waiting for Kerry to come to her and was somehow relieved that she finally did.

Thinking that it’s finally safe to do so, as softly as possible Kerry takes Susan’s hand in hers, and silently breathes out a sigh of relief when the latter does not fight. Kerry feels a gentle squeeze, and her eyes fall onto the sight of their entangled hands under the night sky—an act so simple yet so powerful, and one that Kerry never expected to provide her solace when she needs it the most. She hopes it also has the same—or at least a similar—effect on Susan.

A few seconds later Kerry’s profound attention at her hand around Susan’s is disrupted by the sight of teardrops slowly falling onto the hand, and Kerry promptly looks up to see tears welling up in Susan’s eyes. Susan lets out an audible sigh, all of today’s events finally coming together in a fleeting moment of sudden understanding, and she doesn’t even try to stop tears from streaming down her face.

“What happens now?” Susan finally speaks, her voice barely above a whisper. Still, it’s the most Susan has let out all day, and as strange as it may sound Kerry feels a tinge of relief upon hearing that. Whether she can provide an answer, however, is another matter.

A single look at Susan’s eyes nearly breaks Kerry’s heart into pieces once again; she has never seen Susan look so small and broken, and it pains her that there is only so much she can do to make it better. She silently prays that she will be able to do more after this evening, no matter how little more.

Figuring out that a silent gesture works best for the time being, Kerry lets Susan cry onto her shoulder, all the while holding her like she would a child. Tears run freely down Susan’s face as she mourns her best friend in the arms of her lover; while the poignancy of the moment is not completely lost on her, all she wants for now is simply pouring her heart out through her tears, as she had been waiting for hours, and Kerry is the only one who can help her through it.

They stay like that for a few minutes, until Kerry finally breaks her silence by muttering, “I’m sorry,” in an undertone. For the time being, it says everything that she needs to say and Susan needs to hear; anything more that she wants to say can wait.

“Stay with me,” Susan pleads in a tone that makes Kerry’s heart sink even deeper. It is the voice of someone who is not only grieving the death of a loved one, but also trying to come to terms with how her life will change forever after years of building a wonderful relationship with the person in question. Silently Kerry prays that she will never hear that tone from Susan again.

“Always,” Kerry affirms, because it’s the best thing she can promise to the woman she loves more than anyone else.

For the moment, it’s indeed everything that Susan needs to hear, and she wouldn’t ask for anything else.

#m's fanfiction #m's writing stuff #er #nbc er #er fanfiction #susan lewis #kerry weaver #mark greene #kerry x susan #kerry weaver x susan lewis #mark greene x susan lewis (friendship)#a fic born out of frustration #fic: a land without compassion

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saedii-gilwraeth-simp · 4 years

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Another World - TDC Holidays - Day 9

Alright, we’re entering the portion of this where there are some odd crack ships, so have fun with that.

DAY 9

AU: HOSPITAL

POV: ARSINOE

“Queen, how well do you know the brain?” Arsinoe snorted at the question and lifted her head from the chart in front of her to see Pietyr Arron, her fellow surgeon, standing in front of her.

“Well, I was a neurosurgeon before I switched to peds, so I’d like to say I have a level of knowledge that can’t be sneezed at. Why?” She asked, just to have Pietyr shove a piece of paper in her face and walk away from her. She reads over it before she puts her chart down and rushes after him. “You’re fucking with me. Why on earth am I holding a piece of paper suggesting a full brain transplant?” Pietyr turned to her slightly as he walked.

“Because I want to try the first ever brain transplant,” he explains, almost patronising so she hits his shoulder, “and since you’re the head of peds, I need your help for the patient I have in mind.”

“You’ll never believe the day I’ve had,” Arsinoe declares as she enters the kitchen that night, moving towards where Christine stood at the island. She wraps her arms around her wife and kisses her cheek before moving to the fridge to grab a drink, “do want help with dinner?” Christine shook her head.

“Nah, Billy’s outside with the meat on the grill and everything except for these potatoes are done. Tell me about your day,” Christine assures her and Arsinoe smiles.

“Ah, so we’ll be having char with potatoes tonight,” the two met eyes and they giggled.

“I heard that, y’know?” Arsinoe turned to see Billy leaning against the wall, a small smile on his face. She smiled and let him lean in to kiss her. He places the plate in his hand on the island and takes tongs out to move the meat onto the plates Christine had set out.

“Apparently, our wife has had an interesting day,” the blonde says, absently plating up dinner. “And since for once, we’re all off shift for dinner, the table awaits,” they move to sit and Arsinoe sighs in relief to be off her feet.

“Okay, tell us,” Billy says.

“Pietyr - don’t scowl like that either of you - wants my help to transplant a 14-year-old’s brain. Which is insane but also, I somehow believe he can do it. So now, I have to go into work tomorrow to convince the father of a 14-year-old to let us take her brain out and replace it with another one because there’s no amount radiation that could help the tumour in this girl’s brain without making her braindead instantly. So, yeah that was my day. Yours?” She doesn’t go into the details, knowing that neither husband nor wife needed the step by step of brain surgery.

“I hate the new residents. They’re all dicks to us nurses because they think they’re sooo important because they’re surgeons. And yes, I am aware that I live in domestic partnership with two surgeons, so don’t start you two,” Christine bemoans and and Billy and Arsinoe share a loving look over her head. “If they get much worse, I’m gonna make them handle explosive diarrhoea and projectile vomiting all the time,” Arsinoe and Billy wince, knowing that she would if she had to. “Billy?” She asks, moving the conversation onto her husband.

“I apparently worked too many hours this week and unlike you Arsinoe, Chris’ and my hospital has rules against that so I was home at 11, but I got the laundry done, got the chickens to settle and took a nap,” Arsinoe applauded her husband. Lord knows that they both need more sleep, a fact Christine never fails to mention with concern across her face as if she doesn’t work just as hard.

Suddenly, a beeping came from Arsinoe’s pocket and she checked her phone, swore and stood from the table.

“000, I have to go. Love you,” they responded in kind and she was out the door.

It was 4am the next morning when she crawled back into their bed, between her partners. Christine rolled over in her sleep on reflex and wrapped her arms around Arsinoe and Arsinoe was asleep in seconds.

“Okay, so, we’re into hour 17 of the stimulation of the synapses and hopefully by firing these particular rhythms, we can piece together and allow Patient A to regain her memories. If we fail this step, Patient A is likely to become a… well a vegetable with the memory retention of a one-week-old,” Arsinoe speaks into the recorder on the phone and stifles a yawn. Her and Pietyr had been in surgery for 21 hours, linking blood vessels and nerves up to the transplant brain and both were too paranoid to leave the rest of the process to anyone else, so they had essentially been in this room for 17 hours, firing electrodes into this young girls brain.

Needless to say, their circulatory systems were probably more caffeine than actual blood at this point. But, if they pulled it off, it would be so worth it. If not, then Arsinoe would go home and collapse into tears.

“This process will continue until hour 20, when we will begin to wake the patient up and test her memory,” this phrase fell susceptible to a yawn and she turned the recorder off.

Polly Nichols wakes with a fight, socking Pietyr in the chin as he extubates her and Arsinoe smiles. At least they now knew that they hadn’t paralysed her. Arsinoe steps in and gentles holds her hands.

“Polly, can you tell me the name of the person you just hit in the face,” she says, gently, and Polly turns to her. “Polly?” Arsinoe prompts.

“Dr. Arron,” Polly says and Arsinoe smiles wide.

“And my name?”

“Dr Queen. Why are you asking me that, you’ve been seeing me for years,” Arsinoe smile widens and she turns to Pietyr.

“Go get Polly’s dad,” he does and Arsinoe turns back to her patient. “Alright, Polly, we have to do some tests, but you’re doing great so far,” the 14-year-old huffs and Arsinoe is for once glad to see the attitude.

She had asked one of the other doctors to drop her home so she didn’t fall asleep at the wheel and she unlocked the front door with tired steps. Billy and Christine were waiting for her when she entered the living room and she yawned, delaying their unspoken question.

“So, uh, guess who just completed the first ever successful brain transplant in history,” she smiled when her husband and wife cheered and wrapped her in an excited hug. She leaned further into Christine’s neck, her whole body sagging with exhaustion. “If I wasn’t about to collapse on this floor, I would be tearing your clothes off in excitement,” she mumbled into her wife’s collarbone and Christine laughed.

Billy scooped her into his arms and walked them into their bedroom, laying Arsinoe down and taking her boots off. Christine curled around her front and Billy spooned her from behind, their idle hands rubbing her sore back and hips, letting her fall asleep in their gentle embrace.

TAG LIST: @nataliaarronn, @poisonerrose, @alwaysbored005

#three dark crowns #one dark throne #two dark reigns #five dark fates #kendare blake #queen arsinoe #billy chatworth #christine hollen #pietyr arron #another world #holiday special 2020

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soveryanon · 4 years

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Reviewing time for MAG175!

- Once again, I really loved how it felt like the sound effects were giving their own “statement” of the domain, by telling us (a bit in advance!) what the words were saying. You could remove Jon’s words, and it would still have been a horrifying dive into that desolated landscape, the surroundings themselves threatening you – it came to the point that the occasional clatter was inspiring dread since the noises felt like they might attract the native creature, and you really didn’t want it to come closer?

(I’m not absolutely sure about the Air Raid Siren in the background, but I thiiiink their cycles were regular, with a new round of them coming every 2 minutes or so? Really eerie to think that it had not stopped, while it wasn’t able to protect anyone from the incoming disasters since they were already there; and at the same time, they kept going… because, precisely, it was still an extinguished domain that kept extinguishing itself, that Leah was still there at this point so it could still get worse and even emptier? The signal is supposed to stop when the threat is over – it made sense that it would keep going since The Extinction was there and accomplished.)

- Things in common with previous statements dealing with cases suspected to be Extinction: the “Inheritors” as natives from this world.

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Every single shrivelled ashened face was contorted in a scream of agony, every sharp and jutting jaw cracked and twisted in an expression of horror – of understanding not just of their death, but the end of everything they knew. It was clear that they had been this way for years, if not decades. Bernadette says she was sure that nothing had moved in that dead city for a hundred years. She was mistaken. I have never envied you your position, Gertrude. I have never coveted your gifts, as I know the terrible costs that come with them. But honestly, trying to get a description of these… things, these “Inheritors” from Bernadette Delcour made me wish I could just pull the image from her lips, like you would have been able to. In the end, she would say nothing of them, except that [STATIC]: “There is nothing done in the history of humanity that deserves the things that come after us.” […] It used to be part of The End, perhaps, when The End of humanity was to be the end of all things; but now, the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation; it is of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place.”

(MAG149, Judith O’Neill) “There were no people in there, but… that’s not the same thing as it being empty. Instead, there were… figures. From a distance, they looked like human beings, standing impossibly still. But getting closer… quickly revealed the lie. It was just the rough shapes, cobbled together out of a hundred different pieces of garbage: a broken metal clotheshorse for a ribcage; a… plastic chair leg for an arm; rusted screws for teeth. In some cases, it looked like someone had gone through a lot of effort to match anatomy with construction. I saw one with a broken water-cooler where its stomach would be, and another had a pair of oxygen tanks standing in for lungs. They were completely still, but there was something about them that made my mouth dry up, and my mind scream to run. [STATIC] It didn’t feel like they were statues. It felt like they were choosing not to move.”

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: “Fauna: the thing that lives. Something lives in the Anthropocene age: [METALLIC GROAN] not a twisted reflection of a natural world, [RUMMAGING CLATTER] not a parasite or a scavenger or a cockroach, but a native. [SNAKE-LIKE HISSING] Something born in the sloping shells of sagging concrete towers, that tastes the tang of rusted iron in the air and knows that it is home. [RUMMAGING IN SMALL ITEMS] Something that does not know or care what a human is, any more than mankind thought of the creatures that once lived in the shells they found on the beach. [SCUTTLING] It moves through the stacks of garbage like a beetle through filth, and its smile is all-too familiar, though its eyes are dark and empty. [SNAKE-LIKE HISSING] It cannot be seen in its entirety, for it keeps itself covered, [SCUTTLING] but its long, unfurling tongue may be seen emerging, pink and bristling with long, hair-like taste buds, [CLATTER] hunting for something old enough to eat. [NEW ROUND OF AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] [SNAKE-LIKE HISSING] [METALLIC GROAN] It whispers to itself in the dark, and sounds like snippets of old toothpaste commercials, and adverts to join the army. It is hard to tell if there is more than one, [METALLIC GROAN] but either there are several of them of different sizes, or there is just the one, and it is getting bigger. [RUMMAGING, SCUTTLING] [SNAKE-LIKE HISSING] It is our replacement, and it is welcome to the world. […] [Leah] ignores the burning pain in her forearm, where the thing’s rough tongue has torn a section of her skin clean off.”

… Technically, there was something facepalm-worthy to the fact that one of the last living things from the old world was a seagull, but also:

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: “Fauna: a mouldering seagull. [BIRD CRYING IN THE DISTANCE] Larger than any related specimen to be found before the Anthropocene age, this bird has been rendered flightless by the tightly woven plastic netting, [CLATTER] that winds around and around its torso, digging into the skin beneath the feathers, and bulging over the strange lumps and tumours that cover it. Its feathers have turned an oily black, and its vestigial eyes are pale and sightless, [NEW ROUND OF AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] relying instead on the sounds its prey makes as they traverse the noisy junkpiles of discarded landscape. Its beak has become hard and its edges are serrated, allowing it to tear apart the tin cans and hard plastics that shield its food with ease. Its legs are long, and many-jointed, allowing it to move across the uneven ground, and its throat is blocked with concrete – preventing it from crying and letting it move amongst the ruins in complete silence. It nests in the rusted-out hollows of fleeing cars, constructing intricate shelters for its young, out of corpse-hair and wiring. Its eggs are rusty, covered in slime, and its chicks are born with plastic rings around their necks. They smell like ammonia and salt, and their name is meaningless, as there is no longer such a thing as the sea.”

… AOUCH for 1°) what happened to it, how it… “transformed” as a species due to everything human-related that had been inflicted to it, 2°) especially with the chicks “born with plastic rings around their necks” – that was a terrifying image, indeed.

(So, were the cries of birds we could hear in the background belonging to the Inheritors, or other birds, since the seagull had concrete in its throat “preventing it from crying”?)

- There was something absolutely haunting to the statement in the rhythm itself: the professionalism of the catalogue vs. the slight despair of the parts dedicated to Leah, between the sections she was writing. And the part with the rib!! Jon’s narration slowed down, dragged, sounded captivated by the rib, and really made you feel like there was a big mystery with that bone, something important?

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: “Item: [SQUELCH] a forgotten bone. … Whooose is this…? Pale white and… stained with thick black tar. A human bone, that much is… clear, too big to be a child’s, at least. Can a bone seem familiar…? The shape of it echoing through your mind, like a… face seen only in dreams…? [NEW ROUND OF AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] It may be followed up to a ribcage, still sticky in places with soapy cadaver fat, and closing around a crumpled beer can where the heart should be. There’s a skull as well, yellowing in the thick dust of the open air. Strange… Everything here is either bone-dry from relentless heat, or damp through from decomposition and stagnant decay. Lifeless yet decaying. The world we’ve left behind… Leah considers the bones for some time. Does she know them…? Are they hers? If she had been quicker, more forceful in her warnings, might they still be alive? Her pencil is broken, but her notes, her warnings from this new world are far from complete. She snaps off another rib, [STATIC RISES] and continues writing.”

Was it reminding Jon of his own discarded rib (and was it a nudge/an attack on him from The Extinction)? Was it Leah’s own ribcage, as she had transformed without noticing? Was it the reminder of the death of other people? Was it the “beginning” of an Inheritor? No idea, but the picture of Leah ultimately discarding the questions to snap a bone and use it as a new pen to keep up her work was very striking.

- Also haunting: the fact that Leah’s catalogue almost “humanised” inanimate objects, since they were described with their illogical aspects (the bulb still emitting light) and… almost told the story of what has happened by themselves, and at the same time didn’t at all? But the statement was about a present situation (an Extinct world) with remnants of what used to be – we could recognise the human activities which had caused some of these disasters, we were told of the purpose these items used to serve… and it was all senseless in that new world. It was really chilling that the “Anthropocene era”, here, wasn’t described by what was living and prospering in it, but with the death, decay and annihilation that had resulted from it.

- Obligatory HEAVY SNICKER because of the umbrella:

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: “Item: [FAINT METALLIC CLINK] a laughable umbrella. Look at it! [FAINT METALLIC CLINKING] What does it think it’s doing here, lying there, broken, skeletal? [FAINT METALLIC CLINK] There hasn’t been rain in fifty years. […] Stupid umbrella…! Does it think there is a monsoon coming? Does it even remember what a cloud of water vapor looks like? [FAINT METALLIC CLINKING] The clouds that pass now are oily, and stink of sulphur, waiting for you to stop paying attention before they climb down your throat and settle in your lungs. Perhaps this idiot apparatus thinks it can protect from the relentless heat of the sun! But its fabric is torn and ruined, hanging from the snapped metal limbs, desperate for a breeze to stir it from its… complete stillness. [NEW ROUND OF AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] Take a moment to sneer at this corpse of an umbrella, [FAINT METALLIC CLINK] and wish for a moment you had water enough within you to spit on it.”

… Did an umbrella hurt you in your childhood, Jonny.

Hilariousness aside (it really worked with Jon focusing all of his hatred on that item, you know Jon would be the kind to have a visceral negative opinion over something mundane), it… really worked as an allegory both for Leah’s work and for Jon’s journey. It’s about a damaged item which has lost its purpose in a new world, which can’t serve its initial purpose anymore, which exists but can’t do anything anymore. Just like Leah, writing the state of the new world in her “report on everything for nobody” (it’s too late, The Extinction has already happened), and Jon, only able to describe the horrors of the new world.

- Leah sticking to her catalogue even though the disaster already happened really reminded me of Jon in his function as Archivist (Jonah had called him “a living chronicle of terror” in MAG160, for example). Why is Jon compelled to “pour out” the domains’ statements? We still don’t know why and what that does exactly: is he creating more terror through the tapes, in the same way that Leah’s catalogue could technically be used to spread the terror of the Extinction world?

- ;_; I really really wasn’t expecting an Extinction domain, big surprise!

I really like how the question of it being “real” or not real enough was handled: when Adelard first described it in MAG134, it made a lot of sense as a Fear, and even more as a Fear strengthened by contemporary feelings (with the growing awareness of the destruction of humans being caused by humans themselves).

(MAG175) MARTIN: What was it like? ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: This place’s… [INHALE] Its statement. ARCHIVIST: Nothing too surprising. It’s a domain designed to eke fear out of those afraid of a world… [INHALE] destroyed by human hands, it, uh… It dwells on it. MARTIN: Hm. [SILENCE] [WET SQUEAK] … So it was real, then? The Extinction. ARCHIVIST: Of course it was real…! A–at least in the sense that… it was a thing people feared. Whether it was strong enough in its own right to be considered at a level with Smirke’s Fourteen or… whether it was on its way to getting there, I… [SHUFFLING] Maybe. This sort of thing is always… muddy.

And I really like how Jon was nuanced about it: acknowledging that it’s a real thing since it’s a real fear, but that it’s harder to evaluate whether it was on the same level as Smirke’s Fourteen when The Change happened: in a lot of ways, it feels like Smirke’s taxonomy had arbitrarily shaped the divisions in Fourteen for UK-based people and that for the next two centuries, monsters and avatars mostly referred to that division to organise themselves. The major difference, maybe, is that we never really met a human who decided to serve a fear they identified as “The Extinction” and turned into a servant of it, terrorising people through it to feed it in turn, and trying to shape the world in that image: Adelard had mentioned that he wasn’t sure that The Extinction was hiring avatars yet (MAG113: “I don’t know if my little ‘theoretical’ is strong enough yet to start taking avatars, but this one, as you’ve no doubt guessed, turned out to be Terminus.”), but it didn’t mean a lot – maybe there were already avatars out there and he hadn’t met them, and maybe if Adelard had written and propagated his ideas about The Extinction, a few people would have decided to serve it because they feared and reveled in it in turn.

Anyway, I like how Jon’s words didn’t exactly feel like a big “reveal”, more like a confirmation, since… a lot of these interrogations and hypotheses had been brushed upon by Adelard, Peter and Simon in season 4:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “This Fear is new. This is a fear of extinction. Of change. It used to be part of The End, perhaps, when The End of humanity was to be the end of all things; but now, the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation; it is of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place. Mankind will warp the world so much it kills us all, and leaves only a thousand years of plastic behind. Technology will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien, and cold. We will press a button, that in a moment, will destroy everything we have ever been. Animals are witnessing the end of their entire species within a single generation. These are new fears, Gertrude, and a new Power is rising to consume them. The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us.”

(MAG144) MARTIN: Another… statement. Another side to… Peter’s “Extinction”. I think. I… Y– I– [HUFF] I, I couldn’t follow some of his reasoning, but I think it was about… nuclear weapons, or… or maybe doomsday’s weapons…? In keeping with the theme, I suppose.

(MAG149) MARTIN: Looks like Gertrude’s handwriting? Start of a letter to… Dekker, thanking him for sending Judith to her, though… it doesn’t look like it was ever finished or sent. [PAPER RUSTLING] “I assume this is another one he was trying to use to prove The Extinction? It… certainly has something in it. Mankind’s trash giving rise to something terrible. And again, fear of the other, inanimate humanoid figures. That’s all very… Stranger, isn’t it?” [SIGH] [LOW]… It’s never simple, is it…?

(MAG151) SIMON: “When is a new Power born?” Well; when does it feel like its birth would be right? When enough creatures suffer a terror of it that feels distinct, that feels truly its own… then it would probably feel right for it to emerge into its own. Or perhaps there’s a ritual, if it feels right to enact some sort of birthing ceremony, some… apocalyptic midwifery. MARTIN: And how close is it, do you think? SIMON: Can’t be sure! Peter thinks very close indeed, what with all the current “hubbub”, and I’m inclined to agree. […] Peter seems convinced that The Extinction is different. That its actual birth will be as bad or worse as another power fully manifesting. He believes its advent will be heralded by all sorts of disasters and catastrophes, and global upheavals, and whatnot. That kind of things. MARTIN: Sounds like a rich feeding ground. SIMON: Well, exactly! Peter, however, seems to think that it will upset the balance that we all have an awful lot invested in. And he’s not at all certain the world as we understand will come out the other side.

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “My first assumption would have been The Flesh, based on the cannibalism and strangeness of the bodies involved, but… something about this idea of some sort of “famine world”, its location within a made-man ruin, the whole… societal aspect of it… I’d be inclined to chalk this up as a genuine Extinction manifestation. But I don’t know. Am I drawing wild conclusions, trying to fit the account into my own preconceptions? Keen to know your feelings on the matter.”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “so… perhaps you were right about The Extinction. I’ve been hunting it for decades now, and… while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own. Perhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore; or perhaps the birth of such things is longer and more complicated than I believed. For all that though, I cannot regret the time I have spent seeking it. I have done my duty; and none may ask more of me. I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honour to do it alongside you.”

(MAG159) PETER: Maybe that’s why, when I crossed paths with Adelard Dekker, we ended up talking, and he told me his theory of The Extinction – something that stayed with me even after he died pursuing it. The thing is: the Loneliness I crave, that fills my heart with that… reassuring unease, relies on distance from other people. But a world without people at all, or at least anything I would recognise as people… it is meaningless. Without the lighted window in the distance, how am I to see myself apart from it? No. Such a world would be terribly dull, and scares me in a very different way. A fear I am happy to offer up, of course, but one that I would prefer not come to pass. My instinct was much like the others: I thought that if I could complete my ritual first, then the potential birth of the Dreadful Change would be meaningless.”

So ;w; Adelard was right and wrong at the same time. There was such a thing as a “Fear Of The Extinction”, strong enough to become some people’s living nightmares. But at the same time, the division into Fourteen or Fifteen didn’t really work anyway, so it was doomed to be “muddy”, as Jon said.

… What is interesting is that:

* … “Beholding” is still all-powerful in that world – granting Jon, its “pupil”, way more powers than any other, and ruling over the domains and the fears.

* Jon is still sticking to the 14+1 division. He described domains with the names from Smirke’s taxonomy during the journey – he’s aware that the blob of terror is multi-facetted, yet still clings to the categorisation.

* Due to Jon being confident when he was describing the domains as belonging to x or y Dread Power, I thought that Jonah’s invocation in MAG160 had shaped the world with these neat categories:

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Bring all that is fear, and all that is terror, and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies!”

So, the other Thirteen Fears, under Beholding’s reign (“All under The Eye’s auspices, of course – we mustn’t forget our roots.”), and Jonah specifically schemed to get Jon marked by the Fears following the list of Fourteen to prepare that ritual, in the hope of avoiding the Fifteenth (“All Fourteen, as I had hoped I could complete it before any new Powers such as Extinction were able to fully emerge.”).

… Yet, at least one out-of-the-box Fear managed to still sneak in through. Which means that:

1°) Jonah didn’t exactly create what he wanted! The Extinction is there with the others anyway. As Jon had told Martin in MAG160:

(MAG160) MARTIN: I, I don’t know if it’s just here, or if it– ARCHIVIST: No. … No, it’s everywhere… They’re all here, now. I can feel… all of it.

They’re “all here now”.

2°) Jonah’s ritual didn’t really work on Jonah’s terms. Was it really necessary for Jon to get marked by the Fourteen Fears, would like, ten have been enough anyway, as long as there was a sufficient amount of aspects, to get all the fears into our world? Did the ritual “accidentally” count as an Extinction mark on Jon, allowing it to get brought through too? Was the ritual actually dependent on Jon’s own feelings, and The Extinction got pulled in because he still thought it could be a genuine threat? (Jon began to doubt about it while receiving MAG157’s letter, with Adelard confessing that he might have misunderstood, and Jon feeling like Martin had been lied to; but Peter admitted to him that he was genuinely afraid of The Extinction in MAG159, thus confirming to Jon that he had been honest on that part.)

(But damnit, I was “hoping” (that’s a strong word) for The-Extinction-not-being-invoked being a potential way to reverse the equilibrium and undo the apocalypse in a way or another… And nope, not an option if it’s already there with the others, uh.)

- Wow, Jon felt mercilessly right about the state of the world / whether The Extinction was a legitimate fear as something that could have become concrete without supernatural interferences:

(MAG175) MARTIN: But what about the real world, were they right? ARCHIVIST: … I–I’m not sure I follow. [NEW ROUND OF AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] MARTIN: I mean… Right, if none, if none of this had happened, if the world had just… carried on? [WET SQUEAK] What would have happened, was… was all that fear justified? [SHUFFLING] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I can’t know the future, Martin, not even a hypothetical one. MARTIN: But… you know what was going on, what was happening. [WET SQUEAK, SHUFFLING] O–out of everyone, you’re the best place, you–you’ve got the info to make a pretty damn educated guess…! ARCHIVIST: … I, I don’t know what you want me to say, Martin. Yes, i–it was bad, worse than most people thought and [INHALE] things were only going to deteriorate. Was the end of humanity actually imminent? I… Probably not? But we were well on the way and… it would have been the end of an awful lot of things.

It’s a bit of a change for Martin to ask about what-could-have-been this season: Jon has usually been the one to dwell on that, with Martin stopping him from spiralling (MAG161: “Can you imagine…? If we’d had this…” “But we didn’t, though, did we.”). It makes sense, though, since The Extinction was closer to Martin’s own storyline and the time he spent researching it in season 4, and the fact that, both in MAG174 and MAG175, we’ve seen he still had frustrations regarding that whole arc of his:

(MAG174) SIMON: But I’m not one to tell you how to live your eternity. MARTIN: … No. You’re not. Because I’m done listening to you! SIMON: I’m sorry? I’m not sure I follow. MARTIN: All those lies you told me… You helped to do this, you turned the world into your… your playground! SIMON: Hum… Not to be a pedant, but if you recall, I was actually doing a favour for Peter. And if Peter had won, none of this would have happened. Also, not to make excuses but they weren’t exactly lies, just… oversimplifications of complicated truths! And guesses. … A lot of guesses. [FOOTSTEPS] … A–almost all guesses really, now I come to think about it. MARTIN: Shut up! I don’t care. SIMON: Goodness! We’re rather tetchy, aren’t we?

(MAG175) MARTIN: [TINY SIGH] So Peter was lying. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] To a degree. But, mostly, he was just like anyone else who tried to take the scope of human terror and… package it neatly into little theories. All his talk of “emergence” and “birthing a new power”… it’s just people being scared.

… Mainly: Martin feeling cheated, feeling like he had been manipulated and lied to both by Peter and Simon. I’m glad that his own feelings are resurfacing a bit lately, because he has reasons to feel angry of his own…

(- There is also Elias, in the list of people who lied/misled him: Martin had gone to ask him whether or not Peter was telling the truth in MAG138, and Elias had pushed him in that direction. Martin doesn’t have to hate Elias “only” for the pain he inflicted on Jon and for destroying the world – Elias made Martin a cog in his scheme to bring forth the apocalypse, and that’s enough to warrant Martin’s wrath. In that exchange:

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: … I don’t know how kindly any god would look upon what we’ve done. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Thanks for that. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … Sorry.

I wonder whether Martin felt attacked because he was seeking comfort in the idea of a benevolent divinity (and was denied it, because humanity as a whole has done… too many awful things), or because he personally felt that “we” as including (Jon and) him specifically – as an unwilling participant in the mechanism that ended up bringing the apocalypse, separating the Archives Team and preventing them to deal with Peter&Elias together and ultimately used to lure Jon into The Lonely?)

- Overall, I really liked the talk about religion:

(MAG175) MARTIN: … Jon. ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: … Do you know if… like… gods, religion, the afterlife, all that stuff. Do you know if any of that was real? ARCHIVIST: … Really rolling out the big questions today! MARTIN: [CHUCKLING] Sorry! It’s just… [WET SQUEAK] This place just brings it out in me, I guess. [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: … If there is a god, or gods, or an existence beyond this world… The Eye can’t see it. It sees the fear of it, but… nothing of its truth. [SILENCE] MARTIN: So… is that a no…? ARCHIVIST: It’s an “I don’t know” – although… [INHALE] People’s faith… [EXHALE] It hasn’t saved them. Not here. MARTIN: … True. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Why do you ask? Didn’t think you were at all religious. MARTIN: Oh, I’m not. [WET SQUEAK] Mum was, but I… I–I don’t know. With everything going on, it… certainly feels less far-fetched…! Besides, at this point, I’d take any help we can get. ARCHIVIST: … I don’t know how kindly any god would look upon what we’ve done.

Because it didn’t exclude the idea that any god(s) existed – the show is not claiming prerogative to answer that question – and provided an explanation for Jon not knowing that in a way that made sense in-universe. Jon deals in information linked to fears, not in absolute and metaphysical truths, and so he only has hypotheses to provide in that area.

I also love how ;; It really fits for Martin’s mom to have been religious but him being less categorical. Goes well with his overall sense of guilt, especially when it comes to his mother, uh?

Also, SOB that Adelard was probably in Martin’s mind since:

(MAG157) “This is the last time you will hear from me. You must trust me on that and not come looking. Not that you would; I know you’re too smart for sentimentality, especially after what I have to tell you, but I feel it worth saying nonetheless. Perhaps I’m simply prevaricating, trying to cling on to a few more precious minutes of life – but that’s not me. I know what awaits me, and must have no hesitation in going to my reward. [SCOFF] I know you’ve never had much patience for my faith, but perhaps it will provide you some small peace knowing I face my death gladly, knowing I have done my duty before God.”

We don’t know whether Martin was made aware of this statement (it was sent to Jon), but Martin had read MAG156’s statement in which Adelard had referred to his faith, so he knew Adelard was religious. Setting-wise: they were crossing an Extinction domain, and the previous Extinction “specialist” had ultimately died with the conviction and peace of mind that he would join the afterlife with his God… so I’m guessing that case was probably dwelling in Martin’s mind. (And potentially: whether his mother was also likely to have reached peace.)

- Jon reaaally tried to answer that question about religion, since he used his powers – we could hear static:

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: If I try, [STATIC RISES] I can… see the edges of reality, but… I can’t hold its full scope in my mind. [STATIC DECREASES] MARTIN: And beyond it? ARCHIVIST: Beyond what? Reality? [NEW ROUND OF AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] MARTIN: … Yeah. [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I don’t know! Maybe nothing. [STATIC FADES] [WET SQUEAK] MARTIN: … Jon. ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: … Do you know if… like… gods, religion, the afterlife, all that stuff. Do you know if any of that was real? ARCHIVIST: … Really rolling out the big questions today! MARTIN: [CHUCKLING] Sorry! It’s just… [WET SQUEAK] This place just brings it out in me, I guess. [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: … If there is a god, or gods, or an existence beyond this world… The Eye can’t see it. It sees the fear of it, but… nothing of its truth. [STATIC FADES] [SILENCE] MARTIN: So… is that a no…?

It also came with a few reminders regarding his powers. Jon had already pointed out multiple times that he can’t see the future:

(MAG164) MARTIN: And will she? ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know, th–the future, th–that’s… that’s not something I can see.

(MAG169) MARTIN: Oh, it’s not just your revenge though, is it? Destroying her… it would help all those people in there, wouldn’t it? ARCHIVIST: … Maybe? It’s… [INHALE] Like I said, I can’t see the future. It wouldn’t free them, if that’s what you’re asking. “Free” doesn’t really exist in this place.

(MAG175) MARTIN: What would have happened, was… was all that fear justified? [SHUFFLING] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I can’t know the future, Martin, not even a hypothetical one.

And that The Eye’s powers are limited and fundamentally biased:

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: … Why am I always the last to know about these things? BASIRA: By this point, I just assume the Eyeball tells you. ARCHIVIST: That would imply it tells me anything useful. But no, I’m stuck knowing [STATIC] how your year eight PE teacher died.

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Hm. [SIGH] I’ve, uh… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, after what happened with Daisy last week. About… what I can do. What I am. What feels… right. I’ve found a– [SIGH] I went back to Eli– er, Peter’s office. To that box of tapes; started rifling through. And I started to try and pay attention to the ones I… wasn’t drawn to. The tapes I instinctively wanted to discard. [SIGH] There was one, this one, that my hand… pulled back from. I–I dropped it, twice, when I went to pick it up. Even now, I’m… [AUDIBLE FORCED SMILE] struggling to press play…! I am the avatar of Awful Knowledge And Revealed Secrets… so what does it not want me to know…? [LONG SIGH]

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: Martin, I have the whole scope of human knowledge available to me and… [SIGH] I’d struggle to give you a simple answer to most of this stuff. And even if I am omniscient, I’m starting to realise that… doesn’t mean objective. [WET SQUEAK] MARTIN: Hm. … [SIGH] I guess it’s hard not to bring your own baggage to this sort of thing. ARCHIVIST: I don’t know if it could even exist without the baggage…! You want to talk about psychological projection, try viewing the metaphysical world through the lens of a being that is, by its very nature, a reflection of your own obsessions and fears.

So mmmm… Are we heading towards a confirmation that Jon feeling like he can’t do anything “positive” or “better” is directly caused by The Eye limiting the perception he has of his own options, like The Eye had tried to prevent him from listening to Eric’s tape which informed of a way to cut ties with The Eye?

- … I do disagree with Martin that Jon was beginning to sound like Simon, because REALLY, he sounded a LOT like Oliver:

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “You know, of course, where I am. But know that, even you, will all your power, cannot keep the world alive forever. All – things – end, and every step you take, whatever direction you may choose… only brings you closer to it.”

(MAG175) MARTIN: So you don’t think it would have been the end of the world? ARCHIVIST: “The end of the world”…! Now there’s a concept. Everything ends, I suppose. [SHUFFLING] Even this place. Can’t last forever. Eventually… it will die as well. MARTIN: … You’re starting to sound like Simon.

For someone who can’t see the future, Jon really seems to have ingrained Oliver’s ideas of The End: that it would win, that it would catch up on everyone, that it had to happen to exist as a fear. As soon as the end of MAG168, Jon had accepted Oliver’s idea that the victims of his domains would indeed die as announced (“I feel badly for those that exist in his domain, o–of course, I do, but… At least, their suffering will be over, eventually.”) although… it had not been demonstrated?

So if we’re talking about biases: did Oliver’s conviction contaminate Jon and is it currently making Jon believe his stance? Because Oliver was convinced that The End would kill… but he’s an avatar of his patron. Of course he’ll believe in its all-powerfulness. It doesn’t mean it’s true.

- Amongst the lighter stuff, I’m laughing that Martin has now learned to weaponise the fact that distances and the laws of time&space escape him — which was usually played against him, and Jon even teased him about his difficulty understanding…

(MAG163) MARTIN: … Oh, I’m knackered. ARCHIVIST: Are you? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] MARTIN: I– … Hm. … Well. Okay, well, no, no, I suppose not; but, I–I think I should be. ARCHIVIST: Yup! MARTIN: How long have we been walking? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Fourteen hours and… twenty-three minutes. MARTIN: What, seriously? ARCHIVIST: Yes. I… don’t think it means much out here, though. MARTIN: We should… probably rest. ARCHIVIST: Maybe. I… I don’t know, I– … I don’t know if we can – “rest”. It feels more like… hm, “waiting”. MARTIN: [SIGH] […] ARCHIVIST: [DISTANT] Try to keep up! MARTIN: Yeah, yeah…

(MAG164) MARTIN: How much further do we still need to go? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: A long way. Through many dark and awful places…

(MAG167) MARTIN: Anyway, my “flesh prison” [CHUCKLE] would like to stop for a bit. How far until the next… “domain”? ARCHIVIST: A while. If you want to stop, it’s as good a place as any. MARTIN: Nah, I just… need a moment. [SIGH] One where I’m not just… relentlessly pushing forward. ARCHIVIST: [LONG EXHALE] Alright. We can stop.

(MAG174) MARTIN: [SIGH] … [BAG JOSTLING] Is it much further? ARCHIVIST: [SMALL CHUCKLE] Yes. MARTIN: Urgh…! ARCHIVIST: I’m not entirely sure what you were expecting, it’s The Vast. The clue is in the name! MARTIN: Yes, alright…! ARCHIVIST: Just be glad that this is one of the domains that actually has ground to walk on. MARTIN: Whatever. [DISTANT LOW-PITCHED IMPACT, FOLLOWED BY GUSTS OF WIND] S–so how far are we from the other side? And–and don’t say time and space don’t work here, that’s a cop-out and you know it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Fine! Three days. MARTIN: Thank you. [SILENCE] … Wait. Wait, what counts as a day? ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLING] What an excellent question! MARTIN: Oh my go–! You can be infuriating sometimes, you know that?

… — to take his well-deserved break this time:

(MAG175) MARTIN: You know what? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] I am sitting down. ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLE] Are you… sure, that thing is… That’s not in great shape. MARTIN: Neither am I. I have been on my feet for a literally uncountable amount of time.

He’s right! He has learned! They’ve indeed been walking for a “literally uncountable amount of time” <3

- Loved the couch, loved the scene overall:

(MAG175) [FOOTSTEPS] [BAG JOSTLING] [SHUFFLING] [CREAKING, WITH DAMP SPLOSHES] MARTIN: Mmhph… ARCHIVIST: [CLIPPED] How is it? MARTIN: … Great…! It’s great. [WET SQUEAK] Lovely couch. ARCHIVIST: Right. Well. Rest up, I suppose…! [SILENCE] MARTIN: It’s two-seater…! ARCHIVIST: Yes it is! [WET SQUEAK] … Hard pass. Thank you. [AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] [SILENCE] [WET SQUEAK]

* You could SEE Martin’s blank face, dying inside, regretting his choice with his “great”.

* The “splosh” sounds whenever Martin was moving were absolutely AWFUL =D

* Jon probably knew exactly what that couch was made of.

* Jon, you COWARD, you could have sat in his lap!! (I thought it was the case since there was some shuffling and their voices sounded closer afterwards, but no, Anil-confirmed that Jon stayed standing, aww.)

- Iiiiii wonder whether Jon being keen to give Martin his break had to do with him already knowing that Daisy&Basira were close. ;;

- Okay, so. It’s coming. We already know that Daisy’s case was… not good, Jon already knew that it had gotten worse and that Basira had been pulled into it:

(MAG160) MARTIN: Some–somehow, I don’t think Daisy will be worried about “jurisdictions”…! ARCHIVIST: I– [SIGH] I don’t think she’d come here. [RATTLING SOUND] Doesn’t look like this place has been used for years. MARTIN: [POINTEDLY] And if she does? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Well. At least, we’ll know where she is. MARTIN: Wh…! [NERVOUS CHUCKLE] ARCHIVIST: Besides, I’m more worried about the other Hunters. Or the… “Sasha”-thing. Last I heard, they still hadn’t found any bodies. [INHALE] A lot of destruction, a lot of blood… [EXHALE] But that’s it. [MORE WOOD SOUNDS] MARTIN: … You think they’re still out there. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: Hopefully a long way out there. … But I think we’re okay.

(MAG164) MARTIN: Okay – okay, okay, ‘kay, let’s… let’s try something a little bigger, then. ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] Alright. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Is Basira alive? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] MARTIN: Is she… in… o–one of these places? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: She’s alive. Out there, not… trapped in a–a hellscape, but… moving. [STATIC DECREASES] Hunting. She’s… she’s looking for Daisy. She’s a few steps behind. MARTIN: And Daisy? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: Bestial. Brutal. [STATIC DECREASES] [INHALE] Carving her way through the domains of other Powers, following the scent of blood. … Oh, Daisy, I’m sorry… MARTIN: What’s Basira going to do? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: She… thinks she’s going to kill Daisy. Like she promised. [STATIC DECREASES] But she’s conflicted. MARTIN: And will she? ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know, th–the future, th–that’s… that’s not something I can see. MARTIN: O–kay. Good to know.

(MAG175) MARTIN: [SIGH] Let’s get out of here. This place is making me a bit too… existential. [WET SQUEAK] [SHUFFLING] ARCHIVIST: Wait. MARTIN: What? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Where we’re going, the, uh… the next “domain”, I… I’ve been meaning to tell you, but it’s… well… [NEW ROUND OF AIR RAID SIREN IN THE BACKGROUND] MARTIN: Spit it out, Jon. ARCHIVIST: Basira and Daisy. We’re close. MARTIN: Wait, what? Wait, really? B– Th–that’s brilliant! What are we waiting for, let’s go! ARCHIVIST: Uh, y–yeah, i–it’s… It’s not… it’s not going to be easy, things aren’t… good. MARTIN: Oh my goodness, really? And here was me thinking the apocalypse was going oh-so-swimmingly! ARCHIVIST: Yes, alright, I just meant… MARTIN: I–I know what you meant! I can still be keen to see our friends! ARCHIVIST: … True. MARTIN: Besides, we can help them now. [SHUFFLING] [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Yeah. [SILENCE] [BAG JOSTLING] … Yeah.

* I’m having both fluffy feelings and sigh-worthy feelings regarding Martin saying he has “friends” because:

(MAG170) MARTIN: You, you are Martin Blackwood; yes. You–you didn’t choose to be here. Jon is coming. I am Martin Blackwood, and I am not lonely anymore, I am not lonely anymore! [SHAKY BREATHING] I want to have friends, I… no, I have friends. I’m… I’m in love, eh! I am in love, and I will not forget that, I will – not – forget.

;; Are you sure, honey.

Though, technically: Melanie had listened to him and calmed down in MAG118, following his plan. Basira trusted him a bit towards the end of season 4 and had been a bit softer towards him with the death of his mother. Daisy and him managed to talk in MAG142 (although Martin had to reject her and deny that they were getting along due to Peter’s presence two episodes later). There were embryos of something, I… kinda hope we could see that flourish?

- My hypothesis regarding Daisy&Basira would be: Daisy still a savage beast (like we heard during The Unknowing, pre-Coffin, and when she turned back into one again in MAG158). She might still be after Julia and/or Trevor, depending if they were still alive (we know, at least, that their bodies weren’t found by the police and since the Not!Them was still Not!Sasha, it hadn’t taken either of them). Basira’s degree of “freedom” is a big question: is she able to not be tied to a domain thanks to her connection to The Eye? Or is the pursuit of Daisy, never-ending, torturing her with the promise she made to Daisy to kill her, a Hunt domain by itself? The Hunt is about the chase, and the “innocent” pursuit turning people into Hunters has been a reoccurring thing, so… Basira could have been taken over / “imprisoned” by and in Daisy’s hunt?

- Whether someone dies soon (there… are huge red flags for Daisy, she asked to be killed when she lost herself 18 episodes ago and she had an arc about her own choice and accountability in season 4), I can’t help but think that we’re getting Team Archive members soon? It’s been established that Jon is limited by his own perceptions, and Martin has been considering and clinging to the idea of help:

(MAG164) MARTIN: But I actually meant the whole… being friends thing? I mean, I don’t see why– ARCHIVIST: Martin, she’s… a cruel… vicious monster! MARTIN: Yes. Yes, she is. But who else is there? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

(MAG166) MARTIN: Just, what do you want? ANNABELLE: I want to help you, of course. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … No. Thank you. ANNABELLE: It’s a hard place to find yourself in, maybe I can be of some… assistance…! MARTIN: You can assist me by giving the… “creepy phone” thing a rest…! ANNABELLE: He is more powerful here than he’s ever been, isn’t he? [PAUSE] And you’re not sure what that means for you. MARTIN: [INHALE] I’m hanging up now.

What Jon and Martin would need is probably… other perspectives. There is still Helen running around (and she has the means to follow Basira too, the same way she can follow Jon&Martin, since Basira also traversed the Distortion’s corridors to return to the Institute after MAG135); Melanie&Georgie are somewhere (at the Panopticon already? On the other side of the crack at Hill Top Road? Hidden within Helen’s corridors?); and now Basira&Daisy’s hunt might come to a close. Daisy doesn’t have a lot of chances to survive, but I don’t think we’re done with Basira, given how she got the worst of it during season 4 (she wasn’t the only one getting manipulated by Elias, but unlike Jon, she didn’t achieve any small victories; she didn’t manage to protect anyone at all).

There is only The Spiral and The Hunt left when it comes to domains, both could get crammed into MAG176 since some of their agents are roaming around a bit more freely and we’re entering the hiatus afterwards (it could be a way to make Arc I the journey through the domains, and reaching the Panopticon starting Act II), so… we’ll see. Arc I could end with Daisy’s death, with a reunion, or with Helen pulling someone into her corridors by force ;;

We have currently a big opposition between Jon’s cautiousness, slight despair, and conviction that he can’t help anyone; and Martin’s hope (sometimes expressing itself as frustration) that they could do something positive, that Jon’s powers could help them. So far, it feels like Jon’s stance has been winning, as he demonstrated to Martin that there was “no better”.

But: it’s also true that Martin managed to pull himself out of the Lonely House’s influence with the tape recorder’s and Jon’s combined help. Jon has been revealed to be able to eradicate avatars/monsters with his ability to turn the Fearful into the Afraid. Jon had previously managed to use his compulsion as a way to free someone from a Fear’s influence: he compelled Tim to centre him and made him aware of reality in MAG119, and he made Martin see him in MAG159. So… there is still a tiny tiny hope that he could do something positive regarding Daisy (even if Basira still has to kill her afterwards).

I LIKED DAISY POST-COFFIN, I’ve never been expecting her to Live Forever with the crimes and abominations she committed, I still don’t expect her to survive for long anyway, but I’m not ready to see her goooo ;___;

- … last point is “????” and “!!!!” and I wanted to put emphasis on it, because.

THERE WAS A SOUND BETWEEN THE TWO TAPE-SEQUENCES IN THIS EP???

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Right…! [CLICK.] [TINY SHUFFLING] [CLICK–] [FOOTSTEPS, PUNCTUATED BY SOME JINGLING AND CLATTER] MARTIN: You know what? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] I am sitting down.

That’s new and ???? – usually, there is only the… void? A bass sound, but nothing else.

But there was definitely some shuffling in-between, and WHAT WAS IT?? I’m not excluding that it could be an editing mistake (Jon&Martin’s footsteps beginning a few seconds earlier, for example, without the crunch of the ground), but if it’s not and it was intentional… is this confirming that we-the-listener are listening alongside someone listening to the tape after the recordings, and not during the recordings themselves? The beginning of MAG079 had hinted at that, with Martin’s pre-recorded poem getting written over by Tim&Martin’s recording (+ the overall fact that we hear the [CLICK] of the tapes: if we were only listening to the sound of the tapes, we wouldn’t hear the tape recorders clicking on and off, since that is not a sound that we can hear on the magnetic band itself). Who is listening? Why would we hear them now? Are we coming closer to an answer or a big hint about that…?

… MAG176’s title definitely puts Daisy, Hunters and/or more generally The Hunt to mind, and Daisy’s struggle during the second half of season 4. Regarding the more “classic” meaning, though: is it about Daisy&Basira’s relationship? Is it about the “statement” of the domain (if there is one), in a biological meaning?

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #the magnus archives #tma season 5 #mag175 #tma liveblog #long post/

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tellywoodtrash · 5 years

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sanjivani 13.03.20 lb

i’m not doing the whole screenshot thing coz it’s waaaaay too much effort than i can be arsed for this bloody show anymore.

also i read the episode blurb and am already mad af. ugh, let’s just do this and get it the fuck over with.

---------------------------

these ppl actually believe that sid tried to kidnap ishani. sure. the marela thakela dude who just had major brain surgery 2 days ago and hasn’t done jack for god knows how long is suddenly mr. proactive. uh huh.

this fucking shady mama-mami. tf are they getting outta this anyway?????? (i suppose i’d know if i bothered watching the show, but lol naaah, idc.)

YO MAN I’M REALLY FEELING THIS CHEMISTRY BETWEEN THE HUSBAND AND ISHANI. I’M REALLY FUCKING PISSED NOW.

sis finally does the right thing and speaks her heart out and is like “yeah actually i’d like to make this relationship work.” der aayi par durust aayi.

ainvayi ka tension ramp up with condition and all.

ugh. honestly. where did all this coffee endorsement get this stupid show. i bet the trps actually went down after they started this bs.

DUDE I WANT HER TO STAY WITH THE HUSBAND

husband is all giddily in love with her and still walking around with holi colours she applied on his face. god i love dudes who are stupidly in love with their wives.

ishani really needs some kinda deep conditioning treatment coz sis your hair is looking fried as fuckkkkkkkkk. like jeez, at least put some argan oil on it or something?!?!

husband is tooooooo good of a human being. wants to go give his wife’s “kidnapper” his medicines in jail. matlab hadhhhhh hai acchaai ki, sir!

shady mama put an end to that, i guess.

ishani ne kasam kha rakhi hai ki jab bhi shaadi ka joda pehenegi aisi sadddddi hui shakal ke saath hi. teesri baar hai sis, kabhi toh khush hua karo.

ok she’s pulling herself outta it. but kya faayda. *sigh*

lmaooooooooooooo rahil got arrested with sid? for what?????

lol sid asking the police to “just let us go”. sure, that’s how it works. are we sure that tumour was fully removed????

finally dimaag ki batti jali. god i can’t believe how much they ruined this dude’s character.

also damn i got over my crush on namit quick and his voice is really annoying me rn. how tf am i suppose to go back to YPNTKH now?????

lmao these police waale actors reallllll bad.

lol i can’t believe the police dude is getting spooked by this one dude who just got out of brain surgery and has a huge bandage on the back of his head, and the other one is like 4 feet tall. rahil i love you, but being threatening is not something you can do, lol.

ishani idhar abhi bhi dharam sankat mein. ouffffffffffff.

more nescafe endorsement. bedagarak ho inka. achche khaase show ko 20 min ka coffee ad bana rakha hai.

LOL WHAT EVEN IS THIS FIGHT SCENE. RAHIL IS WRESTLING TWO GROWNASS MEN SINGLEHANDEDLY, LMAOOOOOOO I FUCKING CANTTTTTTT.

ok just all round badddddd acting in these scenes with namit and the real/fake police. fwding.

husband is a real good dude and does not deserve to be in this show’s universe. poor guy. this is his purgatory. someone freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee himmmmmmm.

ishani’s spidey senses still tingling for sid. ughhhhhhhhhhhh.

blah blah blah fwding shaadi nonsense. jab honi hi nahi hai toh kaaahe ka time waste.

LMAO SUDDENLY MAMA’S NAME CHANGED FROM VIVEK ARORA TO VIVEK MALHOTRA. NO ONE GIVING A FUCK IN THIS LAST EPISODE HUH.

also the police just literally waltzed into the mandap to do khuspus in nv’s ear. matlab kuchhhhhhhhhh bhi chal raha hai yahan pe.

lo ji sid rahil bhi haazir.

LMAO MAMA REALLY TRIED TO MAKE A RUN FOR IT.

ok truth is all out now.

“HUM NAHI CHAHTE THE KI SHAADI KE BAAD BHI ISHANI HUMPAR BHOJ BANI RAHE”?!?!?!?! WHAT BHOJ, YALL WERE LITERALLY NOT IN THE PICTURE AFTER SHE CAME AND JOINED SANJIVANI?!?!!? AINVAYIIIIIIII KUCH BHI???????

LMAO WTF MAMI WRANGLED A GUN OUTTA POLICEWAALA’S HAND AND IS HOLDING ALL THESE PPL AT GUNPOINT WTF IS EVEN HAPPENINGGGGGGG OH MY GODDDDD

cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool, ishani ke maa baap ka bhi mami mami only did kaand. for what reason, who tf knows or cares anymore?!?!

WHY ARE THEY SO SMUGLY CONFESSING THIS (A WHOLE OTHER CASE) IN FRONT OF THE POLICE AND INCREASING THEIR OWN LEGAL PROBLEMS THO? MY GOD THIS SHOW HAS GOTTEN SO BAD I CAN’T EVENNNNNNN

ishani’s two boy toys uniting to take down evil mama mami. chalo ji, yeh trope bhi ho gaya.

husband got shot in the hand for his achchaai in trying to save sid. no good deed goes unpunished in tellywood, and thus this man will have to suffer more than anyone else here.

WHAT EVEN ARE THESE AWKWARD CUTS AND EDITS LORD DOES NO ONE WORKING ON THIS SHOW GIVE A SINGLE FUCK ANYMOREEEEEEEEEEEE?????

sid standing like a sulky toddler in one corner. lord the way they ruined this characterrrrrrrrrr. main kabhi maaf nahi karoongi.

i realllllllllly do not care for this dumbass expository conversation. just get it the fuck over with.

YES SID DO THE RIGHT THING LET HER MOVE ON WITH MR SINGH PLS GOD JUST LET MY GIRL GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

lol now both of them are angstily crying over........ their mutual crush on mr singh and his unlimited achchaai?

mr singh is here to talk sense into everyone’s heads, as per usual.

lmaooooooooooooooo @ sid awkwardly standing here listening to this conversation about all this mohabbat mr singh has for ishani.

blah blah blah khatam karo yaaaar, sar phataa jaa raha hai. ‘

ok this took a weird-ish turn and lol i am sid, awkwardly lingering here like “should i go or like... mera yahaan hone ka kuch matlab bhi hai??”

haaan lucky toh hai siddhant. who tf comes out of a coma with a brain tumour and still survives and regains all his motor functions back IMME-FUCKING-DIATELY?????? a “lucky” medical miracle, that’s whom.

HANDSHAKE?????????? IN THESE CORONA INFESTED TIMES??????????????? WHAT TF YOU PPL EVEN DOING?!?!?! SOCIAL DISTANCING, PPL!!!!!!! FFS YOU’RE IN THE MEDICAL FIELD?!?!?!?!?!!

blah blah blah, kar diya mr singh ne apni biwi ka kanyadaan uske aashiq ko. no one even bothered to give her time to like sit down and really think about what she wanted to do with her life after all these chaotic revelations. bas passed her over from one man to another like she’s some kinda property. cool. patriarchy zindaabaaad.

that’s the most bhai-behen-ly hug i have ever seen. dupatta phaad ke raakhi baand le isko, behen.

lmao at least kunal got to cheese it up in the last shot. good for him.

ok now fuck this i’m off to watch the new ep of brooklyn nine nine. i deserve it as a reward for sitting through this bullcrap.

#sanjivani #sj lbs #episode liveblogs

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whatdorothyhaleknew · 4 years

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Something I wrote when my mother was dying.

My mother is dying, and not in the Buddhist, Sylvia Plath "we're all dying, all the time" way. Her body has been compromised, the messages her cells send each other got confused, and now there is rapidly developing cancer in her lung, and most horrifically, in her brain. Just typing that disgusts me enough to taste stomach acid rising, the most brutally unfair place to become ill, a desecration on the shrine to her life, her person. I've been staying at home a lot, obviously, and unsurprisingly, my university work has been put on the back burner while I cope emotionally and practically. Mum has been her usual stoic self, we don't talk about it. She just wants to sleep, drink her tea, keep on smoking (as laughably distasteful that seems), listen to her radio. She doesn't want to disrupt any of our lives. But despite her stiff upper lip, her cancer is catching up with her. First, she couldn't make it up the stairs, so she had to stay downstairs. But she still was ok. Then she had her infection, knocking her out completely over Christmas. Back then we still didn't know she had cancer, she had kept it from us. She seemed to recover a bit, she came home, she was back to normal. It wasn't until later that she began to decline. Now, she is frailer than I could ever have imagined her to be. She moves with a tricycle/walker that we got from the NHS, which she could use by herself at first. I stay at home as much as I can. I stay up late, listening for her needing my help. When she could move easily by herself, getting out and into bed with no problem, zooming around with her walker, going up and down the steps no bother, it wasn't such a big deal. I went to sleep without any worry. Then she got thinner, slower, she needed more help with getting up the little step to get into the kitchen. I started staying up late, listening in my bedroom for the telltale sound of the kitchen light flickering on, coming down and making excuses, assuring my mother that I was up anyway, and that I just wanted a tea, like her. About 3 or 4 times a night I would sit with her until she went back to bed, trying to make conversation. I still haven't talked about her cancer, or her terminal diagnosis, with her. It feels too cruel to do it, to someone I love, who is dying, who never wanted to have the difficult conversations. I dread when people ask me how she is. She's getting worse, more confused as the tumours annex more of her brain and more of her, she's thinner, getting lighter for her final journey. The last week or two, she has had trouble getting in and out of bed. Now there is no pretense, she knows I am up for her in the night, because she calls me to come down. She knows I stay awake. Yesterday, I had the horrible thought that all of us were just waiting to be bereaved, trapped in between two points, the names of which I am too frightened to fully acknowledge with words. Mum was adamant that I stay in university, and so I have also been thinking of all that tedious business, in the back of my mind. Now there are some deadlines coming up, and I have threadbare theories to work with, subjects that I struggle to care about. Today, I came back to my flat near the university, and headed to the university library with my laptop, intending to bulldoze my ideas and theories until I produced something. I stared into space when I tried to read, I desperately switched to Buzzfeed, Facebook, Twitter when I tried to write. Without realising it, my fingers seek distractions from when I try to let my brain out of its safe space. About 20 minutes ago, I was finally pushing my thoughts forcefully onto the Word document, rough, shoddy work, but at least it gave me a mound of clay from which I could sculpt my argument. I had stopped, just for a second, to think, or to not think, just for a second. I had Spotify on my earphones, on shuffle, my playlist including over 9000 songs. In that dead space, my brain briefly off-lining itself while I gain momentum to write again, Amanda Palmer came on, freezing me with her words. "Love of mine, soon you will die, And I won't be far behind, I'll follow you into the dark." I sat through the entire song, not sure if I should just have skipped it, as I felt that icy boulder I have in my gut thaw, a real, bitter taste to my throat. Embarrassed to say that I cried there. I swallowed that mysterious lump that comes from crying. I think the Chinese guy to the side of me saw that I was crying, but I'm thankful he didn't say anything. After I got myself together again, after I grew used to the wound that the song had created, or exposed, I felt....the same? Worse? Better? My life at the moment is like a kaleidoscope of brown and grey, even when it turns and changes, it's just more of the same aching dullness. This whole thing with my mum at first made me scared about where would she go when she died. I was raised a Catholic, then I was an atheist in my teens, and now I confess that I am agnostic. I don't know, and neither does anyone else. I don't think the picture painted in the Christian Bible, or the Muslim Qua'ran, or any other holy book is the perfect, accurate story, I don't think it is the exact blueprint for how the cosmos works. Ultimately, these religions were created, I think, to act as an adhesive for communities, creating immutable laws for everyone, and explaining unknown things. Of course, the belief in the afterlife is part of that last thing. Even knowing this, in my cold, rational brain, I can't quite believe that a person ends completely. Part of this lack of belief in disbelief is something I can't explain without sounding mildly insane. I have always had this sense, that the pair of eyes I look out of is a complete fluke. That I could have just as easily be looking out another pair of eyes, and using a different pair of hands, being called a different name. I have never liked labels placed on my identity, or people assuming I like this or that because I am female, or because I am straight, or English. Because I am well aware that there is a part of me, deep in my mind, which is neither female or male. It has no sex, no nationality, no race, no preference. I would stay awake for a long time as a child, thinking about this other me, that was looking out of my eyes, knowing they were only mine by chance, and knowing that these eyes are only mine for a limited time. As a child, when I went to sleep, this is all I would think about. As I got older, as I absorbed the culture I grew up around, I did not have so much time to reflect on this opinionless, sexless, ageless edifice in my mind, thinking instead about how I could fit in with the others, whether I'd get a job, if I would fall in love. But that thing still lives, it has always been there, it sits, unchanging in its appreciation in the randomness of this body and this life, a dark, hard, immortal rock in ever-changing currents, the mountain my house is built into and on. I don't know what to call it, not entirely sure if I can call it part of me, and if that it is the "real me", and the personality I have developed is just a growth. I don't want to use the word "soul," as it is too value-laden, but it suits this rock within me in some ways - it is unchanging, it watches, it is nothing but itself. If I lose both my legs, this rock of me will not be chipped, it will not be scratched, it will remain as unmoved as it always has been. I could lose my eyes, and it will only increase in its heaviness, in its presence. If the part of me that is me is my brain, what happens when it rots? Does it rots away around this rock of me? Does the rock of me stay?

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patron-of-lost-causes · 5 years

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Books that remind me of Jude from A Little Life

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, but I’ve always felt like I haven’t read enough to make a proper list. Then I realized that I will always feel like I haven’t read much and it is as good a time as any to do it. I have decided to create lists of books that remind me of certain characters-characters that I love, characters that intrigue me, characters that I can’t seem to forget. I decided to come up with these lists because it has been so difficult for me to find books that are similar to the books I loved or similar to the characters that I loved and I feel like this is a good way for me to keep track of these books and for other readers to find books that are similar to their favourite books and characters. These books can be similar in terms of the character’s personality, the character’s past, the character’s relationship with the people around them, about anything really. The similarities might vary, some books might be more similar than others. After all, reading is a subjective experience and no two persons ever experience the same book. Therefore, what I find is similar to my favorite character might not be the same for you. Please just keep this in mind before you get your hopes up. Also, recommendations are always welcome!

My first book list is about Jude from A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Jude is the main protagonist from A Little Life and the book focuses on his relationships with his three closest friends and other people whose lives have interwoven with his life-directly and indirectly but mostly, it focuses on his relationship with himself-his mind and body. A Little Life examines Jude’s life-a character study of what makes a person the way they are, how much hardship a person can endure, what makes and breaks a person and how a person makes the best out of their life even in the midst of suffering. Jude is a complex character-a character moulded by trauma and the kindness of his loved ones-and he is very very precious. Fellow A Little Life lovers would know how difficult it is to find books similar to A Little Life, never mind finding similar characters to Jude.

TW: Almost everything-A Little Life and these books are very triggering because of the heavy subject matter and graphic scenes so please make sure you’re in a good place emotionally and mentally before reading my post (it has some quotes which might be triggering to some) and before checking these books out.

Spoilers: I will only provide the book synopsis (based on Goodreads). There will be spoilers from the description of the similarities between A Little Life and the other books on the list.

1) Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

“I wanted to wake up and not feel. My life would have been acceptable, I felt, if someone had come in and in the night severed all my nerves where they attached at the skin. If I was numb, then great. More life for me, another helping, please.”

This is the latest addition to my list having only finished it three days ago. It is a book about Aphias “Fee” Zhe, a Korean-American boy who has to come to terms with the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of his choir director who also abused his fellow choir friends. This explores the aftermath of abuse-the difference ways abuse can shape a person, the coping strategies of the victims which can be quite destructive and how different victims deal with abuse differently. It is a very triggering book and it is very draining. My emotions were all over the place and Alexander Chee writes the book with such a raw and unflinching honesty that you can’t help but absorb all the emotions. This book reminds me of Jude in the way that it follows a victim of abuse through his self-destructive years, his achievements, his relationships with his loved ones and the complicated feelings he has for his abuser which he feels both disgusted and protected by. This book also portrays the human condition as beautifully as A little Life did and Jude and Fee both have the same outlook on life. The writing is simply gorgeous. Besides, Alexander Chee and Hanya Yanagihara are close friends in real life and she helped him a lot with this book. Both authors are really good at wrecking people.

2) Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

”What do you fear when you fear everything? Time passing and not passing. Death and life. I could say my lungs never filled with enough air, no matter how many puffs of my inhaler I took. Or that my thoughts moved too quickly to complete, severed by a perpetual vigilance. But even to say this would abet the lie that terror can be described, when anyone who’s ever known it knows that it has no components but is instead everywhere inside you all the time, until you can recognize yourself only by the tensions that string one minute to the next. And yet I keep lying, by describing, because how else can I avoid this second, and the one after it? This being the condition itself: the relentless need to escape a moment that never ends.”

This is about a family wrestling with mental illness and how mental illness affects the family and their ability to care for a person with mental illness. John suffers from severe depression and his marriage with Margaret gave him three children, one of whom suffers from depression and anxiety. What follows is years of anguish and suffering as Michael (the son) gets worse and the family tries their best to save Michael. This book asks the same questions as A Little Life-what makes a life worth living, how much a person should have to endure before it becomes acceptable for them to end their life, what right does someone have to force another person to live against their wishes even if their intentions are good, is it cruel to require someone to stay alive just for the sake of staying alive. It is brutal in its questions and it will force the readers to think about the consequences of their actions done with the intention of caring for their suffering loved ones. Jude is very similar to Michael even if their personalities couldn’t have been more different. Both were shaped by their suffering and by the suffocating love of their loved ones. Too much expectation and hope were placed on them both, neither of which they were ready to fulfill and give. It also offers insight into the feelings of the family members-how helpless they feel in not being able to heal Michael, how difficult it is to care for their loved ones while having a busy life themselves, how some family members are more gentle and patient than others.

3) The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride

“It was the very worst moment of my life and after it, everything soft in me slowly turned to bone.”

This book follows an 18-year old Irish girl (the characters are unnamed for the majority of the book) who goes to London to pursue acting. She meets an older man and begins a relationship with him and this is a story of their relationship and how it’s affected by the man’s traumatic past. This is a very disturbing book as the abuse in this book is very graphic, similar to A Little Life and their relationship can be toxic at times. While reading this book, I felt like I was walking on eggshells and it was not a pleasant experience. The anticipation of what was to come was almost worse than reading about the abuse itself. Both Jude and the male protagonist are very damaged characters, they are betrayed by the people who were meant to protect them and the extent of abuse experienced by both of them are very extreme. Both characters are self-destructive in different ways and they both HATE opening up to the people they care about and end up hurting the people they care about. I would also like to mention that while a huge part of this book is about the abuse and its aftermath, it also focuses a lot on the couple’s relationship and there are a lot of sex scenes-A LOT (I thought it’s worth mentioning in case some people are not comfortable reading about sexual scenes). The book is written in stream of consciousness style so every feeling goes straight to your brain without any filters, making everything raw and heightened.

4) A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride

“You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say.”

This is another novel from Eimear McBride that was an absolute pain to read. I still am unsure as to which of the two books I loved most. This book follows a young girl (unnamed again, but now throughout the book) and her relationships with her unstable mother, her brother who has brain tumour and her uncle who she has a complicated relationship with. This book is also about her sexuality and how a loveless upbringing and abuse can affect a child and her outlook on life. This book is BRUTAL, in many different ways, and I would say that it is more brutal than The Lesser Bohemians which is already very brutal and raw to begin with. The atrocities in this book make me nauseous and it requires a huge deal of commitment and masochistic tendencies to brave through this book. Some people might feel differently, some might feel that the other books in this list are more brutal than this one and they are right too. At the end of the day, it all comes down to who you are as a person and the limits of what you can see and endure. Again, both Jude and the protagonist are hurt by the people who were meant to protect them, people who are capable of so much love but chose hate instead. Both are very self-destructive even if they’ve managed to find their place in the world by their own terms. Both also have complicated feelings for their abusers.

Those are the books that reminded me of Jude and A Little Life. Hope you guys like these books as much as I did. On a side note, there’s a book called On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and like its title, it is a really gorgeous book. I would have added this book to the list but it didn’t remind me of A Little Life and Jude in any way other than its overall tone and writing. It is both sad and hopeful and I personally like these kinda books so if you are interested, please check it out!

#jude st francis #a little life #hanya yanagihara #edinburgh #alexander chee #imagine me gone #adam haslett #the lesser bohemians #a girl is a half-formed thing #eimear mcbride #book recommendations #literature #literary fiction #beautiful quotes #reading #book quotes #love for books #abuse #me

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