#ethel mugs

[poeghoul]

hard times

in which harry is grumpy and mean and has a scary job

word count: 3,315 warnings: angst, semi-mafia!harry, a single mention of drugs, semi-gun violence, harassment. do not read if opposed to any of the topics mentioned.  authors note: i haven’t written in years so this may be bad. inspired by "western nights" by ethel cain.

Harry met Niall at a small diner called The Vinyl booth at 9:37pm, an oddly specific time Niall gave to him, Harry thought. Niall had been interested in forming a connection with Harry, seeing as he’s the biggest drug supplier in all of northern California. Niall loved The Vinyl Booth; he loved taking his girls there every other Sunday after church. It was a warm, cozy diner, with checkered flooring and a jukebox that only worked if you kicked it in the right spot. 

“Harry!” Niall exclaimed, excited to finally be meeting with him after hearing about him for so long. Harry gave him a curt nod as Niall put his hand out for him. Harry took his and grunted as Niall brought him in for a weird semi hug that men do. “Good to finally meet ya,” Niall smiled and held the door open for him, a little bell attached to the handle sounded. Harry walked in first as Niall followed behind and stood while they waited for someone to seat them.

“Niall? What are you doing here so late?” A girl approached the two men, smiling at Niall before grabbing two menus. 

“Y/n!” Niall exclaimed, returning an even bigger smile than she had initially sent him, “just needed a little late night treat.” 

“Of course you did, come on,” she led the two to a corner booth, “I’ll be back with some coffee.” She smiled at the two and Harry noticed she hadn’t greeted him or even made eye contact with him once, which infuriated him; he was used to everyone showing him the respect he swears he deserves. 

She walked back with two small gray ceramic mugs in her hands before turning again to get the coffee pot (Harry assumed they hadn’t brewed a fresh batch in some hours, disgusting him even more than he already was with the sticky menu he was holding). She went to pour some into Nialls mug before Harry decided to speak up. 

“When was that brewed?” Y/n looked up as she stopped pouring the coffee.

“Um,” she paused, trying to remember when she last even touched the pot, “maybe around 5,” she shrugged, phrasing it more as a question than a statement. 

Harry scoffed, “and you expect us to be okay with drinking that?” he practically shouted at the girl; she was taken aback, furrowing her brows and cocking her head to the side. “Get him a new mug and brew a fresh batch, we’re not drinking coffee that’s been sitting out for nearly five hours.” he spat. Niall went to speak up and Harry shot him the deadliest glare the man had ever seen, effectively shutting Niall up. 

“I’ll get on it,” she murmured as she bowed her head, picked up Nialls mug and spun on her heel, heading towards the sink to dump out the hour's old coffee. 

“You didn’t have to shout at her, Harry,” Niall scolded the man like he was a four year old. Harry just looked at him and shook his head, going to speak up before deciding against it. 

The bell on the door rang. It was one of his security guards; he had told both (one of them planning on coming in three before 10pm, the time they closed) to observe the interaction between the two men; one to scope out Niall, and two to make sure Harry made it out alive. With what Harry did, not making it out of the diner was an option. The burly man sat down in a booth facing Harry directly. 

Y/n was at the coffee pot, pouring in new coffee grinds and pressing at the brewing options, though there couldn’t have been more than one option with how old the machine was. She looked up as the man sat down, a puzzled look taking over her features; Harry couldn’t stop staring. 

Y/n approached him, “Hi,” she smiled at him, “I’m y/n I’ll be taking care of you today, can I start you off with some coffee? I’m brewing some right now so it’ll be the freshest coffee of your life,” she joked with him, purposefully being loud enough for Harry to hear; he just narrowed his eyes at her and, instead of gazing at her, he began glaring. The man just nodded. She gave a half smile before walking back to where the two men were sat, pulling out a small notepad and pen from her apron. “Oki doki, Niall I know what you want already,” she smiled at him, a dimple forming in her cheek. She looked at Harry, “how about you? Have enough time to look the menu over?” He hadn’t even opened it. 

“No,” he said simply. Her smile faded, a puzzled look taking over her features. 

“Oh, well, do you have any questions?” She tucked her pen and notepad into a small pocket on the black apron that was folded and tied around her waist. 

“No,” he replied, a bitter tone, “I would like some fresh coffee though, if you’re capable,” he tried his hardest to contain his smirk. 

If y/n didn’t care about her job, she’d bark at him. If y/n didn’t care about the owners and how close she had gotten to them, she would’ve taken her pen from her apron and jammed it in his hand with all her might. And if y/n had the guts to either of those, she would. She cares, though, far too much to do either of those; so instead, she smiled and prayed that her eye wouldn’t start twitching. 

“Of course, sir,” she turned and rolled her eyes, mimicking him under her breath. Harry heard her, but didn’t say anything. She grabbed another mug and the coffee pot, almost burning her knuckles in the process. She placed Nialls mug before him and poured into his new one, making sure to leave room for creamer. “Room for cream?” She made eye contact with Harry. He shook his head, humming a ‘no’. She tried her best to fill it to where it would spill on him if he picked it up too quickly, and made her way to the only other patron in the small diner. The bell on the door rang again, but it wasn’t who Harry was expecting. 

Y/n looked up at the character who walked into and watched as he walked past her and sat at the counter. Nobody ever came in this late, three of them looked scary and they were all men. She felt her heart skip some beats in the worst way. Thankfully, two of the cooks were here, but they were already upset with her for seating guests twenty something minutes before closing. 

She walked behind the counter, setting the pot down on the heater, and walked to the man at the counter. She noticed his red ringed, dark brown eyes. “Hi, I’m y/n,” she started her script, “I’ll be taking care of you tonight, what can I get ya started with?” She grabbed her notepad and pen, again, hoping he knew what he wanted to eat so she’d have an excuse to go into the back, wanting to be with the men she’d known for some time, rather than three suspicious men and Niall  (who, according to her, was far too gentle to hurt a fly). 

He smiled at her; it made her stomach curl. “Orange juice, please, and a mixed cheese omelette.” She scribbled in her notepad, muttering a ‘got it’ before scrambling to the back to put the order in. 

“So,” Niall began, causing Harry to finally look away from the door the girl had basically run through. “I know you didn’t agree to meeting me here for the chorizo and eggs plate,” he joked at Harry. He gave a curt nod. Niall cleared his throat. “I know you have a busy schedule, so I’ll get right to it,” the bell on the door sounded again. Three minutes before closing, right on time. His other bodyguard walked past the two and sat at another end of the counter. Y/n peaked her head through the swinging door, looking around before setting her eyes on the last patron to walk in. She sighed before walking out and giving him her whole spiel. 

“Coffee, please,” the man smiled at her. She was grateful for someone, other than Niall, to show her some kindness in a non creepy way. She turned to grab another mug and the pot of coffee and made her way back to him.

“Long night?” she asked him while pouring into his mug. He nodded and smiled at her, offering her a thank you. Harry felt a twinge of jealousy in his chest. 

Niall continued to speak to him, though Harry tuned him out, granting him responses in the form of grunts. He watched the girl bring out the orange juice for the boy at the counter before going into the back and returning with a bowl of prepackaged creamers. “Sorry, Niall, the creamers completely slipped my mind.”

“Not a big deal, y/n, I knew you’d get around to it,” he reached into the bowl, grabbing a package and ripping it open to pour into his coffee. He did that four more times, turning the near black brown to a light, almost white shade. 

She looked at Harry, his eyes already on her, “finally decided?” he shook his head. She just stared, no emotion on her face. 

“Just get him the same thing as me, please” Niall awkwardly cut in. Y/n’s gaze softened, looking at him and smiled, before nodding and walking off. Harry, still, couldn’t stop staring; watching how she walked and moved and how she reacted to every word said to her. He also noticed how the boy at the counter did the same. Niall continued to talk at him about a deal he was wishing to make. Something about expanding Harry’s territory and getting a small cut. From what Harry heard, it wasn’t a bad proposal. 

+++

“Thanks, again, for meeting with me, Harry” Niall shook his hand, a beaming smile plastered on his face. Harry offered him a pursed smile in return. “Get home safe.” Harry nodded, watching as Niall turned to walk to his car. 

Harry turned to his, getting in the backseat, greeted by his bodyguard, Daniel, who’d entered the restaurant earlier. They sat in silence as they waited for the final of the two men, Jax, to return to the car. Harry had sent him a message halfway through their meal, asking (more like demanding) him to stay in the diner until the skeptical character had left; he left a bitter taste in Harry’s mouth and he just wanted to ensure the safety of the girl he was fascinated by. 

He waited. And waited. Bit at his nails, ran his hands through his hair, groaned many times and waited even more. 

Time seemed to go by so slowly. He stared into the window, watching the three of them closely. His left leg was bouncing up and down, an unfamiliar sense of anxiety coursing through him. Huffing through his nose, he ran his hand through his hair. He hated how he was feeling, and judging by her body language, she was feeling similarly. 

Y/n stood with the coffee pot, having had to make another batch as the group of men continued to order more and more cups throughout the night, waiting for the two men to leave so she could crawl into bed. She had been here close to eleven hours now, and was growing anxious being practically trapped in a room with two strange men she had never seen, especially since the two cooks had left for the night (she was too scared to ask them to stay, not wanting to be a bother but she desperately regrets that now).

The bigger man of the two sat glaring at the smaller one, watching his every move. Y/n could tell he was growing uncomfortable with harsh eyes on him at all times; it made her feel safer, though. 

The small one offered her a small smile, asking for the check silently. She felt a wave of relief to soon have him out of her hair. She couldn’t wait to leave; she had already wiped down all the tables, swept, asked the two men if they’d be paying cash or card, and when they both replied with card, she closed out the cash drawer on the register. She was eager, practically vibrating. Nothing planned for the night, she just couldn’t wait to step outside into the fresh air, feeling suffocated in the small space of the diner. 

She handed the small receipt to him and he immediately offered her his card, making sure to graze her hand with his. She noted how cold and pale it was. A small ‘thank you’ before a pursed smile graced her features. She ran his card through the machine, printed a receipt and handed the two over. He smiled at her, leaving a ten on the counter before walking out. 

Outside, Harry noted the movement inside the diner, watching the weird man walk out of the restaurant and around the corner to where, he assumed, was a back alley. Jax walked out shortly after, y/n walking to the door behind him to lock it before heading to the back, but he hesitated to leave, still. The lights shut off shortly after. He couldn’t make out much more. 

The door opened and, though he could barely see her silhouette, he could tell she was locking the door behind her. She stood in front of the diner, typing away at her phone. He groaned at how oblivious she was to her surroundings. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a head peeking around a corner. He unlocked his door, prepared to jump to her defense at any given moment. The man who peeked around the corner fully emerged and walked up behind y/n, his hands in the pockets of his oversized jacket. He said something to her, Harry couldn’t hear what, and she practically jumped out of her skin. She turned around with wide eyes and slipped her phone in her back pocket. 

“Oh,” she gasped, “hey, did you leave anything inside?”

He grinned at her, “no, actually was just wondering what you were up to after this.” she gulped. 

“Um,” she tried to think of something, anything, to lie about, but blanked. “I’m just, uh, gonna hang out with my friends,” she rushed out. His grin turned into a smirk. 

“You sure?” She nodded. His smirk vanished. “You’re lying.” she shook her head, a small ‘I’m not’ escaping her lips. “Yes, you are,” he stepped closer to her, “I hate liars.”

“I’m not lying,” she backed up, her breathing picking up. He stepped even closer. 

“Now you’re lying again,” he glared down at her, “must I teach you what happens to liars?” Her eyes began to well with tears. A car door slammed. A gun pressed against the boy's temple. His eyes widened. 

“Touch her and I’ll blow your fucking head off,” Harry snarled, pressing the gun even harder against him. 

“I-I wasn’t, I swear, I swear,” he barely made out. Tears began pouring out of y/n’s eyes. 

“Okay, so then tell me what you were gonna do, hm,” with his free hand, Harry grabbed y/n, pulling her behind him. She hid her face in his back and gripped his shirt in both hands, trying to focus on controlling her breathing. 

“Nothing! Nothing, I swear,” he cried out.

“You swear, hm?” he let out a breathy laugh, “Why’d you wait for her, hm? Why’d you hide back there?” The boy’s mouth just opened and closed; Harry held back a laugh. “Say something, don’t be shy. You weren’t a minute ago.”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I’ll leave right now if you let me, I swear, I promise!” He began to sob.

Harry just pressed harder, “that’s not what I asked, though, is it?” The boy shook his head as best as he could, “then answer my questions.”

“I just, I wanted to see her.”

Harry laughed, “so you wanted to see her, and you couldn't have done it in a normal manner? Couldn’t have asked to hang out rather than hiding in a fucking alley waiting for her when you knew she’d be most vulnerable, fucking scum,” he spat out, inching his face closer to his. 

He sobbed, “I’m so sorry.”

Harry moved the gun from his temple, but not before he pressed a little bit harder. “Get in the car,” he muttered, keeping the gun pointed at him and ushering y/n with his back towards the backseat of a black Range Rover. She opened the door and jumped in before Harry did the same. He put the gun in his holster, secured under his jacket. He looked to y/n, who was shaking in the middle seat. “You okay?” She nodded, her face down, staring at her fingers picking at a loose thread on her jeans. “I’m sorry,” Harry apologized to her, anger surged through his veins and he wished he could get out and have the opportunity to pull the trigger pointed to the back of the boy's head. The car started and pulled out of the parking lot. “We’ll take you home, I’ll send someone to stay in the general area for your safety,” she looked up at him with watery eyes. 

“Okay.”

“Can you give me an address, please,” he handed the phone to her, with trembling hands she took it and typed out her address. It was a six minute walk. “How were you planning to get home?” she handed back the phone. 

“I walk.”

“For every shift?” she nodded. “I don’t like that,” he admitted. 

“It’s only, like, five minutes,” she shrugged, still not making eye contact. 

“Still don’t like it,” he ran his hands through his hair, sighing. She picked at her nails, chewing on her bottom lip. 

The drive was short, two right turns and they arrived at her apartment complex. Harry opened the door and helped her out, following her up the stairs, standing close behind her as she unlocked the door. 

“It’s a little messy, sorry,” she opened the door and led him in. He stood in the entryway, taking in the details of the decorations that filled the small space (it was a small studio apartment, big enough for Y/n, but far too small for Harry). Her bed wasn’t made, with halloween sheets and decorative pillows on the floor next to the bed, and the only chair in the apartment was covered in laundry. 

“It’s not bad,” he looked down at her while she gazed at him. Harry loved the way she looked at him and hated that he loved it.  

“Thank you for taking me home and ya know,” she smiled at him. He nodded. 

“I’ll send someone to take you to work and bring you home for the next few days, need to make sure you’re safe,” he took a deep breath in, stepping closer to her, his hand reaching up to graze her cheek, resting it as he caressed the soft skin with the pad of his thumb. He looked down at her, a glint in his eyes she couldn’t make out. His gaze shifted to her lips, his hand stilled and she tilted her head up in the slightest. 

His expression changed, he removed his hand, and he stepped back. “You’ll know when they’re here. Goodnight,” and with that, he turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Her cheek felt cold. 

She missed his touch. 

And that would be all she thought about for the rest of the night. 

troubles always gonna find you baby, but so will i.

[oceandolores]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫 | chapter 14

"You put your hands into your head, and then smile cover your heart,"

summary: Joel's paranoia is getting worse, and with the new dark truth you found out and the mysterious man...

warnings: 18+ only, Minors DNI, AU, No outbreak. (TW) mentions of substance abuse/alcohol use disorder, adult content, religion abuse, violence, blood gore, mentions of death, sexual abuse, sexual content, domestic violences, ped0ph!l1a, cann1bal!sm, human traff1ck1ng, dad's best friend!Joel, HUGE age gap (i will not specify her exact age, but she's legal and Joel is 49), daddy issues, mentions of toxic family dynamic, Joel is widowed, Ellie is 16, angst, smut A LOT, forbidden relationship, soft and protective Joel, innocent and pure reader. your last name is Gibson. any other details will be explain throughout the story. inspired by the album Preacher's daughter by Ethel Cain and also mix with lana del rey vibes.

CHAPTER 14

masterlist!

previous | chapter 13

next | chapter 15

It’s been a month on the road now, slipping in and out of sleepy towns, worn-out motels, and weathered diners with Joel by your side. The two of you have made a life between highways and backroads, sharing the kind of intimacy that comes from being each other’s only constant in a world that’s always shifting. The hum of the car engine and the crackle of old country songs on the radio have become the soundtrack to your love, which only grows deeper with every mile.

You find beauty in the simplicity of it all—sharing a cup of coffee in a diner that smells of old leather and rain, Joel’s fingers brushing yours across the table as he sips from his mug. The road stretches out before you like a promise, endless and full of possibility, with the sun painting the sky in shades of pink and orange as it sinks behind the hills. Joel’s hand rests on your thigh as he drives, his touch a steady comfort in a world that feels anything but certain.

Every town you pass through becomes a canvas for your love. In every motel room with flickering lights, beneath the worn sheets that smell of something familiar and foreign all at once, you find each other again and again. There’s a certain wildness to it—making love in unfamiliar places, the thrill of knowing that it’s just the two of you against the world. Each touch feels more urgent, more meaningful, as if the act itself can solidify the bond between you, making it unbreakable.

It’s in these moments, tangled together in a bed far from home, that you feel the weight of your connection grow stronger. You’ve seen every side of Joel now—his vulnerability, his fears, his longing—and you know he’s seen the same in you. Your bodies move in sync, a language spoken without words, where every breath, every whisper, binds you closer together.

Joel’s lips find yours in the quiet moments between the thrill of the open road, his touch both gentle and possessive, like he can’t get enough of you. And you welcome it—every kiss, every whispered promise in the dark, grounding yourself in him as he grounds himself in you.

With each new town, each new night, it’s as if you’re carving out your own sanctuary, a place where nothing else matters but the two of you. It’s more than just physical; it’s the way you share the same pillow, the way his fingers trace patterns across your skin as you drift to sleep, the way he holds you after, like you’re the only thing tethering him to this world.

But after New Orleans, you begin to notice a change in Joel, like the shadows he once outran have caught up to him. The nights grow heavier, darker somehow. He doesn’t talk about it, but you feel it in the way he holds you tighter when you sleep, as if he's afraid of losing you to some invisible force lurking just outside the window. His nightmares come more frequently now, muttered words and restless movements pulling him deeper into some past torment you can’t reach.

You wake to find him sitting up in bed, his breath uneven, his brow furrowed in worry. His eyes dart toward the door, as though he’s expecting someone to burst in at any moment. You slide closer to him, wrapping your arms around his waist, your cheek pressed to his back, trying to ground him in the present.

“Joel,” you whisper, voice soft and tender, “You're okay, I'm here with you, It's okay, honey, we're fine." you held him into your arms and give his temple reassuring kisses, just like he did to you when you used to had nightmares.

Joel never says much after, just holds onto you tighter, as if he’s afraid to let go. Sometimes he apologizes, his voice rough with guilt. Other times, he just buries his face in the crook of your neck, breathing you in like you’re the only thing keeping him grounded. You always tell him the same thing: “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

But you know it’s not just the nightmares anymore. There’s something else. A shadow that follows him in the daylight, too, creeping in at the edges. Joel’s become more paranoid, glancing over his shoulder when you walk through unfamiliar towns, his body tense in a way that puts you on edge too. You notice how he lingers by the windows in your motel rooms, peeking through the blinds, his eyes scanning the parking lot like he’s expecting someone to be there.

“Joel, what’s wrong?” you ask one afternoon, after you catch him staring out at the empty street for far too long. But he just shakes his head, offering you a tight-lipped smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Nothin’, baby. Just… keepin’ an eye out. Gotta be careful, that’s all.”

You don’t press, even though the unease in your chest only grows. You haven’t seen anyone following you—no suspicious figures lurking in the shadows, no strange cars parked outside the motels—but Joel’s fear feels contagious, spreading like a dark cloud over the freedom you thought you’d found together.

At night, when you’re tangled together in bed, you still dream of your father. His voice, sharp and condemning, echoing in your head. You wake up gasping for air, your heart racing, only to find Joel beside you, his presence an anchor. He strokes your hair, his voice low and soothing, but you can’t help but wonder if those old wounds will ever fully heal. If either of you can truly escape the past.

But now, the roles have reversed. It’s Joel who’s haunted. Joel who can’t escape the feeling that someone is coming for him. You try to comfort him the way he’s always comforted you, whispering reassurances into the quiet of the night, holding him close like you can keep the darkness at bay. But his worry clings to him like fog in the early morning, impossible to shake.

In the daylight, everything feels lighter. You’re back on the road, wind in your hair, Joel’s hand resting on yours as the miles slip by. But even then, you can see the flicker of something in his eyes—a wariness, a question that never leaves his mind. You watch him scan the rearview mirror more than usual, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel whenever a car lingers behind you for too long. And though you want to tell him it’s all in his head, you know better than to dismiss it. He’s been through too much to brush off his instincts.

So, you do the only thing you know how to do. You love him. In all the small ways. In all the quiet moments. You press kisses to his temple when he needs reassurance, you hold his hand a little tighter when the weight of his thoughts becomes too much to bear. You let him know, in every way you can, that you’re not going anywhere—that whatever is chasing him can’t touch you. Because it’s just the two of you, like it always has been, like it always will be.

One evening, as the sun dipped low and cast long shadows across the room, you stood at the doorway, watching Joel step out onto the motel balcony, his phone pressed to his ear. The gruffness in his voice softened when he spoke to his brother, Tommy. You could hear the low rumble of his conversation but couldn't make out the words.

You glanced at the soda cans on the small fridge beside the bed, all empty now. "Joel, I'm gonna run downstairs to grab some soda from the store. You want anything?" you asked, stepping toward him.

Joel glanced back at you, his brow furrowed slightly. "Alright, but don’t take too long, okay? And avoid talkin' to folks if you can," he warned, his protective nature slipping through in his voice. "Just get what you need and come right back."

You nod, offering a small smile to reassure him before slipping out the door. The motel’s hallway smells faintly of old carpet and dust, the sound of your shoes echoing in the quiet. As you make your way to the store downstairs, you can’t help but wonder what Joel’s talking about with Tommy. You know he misses them, misses Ellie. The weight of it is always there, just beneath the surface.

On the balcony, Joel exhales deeply, listening to Tommy talk about life back home. "It's good to hear your voice, man,"Joel says, running a hand through his hair. "How's Maria? Luke?"

Tommy’s voice on the other end is calm, steady. “They’re good. Luke’s growin’ so fast, it’s like he’s got a new trick every day. Maria’s been keepin’ busy with him, but she’s doin’ well. Misses you, though. We all do.”

Joel smiles faintly, though his thoughts are elsewhere. "That's good to hear," he says, pausing for a moment before his voice grows quieter. "How's uh...how's Ellie?"

There’s a silence on the other end of the line, the unspoken tension hanging heavy between the brothers. Joel’s heart clenches in his chest. He’s been running from that guilt, pushing it down, but it’s always there, clawing its way back up.

"She's good, Joel. Don't you worry about her," Tommy replies gently. "She's a strong kid, you know that."

Joel nods, though the guilt gnaws at him. “I know. I just…” He swallows, unsure of how to say it. “I shouldn’t have left her. I hate myself for it sometimes.”

“You did what you had to do,” Tommy assures him, but Joel’s not so sure. “She gets it. She just wants to know you’re safe. You’re happy.”

Joel forces a breath out, eyes flicking to the horizon. "You wanna talk to her? She's here actually," Tommy said to Joel.

“Tommy, no, wait—” Joel starts, but it’s too late. He hears Tommy call for Ellie in the background, his heart pounding in his chest. He hasn’t spoken to her since he left. Not directly. Not like this.

Ellie’s voice comes through the line, a mix of sarcasm and warmth masking her deeper emotions. “Well, well, if it isn’t my old man Finally found some time to call, huh?”

Joel winces slightly at the edge in her tone but tries to match her energy. "Hey, kiddo. Missed you."

There’s a beat of silence, and then Ellie softens, though her voice is still guarded. “Yeah, well… I missed you too, dumbass.” She pauses, her tone growing serious. "You okay? You both… safe?"

Joel’s throat tightens. "Yeah. We’re good. How ‘bout you? School goin’ alright?"

Ellie snorts, but there’s a softness in her tone that Joel doesn’t miss. "School?" she repeats. "Yeah, sure. You know, same old bullshit. But don’t worry about me. I’m fine."

Joel closes his eyes, leaning heavily against the railing, the cool metal biting into his palms as he tries to steady himself. The guilt is an ever-present weight, always lingering just behind his ribs.

"I’m sorry, Ellie," he says after a beat, his voice thick with emotion. "I’m sorry I left you. I had to… I had to figure things out. And I’m sorry for not bein’ there."

There’s a pause on the other end before Ellie’s voice comes through, softer now. "Joel… it’s alright. You had to do it. I get it." She hesitates, her words catching in her throat. 

"Yeah, I was pissed off for a bit. Hell, I’m still pissed off. But I understand. You love her. It’s weird as fuck to say it out loud, but I understand. People do crazy shit when they’re in love. I’d probably do the same."

Joel can’t help but smile at the honesty in her voice, even if the situation is far from funny. “Oh, you’re in love now? Alright, kiddo, who’s the lucky kid?” His tone lightens, teasing, hoping to ease the tension just a little.

Ellie laughs, the sound full of teenage exasperation, and Joel can practically hear her blushing through the phone. “Yeah, right. As if I’d tell you.” She pauses, adding with a grin, “Maybe when you come back… if I’m feeling generous.”

Joel chuckles, shaking his head. The levity in their conversation fades after a moment, and Ellie’s tone shifts, more serious now. "But… Joel, there’s somethin’ else. People talk. At school, about you… and her."

Joel’s stomach tightens, his jaw clenching as he braces himself. “What kind of talk?”

Ellie hesitates, her voice quieter, almost like she doesn’t want to say it. "It’s not good, Joel. They’re callin’ you… a p-word." The word hangs in the air between them, unspoken but heavy. 

"Pedo," she finally says. "I have to fucking punch the people calling you that shit, that's ain't true, they are fucking assholes." Ellie says again.

"I also heard her father reported you to the state police. They’re lookin’ for you. He’s sayin’ you kidnapped her, but… I don’t know. ‘Cause now she’s legal, right? I heard the cops might drop it, like… you just ran off with her or whatever. Like some… runaway lovers thing."

Joel’s grip tightens on the railing, his knuckles turning white as he absorbs the weight of her words. His voice, when it comes, is steady but strained. "Where’d you hear about this?"

Ellie sighs, sounding almost guilty. "I kinda overheard Tommy and Maria talking. They don’t know I was listenin’, but… it’s all over town, Joel."

Joel’s fatherly instincts kick in, his voice firm. "Ellie, you know eavesdroppin’ ain’t good. You shouldn’t be listenin’ to stuff like that." 

He’s trying to sound authoritative, but the concern seeps through. "Let me and Tommy handle it, alright? You don’t need to worry about any of that."

“But I am worried,” Ellie says, her voice cracking just a little, the vulnerability slipping through the cracks in her armor. “I’m worried about you, Joel. This shit is fucking serious."

Joel’s heart lurches at her words, but he forces himself to sound calm, reassuring. "Ellie, I’m gonna be alright. Don’t think about that, okay? Let me deal with it. You’ve got enough on your plate. School, life… I don’t want you stressin’ about me."

There’s a long pause on the other end, and Joel knows Ellie’s fighting back her emotions. When she finally speaks again, her voice is quieter, softer. "You’re all I have, Joel."

The words hit him like a punch to the gut. Joel feels his chest tighten, the weight of everything—his choices, his past, the danger lurking around every corner—pressing down on him all at once. He knows he’s failed her in so many ways, knows she deserves better. But he loves her, and he hopes that’s enough.

"I know, kiddo," he says, his voice barely above a whisper. "I promise you, I’ll be careful. We’ll see each other again soon, okay? I won’t let anything happen to me. Or to you."

Ellie sniffs, trying to keep her composure. "You better keep that promise, Joel. Just… be safe, alright? Please."

Joel’s heart aches as he listens to her, knowing how much she’s had to endure, how much he’s put her through. "I will, Ellie," he promises. "We’ll be okay. I’ll see you soon. I swear it."

"Tell her I say hi and me and Emma misses her terribly," Ellie says again, Joel chuckles a little, "I will."

There’s a soft rustle on the other end, and Joel hears Ellie hand the phone back to Tommy. Tommy’s voice fills the line again, steady and matter-of-fact.

“Alright, brother,” Tommy says, his tone shifting back to business. "Let’s talk about her father. He’s still making noise, and it’s getting harder to keep him at bay. We need to figure out what the next move is."

Joel leans against the railing, the weight of the conversation with Ellie still heavy in his chest. He glances out into the darkening sky, thinking about the storm that’s coming and wondering how much longer they can keep running.

"Tommy," Joel starts, his voice low but determined. "We’re gonna keep movin'. California’s the plan. We’ll settle there, lay low. By the time she’s old enough… well, legal enough… the cops might drop the charges. We’ll be free."

There’s a pause, and Joel exhales slowly. "Ellie will come with us, when things calm down. We’ll start over, build a life there."

The words hang in the air like a promise, a hope for something better. Joel’s mind drifts—he imagines a small house by the coast, the two of you living quietly with Ellie, finally free from the weight of the past. Maybe He'll get married. Marry you. Maybe even… kids? The thought stirs something deep in Joel, a mix of longing and fear. After all the trauma, the loss, the heartache—could he even think about kids again? and are you even ready for it after all you've been through?

But the idea of a new life, of peace… it feels like heaven. A place where you and Ellie are safe, where he can protect you both and build something that lasts. "That’s all I need," he murmurs to himself, eyes tracing the horizon.

"Joel?" Tommy’s voice pulls him back. "What’s the plan for now?"

Joel clears his throat, shaking off the haze of his thoughts. "We’re headin’ to Boston next," he says, leaning back against the railing. "We’re in Chicago right now, but we won’t stay long. Got too much heat on us here." 

He pauses, thinking carefully before bringing up the subject weighing on his mind. "Listen, I heard somethin’ on the news. About that Lee boy… and the new pastor at Ellie’s school." He keeps his tone casual, not wanting to raise any suspicion. "They say anything about that?"

There’s a beat of silence, and then Tommy sighs. "Yeah, man. They’re callin’ it a serial killer case now. The cops found parts of Jamie Lee’s body out in the desert. Scattered. They think he was murdered somewhere else and dumped out there. They’re throwin’ everything they got at it, trying to find the killer."

Joel’s stomach twists into knots. "Fuck," he mutters under his breath, his hand gripping the railing tighter. How could he have been so careless? He remembers rushing, panicked, after everything went down—he must’ve left something behind. A piece of Jamie’s body, missed in his hurry to bury them. Now the cops were closer than ever.

Cold sweat beads on his forehead as the full weight of it crashes down on him. If they connect the dots… if they find more evidence, they’ll come after him. And what will happen to you? His mind spirals into dark thoughts—what if they find him before he can get you to safety? What if everything he’s been running from finally catches up?

Joel is so lost in his thoughts, he barely hears Tommy still talking on the other end. His mind is miles away, trapped in the worst-case scenarios of what could happen next.

"Joel?" Tommy’s voice breaks through the fog in his mind. "Joel, you still there?"

He blinks, shaking his head. "Yeah, yeah, sorry," he says, voice distant, trying to steady himself. But something in his gut feels off.

He glances back toward the door of the motel room, realizing how long it’s been since you went to grab soda from the store downstairs. "Tommy, listen…" His voice tightens with concern. "I gotta go."

Tommy senses the tension in Joel’s voice immediately. "What’s goin’ on, brother? You alright? You sound… panicked."

But Joel’s already hanging up, his heart racing as he pushes open the motel door and steps back into the room. It’s empty. Quiet. He checks the clock. You’ve been gone too long.

Panic claws at his chest, and before he knows it, Joel’s out the door, rushing down the hallway, his mind racing with a thousand dark thoughts.

Joel’s heart pounds in his chest as he pushes through the motel’s front door, heading toward the store. He forces himself to stay calm, but the dread creeping up his spine is impossible to ignore.

When he reaches the counter, the fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting a harsh glow on the teenage cashier slouched behind the register. Joel’s voice is tight as he speaks.

"Hey, you seen a girl—'bout this tall, brunette, wearing a light brown dress? She came in for soda."

The cashier looks up, nodding lazily. "Yeah, the pretty girl? She was here. But then she left… with some dude."

Joel’s breath catches in his throat. "What?" His voice sharpens. "What man? Who was it?"

The kid shrugs, barely paying attention. "I dunno, man. Older guy, cool lookin’, maybe her dad or somethin’. Think they went to one of the diners across the street."

Joel’s pulse roars in his ears. "Which diner?" he asks, but the kid just shrugs again, not helpful in the slightest.

Frustration churns in Joel’s gut. "Great," he mutters under his breath before pushing out of the store, his steps growing quicker with each heartbeat. His mind is racing, dread gnawing at the edges of his thoughts, paranoia creeping in like shadows stretching across the pavement.

Was it someone from the police? A detective? Had her father finally found them? His thoughts are jagged, sharp, stabbing at his calm like shards of glass.

He moves through the dimly lit street, crossing between diners, pushing through doors, scanning each place with eyes wild, searching. Every face he sees isn’t yours, and with each diner he leaves, his panic tightens its grip.

"Where the hell are you?" he whispers to himself, his breathing growing ragged.

It’s as though the world has closed in on him, every step forward feeling like running against the tide. The buildings loom like cold, indifferent sentinels, mocking him as he moves from one diner to the next, desperately searching.

His thoughts spiral—what if it’s not just some guy? What if it's someone looking for you? What if they know who you are, who he is? Joel feels his stomach twist, his worst fears wrapping themselves around him like chains, dragging him down into a pit of dread.

And then, across the street, he sees you.

Standing outside one of the diners, you’re talking to a tall man, his back turned to Joel. The guy’s wearing a black leather jacket, his salt-and-pepper beard catching the faint glow of the diner lights. You’re smiling, carefree, like you’ve known him forever.

Then, you hug him, a quick goodbye before the man climbs into his car and drives off, leaving you standing there with a wave.

Joel’s blood runs cold.

You spot him across the street and wave, holding a six-pack of soda in one hand, your sandals slapping against the pavement as you walk toward him with that same innocent smile.

"Hey, Joel!" you call out, your tone casual. "What are you doing out here?"

But Joel doesn’t respond. His body moves on instinct, storming toward you, his jaw clenched tight. The second he reaches you, his hand shoots out, grabbing your arm with a harsh grip.

"Joel?" you say, confused, your eyes widening. "What’s wrong? Ow."

But Joel’s beyond reason now, his mind locked in panic, anger bubbling just beneath the surface. He pulls you with him, his grip firm, dragging you toward the motel without a word. Your steps stumble to keep up, your free hand clinging to the six-pack.

"Joel, what are you doing? You’re hurting me," you plead, but his grip only tightens as he hauls you into the motel room, slamming the door shut behind him.

You nearly fall as he shoves you inside, the six-pack slipping from your grasp and hitting the floor with a clatter. His back presses against the door, locking you both in the small space. His chest heaves with the effort of trying to catch his breath, but the rage boiling inside him leaves no room for calm.

"Didn’t I tell you not to talk to anyone?" His voice is low, rough, a dangerous edge in his tone that makes your heart pound in your chest. "Who the hell was that?"

Your eyes widen, fear flickering across your face. "Joel, I’m sorry, I was going to tell you, I just didn’t want to be rude—"

"Who was that?" Joel’s voice is sharper now, and he moves toward you, his face dark with fury. His hand reaches for your wrist, squeezing hard enough to make you wince. "Tell me."

"That's Negan," you blurt out, your voice shaky. "He—he used to visit my father. He was one of his guests. I met him at my house. We were just talking, that’s all. Joel, please, you’re hurting me."

Joel���s grip doesn’t loosen, his mind whirling. "Your father’s friend? Is he still in contact with your dad? Did you tell anything about us?" His jaw is tight, teeth grinding together, his breath coming in quick, shallow bursts.

"No, no, he’s not," you insist, trying to steady your voice. "He’s not in contact with my dad anymore. He doesn’t know anything about us. I told him I was just on summer break with some friends."

Joel’s eyes bore into yours, searching for any hint of a lie, his fingers digging into your skin. "What did you talk about with him?" he demands, his voice a low growl.

"I'm sorry, Joel, I'm sorry. Nothing important, I swear. Just catching up." You can’t stop the tremble in your voice. "He doesn’t know anything about us, Joel. I promise."

But Joel’s mind is still clouded, still trapped in the dark corners of his paranoia. Every word you say feels like a thread unraveling in his head, and all he can think about is the man—the man who was too close, who might know too much.

You stand there, frozen, your body trembling as Joel finally lets go of your wrist. His breath is shaky, his hands falling to his sides as he steps back.

The anger that just consumed him is replaced by a heavy wave of regret washing over his features, but it doesn’t make the sting of his grip—or the terror it left behind—disappear.

“You… you can’t just do that,” he mutters, his voice quieter now, almost defeated. “You can’t just walk off and talk to people. You don’t know who’s lookin’ for you… for us.”

You nod, mechanically rubbing the spot where his fingers had dug into your skin, still too shocked to fully grasp what just happened. The image of him, face twisted in rage, flashes in your mind, and you feel your heart tighten painfully in your chest.

For a moment—just a moment—you saw someone else standing there. Not Joel.

Your father.

The way his jaw clenched, how he towered over you, the grip on your wrist—it was too much like before, too close to the nights you feared your father’s wrath, his cruelty.

It rips open an old wound you thought had healed. You take a shaky breath, but it comes out as a sob, your chest heaving with the flood of emotions crashing down on you.

Joel’s gaze flickers to your wrist, and when he sees the angry red marks his grip left behind, his eyes widen in horror.

“Fuck, baby,” he whispers, his voice hoarse, trembling. “I didn’t mean to— I’m so sorry. I…”

He reaches out to you, but the second his hand moves closer, you flinch, stepping back instinctively, your arms wrapping around yourself protectively.

“Don’t touch me,” you manage to choke out, your voice small and broken. “I just… I want to be alone. Please.”

Joel’s face falls, a look of devastation crossing his features as he lowers his hand. He takes a step back, guilt weighing heavy on his shoulders. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear—”

“Just leave,” you whisper, tears welling in your eyes. “For a moment. Joel… I need space.”

He swallows hard, his expression tortured, but he doesn’t push you any further. He knows he’s hurt you in a way he never intended, and the regret in his eyes is almost unbearable.

Joel opens his mouth as if to say something else, but he sees the way you’re trembling, sees how scared you are. He doesn’t want to make it worse.

With one last look, he turns and leaves the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

The second you hear the click of the door, your knees give way. You sink to the floor, your body shaking as the sobs come harder now, the weight of it all too much to hold inside any longer. You feel like you can’t breathe, the air thick and suffocating, and the tears spill over uncontrollably.

It was Joel… but it wasn’t.

The man who held you just now, who gripped you so tightly you thought he might hurt you… that wasn’t the Joel you knew. And that scared you more than anything.

You scramble to your feet, rushing into the bathroom. You slam the door shut and lock it, as if that simple action could somehow keep everything out. But nothing stops the flood of memories, the fear that curls around your chest like a vice.

The way your father’s face twisted in anger whenever you crossed him, the sting of his words, the threat of his hand. You always knew when it was coming, that moment when his patience snapped, when you’d become the target of his rage.

And for a moment, Joel had looked just like him.

You press your back against the door and slide down, hugging your knees to your chest, your body trembling as you sob. You cry for what feels like hours, the weight of it all crashing over you again and again.

You don’t understand why Joel acted like that. What was he so scared of? Why he's so paranoid? And what stuff that Joel hadn't told you?

It feels like something is unraveling between you and Joel, something you didn’t even know was fragile until now. Joel has always been protective, always had that edge of anger simmering beneath the surface, but never toward you. And now… you don’t know what to think.

After what feels like forever, your sobs finally quiet. You sit there, leaning against the bathroom door, your mind racing but your tears spent. It hits you then, harder than before—you have no one else.

 Your father is gone, your mother is tied to him in a way that leaves her powerless to help you, and the life you once knew, are all out of reach now. You’re alone in this world except for Joel.

It’s just you and him.

You clutch your knees tighter, the realization sinking deeper. Everything you have, everything you are, depends on Joel. He saved you when no one else would. Pulled you out of the hell that was your life, gave you a way out.

You owe him more than you could ever express—more than you could ever repay. There's a part of you that feels indebted to him, like you have no choice but to obey him. He’s all you have left.

And it scares you. You’ve never felt this dependent on anyone before, never felt like your entire world revolved around one person. But with Joel, it does. If you lose him, what would you even have? You wouldn’t survive.

You can’t survive alone. And even though his anger tonight terrified you, you can’t shake the feeling that you need to do whatever it takes to keep him. Even if that means obeying him without question, doing whatever he says. Because without Joel, you're truly, utterly alone.

Tears well in your eyes again, but you quickly wipe them away. You can’t let that fear rule you. You’re strong. You’ve survived too much to fall apart now. But this feeling of being so utterly dependent on Joel, of having no one else to turn to—it gnaws at you.

Even as you cry in the shower, trying to pull yourself together, you know deep down that you’ll have to go back to him. Apologize, make things right, because you can’t lose him.

He’s your only tether to this world, the only person who keeps you from feeling completely lost. And you know, despite everything, you’ll do whatever it takes to keep him in your life.

As the water runs down your skin, you close your eyes and take slow, steady breaths, trying to ground yourself. You can’t keep hiding in fear. You need to know what’s going on. You need to talk to Joel, to figure out what’s haunting him so badly that it’s making him act this way.

He’s always protected you, always cared for you, but now it’s clear there’s something deeper going on. Something he hasn’t told you. And if you’re going to stay with him, if you’re going to trust him again, you need answers.

When you step out of the shower, you feel a little more in control. You towel off, get dressed, and take a deep breath. You have to be mature about this. You can’t let fear rule you. You’re not a child anymore—you need to face this head-on.

Joel needs to tell you the truth, whatever it is. You need to know what’s driving him to this edge, why he’s so terrified of losing you, of being found.

You dry your eyes, gather yourself, and make the decision. You’ll talk to him. You’ll make him talk. Because you can’t keep living in the dark, and you can’t let fear take root between you. You need to understand what’s going on in Joel’s mind—and in his heart.

Slipping out of the room, you feel the cool evening air hit your skin like a reminder of the space between you and him now. You think you know where he went—the bar.

You’ve learned Joel's patterns well enough by now, and after what happened earlier, you’re certain that’s where he’d go to drown out his anger and regret.

As you walk down the empty hallway and push open the doors of the motel lobby, your nerves tighten with each step. You can feel your pulse quickening, the sinking fear that things between you and Joel might never be the same.

But you need to fix this. You need him—more than he probably even knows.

When you step into the bar, it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. Your gaze scans the room, searching, hoping. And then you see him—sitting at the bar, his broad back turned toward you. Relief floods your chest, but it’s short-lived.

Joel isn’t alone.

There’s a woman beside him, by the look of her, she looks like she's near his age, younger, probably in her 40s, and she is close enough that her body leans into his space, her fingers brushing his arm as she speaks.

She’s beautiful, with soft waves of auburn hair and an easy smile.

She’s holding something in her hand, showing it to Joel—it looks like a bottle of perfume, and Joel is leaning in slightly, smelling it. They’re laughing. She’s too close, far too close.

Jealousy flares in your chest, sharp and immediate. It burns through your veins as you take a step forward, unable to keep your eyes off them. The way she touches his arm, the way Joel doesn’t pull away—why isn’t he pulling away?

You swallow hard, forcing yourself to move forward. Each step feels heavy, weighed down by doubt, fear, anger—all swirling into one mess inside of you.

When you finally reach them, Joel doesn’t notice you at first. He’s still laughing at whatever the woman said, his head tilted down toward her.

“Joel,” you say, your voice shaky but loud enough to cut through the laughter.

He looks up, surprise flickering in his eyes as he meets your gaze. "Oh… hey, baby." he mutters, his voice slurring slightly, like he’s already had one too many drinks. "Sorry, I didn’t realize how late it was…you uh okay now?"

You stand there, arms crossed tightly over your chest, the jealousy clawing at you. You stare at the woman, waiting for Joel to introduce you. But he doesn’t—he just awkwardly shifts on his barstool, rubbing the back of his neck.

The woman turns toward you with a kind smile, not realizing the tension hanging in the air. “Oh! You must be Joel’s daughter, right? I'm Tess, nice to meet you,”

The words hang in the air like a slap, the shock hitting you square in the chest. You blink, feeling the ground tilt beneath your feet. His daughter?

Before you can speak, Joel clears his throat, his voice low but firm. “She's not my daughter, she’s my partner.”

Tess freezes, embarrassment washing over her features as she glances between the two of you. “Oh… oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she stammers, clearly flustered. “I just assumed…"

"It’s fine," Joel cut in, his hand resting on your back protectively. "Tess was just being friendly."

But you saw the way Tess glanced at him, the way she lingered just a little too long on his eyes. She’d been flirting, and though Joel hadn’t seemed to notice—or maybe he had and didn’t care—you couldn’t help the jealousy that simmered beneath your skin. You shot her a tight smile, pulling Joel closer as if to remind him where he belonged.

"It’s okay," you said, though the tension between you and Tess lingered as Joel excused himself from the bar.

You feel your heart race, the awkwardness settling in the pit of your stomach like a stone. Joel looks at you, guilt flickering in his eyes, and you can see it—he didn’t mean for this to happen.

Tess tries to laugh it off, waving her hand as she takes a step back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll, uh, leave you two alone. Nice to meet you, Joel."

Joel mumbles something, but you barely hear it. Your focus is on him—on the way he avoided introducing you, the way he let Tess get close to him, the way you feel so small in this moment. You're so insecure, because she's like the type of Joel's woman, like she's age appropriate for him.

You glance at Tess as she walks away. You’re left standing there with Joel, the silence between you growing louder with every second. He looks at you, regret heavy in his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Where have you been?” you ask, trying to steady your voice. “I was waiting for you…”

Joel sighs, running a hand through his hair, clearly at a loss for words. "I—I'm sorry," he mutters again, his voice softer this time, tinged with guilt. "I didn’t mean to stay out so long."

You nod, feeling the sting of his absence, of watching him with someone else, of realizing how fragile everything between you suddenly feels.

But you push it all down, reminding yourself of what you came here for—to talk, to understand.

“Let’s go,” you say quietly, your voice barely above a whisper. “We need to talk.”

And Joel, with all the weight of his mistakes hanging heavy on his shoulders, simply nods, following you out of the bar into the cool night air, where everything is waiting to fall apart or be made whole again.

As you both step into the room, you push the door open and walk inside first, the familiar surroundings offering a brief moment of comfort in the storm brewing between you.

Joel hesitates at the threshold, his hand hovering near the door as if he’s afraid to follow. But after a moment, he steps inside, closing the door behind him and locking it with a soft click that echoes in the stillness.

You sit on the edge of the bed, a nervous knot twisting in your stomach. The air is thick with unspoken words, and you pat the space beside you, inviting him to sit.

Joel moves slowly, as if every step is laden with the gravity of what’s unsaid. The silence stretches, taut and heavy, both of you caught in the weight of the moment.

Finally, Joel breaks the stillness, his voice low and filled with concern. “Are you alright, doll?”

You nod, though the tremor in your hands betrays you. “I’m fine.”

“I'm really, really sorry,” he continues, his words tumbling out like stones from a burdened heart. “I didn’t mean to…” His voice trails off, as if he’s searching for the right words but can’t find them.

“It’s alright,” you cut him off gently, wanting to soothe his pain even as your own heart races with anxiety. But the pause hangs between you, heavy with unresolved tension.

You shift your position, turning to face him fully, the intensity of his gaze making your chest tighten.

“What’s going on, Joel?” you ask, your voice softening. “I need to know what’s bothering you. Is it me? Is it something else?"

"Why are you so scared? You’ve been acting different since New Orleans... I need to know, Joel. I… I can’t lose you. I’m scared.”

His expression shifts, the rigid lines of his face softening as he takes your hands in his, holding them close as if they’re a lifeline in the tumultuous sea between you. He leans in, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead, and tears threaten to spill from your eyes.

In that moment, he wants to tell you everything—the shadows that have been haunting him, the demons that lurk in the corners of his mind.

But he hesitates, his heart racing with the fear that you wouldn’t understand.

The guilt of what he’s done looms over him like a dark cloud, heavy and suffocating. He’s terrified that revealing the truth would shatter the fragile bond you’ve built together.

Yet, as you look up at him, something in your eyes compels him to speak. “It’s about your father,” he lies, his voice barely a whisper.

“He still reported me… I’m just scared that the detectives will find you and take you away from me. I can’t let that happen.”

You feel a rush of emotions course through you, sensing the half-truth in his words, the fear that lingers behind his stoic exterior. He’s afraid—not just of the detectives but of losing you, and that realization cuts deep.

“Joel,” you say softly, your heart aching for him, “he’s not going to take me away from you. We’re safe. I promise.”

His eyes narrow, skepticism etched on his face. “You don’t know that,” he counters, his voice thick with concern. “He could be lying in wait, ready to pull some strings."

You shake your head, a flicker of frustration igniting within you. “Joel, he’s my father. I know him better than anyone. He’s just bluffing. He’ll eventually let me go; I mean… I’m nothing to him. He hates me. He doesn’t want me in his life, so why bother wanting me back?”

The raw honesty of your words hangs in the air between you like an echo of an unshakable truth. Joel’s expression softens, the tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction as he searches your gaze.

He can see the hurt beneath your bravado, the wounds your father has inflicted that run deep, yet he struggles to reconcile that with the danger he feels looms just beyond the horizon.

“Doll,” he murmurs, his voice tinged with both tenderness and fear. “I don’t want to think about the worst. I just… I can’t bear the thought of losing you. You’re everything to me.”

You look up at him, conviction burning in your chest. “You will not lose me, Joel. I promise, I will not lose you either. We’re in this together. Always.” But even as you say the words, a nagging feeling churns in your gut, whispering that there’s more he’s keeping from you.

“Are you sure there’s nothing else, Joel?” you ask, your voice steady yet gentle, searching his eyes for the truth. “What do you mean by that?”

He hesitates, his gaze drifting away as if the weight of his secrets is too heavy to bear.

“Joel,” you plead, reaching out to touch his hand, “you can trust me. We’ll stick together, no matter what. Just let me in. You don’t have to carry it alone.”

But he still doesn’t budge, the wall between you seeming insurmountable. You nod, accepting his silence for now. “Okay, but remember that you can tell me anything. My love for you will not change, no matter what.”

The words hang in the air, a vow that wraps around him like a warm embrace. In that moment, something shifts within Joel. He meets your gaze, his heart melting under the weight of your unwavering love, your sincerity cutting through the chaos that clouds his mind.

“What did I do to deserve an angel like you?” he whispers, his voice cracking just a little.

“Just being you is enough,” you reply softly, feeling the tenderness in the space between you.

And then, unable to resist the pull between you any longer, you lean in, kissing him deeply. This time, it’s pure, unfiltered love that surges between your lips—a promise sealed with every gentle brush of skin, every soft sigh that escapes into the air.

The world fades away as you lose yourselves in each other, the moment stretching into eternity, filled with a warmth that chases away the shadows of fear.

When you finally pull away, breathless and glowing, a smile dances across your lips. But as you gaze into his eyes, you see a flicker of something else.

“You haven’t eaten,” he says, concern threading through his voice. “You should rest. I’ll order something from downstairs and bring it back up for you.”

“Joel, I can wait—”

“No,” he interrupts gently but firmly. “You need to take care of yourself. I’ll be quick.” He leans down, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead before moving away, leaving you momentarily in the warmth of his embrace.

As he steps outside the room, you sink back onto the bed, feeling a mix of warmth and longing. The air around you is still charged with the magic of your shared moment, but the unanswered questions linger, dancing just beyond reach.

You let out a soft sigh, closing your eyes for a moment, willing yourself to rest, knowing he’ll return soon.

Joel heads down to the bar, his mind racing with thoughts of you. He orders food, feeling the pressure of his emotions begin to lighten just a little with each passing moment away from you.

Yet, even as he waits, the shadows of his past loom large, reminding him that he’s not just fighting for himself—he’s fighting for you. And it’s a fight he intends to win.

As Joel waits at the bar, the world around him is alive with laughter and chatter, a stark contrast to the heavy weight pressing against his chest.

The air is thick with the scent of whiskey and lingering conversations, people mingling as if the night holds no threats, but he knows better. Shadows of his past linger, whispering reminders that the fight he’s waging is not just for himself—it’s for you.

You are the light of his life, fire of his loins, and he’ll be damned if he lets anything threaten that.

He watches the crowd, the chaos swirling like a tempest around him. In the corner of his eye, he catches sight of a man ordering a drink, but his view is obscured by a group of women animatedly chatting nearby.

Joel shifts, trying to get a clearer look, but the bustling bodies block his view.

“Got a lot on your mind, fella?” a voice cuts through the noise, pulling him back into the moment. He turns slightly to see the man leaning against the bar, a sly grin playing on his lips. Joel's brow furrows, he can't see his face.

“Yeah, life,” he replies curtly, not in the mood for small talk.

The man chuckles, taking a sip of his whiskey. “I saw you with a young girl. She your daughter?”

At that, Joel’s heart skips a beat, and he freezes, “No…” he responds, his voice low and cautious.

“Oh, she looks young enough to be your daughter,” the man presses, his grin widening, but still Joel can't see his face because the women blocking his view “Who is she then?”

“None of your business,” Joel bites back, his tone cold and defensive, but the man merely laughs, clearly unfazed by Joel's irritation.

“Got a fire in you, my friend,” he remarks, his tone almost mocking.

Joel tries to catch a glimpse of the man’s face, but he’s constantly blocked by other patrons milling about, laughter and chatter drowning out his mounting anger.

“You know she’s a pretty little thing,” the man continues, leaning in closer. “What’s her story? You fucked her, didn’t you? Kidnapped her from her abusive family?”

The words hit Joel like a punch to the gut, and a primal instinct surges through him—protectiveness mingling with anger.

“What?” he snaps, adrenaline coursing through his veins as he struggles to see the man’s face, but the crowd shifts, obscuring his view further.

“Have you heard about this cannibal running around, kidnapping and eating young girls? If I were you, I’d be careful to keep her safe, ‘cause damn, she does look delicious.”

With that, something inside Joel snaps. He stands abruptly, every instinct screaming to confront this man, to demand answers.

But just as quickly as he rose, the man leans back, disappearing into the throng of bodies, leaving nothing but a ghost of a threat lingering in the air.

Joel’s heart races, panic seizing him as he realizes what he has to do. You’re alone up there, and he needs to get back to you—now.

The laughter and warmth of the bar fade into the background as he pushes through the crowd, each step fueled by fear and urgency.

The thought of you, vulnerable and alone, drives him forward.

His breath quickens as he navigates the throng, his mind a whirlwind of protective instincts and dread. The very idea of losing you ignites a fire in his soul, and he bursts through the door to the hallway, urgency pulsing in his veins.

Each step toward your room is a promise—a vow to keep you safe from the dark corners of this world that threaten to creep in.

Joel bursts through the door, and the sight that greets him sends a jolt through his veins. You sit on the bed, your eyes wide and haunted, riveted to the flickering television.

“Baby, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” he rushes to you, concern flooding his voice.

“Joel...it’s Pastor Ben,” you manage to say, your finger trembling as you point to the screen. The news report unfolds like a nightmare made flesh—Pastor Ben, the man who had cloaked himself in righteousness, is revealed as a predator, a monster who has sexually abused, raped hundreds of children in Mexico.

A visceral reaction surges within you, a repulsion that knots your stomach. You remember the moments in his car, the way his fingers brushed against your arm, the unsettling questions he had asked about your age, each touch a violation that makes your skin crawl.

It feels as if the walls are closing in, suffocating you with the realization of the betrayal you had trusted. The reporter’s voice booms through the room, detailing the horrors of the youngest victim—only six years old.

The words resonate with a sickening finality, and you rush to the bathroom, the taste of bile burning your throat as you heave into the toilet.

Each retch feels like a release of the poison that has been festering within you, a violent expulsion of the memories that threaten to drown you.

Joel stands frozen for a moment, grappling with the revelation. His heart races, a chaotic mix of anger and relief coursing through him.

The man he killed had been a monster, but the weight of that truth is heavy. The knowledge that you were entangled in his web, even briefly, gnaws at him.

When you emerge, pale and trembling, Joel swiftly turns off the TV, the silence in the room suddenly deafening.

“Doll, are you okay?” he asks softly, his hands moving to cradle your head, fingers brushing gently through your hair, a comforting gesture meant to ground you.

“Just… let’s go to sleep, please,” you whisper, fatigue washing over you like a tide.

He nods, understanding the weight of the moment. With gentle strength, he scoops you into his arms, carrying you to the bed where safety awaits.

As you lie together in the dark, bodies intertwined in a protective embrace, the weight of the night hangs heavily in the air.

You are cocooned in the warmth of each other, yet your minds are worlds apart.

Each fleeting memory of his touch feels like a branding iron against your skin, igniting a fury within you that is both righteous and shameful.

You lie in a spooning position, the two of you entwined like vines clinging to each other in a storm. The heat radiating from Joel feels like a sanctuary, a barrier against the outside world, yet the weight of your thoughts is heavy as you drift further into your own mind.

In the dark, you wrestle with the shadows of your past. The image of Pastor Ben’s face looms large in your thoughts, a grotesque reminder of the trust betrayed.

You can still feel the ghost of his hand, a specter lingering just beneath the surface, haunting your skin. With every breath, the bile of betrayal rises in your throat, intertwining with anger—a tempest that threatens to erupt.

You are caught in the eye of a storm, where calm meets chaos, grappling with the lingering questions of why you didn’t see the monster hidden behind the mask of a man of God. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, a reminder that safety is often an illusion.

Meanwhile, Joel is lost in his own labyrinth of thoughts, the weight of the evening pressing heavily on his chest. The man he met at the bar—the specter of danger—lingers in his mind like a shadow refusing to dissipate.

He feels the knot of fear tightening in his gut, an ancient instinct urging him to protect you at all costs. He remembers the words the stranger flung at him, laced with menace, and the realization that the world is a cruel place, full of predators who prey on the innocent.

In this moment, he clings to you as if you were a life raft in turbulent waters. The warmth of your body against his is a reminder that he has something worth fighting for—a reason to face the darkness head-on.

Yet, beneath that fierce resolve lies a flicker of doubt, a gnawing fear that perhaps he can’t shield you from everything, that the ghosts of his past may find a way to reach you.

It eats at him, the thought that the world could steal you away from him just as it had stolen so much before.

Both of you are wrapped in a cocoon of silence, where your breaths mingle and become one. You can feel Joel’s heart beating against your back, a steady drum that soothes you even as your thoughts churn.

It’s a reminder that you are not alone in this battle, that there is strength in the bond you share, even amidst the chaos that swirls around you.

“Promise me,” you whisper into the darkness, “we’ll get through this together.”

Joel tightens his grip around you, his body a fortress. “I promise, doll,” he murmurs, his voice low and steady. “You’re safe with me.”

In that moment, you both find a flicker of hope amidst the storm—two souls entwined, standing against a world that threatens to tear them apart.

Each heartbeat, each breath becomes a testament to your love, a silent vow that even in the darkest of nights, you will hold on to each other, no matter what the dawn brings.

[inknopewetrust]

Are you still writing a rust fiction can you give us a spoiler

bestie anon, am i? AM I? yes of course it just takes me 8,000 years to publish anything. but i'll give a little sneaky peak of the opening "frames" of the fic. it's called 'a house in nebraska' after the ethel cain masterpiece.

In the reward of death, you often wondered if those women had ever found peace. Were their horrors laid to bed or their sadness lifted from their shoulders heavy with burden?

Fixed vacant on the ceiling in the darkness of your bedroom in a house littered with holes and creaky staircases, you saw them when you closed your eyes.

Mistakes of unremarkable grief and insurmountable spite, the faces of memories that had become ghosts sprung to life with a rejuvenated mission to find answers.

Carcosa called home in the eclipse.

And away in another world, a camera blinked red to hear a tale come alive.

The smoke from the cigarette twisted in the air; trailing along the chemtrails of the small, musty room with wooden panels and leaky wallpaper.

Blink, blink, blink.

“We talk plenty ‘bout Marty, but you two ain’t the only ones that worked this case,” Detective Maynard Gilbough pulled a newspaper clipping from a file that had been scattered about before them. “Tell us ‘bout her. She ain't live in these parts anymore and the folks up in Gering give us an inch for every mile we take... So y’all will be fillin’ in those gaps for us.”

The detective tossed the yellowing paper across the table.

It was faded along the edges. A worn, bleeding ink recalled the stories of old that replayed on the film reel within his mind whenever he let his thoughts wander just far enough. The picture was in black and white—a fragmented, distant past that lied with a stoutness that lingered in the fruitless victory in Vermilion Parish near twenty years prior.

The cigarette was bitingly bitter against his tongue. Its fumes littered his sights of you.

And for the first time since he sat down for the interview, Rust Cohle pondered his words before they tumbled out. He had been so calculated with the two detectives before him yet the flowery, sermon-esq verbiage that leaked like sieve from his mouth could not grasp the weight of the missing. Rust simply took the cigarette from his mouth and tapped its end along the side of the coffee mug.

And he paused.

The detectives had found a crack in the pavement.

[nhothicket]

Ever create a band au even though you cant draw instruments?

more info below the cut :>

Meet Bdubs, 38, stage name BdoubleO - Boomer is often mistaken for his first name, but is just another nickname for the pile. Infamous online, if it weren't for the fact that he makes disgustingly good music he would probably have more hate followers than genuine fans. The line between charming asshole and just asshole is one he fails to tread lightly most days, but he's mostly harmless. Let's just say the Bdoubleo could also stand for boorish. A bit of a sellout, but he enjoys what he does and many appreciate his extremely.. candid attitude. Best likened to a cartoon villain dressed as a rockstar, with the ego to match. (It's usually his unrelenting pretentiousness that gets him into Twitter spats.)

Thank you @foxden-frontier for always helping out with my stupid aus ^v^

Annoying at worst, unfortunately very charismatic at best. You could say he's a softie at heart, but that implies its at all difficult to spot. Once he's done "clapping back at all the haters", in person he's still got a temper (he thinks he has a bad boy reputation to uphold) but is enthusiastically friendly.

Etho, 32, resident keytarist of creatively named band Canadian Bacon. Joined by his two best friends, Pause the frontman and bassist, and Beef their drummer. A deceptively popular band if judging by their permanent rough draft name and their nerdy-college-student dress code. Etho himself is just a guy who likes playing music with his buddies, their hobby having blown up under their noses. Now, as an unfortunately successful touring artist, Etho's anonymity is scarce, but he continues to wear his mask to discourage widespread photos of his face. In spirit. He's concerned about having his face plastered all over fan accounts, which still occurs, but a perk of having a completely rabid fanbase is that many will defend your boundaries to their last dying breath. Like his face, his legal name is out and about online, but its similarly discouraged. Best likened to just a guy.

If asked on the subject of his scar, the entire band has various different whimsical stories, brand new everytime. His lack of internet presence means Pause and Beef are free to make up whatever misinformation about him as they please completely unchecked (in jest of course), and they do take advantage of that. Many of these alternative facts are passed around on wikis and in fan circles.

To say Bdubs is jealous of Canadian Bacon's popularity is an understatement. They weren't even trying at all and yet they're the hot shit? But instead of putting that jealousy to hatred (which he had considered of course) he's instead set himself on proving himself. And if that means impressing Etho then so be it. Why does it mean impressing Etho? Good question, never ask it again. They say keep your enemies close, and Bdubs' enemies don't deserve personal space.

As it turns out, Etho wasn't too difficult to impress or maybe Bdubs was just that amazing. Either way, they end up hitting it off. Their friendship is an interesting one, mostly because Etho's fans basically hunt Bdubs for sport online. We're talking scribbled out of pictures, get behind me, #FreeEtho. Etho thinks he seems pretty cool though, if not a bit much sometimes, so no harm no foul.

Okay, rapid fire, some other notes for this au.

> Etho's legal name is Ethel. Because it is. My heart is so set on it. But if you're boring, Ethan or Ezekiel or something work too I guess.

> Etho's keytar mimics a more traditional guitar in most cases, though he's known to experiment a lot with how far he can push that.

> Etho's scar is from a mugging in this au, not a very fun story to tell. Beef practicing his brand new razor blade throwing hobby or fighting a bear to beat Pause in a bet is much more entertaining.

> Canadian Bacon is meant to have a manager, but I couldn't think of anyone I felt fit. Just a note.

> Bdubs has a habit of grabbing Etho by his tie and pulling him down to his level or otherwise using it as a leash. Etho doesn't usually wear the tie outside of show stuff or interviews, but he wears it around Bdubs because thinks its funny. When there's no tie that doesn't stop Bdubs, collars and hoodie strings are subject to the same usage.

> Etho isn't aware of how infamous Bdubs is when they meet as they meet at a festival with a big group of other musicians. Most of which already know Bdubs as his more excitable friendly self. He only finds out later when Bdubs complains about Etho's fans flaming him anytime he mentions him.

> Bdubs still has a self-imposed curfew, 10pm every night unless it conflicts with a show. He needs his beauty sleep.

> The trigger reason for the animosity toward Bdubs is due to being blamed by fans for the split of his last band that had a pretty hardcore cult following (OOG, I've not named their band yet), and that has since snowballed into what it is today, despite his actions being relatively harmless. To note, this was not an assumption at all promoted by either party, it was entirely a fanmade judgement.

> For those who can, picture s5 jungle Bdubs mixed with drunken OOG(E) ctm maps for his approximate personality. Still goofy but with a sharper tongue and a lot worse of a temper.

> Originally I considered Cleo as Bdubs' manager so he's not all alone in narrative sense, I still think it's not a bad idea I'd love to see her chew him out for acting like a moron. Ren or Scar would be also be options for manager.

> Bdubs needs a touring band, but I'm not well versed enough in the hermits to actually pick one out. Just a note.

Okay, that's most of it! There's some more pg-13 headcanons for this au, along the lines of fuck yeah rock'n roll lifestyle, but it's not really important I'm sure just that is enough to get the gist of it. Thank you for reading this overly long note. ^v~

[zapiarty]

Sandman - Dead Boy Detective

1389 - Dream & Death meet Hob Gadling; who refuses to die 1489 - Dream & Hob form their Arrangement 1589 - Hob brags about how good he's got it, with a wife, a son, riches and a knighthood. Dream decides to leave early upon meeting William Shaxberd 1689 - Dream waits for Hob's arrival, who is at his lowest point in his life thus far, Dream expects Hob to ask for death now and is surprised when Hob laughs in his face and says "Death is a mug's game, I've got so much to live for!" 1789 - Dream warns Hob against getting involved with the Slave Trade, Lady Johanna Constantine interrupts their meeting, Hob comes to Dream's rescue briefly which amuses him 1889 - Hob wants to learn things about Dream, dares to suggest he's lonely and that they are friends, Dream storms off in a huff declaring he doesn't need Hob's company

1916 - Edwin Payne dies via ritual sacrifice to Hell by classmates at 16 - The Corinthian begins his mayhem in the Waking World - Dream of the Endless is captured & imprisoned by Roderick Burgess 1917 - Sleeping Sickness officially acknowledged - Unity Kincaid remains asleep

1926 - Ethel Cripps becomes Roderick Burgess' mistress - Roderick has his son Alex kill Jessamy the Raven - Ethel gets pregnant, steals the helm, sand, and ruby and flees - Roderick dies, Alex decides not to free Dream like he'd promised 1927? - Ethel Cripps gives birth to John D

? - Ethel bargains away the helm to a demon, sells the sand

1989 - Edwin Payne escapes Hell - Hob Gadling waits for His Stranger but he does not arrive (As Dream is still held captive in the Burgess' Estate) - Charles Rowland is murdered by classmates via hypothermia & internal bleeding at 16 in December of '89 - Edwin is there for Charles to ease his death; Charles decides to stay with Edwin instead of going with Death - Some point Edwin & Charles form the Dead Boy Detectives

1994 - Infamous Puppy Debacle (Charles got too attached to a living puppy?)

March 22, 1994 - Devlin Murders occur in Port Townsend, Washington

1997 - Great Fenwick Pixie Escape (puts Edwin at a loss)

2006 - Great Chewing Gum Debacle (stressor for Edwin?)

2015 - Rose Walker & her little brother Jed are split when Rose and their mother Miranda move but her father refuses to let Jed leave with them

2020 - Lyta's husband Hector dies via a car accident, Rose's ill mother dies near the end of the year

2021 - Dream/Morpheus is released & searches for his tools to rebuild the Dreaming - Unity Kincaid wakes the moment Dream is released - Johanna Constantine purchases the sand but left it at a girlfriend's place when she left her 6 months prior (resulting in her death via the sand) - Dream faces Lucifer in Challenge for his helm; wins & humiliates Lucifer - John D uses the Ruby to nearly destroy the world in an attempt to make a better one; causing mass destruction and death, destroys the ruby in an attempt to destroy Dream and replace him but this only returns the stored power to Dream in full

8 Months later: - Death & Dream have a talk, Desire & Despair plot to knock Dream's ego down as Desire's previous attempts failed (Nada, Roderick Burgess); focus turns to Rose Walker (Desire's Great-Granddaughter) - Dream reconnects with Hob at The New Inn; 30 years late but acknowledging their friendship - Rose Walker is the Vortex and looking for her brother Jed who dreams of being The Sandman (thanks to Gault) - Unity Kincaid asks Rose to meet her in London to reveal she's her Great-Grandmother (the Great-Grandfather being her Gold Eyed Man aka Desire) - The Corinthian attempts to use her to create a New Dreaming - Lyta Hall gets pregnant from her ghost husband in the Dreaming; Dream banishes the ghost from his realm as Ghosts shouldn't be there - Morpheus collects all his lost Dreams & Nightmares; returns the Corinthian to his base form - Dream of a Thousand Cats - Calliope's most recent "owner" slips up and she is able to send a message to Morpheus who comes to free her (by driving the man who binds her insane with ideas)

Late 2022 - Crystal Palace & David the Demon enter into a relationship

2023 - Edwin & Charles take on the Case of Crystal Palace on behest of Emma the Ghost

- Becky Aspen case in Port Townsend, WA; meet Esther the Witch, get trapped in Port Townsend by the Cat King - Niko Sasaki & the Dandelion Sprites Case - February 17; The Devlin House Case (Charles' history brought up, meet Monty) - Case of the Lighthouse Leapers (Charles & Crystal kiss, Night Nurse fed to Sea Monster, Cat King taunts Edwin with Monty & Charles' likeness in an attempt to get a kiss) - Case of the Two Dead Dragons (Edwin realizes he's truly in love with Charles as he comforts Charles after a breakdown, Monty steals Edwin's first kiss thinking Edwin was talking about him) - Case of the Creeping Forest (Monty's betrayal, Crystal's Awakening) - Case of the Very Long Stairway; Edwin gets taken back to Hell & Charles goes after him, Edwin confesses he's in love with Charles - Edwin meets Despair and she decides they are "friends" now - Case of the Hungry Snake; Niko dies (?) saving Crystal from Esther Finch in an attempt to rescue Edwin & Charles - The Lost & Found Department of the Afterlife "officially" allows the Dead Boy Detectives to work cases to help them help ghosts cross over in exchange for allowing them to stay together on Earth

[romanoffsbish]

Picture It… New York, 2022

WandaNat x Fem!Reader

Bishova 🥰

My take on a sick Wanda who can’t exactly contain her powers 😂❤️

Warning: Petty Natasha, Sad Reader for a blink | 3,386 Words

Sitcom Inspo (In Order) : I Love Lucy, Golden Girls, Friends, Bewitched.

“Where’s Wanda?,” Yelena mused over her mug of cocoa, the whipped cream on her nose made it hard for you to answer her over the laugh bubbling in your throat, and you settled into Nat’s hold when she answered instead., “Our little witch is asleep, she woke up with a high fever so we quarantined her in the room.”

“Oh no, do you think she’ll be okay by the end of the week?,” Kate’s true question wasn’t lost on you., “Don’t worry Bishop, no cold will keep her from perfecting your upcoming nuptials.,” your girlfriend chuckled beneath you., “Yeah, Wanda would never let an ailment keep her from planning a wedding. She actually had the flu while finalizing ours.,” you shivered at the nasty memory, a snotty nosed brunette with her hands all over the flower arrangements that you and Natasha slyly replaced as soon as she fell into her coma like sleeping state.

While the lot of you sat on the couches catching up, with the two of you occasionally teasing the engaged couple about what the future holds there was another storm a brewing just right out of your eyesight. Clouds of red billowed out from just beneath the closed bedroom door, slowly traveling throughout the hallway of your homey loft, and with no one’s concern falling to the encroaching smoke you were all in the dark on what was to come; literally. The smoke had permeated all of your minds, your bodies instantly slumping against the surfaces behind you as you’re all forced into a restless sleep.

The darkness slowly began to lift for you, and as you looked around you were stunned to see it was only you, and Yelena in a room that was completely foreign to you. Neither of you said a word, both too busy trying to figure out where you had ended up; wondering if some enemy of sorts might’ve slipped a hallucinogenic into your buildings water pipes. Then you heard a creaking noise, looking down you noticed you were both in aprons, with weird hats on, you blinked rapidly too, wondering if you’d suddenly become color blind, but the action never changed the visuals around you.

“Ladies!,” you turned to see Nat stood behind you, face stern, but with eyes just as confused as your own., “This will be your last chance to impress this company, the parchment paper here is for you to wrap the sushi rolls, not a single one should make it into the next room unwrapped; if they do, you’re both likely to be terminated.,” and as soon as the two of you hummed your understanding she was gone out the other door that led into a long hallway.

It became apparent to all of you that though you couldn’t verbalize, as Wanda controlled the dialogue, that you could still convey messages through your expressions. Yelena looked to you dumbfounded, waving her arms about as if to say ‘did this witch really turn us to black and white?,’ and you looked to her with an equally as dumbfounded look before the sound of the conveyor belt caught your attentions.

Sushi rolls began to speed by the both of you, and you were surely perplexed, because if you remember the iconic scene at all, you knew it was chocolates that Lucy and Ethel were meant to be handling. A soft chuckle reverberated in your mind at the tiny variation your lover must have made, knowing it was likely influenced by the dinner you and your girlfriends shared a couple nights prior; Wanda’s love for sushi transcended the normal worlds bounds.

“Yelena, what are we meant to do?,” you spoke frantically, your hands now flying around out of your control, you believe in an attempt to emphasize the unfolding catastrophe.

“I’m not sure, maybe if we eat some it’ll make the mess less?,” the blonde looked to you with an unimpressed gaze, clearly she wasn’t a fan of her given dialogue., “That sounds like a quick way to get fired, and we need this job.”

“Good, this place sucks, look at the sushi rolls. Not even filled enough, and the belt is clearly being run by satan himself.,” she grumbled while popping a roll into her mouth, then promptly spitting it out., “That’s disgusting.”

A laugh reel echoed behind the both of you, and your soul nearly left your body at the boom of it, then the sound of multiple footsteps echoed dramatically from the hallway outside the door. Yelena looked to you in a panic, then the both of you nodded and began to shovel the rolls into your aprons, then when they were full it was into the hats on your head, and when all else failed the both of you began to shovel them down your throat in an attempt to hide your obvious failure’s from the incoming bosses.

Wanda and Natasha entered the room with angered expressions, Kate was behind them with a clipboard in her hand, and a nervous smile that fell as soon as the women spoke., “Ladies, it’s come to our stock counter’s attention that only ten rolls have made it into the following room, care to explain where the rest managed to go?,” Wanda’s pointed stare told you she knew exactly where they went, of course she did, she was the all seeing puppet master in this weird dream state anyways.

Yelena looked beyond you., “We run now?,” you followed her gaze to the door then nodded. As soon as you passed the threshold the world was now in color, and you were stood outside of a quaint, large home that not so shockingly matched the street full of real estate.

Inside the house were the other four women, all in the most hideous of ‘mumu’s.�� Well, all of them outside of Wanda, who instead wore a gorgeous red dress, her bosom’s prominently on display, with a full face of makeup to boot.

“Natasha dear, can you grab the cheesecake?,” the redhead did as asked, not that she had much of a choice. She settled it down on the table in front of an uncharacteristically quiet Kate who was deep in thought., “Kate, honey, what’s on your mind?,” internally she cringed, never in her life would she ask the eager girl such a question, she never had the time necessary for the long winded answers.

“Well—.,” before Kate could spin into a story, Yelena slammed the door open, with a butchers knife raised high, cackling wildly at the sight of the terrified women clutching their chests., “Yelena! That isn’t funny!,” Natasha shrieks, and the blonde deadpans., “To you, but to me that was hilarious. All of your silly, scared faces bring me immense joys.”

“Yelena, take a seat, and hush your mouth.,” Natasha groaned, pulling her own chair into the table and slamming her fork into her slice of cheesecake before bringing it to her mouth. Surprisingly she could taste it, the creamy texture was clear on her tongue, and internally she was beaming at the fortunate discovery.

“Anyways.,” Kate blurts, an innocent look in her eyes as she goes to answer Nat’s question., “I was thinking about this time back in my youth.,” Yelena groaned unabashedly, but Kate just continued on., “Schenectady, NY, I was on the tractor with my daddy when a rogue pig began to run through the fields.,” she giggled., “I was about to end up making unintentional bacon, but then fortunately for us Mr. Wiggles squealed loudly.,” the knock you placed on the front door had the kitchen erupting in cheers as Kate’s story was once again put on pause.

“That must be my date.,” Wanda purred, then left the kitchen to open the door for you, her eyes trailed down your body, appreciating the floral suit you put on—that she chose—a hand reached for yours, and you shyly accepted it., “Let me introduce you to my friends kotenok.,” she chuckled when your head dropped, it was so easy to fluster you—truly—it was her favorite thing to do, she’ll never stop flirting with you.

As the door to the kitchen was swung open all the women’s eyes fell to you, and the redheads widened at the sight of you., “Y/N?,” you were not sure your role here outside of Wanda’s date, but now you realized your plot was deeper., “Nat? Long time no see.,” she scoffed, “Yeah, since you dumped me with no reason.”

Internally you cringed, your poor girlfriend was typecast as Dorothy—a great character, but poor thing was the butt of single-hood jokes, and you worry for your other girlfriends sake; Natasha will not hold back her thoughts later.

“Well, it’s clear you all have better things to do. Y/N and I will be going to dinner now.,” Wanda cleared the rooms tense atmosphere with words that weren’t to be questioned., “And if you play your cards right, you’ll be enjoying your dessert in no time.,” she whispered into your ear while pushing you back into the living room, but when you spun around the scene had completely changed.

No longer were you in the living room designed from an 80’s catalog, but instead you stood in a quaint two bedroom apartment in you assumed to be upper Manhattan based on the purple door with the yellow frame around the eyehole. Just as you were about to explore the space the door flew open, and all of your friends piled in.

“Yelena, you can’t be serious.,” Kate whines while following the blonde to the couch. “Oh, but I am Kate Bishop! As serious as a heart attack!,” she exasperates., “You’re going to deny the poor girl a second date over fries?”

“No, of course not, don’t be silly Kate, it’s all about what the fries represented to me!”

“Which is?” she humors the blonde., “All food!”

The brunette looks back to you pleadingly., “Can you believe this?,” you chuckle and nod., “Yelena doesn’t share food Kate, I once saw her wrestle with a seagull to get her fries back.,” the younger girls eyes widened, turning back for confirmation and receiving it by way of the blonde’s smirk., “I don’t share food Kate.,” she winked, then to prove her point she slapped the girls hand away from her chocolate muffin.

Natasha settled her body behind yours, arms wrapping around your waist, with her chin resting on your shoulder., “Have you given more consideration to going out with me yet?,” you rolled your eyes and shrugged the woman off you., “Natasha, we’ve been over this, you are not getting a second chance with all of this. Not my fault you slept with someone else.”

The redhead groaned as you walked out of her reach., “Y/N! We were on a break! Let it go.”

Your eyes widened while facing the fridge, the witch was two for two now with the typecasting mistakes, Natasha being Ross—though kinda hilarious, will likely not sit well with her.

Wanda threw her hands in the air, effectively silencing the words she’d almost let you say., “Knock it off, the both of you, the argument is tired and I need your help to decide if this is good enough for Vis’s work potluck tomorrow.”

All the hairs on your body stood up at the name of her former partner, it stung a bit that she would typecast him in place as her Chandler, but it wasn’t like you had any time to really care when you were being physically propelled towards the dining room table.

“Wanda, oh my goodness! This is delicious.,” Yelena groaned, her hands soaked red from the sauce of the lasagna she shoveled in her mouth. Kate grimaced at the sight of it all., “No thank you Wands, I don’t eat cheese or meat.,” she grabbed an apple then returned to the couch.

“Y/N? Care to try your best friends dish?,” the forkful was soon pushed passed your plump lips, and you hummed your approval for the pasta. The redhead and you shared a personal look, and you could see she was trying to quell your anxieties, ‘a dream is just a cumulation of many meaningless thoughts,’ you could imagine the words falling from her lips, as they have many times after one of your lifelike nightmares. You blinked three times, and the woman smiled fondly at your display of love.

“It’s delicious Wan, Vis will love it!,” you beamed your scripted line to the woman who smiled at you a little too fondly for it to have been platonic, but such is the way of an altered reality you presume., “I’m glad to hear it.,” and just as you went to take a seat on the couch it dematerialized before your eyes, as did the rest of the scenery. An odd sensation consumed your form, then suddenly you were gasping.

In real time Wanda’s body jolted off of the mattress in a fit of harsh coughs, briefly releasing all of you from the trippy mind fog. Yelena and Kate shared a look as they booked it for the front door with their bags and a distant shout back., “A hotel works just fine for us.,” Natasha smirked down at you from over your shoulder, your body having slumped into hers, and just as she went to speak she was silenced. The both of you watched as the color of the apartment faded into a murky black and white.

This time though you’d had full motor control, it was apparent that your sickened girlfriend was losing her ability to hold much control. With quick footsteps you approached the room, Natasha hot on your heels, as the both of you were honestly worried about her wellbeing. Upon entering the room you saw Wanda in a robe sat before the vanity, she didn’t look like she had in every other sequence though.

This time the sickness had the upper hand over her, the tip of her nose was a much darker shade of grey from the rest of her face, as were the bags beneath her eyelids. Nonetheless, she smiled fondly at the both of you., “My loves.,” she croakily coo’d, all your previous qualms based on her choices faded away at the sight of the soft smile that accompanied her words. Natasha’s were simply pushed to the back of her mind, to obviously be fought over later.

“Oh baby, you don’t look well.,” you softly say as you approached her, her nose scrunched in offense, but when she released the hold a box of tissues had materialized in your hands. Natasha chuckled, remembering last nights sitcom of the hour, and how you’d told Wanda she was basically Samantha’s witchy twin., “That’s not very nice.,” she whined, but her soured mood only lasted a second, because in the next you were handing her a tissue, and scooping her body up and into your chest.

“Most of what you’ve done today hasn’t been.,” Natasha grumbled, clearly not letting anything go, but when Wanda looked to her with a pout she temporarily resolved., “Let’s get you back in bed. Natty will get you some medicine.,” you sent the redhead a pointed glare and she went into to the ensuite swiftly, coming back with a cup of NyQuil, and a glass of water., “Open up.”

Wanda tiredly did as told, grimacing shortly after as the bitter cough syrup coated her tongue. You quelled her whimpers with a box of apple juice from your stash, before then urging her to drink the glass of water as well., “Get some rest love.,” you coo’d, hands gentle as they stroked her sweaty hair out of her face., “Lub you.,” both of your hearts skipped at her whispered words., “We love you too detka.,” Natasha confirmed, then you heard a cuffing noise, looking down to see she’d restricted Wanda’s powers., “They’ll time off before she even wakes up, but I refuse to receive any more horrible roles, now lets go watch a movie.,” you shook your head in disbelief while chuckling, then accepted her outstretched hand anyways.

That night Natasha and you slept on the couch, so when Wanda woke up in a bed full of tissues instead of your comforting bodies she pouted. Walking out she found the both of you in an entangled mess of limbs on the couch., “Cute.”, she gently brushed the hair off your face, then placed soft kisses to both of your foreheads. She was honestly feeling so much better after all of the given meds and rest, so she decided to take care of breakfast in a show of her thanks.

Bits and pieces of the oddest dreams kept flashing through her mind while flipping the pancakes, and a frown befell her face at just how real all of felt as it replayed for her., “Sweetheart, give me the spatula, and run.,” you suddenly spoke from besides her, and when she looked to you she saw an angry Natasha quickly approaching from behind you., “What?,” you grabbed the spatula, kissed her lips, then lightly shoved her., “Honey run!”

“You can try to run, but I’ll eventually get you!,” Natasha shouted, slapping your ass in warning as she brushed right on passed you.

“Natasha! Baby, what did I even do?!,” Wanda shrieked from down the hallway, you shook your head in amusement while plating up their pancakes., “What did you do?!,” she scoffed., “Wanda, you typecast me as Ross Gellar!,” the witches gasp was far too audible to you, and that was because she came barreling back into the kitchen from the other entrance, and before you could protest she was using you as a shield.

“I-I, was that all really happening?,” she stumbled over her words, the confusion was evident in her tone, you nodded gently, turning to peck her forehead just before Natasha reentered., “Wanda, why?! Is that how you really see me?,” you held back a giggle, finding Natasha’s whining rather adorable actually. Wanda however was mortified, she shook her head violently against your shoulder blade, and you could see Natasha’s anger melting the longer she stared at the witch clinging to you. Then when you teasingly stuck your bacon out for her to nibble on she was back to baseline, approaching you eagerly, and moaning at the salty, yet sweet flavor of the meat.

“Am I still in trouble?,” she whispered timidly, you spun around to face her., “Not unless you really want Vision back.,” her face scrunched in hardcore offense., “Absolutely not, I’ve got all I could ever want or need here with my wives.”

“Right answer.,” you settled a kiss to her lips, then another to Natasha’s as your turned back around and headed towards the table to eat., “Come now ladies, let’s enjoy the food.”

Everything was going great too, giggles filled the room as you reminded the witch just how everything played out., “Did they really run out of here like the world was on fire?,” you nodded while sipping on your warm mug and Wanda broke out into another fit of laughter., “Always so dramatic.,” Nat added., “Yeah, can’t wait to see them drunk at their wedding.,” you teased, but before the conversation could go on your lovers looked to you with concern as an unexpected, harsh cough tore from your throat.

“Please, nooo.,” Natasha groaned, because as hypothesized, following your cough came a loud boom as storm clouds formed above the dining room table, and as another cough tore through you, lightning cracked and rain fell. Soaking the entirety of the table, along with you and your lovers., “Please, remind me again why I married you magical little freaks.”

Wanda ignored the grumbling redhead, turning to face your pouting form with a smile, and beckoning you over towards her with a finger., “It’s okay my love, get some rest.,” and as you settled into her arms red tendrils flowed out and into your mind, locking you into a deep slumber, and settling the brewing storm., “Because I can do just that, and let’s not act like you’re not an absolute menace when sick.,” Natasha blushed, and bowed her head at the call out, then she approached you both., “She is pretty cute.,” Wanda smiled., “The cutest.”

——————————————————

For reference:

ILL (Lucy-R, Ethel-Lena)

Golden Girls! (Kate-Rose, Nat-Dorothy, Lena-Sophia, W-Blanche, R-Blanche’s date/Dorothy’s “ex”)

Friends (Kate-Phoebe, R-Rachel, Lena-Joey, W-Mon, Nat-Ross)

Bewitched! (Wanda & Nat/R)

[luthiest]

01.26.23

swiss miss in the chicken mug kinda day

🎧 : american teenager - ethel cain

[you-have-made-a-fatal-error]

semi-annual tradition of roasting HeR's questionable fucking merch because all their designs are bad again let's goooo ->->->

remember how for a bit there it felt like HeR was putting some effort into making their merch good? desirable? well-designed?

welp it seems pretty clear they're done with that, because i'm sorry but this just looks awful. the font? bad! the horse/lasso clipart? bad! the layout? very, very bad!

"I left my at Shadow 💛 Ranch" are you serious rn? bad! i don't think you tried at all!

actual Mystery of the Seven Keys merch ffs why isn't it called Case of the Seven Keys that sounds so much better has dropped - and while it's nothing special (though some of it is weird - hey do you want an 8x10 metal print of the game 'cover' awkwardly centred on a blurred, indistinct background? 'cause HeR made 'em!) it seems like they can't decide what nancy silhouette to use? because while most of it uses the new exorcist-head-turn pants-y drew silhouette, they've also got a couple pieces with the classic silhouette - the one they haven't used since Stay Tuned for Danger. because who needs brand consistency.

(the nancy silhouette use from mhm to sea - aka for nearly 90% of the games - has not resurfaced.)

the presence of actual KEY merch raises the spectre of who they think is gonna buy all the merch they made during the lead-up to the game - seriously is there any reason someone would buy this now?

i would also argue there was no need for anyone to buy any of these before, but now? $60 for a hoodie with your fucking launch date?? really???

does anyone know what separates the 'classic' icons on the left from the 'deep cut' icons on the right? also wow they're really just never going to acknowledge ran at all anymore huh.

ah yes. noted 'deep cut' references. like henrick. and ethel. and hotchkiss.

these next designs are clearly not the worst things in the store and while I guess they're not awful though I don't like the font they are blatant Bess and George erasure and thus I hate them on principle.

Bess + George > Deirdre. Also, Bess + George > FrankenJoe. hope that clears things up.

the 25 year anniversary merch is a whole load of bad - the 'and all i got was this lousy _____' trend is lame, and has been for 10,000 years, but there are worse crimes. the mug is just boring in a way that looks unfinished rather than minimalistic. font crimes from the magnifying glass - every time i see it i think it says 'snoopers' not 'snooping'. i actually thought the teal callback designs were kind of neat in a nostalgia-bait kind of way until i realized the necklaces were the only option without all the text under the magnifying glass? maybe folks who were more active on the boards get a nostalgia kick from that last one but i'll be honest, it does nothing for me.

i don't mean to be an exhausting pedant but. no sassy detective until trt, no koko kringles until ssh, no easter eggs until dog, no horse shirt until ddi, can't call carson until clk, no lost luggage until dan. also the placement of the text is just. weird. doesn't look right.

and jenna's whale t-shirt still isn't available in green. bye.

[cowgurrrl]

Ptolemae

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem!reader (except this is all backstory)

Author’s note: I was listening to Ethel Cain the entire time while writing this and it shows

Summary: “Rage is not to be avoided, diminished, belittled. Rage is God. Better believe my rage is steeped in love.” — Shira Erlichman, as quoted in Jacqui Germain’s When the Ghosts Come Ashore [3.8k]

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI, canonical type violence, PTSD symptoms, probably incorrect wound care, angst, feminine rage bordering on insanity (my favorite)

It takes you a full forty-eight hours to approach the soldiers in the center of what's left of the city. They've set up tents and medical sites among the rubble. They're calling themselves the Federal Disaster Response Agency or FEDRA. Their uniforms are identical to the one the woman who was ready to shoot you was wearing. They carry assault rifles and yell orders out, every so often burying a bullet in some Infected's head as they approach the camp. You don't trust them, but then again, you didn't trust many people before the world went to shit. You would've stayed outside the makeshift fence longer, but the graze on your arm is only getting worse, and Jane is only getting hungrier. You can't keep being stubborn when she's relying on you to keep her safe. 

You tuck your gun and knife into the very bottom of your backpack, hoping the supplies and half-open gauze packages will distract them long enough to conceal your weapons. Jane watches your movements quietly and curiously. You glance between her and the camp beyond the treeline you're hiding in. She looks like she's aged three years in the past few days, dirt and fear hollowing her features in a way you've never seen before. You smile half-heartedly as you put your hands on her arms and squeeze.

"Hey," you say gently. "It's gonna be okay. We just need to go down there and tell them we need help, just like we practiced. Can you show me what you do?" You ask, and she raises her little hands to show she's unarmed. She's shaking. You can't tell if it's from hunger or fear. You don't know if it matters. 

"My name is Jane Eloise. I'm five years old. I'm not sick, and I don't have anything that could hurt you." She says, and you nod. 

"That's right. Good job. And then, let Mommy do all the talking, okay? Once they get us all processed, they'll take us wherever they've been taking people all day, and we'll be able to get you some food."

"What about you?" She asks. Jane knows you haven't been eating or sleeping. You gave her all three of the meal packs in the tactical backpack, and she's heard you curse under your breath when you tried to change your bandage. Still, you smile and tuck her tangled hair behind her ears.

"I won't ever leave your side. I'll be right here, holding your hand, and if you're feeling scared, you can squeeze my hand as hard as you can, and I'll take all your fear away," you say, grabbing her hand. "Wanna try?" You ask, and she smiles as she squeezes you with all her might. You make a goofy face, and she laughs for the first time in three days. It sounds like music. Once she's done squeezing your hand, you smile. "So, when you do that, you shouldn't be scared anymore. You should only feel strong and brave. Can you show me a brave face?" You say. She flexes her muscles and mean mugs you until you laugh at her commitment to the bit.

"Did I look scary, Mommy?" She asks, stepping into your arms, and you nod.

"Scariest kid on the block," you say as you hug her. For a moment, the only thing in the world that matters to you is her heartbeat against yours. It's steady and perfect and made from half of you. The consistent thumping gives you enough strength to stand, carry her in your arms, and walk down to where the FEDRA soldiers are stationed. 

You're slow and careful as you come down the hill. If you run to them, yelling for help, they'll put a bullet in you without a second thought. They'll think you're sick if you act desperate like that. So you move like you're treading on ice, but even then, ten different guns point in your direction, and you swallow down your fear as you put the hand not carrying Jane in the air. She does the same. 

"Stop right there." A FEDRA soldier yells once you're a few hundred feet away. You put Jane down and show them you're unarmed. All the soldiers look identical, with heavy tactical gear, menacing weaponry, and helmets protecting their skulls. Jane reaches for your hand and squeezes hard. You swallow around the lump of bile in your throat and find your voice.

"We're not sick!" 

"Names!" One of them yells. Jane immediately launches into her rehearsed speech with one hand above her head and the other tucked in yours. You take a deep breath and tell them your name once she's done.

"I'm her mother. We need help." You say. The soldiers look at each other for several long seconds before lowering their weapons and approaching you. Jane squeezes your hand again and steps back into your body. One soldier removes his helmet and drops to the ground to show Jane that he's just a man. He's got kind eyes and dirt stuck to his skin, but he manages a gentle smile for Jane. You wonder how he would treat you if you didn't have a kid.

"We're gonna take you and your mom to that tent over there to get you checked out," he says, pointing to the tent beside the barely standing fence. "Once the doctors say you're okay, we can take you to a shelter with lots of food and water. Does that sound good?" He asks, and Jane nods hesitantly. The soldier glances between you and Jane before rising to his feet again and leveling you with a look, his grip adjusting on his gun. She's not a threat, he's saying. But you are. "Ladies, first." He gestures toward the tent, his tone starkly different than the one he used with Jane. Your jaw clenches, but you do as you're told. He follows closely behind as you walk over to the tent, the metal of his gun clanking against his gear. It sounds like bones rattling. You do your best to hide the shakiness in your step and keep the hand Jane's holding steady. 

He follows you inside the tent, closing the flaps for some semblance of privacy. There's no medical gear inside, just a scary-looking table. Something squishes under your shoes, and you make a conscious effort not to look down at the damp ground as you turn and look at the soldier. "Put your bag down," he orders. You let go of Jane's hand to slowly slide the backpack from your shoulders and place it on the table. His eyes widen as he recognizes the tactical bag. "Where did you get this?"

"I found it in the woods while we were hiding," you lie, squaring your shoulders as he eyes you suspiciously. "Nobody was around, and I thought it could have stuff we needed in it."

"So, you just found and took a military-issued bag and didn't think anything about it?"

"No offense, soldier, but I don't think theft is the worst thing to come out of the past few days." You say, and he squints at you like he's trying to figure out if he believes you. His gun clicks against his gear as you stare each other down. 

"I need to know you're not bitten before I can let you go any further," he moves on, and you feel your shoulders drop in relief. You remember seeing those things mercilessly attacking people, ripping their faces off, or chewing on flailing limbs. If getting bitten is how this is spreading, who got bit first? Who started this? The soldier looks down at Jane. "Can you wait outside while I talk to your mommy?" He asks, and you put a hand on Jane's shoulder before she can move.

"She's not going anywhere." You dig your heels in, and you watch his jaw tighten.

"I didn't think you'd want your kid in here when I asked you to strip to check for bite marks."

"The world fucking ended, and you think I'm going to trust you people with my kid after you dropped bombs on us?" You ask, tucking Jane behind you. You've done it so many times in the past few days that it feels natural, putting yourself between her and a threat. "She's staying with me."

"Fine, but I still need you to strip." He sighs, exasperated. You're pulling your arms through your jacket before he can even finish his sentence.

"I'd love nothing more, Waters." You spit, glancing down at the name tag on the front of his uniform. You throw your jacket down on the table holding your backpack, and he freezes when he sees the gauze on your arm. He doesn't move as you pull your shirt over your head to reveal the scrapes and asphalt burns from fighting the infected guy outside your apartment. Your legs don't look much better, the skin broken and stained red. Jane gasps once she sees the cuts and bruises for the first time, and the sound makes you want to cry. Waters gestures with his gun at the bandage on your arm.

"Take it off," he orders. With shaking hands, you peel the gauze back, the graze immediately bleeding and making you hiss as the air hits it. Your hands clench into fists as he looks at it intently. Once he's satisfied, he nods and hands you a new package of gauze. "What happened?"

"We got caught up in the bombings. Cut my arm on a piece of shrapnel." You say as he checks you for anything else that could be a bitemark. Once he's done circling your half-naked body, he clears his throat and turns his back to you so you can redress. You do quickly and painfully, your skin seemingly protesting against the sudden stretching. You ignore the scrapes across your shoulders breaking open, coating the back of your shirt in blood as you pull it over your head. He doesn't turn around until he hears your pants zip back up. You're quietly grateful he decided to be respectful when he could once he decided you weren't a threat anymore.

"You've been out there since the bombings?" He asks, and you nod. He looks at Jane before looking at you again. "And her? She's not sick?"

"If she were, we'd both be dead." You're shocked by the cruelty in your voice, but you don't flinch. Waters gives you a look before moving to your bag and searching through it. If he sees your weapons at the bottom, he doesn't take them or indicate that he knows about them. He zips up your bag and hands it back to you.

"Welcome to the Quarantine Zone."

The shelter isn't even half-full when you get there. What was a high school has since been turned into a home base for any survivors who made it past the FEDRA screenings. They give you a hot meal, blankets, toothbrushes, and a change of clothes. There are no showers, but you're just grateful to get the taste of blood out of your mouth. You and Jane set up your stuff on two little beds next to each other in the corner of an old classroom, your bed closest to the door. There are maybe ten other occupied beds in the room with you. Maybe. 

You don't know why, but you search the wartorn faces for your ex. You haven't seen or spoken to Matt since Jane was a few months old, and even then, your last conversation was not one you'd care to relive. Still, part of you had hope that he'd be alive and safe. He's still Jane's father. But you don't find him. You don't see anyone you recognize as you and Jane walk to the medical tent in the old gym. An older woman with bloody scrubs and a clipboard greets you.

"Hey there. What do you need today?" She asks, surprisingly cheerful, and you glance around at the medical supplies.

"I just need some surgical glue. Do you have any?" You say, and she gives you a look before digging around in a bin. She finally comes up with some, and you let out a relieved sigh. "Can I use some? I'll give it right back." You ask. Someone gasps behind you before she can open her mouth to say anything. You quickly pull Jane closer to your body and feel your fists clench as you turn to see who's behind you. When your brain catches up to the fact that an Infected is not rushing toward you, you see Mr. Lowery standing there. Jane wiggles from your arms and runs to him, an excited noise leaving her. 

"Jane, oh my goodness. I'm so happy to see you," he says, his gentle teacher voice not wavering even in the apocalypse. You let out a shaky breath as you leave the medical table and walk over to them. Adam says your name in the same breathless tone once he realizes you're there, too, and throws his arms around your shoulders. You yelp in pain as his hand grazes your open wounds, and he quickly lets go of you. "I'm so sorry. Are you hurt? I didn't-"

"It's fine. Just sore," you shake your head once you see the worried look in Jane's eyes. "I'm glad you're safe, Adam." 

"Yeah, you too. You're the first parent I've seen since I got here." He says sadly. You try not to think too hard about what that means and swallow around the lump in your throat.

"Ma'am, do you still need help?" The woman you were talking to earlier walks over, the surgical glue still in her hand, and you nod.

"Yeah, I just need to borrow that." You say, pointing at the bottle in her hand.

"I don't feel comfortable letting someone untrained use medical supplies like this." 

"Oh, she's not untrained. She's pre-med. Right? Weren't you studying for the MCATs?" Adam asks, and you press your lips into a line as you nod. The woman looks between you and the gauze on your arm with a cocked eyebrow.

"Why don't you let me look at it?" 

"No, it's really okay. It's not that deep."

"I'm only gonna ask nicely once." She says with the same stern, concerned tone you use for Jane. You sigh and grab Jane's hand, but she stands her ground. 

"Mommy, can I stay with Mr. Lowery? I really, really missed him." She asks with praying hands tucked under her chin. Your heart lurches in your throat, and your mouth goes dry as you search for an answer.

"I can watch her while you get checked out if you want. We'll stay right here. We won't go anywhere." Adam offers, and you fight the urge to snatch Jane from his arms and yell at him to shut up.

"Please?" Jane begs, making her vowels extra long to plead her case. You take a deep breath and make eye contact with Adam.

"You stay here. You don't take her anywhere or give her anything. You don't even think about moving from this spot, got it?" 

"Got it," he says without hesitation, and your jaw clenches as he stares at you. "I won't let anything happen to her." There's enough conviction in his tone for you to nod and follow the woman into one of her sectioned-off canvas rooms.

She puts on gloves and watches you sit on the edge of the cot, your knee bouncing as you stare through the curtain's tiny opening. You don't say anything as she carefully pulls the bandage away from your skin, blood breaching the surface as soon as it's off. You grit your teeth as she wipes at the cut with an antiseptic wipe but don't make any noise. You don't want Jane to hear you being in pain, so you clench your jaw so hard your bones creak with force and wipe your tears on your shirt sleeve.

"That your little girl out there?" She asks, trying to distract you, and you nod. "She's beautiful."

"Thanks." You mutter as she applies a little more pressure to your skin. Stars explode across your vision, and you curse under your breath. You don't remember it hurting this bad when you actually got grazed. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.

"Did you come here with her dad?"

"Nope. Haven't seen the guy in four years." 

"Sounds like his loss."

"That's a understate, fuck," you stop as she presses a line of surgical glue across the graze. It burns as it settles into your skin, and the woman offers you whispered updates of how much longer until it dries and little encouragements. Once it's finally done drying, she puts a sterile bandage over the adhesive and offers you two painkillers. You look down at the two little pills and raise your eyebrows at her. "Acetaminophen?" 

"There's that pharmacology," she smiles as you take the pills. "What branch of medicine did you wanna go into?" 

"Doesn't matter now."

"It matters to me." She says, and you shake your head. You bite the inside of your cheek as you debate on telling her or not. Is it fair to bring that dream up when it will never happen?

"Surgery." 

"Smart girl." 

"Something like that." You shrug, the movement irritating the scrapes on your back, and you wince. The woman stands and looks at the back of your shirt to see it stained with blood.

"What happened?" 

"One of those things tried to get me. My back got cut up on the asphalt," you explain. "It's fine."

"Doesn't look fine. Can I take a look?" She asks, and you chuckle. 

"You're the second person I've had to take my shirt off in front of today." You say, taking a big breath and holding it as you pull your arms in and pull the fabric over your head. You turn your back to her so she can see the extent of the damage done to your skin. She doesn't gasp or have any reaction. She just starts dabbing at the blood gently, like you cleaned the blood from Jane's skinned knees. 

"May," she says like she's speaking to a spooked dog. "My name is May. I figured someone should give you the courtesy of knowing their names when they ask you to strip." She says, and you nod. You tell her your name in return, the rigid posture of your spine relaxing a little at her care. 

"Jane is my little girl." 

"How old is she?" She asks, and you swallow thickly.

"Five." 

"Must've been scary. Tryna keep her safe out there." 

"You have no idea." You whisper, your voice cracking over the words as memories of screaming creatures and shaking earth fill your mind. She cleans the rest of your blood in silence before putting ointment over the scabs. She checks for any broken bones while you're still sitting and tsks when she presses against a tender spot in your side, making you groan. 

"You've got at least one broken rib and probably one of the worst cases of road rash I've ever seen, and I was an ER doctor," she says as she hands you your shirt and sits across from you on her rolly chair. She gives you a sympathetic look, but you're not all there. Part of your brain is still pinned to the concrete under a screeching human, clawing at your skin. "But that little girl," she says, recapturing your attention. "That little girl is in perfect health. If I didn't know what happened this weekend, I would've had no idea she was ever in any danger."

"Is this the part where you scold me for putting myself in harm's way when I could've just come here earlier?" You ask, and she shakes her head.

"No, this is the part where I tell you what I've told all my parents who've come through here," she says, resting her knees on her elbows so she can look you in the eyes. "I don't care what you had to do to survive. I don't care what you did to protect them. I don't even care why you're sittin' on my table. I care about making sure you know how lucky your kid is to have you. For every kid that made it out, there's three more who died. You did good." She says sincerely, and you have to look away from her to wipe at your eyes.

"Doesn't feel like it, but thank you."

"I know it doesn't, but I promise you it's true," she says. "And I see how much you care about others. Otherwise, you wouldn't have wanted to be a surgeon. Now, I know you didn't get your MD, but I did, and I want to teach you what I know. Lord knows I need the help." 

"No, I can't." You shake your head.

"Yes, you can."

"I'm not the person you want for this."

"You don't know that."

"I do. I'm... I'm not a good person."

"Who is?"

"I killed people," The confession stuns you both into silence. Hot, angry tears stream down your face, and you pull your shirt back over your head. "I killed people to protect her. It was them or her, and I chose her. I will always choose her. So, whatever perfect, good, strong person you think I am or could've been at one point isn't here anymore. I buried her the second FEDRA tried to drop a fucking bomb on my kid," you stand on wobbly legs and pull your hair out of the collar of your shirt. "Thanks for your help, May."

That night, you don't sleep despite the aching in your bones. You stay awake and listen to the expanding and contracting of Jane's lungs as she dreams. When she wakes up screaming, you're already there to calm her down and remind her that she's safe. Adam ends up sleeping three cots down and tries to help when she wakes up, but you stop him before he can sit on her cot with a wide-eyed, annoyed look. He backs off after that. You've gone most of Jane's life without help from anyone, and you're sure as hell not going to accept any now. 

You were the one shoving knives through skulls and burying bullets in throats to keep her safe. You were the one who hid your pain from her for two days while you hid out in the barn. You were the one who taught her to give her fear to you because you are the only one who can handle it. What the fuck does Adam Lowery or May know about that? You will never again be the woman they once thought you to be. No, after this, you will be bloody and rageful and ruthless. There is nothing you wouldn't do to protect her or ensure her happiness. There is no corner of the earth you would leave unturned for the tiniest chance of her having a future. 

And God help any motherfucker who stands in your way.

[boghermit]

For Salem: Is there someone your OC didn't like at first, but then got along with later? Which canon character is pissed off by the general presence of OC? c:

Is there someone your OC didn't like at first, but then got along with later?

Out of the main companions, he didn't like Gale or Astarion at first. Gale pops out of that portal and starts talking in fancy English while Salem is trying to deal with a traumatic brain injury, then asks to eat his shoes. Meanwhile Astarion straight up mugs him. Ironically he forgave Astarion faster. He also initially despised Isobel, but got over it eventually, especially after she pulled him away from Bhaal and forgave him for trying to kill her.

Which canon character is pissed off by the general presence of OC?

Orin HATES his ass. Ketheric could never get along with him very well either. And of course, Auntie Ethel.

[riverdale-retread]

Riverdale S7 E19 (Chapter 136) Golden Age of Television

There are so many things you can say about Riverdale the show that are completely wrong, but one of the most wrong things you can say about it is that it is made in some sort of careless or haphazard way, without due care and consideration.

The penultimate episode of Riverdale the TV Series, which launched in the final years of the most recent Golden Age of Television, and is likely to be one of the last shows to have this full 22 episode, multi-year arc of classical American TV, opens with a wide open outdoor shot of the river, the forest with huge trees, and the sign that looked old fashioned and worn even in an 1950s context which they never changed into 2017.

The picture-perfect shot of the Riverdale-Town-With-Pep sign is transitioned perfectly over to an actual postcard showing a pictorial representation of that sign, stuck to the window of Jughead Jones’ souped up train car. The fact that this person who lives in Riverdale has purchased (or was given?) a postcard of the town sign and put it up on his window as the sole decorative touch when he is IN the town is so funny. Jughead has said that Archie is the spirit of Riverdale in all seasons other than this one (he just isn’t as interested in Archie in this alternative universe) and yet he’s the one that is completely obsessed with what it means to be Riverdale in a way that not even the people running for mayor (who are all of his friends’ moms and dads) have bothered blathering on about.

In the 1950s alternate universe, Jughead Jones has this to say about his location:

“For years, Riverdale had prided itself for being the town with pep - safe, innocent, utopian.”

Alas, but this is not real, apparently because he’s learned about the “darkness that churned beneath Riverdale.”

Life in general is at best a mix of good and bad things happening. There are some eras though that are convinced they are the good times when they are happening, which then provides endless fodder for people to argue with in subsequent generations. The 1950s for the United States is one of those eras.

Possibly in this spirit, Jughead Jones loathes to write meanly about the things that he loves, so our narrator is being a bit indirect when he tries to describe the “churning darkness” but that leads to lying by omission. The Town’s Mayor turned out to be a Soviet Agent hiding a nuclear bomb warhead in his ancestral mines - rather more dire than just merely prejudice and fearmongering, and unrelated to inequality!

See, even now, even after all he knows in the 1950s universe, Jughead doesn’t want to write his town off as the hellhole that it often actually has been! (Look what they did to Ethel! And the man summarily executed in the town square by Sheriff Keller as his skin sloughed off him in layers!).

1950s Jughead is not the insomniac-due-to-homelessness of the other time line Jughead. He’s just a morning person who gets up early enough to get the morning paper, read it, and then start writing while the sun comes streaming in. On the table next to the typewriter is a copy of the Riverdale Register with HIS PHOTO, posing moodily against the big phallus of the palladium bomb. First, this is a very funny photo for the Riverdale to use with the headline PROJECT MOLOCH FOILED! Why not use a photo of the mayor and his soviet spy wife getting arrested or their mug shot or something else? Why use this photo of Jughead Jones? Secondly, the idea that something as major as a world-ending bomb being discovered by two high school kids in abandoned mines in upstate New York getting no New York Times or other major newspaper coverage is pretty funny. What’s even funnier is that maybe it DID get national press coverage but Jughead Jones is so absolutely parochial that he only cares what the Riverdale Register had to say about it. Or! And maybe this is the truth - he only wanted to see himself in this off beat beatnik type of photo on the front page of a paper. Vanity at its most potent!

Because think about this - he’s wearing stripey pajama pants and the patented slutty tank top (in the 1950s these were undershirts, right? So he put on a brassiere for his early morning writing bout) but then remembered to comb his hair and pin (it has to be pinned) his felt crown just so on top of his head before he could sit down to write his commentary about the recent events which showed that Riverdale is not in fact a perfect haven.

Anyway, I am happy that he’s narrating again. I missed Jughead narration.

We cut to Archie who is reading On the Road, in bed, first thing in the morning. Jughead tells us that there’s “some new thinking that is required,” thereby presenting us with this as one of the major indicators of “new thinking.” Except Archie has been trying out experimental artistic writing and reading all season, so this is not in fact new. Jughead of this world simply doesn’t know Archie Andrews very well at all.

At school, Principal Featherhead is packing his personal items into a cardboard box under the watchful (but useless) eye of Sheriff Keller. Jughead, at school well before the rest of the student body, gets to witness the very unhappy and angry Featherhead leave the premises. Featherhead gives him a nasty, I blame you for this! glare. Narration Jughead explains that Featherhead gave an official ‘personal reasons’ explanation for his losing his job, but the real reason was “an anonymous accuser” identifying him as part of “Mayor Blossom’s Soviet Shenanigans.”

Was that Jughead, who made the accusation? Or was it Cheryl?

Featherhead’s boyfriend the Lolita-fetishist comes out to see him take his leave of the premises, then makes sure to give Jughead the same I Blame You For This glare too. These adults do not have any qualms about not treating these kids like they are kids. Jughead has been feeling himself of late - he’s wearing suspenders and a t shirt under his button down shirt.

We cut to Hal and Alice reading out the news. They are looking for another principal! Then we cut to the extremely colorful Cooper house, where Betty is giving her parents maximum disapproval in glares as they work out how they are not going to separate or get divorced but instead will simply live apart on different stories of their house - Hal in the basement, Alice on the second floor where the bedroom is. Betty wants to know why Alice won’t simply divorce Hal.

The simple answer is that Alice loves being on television, and the sexism of newsmedia (which is STILL EXACTLY THE SAME IN 2023) means that there’s no way a woman in her 50s who looks like she’s in her 50s, no matter how gorgeous, would be allowed a head anchor job, for one, and for another, she might simply not be good enough for any other television job not given to her by her husband. This is the simple answer as I say, but Alice is not someone who has a clean relationship to the truth, so in response to Betty’s question she says a lot of other things, all bullshit, about staying together for her daughters, not breaking up the family, blah blah. She does mention the inability to open a bank account again.

Alice says something else, that I find rather terrifying, but Betty isn’t horrified by it. Alice would rather have her cheating troll of a husband live with her in the basement like a literal troll, and sit next to him smiling on their television show, than be alone, because she doesn’t know how to be alone. The music they play is sympathetic, but I feel no sympathy for Alice. There are no excuses - none whatsoever - to the way she treated Ethel from end to end, including that ridiculous offer to ‘adopt’ her. Fuck Alice, and also, fuck everyone who is scared to be alone. You all do the worst shit to other people.

Nana Blossom meanwhile is holding court in front of her two grandchildren. She calls her son “idiot” and her daughter in law “viper,” then prays that they rot in a “Russian gulag for the rest of their miserable lives.” Why would it be a Russian gulag though? Having committed treason, wouldn’t they just be executed in America?

Both of the Blossom children hated their parents as much as their grandmother did.

“From your lips to Moloch’s ears, Nana,” Cheryl says. This is one of my most cherished Cheryl lines ever, right up there with “You’re looking especially Dilfy today, Mr. Andrews.” Julian chimes in to say that he always knew there was something squirrely about his parents. I mean, bless Julian’s wonderful singing voice, but he’s only being like this because he’s pissed that his father brought in Reggie Mantle, no? Cheryl has been put through it - about her sexuality, about her art - by both of her parents who threatened her directly. Julian has had either favored-child or ignored-child status, so it’s quite dark that he hates them so. They both look very psychopathic as they put their indifferent two cents in.

Nana Blossom, who anyone with sense has to admit is the best character on Riverdale bar none, starts to say that it’s up to the three of them now to "ensure that the Blossom rise from the ashes like phoenixes” which scared me for a moment because I thought for sure she was going to suggest Julian and Cheryl fuck each other but she does not. Instead, Cheryl, looking very happy, says she knows just what the first thing to do should be.

The school bell rings, and we see the important kids all seated at the student lounge together, worried for the future, “with Featherhead gone.” The seating configuration is interesting. Counting clockwise from Betty, it’s Veronica, Jughead, Clay perched next to Kevin and touching him with his body, Kevin, then Reggie perched next to Archie and touching HIM with his body, Archie, who is seated as far as possible away from Cheryl while still adjacent, who is next to Toni. The bi-girl Beronica couple are not touching, and the gay-girl Choni couple are also not touching, and I object to all of this.

Jughead is very worried that it might be Dr. Werthers as the replacement. Kevin doesn’t like that idea at all. He’s seconded by Reggie, who says Captain Hook or Godzilla would be a better replacement. That joke lands flat because Archie is really worried they might ask Uncle Fucking Frank ‘to step up.’ Reggie is wearing a black and orange striped shirt and it can’t be a coincidence that Archie’s T shirt has the same orange shade at the neck.

Toni says she knows a great candidate, who will need a boost from the PTA. Betty tells her that Alice is president of the PTA, urging Toni to give Alice another chance at “doing the right thing.” Now that I’m typing this out, it seems telegraphed in the most blatant way - Toni brings it up, and this is supposed to be a redemption opportunity for a white woman - but I truly didn’t glom on to who this candidate might be when I was watching the the first time, because of the strange way that Jughead takes leave of his friends.

Right after Betty says that thing about Alice (“A lot has changed for her”) he jumps up to say he’s going to pay a visit to Dr. Moldy, then significantly nods in general at the silent group before taking off to no fanfare. I also couldn’t tell who this ‘Dr Moldy’ was that he wanted to pay a housecall to.

It turned out to be Dr. Werthers, who is also packing up his things. I mean, it was only fun for him to work at Riverdale HS because his boyfriend ran the place, so of course he’d be leaving now that he’s gone! Jughead doesn’t yet know that gay people exist, maybe, since he hasn’t been in the Grundy writing class nor getting recruited by Clay, so he jumps to the opposite conclusion. “Featherhead is barely out the door and you’re already trying to take his office!?” he says, after groaning, Oh I knew it!

The phrasing of this is so funny - he’s just out of a job, Jughead, not dead, but okay, sure, say it like that.

It turns out Werthers is going “off to do real work, in Washington.” This has Jughead very concerned, so he steps decisively into the room. Werthers is extremely smug, saying he is going to be working on a presidential committee on juvenile delinquency, with a specific focus on the evil of comic books. Jughead sarcastically says “Well Golly!” at him in a nasty way before telling him not to let the door hit him on his way out. Werthers won’t of course let that be the last word: “My tribunal will still be doing the important work of regulating comic books.” Jughead spits out that what that tribunal does is Censorship. Werthers doesn’t skip a beat - he anticipated that Jughead would come barging in here, like this, at this time, so he had a final nasty piece of news ready: The latest issue of Pep Comics that Jughead and his editor submitted for approval has been rejected by the Tribunal. Extremely pleased with himself, Werthers basically tells Jughead that he knows he put this entire comic publisher out of business, and he did it on purpose.

This is the second time in this show that Werthers/Dupont has completely derailed a Jughead Jones creative career endeavor. Oddly powerful, this wizened turkey necked man, isn’t he?

Outside, Archie is working off some steam he built up about literature by shooting hoops in front of Reggie, who tells him “you still got it.” Archie has been so enthused about the On the Road book that he’s committed pieces of it to memory. He has decided to just live out the book - to ride the rails, hit the trails, hop trains, explore the country, sleep under the stars, and write. This has to be a little dig to someone about the relationship that Jughead and Archie tried to have with each other in the other universe. Those two actually did ride (well, walk along) the rails, slept under some stars, and so on. It’s really surreal that Archie is saying this to Reggie, even if this an alternative universe!

Reggie wants to know how Mary is going to take these vagabond wild man writer fantasies. Archie confidently tells him that since he will do these adventurings during summer vacation, nobody can stop him. Meanwhile, I am reminded of that Sylvia Plath journal bit where she is annoyed that she doesn’t really get to have experiences like On the Road, of hopping on a motorcycle and just taking off to ‘rough it’ - not worrying about where she’s going to sleep and if she’ll be safe from, variously, rape, violence, attempted murder, murder. Reggie is all about his ‘best basketball camp’ experience that he’s looking forward to. He shoots a basket casually, making Archie look at him in wonder.

My bitterness about Jughead-Archie not happening aside, the relationship that Reggie the good hearted basketball star has with Archie the small town boy with bohemian writer aspirations is quite sweet. Almost wholesome. (Insert “We could have had a good life” speech from Brokeback Mountain about Jughead-Archie here). IF we’re still positing that all these people are existing in the Angel Tabitha created world which is supposed to solve the problems of all the satan-riddled other Riverdales, the fact that Tabitha thinks that the deep relationship that Jughead had with Archie was fully toxic and in need of eradication is, to say the least, disturbing.

Speaking of Jughead, he has run straight to Veronica, to nurse his wounds about the latest issue of Pep Comics being kiboshed by Werthers. They’re calling it Zip Comics right now. Veronica is in her Movie Usher uniform, because I guess Clay and Kevin haven’t reported into work yet. Jughead speculates that it’s due to “The Comet” story that the latest issue was rejected. He mentions that Tabitha “clued [him] in” last time she was in town. Veronica is upset, because in her opinion that story was wonderful. “It’s so romantic and philosophical,” she says, reminding the audience that this is a story about a comet that hits NYC, with two survivors, a black man and a white woman, who fall in love.

WINK WINK HINT HINT hey because Season 6 of Riverdale ended with a comet hitting a town and obliterating it, ending the lives of a white man in love with a black woman.

In any case, when Jughead makes it clear that he thinks it’s the interracial nature of the couple that got the entire issue killed, Veronica looks a little surprised. Jughead looks concerned in a filial way when he tells her that he hasn’t yet told his publisher the bad news, because it will “crush” Featherstone.

Veronica says that the comic and the story was a masterpiece, adding she thought it would make a great movie. The single page of the comic they show us involves rather tame looking panels of one white man asking another white man if we hadn’t passed through the tail of a comet before, and the other man replying this was a different comet.

Jughead apparently adores the budding movie mogul side of his girlfriend, because he can’t contain his excitement even though he tries to -his eyebrows waggle up then down and back up again, as he starts to smile. He tells Veronica that if SOMEONE wanted to get in touch with DuBois, the original author of the tale, he has “all their information.” He means for Veronica to pursue it! Jughead Jones s7 being the most supportive friend to women who want to make art (Ethel! Veronica!) is a great touch. I’m very for this. Veronica’s face goes from being just wistful (I thought it would make a great movie) to disbelieving (do you think I can do it?) to being scared but excited (Maybe I *can* be the one!) It’s very lovely to watch.

At the Cooper house, Betty and Alice are sitting on the sofa as Toni makes her case from their armchair. When Riverdale High School integrated they shut down three (three??) black high schools, summarily firing all the teachers. Three? THREE all black high schools existed IN Riverdale?

Toni is lying. She has to be. There are definitely not enough black people in Riverdale to sustain a single all black high school, nevermind THREE. Either that, or there is some sort of terrifying deep apartheid going on because no.

But anyway, all three women are wearing belts with the most outlandish buckles of all time. Like, hideous monstrosities. Is this each of their armor, to protect their fragile navels from each other now that they have to discuss race?

Toni says that one really incredible teacher has been driving a cab the past year. I try not to look too closely at the racial history of Riverdale especially as relayed by Toni because of all her bullshit both as a construction and as a person, but she does have one thing right - in talking about race to a white woman, she takes on a quiet, almost pleading, nearly weepy super-soft tone, to prevent a freak out and flight. Even so, Alice still tries to wriggle out of it - She the Good White Person is of course in support of justice in theory, but she does not have the power to wrangle other white people of the PTA.

Betty calls bullshit on that immediately (good for her!) telling her to make it work.

And voila! Alice made it work. “Now is the time for a fresh start.”

Hey it’s Weatherbee! He’s now principal. His speech is about change and new ideas (things that the previous administration was against.) Betty and Veronica are sitting with Jughead, wearing hers and hers similar outfits (tight fitting bodice, flared skirt, bow at the bust) in pink and purple checked patterns.

Weatherbee starts to give an extremely political sounding speech that I would find very confusing coming from a high school principal. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” “The challenges are enormous and systemic” he says, adding “Be kind. Be decent. Be better!” Toni leaps to her feet, applauding, which then makes everyone else do the same, though I don’t know what this pseudo Obama first-campaign styling has to do with running a high school. Why is the show making me be like Evelyn Evernever? She is the last last to get to her feet, looking extremely annoyed.

Archie goes to visit the principal to advocate for a “top not teach” - Mrs. Thornton! Weatherbee is all about bringing Mrs Thornton back to work at Riverdale. As he leaves the office, Archie grins maniacally to himself about this.

Part of the uh, doing better also includes Cheryl crashing the rehearsal for the cheerleaders. She singsongs, “Hold on to your pom poms my beloved paper shakers, because I’m ba~~~~ck!” I wish I had her confidence. Evelyn has all the girls lined up in a rigid grid. She tells Cheryl that she isn’t invited to the “private practice of the Vixens” because Cheryl is the “has been daughter of Russian spies.” Cheryl says she’s launching a coup because Weatherbee is “ushering in a new era.”

This is just like Kyle’s dad from South Park screaming Obama~ in the streets of their town causing mayhem after the election because that one change was supposed to fix literally everything all at once.

In any case, Cheryl challenges Evelyn to a dance off. “Winner takes all.” Evelyn refuses, but she doesn’t issue the refusal in a powerful way. She stammers a little, which then allows Cheryl to insist that refusal is not an option.

We get a final (sob) Cheryl Blossom cheerleading dance-off routine, ending in slow motion splits, with lots of little skippety hoppity steps and rather muted whooshing sound effects. I really can’t tell anything about cheerleading technique (repeat viewings of Stick It and Bring It On notwithstanding). At one point Cheryl drops the pompoms altogether to freestyle before retrieving them in a basic crouch. She has great chaine turns and flexibility.

However - What does having solid ballet training and the ability to do a solo dance have to do with cheerleading? When will the cheerleaders ever have to do chaine turns like this or be allowed to kick their ankles up to their ears in conservative 1955? Why is it necessary for the captain of the cheerleading squad to be able to do an impromptu dance? Furthermore, Cheryl’s dance-off proposal is patently unfair. It tests for improv skills that are not necessary in cheerleading, where coordinated movement with other cheerleaders is more important, plus Cheryl had time to pick the music, create the choreography and practice the thing before ambushing Evelyn with this whole set up, whereas Evelyn has presumably been busy actually running the squad and teaching them to stand in straight lines (this is, by the way, no small skill - ballet companies as great as the New York City Ballet consistently suck at getting professional ballet dancers to stand in straight lines to move in unison).

Cheryl inevitably wins but sheer charisma and starpower here, but I am (once again, sigh) full of sympathy for Evelyn here. Evelyn just freaks out, screaming, and then leaves the rehearsal. I have this weird amount of faith that she was a better squad leader, that the caliber (?!?) of cheerleading under Evelyn must have been superior to the self-aggrandizing that my beloved Cheryl Blossom can’t help but engage in.

Case in point - Cheryl grandiosely announces that this is a ‘new era for the Vixens’ but then only talks about herself. She comes out to the group as a lesbian, in order to “live in the light.” Except she issues a dark ultimatum - if anyone has a problem with a very rich lesbian who does great at solo dances leading the cheerleading squad, they can henceforth eject themselves from the squad. Umm team building? I guess??

Another couple outs themselves from within the squad - a white girl and a black girl. So at this point 100% of the black people who ever spoke and are queer can only date white people. That is so strange.

Jughead shows Fieldstone the “rejected for not promoting traditional American values” notice about the latest issue of the comic the two of them put together. Featherstone decides he’s going to publish the issue anyway, “send it out into the world, hope for the best.” He is with Jughead - the reason this issue was rejected was because of the miscegenation in the Comet story.

Fieldstone the editor has a bomb of his own to drop. “There’s not gonna be a next time, kid.” He’s proud of the Comet issue, can’t imagine a better swan song, and will let his business die on a high note. As people always do, in every universe, Fieldstone asks Jughead Jones to write a eulogy (in this case, the last editorial). Fieldstone turns out to have had a heart of gold after all (sort of), enough to give Jughead a heartfelt “It’s been an honor kid” double handed handshake. Jughead looks very moved, and very alert - he’s trying to learn how to let go of something he loved, which is a skill no adult ever really demonstrated how to do. Fieldstone takes an unsentimental look around the place, then says, “Well, it was a beautiful dream while it lasted.”

Speaking of dreams, Betty goes to pick up a special package from the post office. She unwraps it right then and there. It’s the Teenage Mystique, self published! The nice lady at the post office says something generic about how proud her parents must be. Betty doesn’t know how to tell her, No, they aren’t.

Then we catch up with Kevin, who fills me with dread every time I see him this season. Room 309 opens to reveal his dad evidently shirtless (or less, ew) in just a robe. Kevin was being a good son - Audrey (from the Sheriff’s office?) told Kevin his dad wasn’t feeling well, so he brought his father some soup. That’s really sweet.

Unfortunately, this is the exact time with Uncle Fucking Frank decides to come out of the bathroom in just a towel. He tells a ridiculous story about the shower being on the fritz in his room because he is also allegedly staying at the hotel. Why the hell didn’t he just stay in the bathroom if he was going to lie? This is a very Frank Andrews move, isn’t it?

Looking utterly terrified, Sheriff Andrews invites his son into the very red interior of this old man yaoi fucking room. Oh no, is this in the same motel that Twyla prostitutes out of? Christ in heaven SAVE ME.

Kevin looks as horrified as I feel. He can tell these two have been fucking.

At the Cooper’s, Betty shows her mother the self published book. She very much wants Alice to read it, and Alice immediately refuses. Betty begs her to read it - “By getting to know me better, you might get to know yourself better.” Alice refuses to touch the book.

Archie is meanwhile hanging out with Mrs. Thornton, who has been employed lickety split back at the school from which she was fired. She says Geraldine and she have been discussing Archie’s writing, which Mrs. Thornton wants him to continue with. Archie proudly tells her that he is “gonna hit the rails” with the dream of writing a big juicy poem. She wants very much for him to see what the world beyond Riverdale is like.

Veronica approaches Clay to ask him whether he knows The Comet as a story. When he gives a very enthusiastic affirmation, she floats the idea of his writing a screenplay of it for a major motion picture. I really love this about Veronica - when she sells an idea she sells the idea big. I should do this, but I don’t. She’s literally never made a movie but by god it’s gonna be MAJOR, you know? Anyway turns out Clay is one of those prepared people that god smiles down on, because he’s “actually been fiddling with a screenplay version” of this exact story. I am going to take a page out of Clay’s book and say the equivalent of this, because I’ve seen now so many men volunteer for things that are a) way beyond their capacity and b) based on lies along the lines of “I’ve Been Working On That Exact Thing For Years!”

It turns out Veronica actually used Jughead’s contacts and straight up bought the rights. She even has casting in mind (“Sidney Poitier!” they both shout actually). They then immediately decide to work their connection to Josie McCoy to get it rolling. Veronica sets the Cannes premiere 4 or 5 years from now. They embrace, giggling.

Archie comes home to find Reggie sitting disconsolate next to the lilacs. The dates for the basketball camp that Reggie has been so looking forward to will fall right in the middle of a key harvest at his family’s farm. The harvest can’t be skipped - it’s the one month that ensures survival for the rest of the year. “My parents need me,” Reggie says, his voice seizing up with tears. Reggie starts to cry in earnest. So then Archie says something completely amazing: “I’ll take your place on the farm.” He goes on to add that “Whatever else I had planned, it’s not as important as getting you set up for college.” He even gets a little poetic about how farmwork could actually be “exactly what a Beat writer should be doing.”

I’m very moved by this, because 1950s Archie is very kind in a way that the other universe Archie is not. (I mean, I’m a little bit anti-other world Archie because he’s so unpredictably violent. I’ve never forgiven him for smashing up his tv with a baseball bat as his terrified mother screamed in fear. Mary Andrews is useless, I grant you, but this is personal.) Anyway, Archie actually setting aside a personal dream (which is pretty harebrained, honestly) and wanting to commit to provide an actually useful material good for someone else!

Archie mentions the two people who can never been looked at directly on screen in S7 - Archie’s mom and dad - because they made things too complicated about how and why the biracial Reggie who identifies very strongly as a Koraen can exist as an American citizen in 1955. Archie talks about breaking bread with these unseen unseeable parents as though he’s really looking forward to it. Reggie, still getting over crying, tells him it sounds good, and then they embrace.

Archie says he loves Reggie, and Reggie says it right back.

OK so I’m discovering from watching this that I am actually a Jughead/Archie shipper at heart because THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN A STORY WITH JUGHEAD. Why the fuck is Reggie usurping Jughead’s position? I understand that this world has been put together in some ways by Tabitha but in the context of the show, this storyline with the I Love Yous and Archie demonstrating that he is actually the golden hearted person that Jughead has for YEARS wanted him to be - this belongs to Jughead!

Betty wakes up without screaming to find her mom sitting creepily on the edge of her bed in the middle of the night. Alice is upset. She says she’s read the book, “and I’m speechless.” She’s belatedly proud that Betty wrote “a whole book.” Alice is weepy about how she did get to know Betty better and how she got to know all the young girls “so full of thoughts and fears and struggles and dreams” through the book. Alice of course can’t really spend a lot of time thinking about anyone other than herself - so she immediately turns the discovery that girls are not just a problem for her to quash but people in their own right, and sneers at herself about her limited aspirations that were of the limited times she was raised in.

I really resent the ways that this show keeps insisting that I hear Alice’s side of the story. Actually she’s a piece of shit. There is no her-side of the story. Betty is trying really hard anyway, trying to tell her mother both that it’s not too late for her, that she can be happy.

They embrace to stirring music, but I am unstirred.

Instead of worrying about the world ahead for the women who are coming up behind her, or trying to apologize to her daughter or Ethel (I mean really, Ethel is owed), Alice uses this opportunity like all other opportunities to think about how life has not treated HER very fairly, with Betty in full support.

Jughead has hauled the very heavy typewriter all the way to the diner, to type at the booth. This is very funny actually - he lives in a train car, and his favorite place to be outside his home is another converted train car. He’s composing the final letter for the final issue of Zip Comic, put out by Pep Comics. “We here at Pep Comics refuse to kneel to unAmerican censorship.” He’s very haunted by the bonfire of fascism from a few episodes ago. There’s a slowmo insert scene of all the now out of work writers and workers of Pep Comics reading through the final issue together in the office. Fieldstone comes to put a proud and grateful hand on Jughead’s shoulder. Jughead says that even though the final issue is being published without the seal of approval, he still hopes the issue will make it into people’s hands. They show people in the town square publicly reading the final issue. Jughead hopes that the comic will make people think, and help them feel a little less alone. We see Dilton holed up somewhere (is it the bunker? or just his room?) reading by flashlight, looking proud and sad.

Jughead goes to visit the emptied out offices a last time, as he listens to his own final message for the readers of Zip/Pep Comics: “It is easier to tear down than to build up. Try to be a builder, not a destroyer.” Wistfully, he swings the magazine rack, then he wanders into the editor’s office. Fieldstone has left him a little present - a photo of him and Jughead, holding a copy of what must be Jughead’s first issue, looking very grandpa-and-grandson, with the handwritten note that says “Keep Going, Kid.” The message that Jughead explains to his would be readers about W.E.B Debois is that there’s always a possibility of a greater, better future. Jughead is very moved by the gift and the encouragement, looking infinitely sad that it only came at the end of this entire enterprise.

Much like Archie sacrificing something he thought he wanted for pure vanity and personal aspiration to be actually useful in a direct and generous way for someone else breaks him out of a rather bad cycle that his character kept repeating, Jughead being able to see something come to a non-violent end, sort of land the ending, as it were, and then furthermore receive encouragement from a male authority who actually survived his mentorship relationship with Jughead is a huge thing that has happened.

Jughead comes home from the visit to the empty offices to find that Tabitha Tate is sitting in his train car, waiting for him. The music whooshes to let us know that this is the 2023 Tabitha, not the 1955 Tabitha. She’s not wearing her glasses. I also don’t know if 1955 would’ve just barged into someone’s residence like this one has, but in any case, Jughead is immensely pleased to see Tabitha. He gives her a hug, then asks where her glasses are. She’s also managed to haul a TV into his space.

2023 Tabitha lays out the very strange things she has to tell him in a very straightforward way- she’s not the Tabitha traveling with the NAACP. “I’m the Tabitha that you’ve forgotten.” Jughead makes a choked sound if disbelief at this crazy thing she says (which was actually a really good, grounding performance choice. I liked this throat sound a lot.)

Tabitha invites him to sit down in his own armchair. Jughead looks at her askance, but he isn’t sure that this isn’t some sort of joke, so he keeps grinning awkwardly. Then Tabitha switches on the TV, and in full 2017 digital color the show Riverdale starts playing.

Our story’s about a town, Jughead narrator is saying over the drone scan over the town of 2017 Riverdale.

Is this a color television?? Jughead shouts, looking very elated, then he starts to hear what the narrator is saying, “From a distance, it presents itself like so many other small towns.” He recognizes himself, and he does that thing that I think most people do when encountering their recorded sound in an unexpected way: He lowers his own voice, by a lot, to ask “Is that my voice?”

Tabitha is in some sort of rush, because while she’s showing Jughead the first episode of the first season of Riverdale while making a cameo appearance as a pivotal character in the penultimate episode of the final season of Riverdale all she can think to tell him is to “Just absorb.” She says that she will “explain everything” after the absorption.

The Jughead S1 narration is still going on: “The name of our town is Riverdale” and as though in answer, the soundtrack song starts with, “Tell me.” (Oh I see what they did there, lol).

We are watching the TV for a moment from Jughead’s point of view, and he gets sucked into the screen. (Uh, much as I have, for the past several years.)

Cut to later. Jughead looks completely destroyed. His eyes are wet with tears, his shoulders are up around his ears, his hands have no strength. Tabitha pushes a cup of tea at him, prompting him to say something. With his voice shot, Jughead says, “I remember.” Tears fall down his face, and he says, as he looks up at her, “I remember everything.” He is so upset - and honestly, Jughead has a lot to be upset about in the course of Riverdale.

Tabitha either is very impatient and kind of brutal or she has a huge amount of faith in Jughead’s mental resilience because she is relentless in deluging him with very difficult pills to swallow. She has the power to send people back in time, there was the Bailey’s comet, etc. She calls this timeline “dark, and nihilistic, and hopeless” but credits “all of you” with helping making it less so. Meanwhile she was trying to untangle jumbled timelines and shore up the multiverse.

Uh.

OK I need - I need someone to write me a companion book about what the hell she’s talking about. Fic writers, is this in the works? Can I commission one? Fantasy-scifi is not my genre, at all.

Jughead is still crying, but he’s trying to keep up. I kind of wish she’d take a breath and ask him what he’s most upset about, because he’s clearly thinking about whatever it is made him start crying while she’s throwing all this jargon around about the timelines.

He wants to know if he and his cohorts were successful in making this particular timeline less terrible. Very kindly, Tabitha tells him that thanks to their “innate decency” all of the work that they did have “started to reshape this town, this world.” She assures him that things will keep getting better. Still shaky with tears, Jughead gives an appropriately happy response. Then he asks her if she was successful on her crazy sounding mission.

Tabitha says that she gave up trying to untangle the messed up timelines and instead chose to weave each strand (??) into this particular timeline, to make it more stable, “to fortify it.” I think Jughead doesn’t understand what the hell this means any more than I do, but ‘more stable’ and also ‘fortified’ sound like they are good things, so he says, “Great.”

Then, looking very remorseful, Tabitha says that stabilizing this timeline meant that she lost the ability to move anyone back to the original timeline. “I can’t send anyone back to 2023.” Jughead, who had been leaning towards her, rears back, looking betrayed. He wants to know if this means the others “won't remember anything about everything that happened before?”

Are we including the Rivervale storylines into the “everything that happened” part of this?

Tabitha confirms that the other lifetime that Jughead just watched, the one where his life ended in 2023, is closed off to him forever. Jughead continues to look crushed. As a strange sort of consolation, Tabitha instead offers to show all the others what she’s just shown Jughead (uh, Seasons 1-6 of Riverdale the American TV shows) and “they can then decide whether or not they want to remember their other … adventures.” After loading a lot of editorializing meaning into that word, adventures, Tabitha further commentates by adding, “let’s call them.”

There is so much happening. Tabitha the Angel Time-Weaving supernatural person has somehow obtained the ability to watch and to show others the whole of Seasons 1-6 of Riverdale, when she herself was a featured character that grew increasingly important after being introduced in Season 5. And furthermore, Tabitha Tate, the most loving girlfriend Jughead Jones ever had, the one who never hurt him or disappointed him or lied to him, has OPINIONS about all the stuff that people did to themselves and to each other in Seasons 1-4. Jughead is crushed & appalled about being the only one in the 1950s timeline with the dual knowledge of both The Present and The Other Time, but Tabitha already thinks (has thought all along?) that many of the others actually would prefer not to remember.

As he did months ago at the start of this timeline, Jughead gathers a lot of people - a lot more people now actually - to tell them what they have no reason to believe.

This time, because he’s just watched six seasons of Riverdale in one sitting, he is a person of charisma and gravitas who must be taken seriously by everyone who hears what he has to say. Assembled are Cheryl, Toni, Dilton, Fangs, Kevin, Clay, Julian (Julian??? Why is JULIAN here?), Reggie (again, this Reggie doesn’t really have a relationship with this Jughead, but I suppose he came here as Archie’s +1), Archie, Betty and Veronica.

Very somberly, he tells them (some of them a second time in the same school year) about ‘the future’ then adds this additional detail that they now cannot return to their previous lives, but he has a method to help them remember, if they want to keep the memories he’s going to show them.

The reactions are as varied as the disciples reacting to Jesus’ announcement in the Da Vinci painting, only more depressed. Cheryl has legs crossed and is hugging herself defensively. Toni, seated, and Dilton, standing, have their arms crossed. Fangs massaging his forehead. Kevin and Clay, standing and seated with legs the identical width apart have their arms crossed in the You Talk But I Don’t Believe You crossed-arms stance of mental ward orderlies in movies. Julian, as the most competent dancer, is in the most interesting pose - feet, knees, hands, elbows, shoulders are each at a different angle. Standing ramrod straight next to him is Reggie, and this talk is giving him a bit of a migraine. Archie is staring open mouthed at Jughead, while Betty and Veronica look worried.

Jughead continues to speak with his Post Riverdale Bingewatch Charisma, so nobody dares to contradict or even ask questions. He sounds so serious as he says “you know where to find me.”

Betty does a mean-girl gaze-slide towards Archie, except Archie is focusing very hard on Jughead. He seems to be trying to figure out why Jughead is doing this after he more or less threatened him with incarceration in an insane asylum earlier this year and also simultaneously wondering if this whole monologue is some “Howl” type of poem. Anyway, Archie in this world loves two people only, and Betty isn’t one of them so he doesnt care what message she’s trying to convey. Cheryl looks with a ‘What Fresh Hell Is This?’ sort of expression towards Toni, who looks back at her with ‘This is some White BS.’ Veronica, this Jughead’s current girlfriend, appears depressed and looks at no one. Jughead looks keenly towards Veronica to see if she is willing to give him support, but she won’t look back.

So, all alone, as the bearer of a bizarre and unwelcome truth, Jughead leaves the silent room.

Back at his home, Jughead is making what looks to me like a mayonnaise and lettuce sandwich. He wonders if “any of them would take me up on Tabitha’s offer.” And of course, one of them does! It’s Archie, who makes it very clear he didn’t want to be here. “I drew the short straw” he says, before adding that he thinks this insanity that Jughead has been spewing might be good grist for his poetry mill. Oh, so I was wrong. Archie loves *three* people in this world - Fred, Reggie, and Allen Ginsberg.

Jughead takes the whole thing in stride, which may be one of the “dark, nihilistic” things that Tabitha thinks has been fixed through effort - the Jughead of S1-6 would be absolutely crushed to pieces at Archie’s, I Don’t Want To Be Here With You clumsiness. He started to cry when he realized Archie didn’t believe him about the comet and time travel at the start of the season, you know? By the almost end of S7, Jughead no longer makes Archie a priority in any part of his life.

Is this what healing looks like?

I suppose. I mean, it’s one form of healing, but it’s not the one I was hoping for, for Jughead.

At the bunker, where the Riverdale viewing will happen, Jughead thoughtfully leaves out a box of tissues for Archie before he puts the show on for him. “In the future, this is called binge watching” he says, lowkey sardonic, before taking his leave of Archie.

Some time later (I mean it would take at least 13 days if you were watching 9 episodes per day, right? If you increase it to 16 episodes a day it still takes 7.3 day) Jughead and Archie are at the diner, when it’s bright outside, to discuss. Archie looks shell shocked, slumping down in his seat. Jughead looks at him with some warmth. Archie then does what the other Archie also used to do: he talks about himself, first and foremost. He lists all his various roles & jobs first (boxer, prisoner, football player, soldier) before immediately moving on to his perennial other topic of interest, his father. It takes less than a minute for Archie to say “my dad” as the thing he found most meaningful from watching 117 episodes of Riverdale. Jughead’s gaze flattens completely as Archie starts to tear up about his dad, about Fred dying again.

Archie, burdened with grieving double time for two Fred, says he’s not sure what he���s going to tell the others when Jughead, looking at him with very cold eyes, asks him. He doesn’t even care what the others want to know - “I didn’t think I’d ever see my dad again… so I’m glad about that” is all he can say. Archie thinks that Riverdale the show is not to everyone’s taste (“I don’t know if they will want to see what I saw.”.).

Jughead doesn’t disagree, but he wants to help Tabitha do her mission, so he offers to be available to anyone else who wants to see what Archie saw. Archie takes off without a word of farewell.

Later still, on a wholly different day (because he’s wearing a totally different outfit) Jughead is still in that same booth, now reading a comic book. He’s approached by his (ex?) girlfriend Veronica of this timeline and his ex girlfriend of the other timeline, Betty. They are wearing the same shade of purple but in different designs. Veronica looks wary and sad, which makes me think they’ve broken up. They tell him that they’ve heard from Archie (I’m assuming that Archie was too busy weeping about the two Freds to go tell anyone anything, so Bee and Vee went to interrogate him). They want to see what he saw, but together. Jughead takes them to the bunker, where they sit side by side. After putting the show on, he leaves via Veronica’s side of the bunker, but he doesn’t touch her and she doesn’t spare him a glance. Before he leaves for good, he takes a short look first at Veronica then at Betty.

At the line “The name of our town is Riverdale” Betty and Veronica give each other alarmed looks. Is this because they recognize Jughead’s voice by this time and come to realize, Wait, HE is the NARRATOR?

A week or two later, Veronica and Betty have watched all the way to Episode 117, The Night of the Comet, and have come to confront Jughead at the diner. It’s night now. “You could have prepared us a little more for that, Jughead Jones,” Veronica says, dolefully

I mean probably, but also you dumped him a second time and without saying so, Veronica, for one, and for another, how can anyone really prepare someone else for Riverdale? Betty starts crying immediately, thinking about it all. The first thing she says though is “darkness” and immediately I am so bored. I am bored by Betty’s obsession with her personal darkness. All the kids of Riverdale S1-6 had huge problems, so it’s hard to determine who had the roughest, but honestly the one who complains about it the most is Betty, so here we go again.

Betty can barely breathe as she says, “My family!” right after bursting into tears about darkness, while seated next to Veronica Lodge. Whose father was actually a killer and more competent about it than Betty’s father, for one. And also Veronica herself is a killer (of a husband and then that same father) which they just watched. Also Veronica was a conflicted mafioso daughter whose father waged war of various kinds on her boyfriend/obsession Archie Andrews and her childhood male frenemy/ adult colleague type friend Jughead Jones. Betty is so self absorbed and tactless - she’s revealing that she really only watched for her scenes, and took in none of Veronica’s story. She doesn’t say OUR families, OUR fathers - she’s all me me me. Veronica frowns, can’t make eye contact, during all this.

“My father was a killer!!” Betty says, vibrating with grief & outrage which… okay fair, but also? What did I just say? So was Veronica’s! And the entirety of Jughead’s sufferings in S1 came directly from HIS father being a falsely confessed killer! So much of Betty’s externally expressed self-understanding is This Isn’t Supposed to Happen To Me! which is why I remain highly wary of anyone who is a Betty stan. Those people are the scary types of Americans, lemme tell you.

Polly being murdered and coming back to life is the next major thing that Betty of 1950 remembers of the series she just watched, but not that heaven is real, not the bit about Sabrina the Witch and her reanimated Jughead Body boyfriend telling her about the Book of Revelations actually being very relevant to the spiritual realm (Whore of Babylon = Betty etc).

Then Betty looks at Jughead, saying “You and I were together.” Which is the weirdest summary and as tactless as saying “my father was a killer!” to Veronica Lodge. S7 Jughead Jones, because he has zero feelings about Betty Cooper whatsoever, laughs because she’s being a bit ridiculous, quips back, “Yeah, till we weren’t.” And of course, the reason they weren’t is because Betty crushed him at least twice over, but S7 Jughead saw what he saw and doesn’t feel any particular need to advocate for his alternate universe self. Since Betty can’t really come up with something to say about why Bughead is no more that makes her look good, S7 Betty behaves just like the other Betty and abruptly looks away to stop talking.

Veronica jumps in with “I was with Archie,” which I think is an act of aggression of the most passive variety against the whole hideousness of Betty’s self serving and self pitying (to the max!) summary. The immediate next thing she says, “I killed my husband, Chad, AND my father” is more of the same. Like, how to tell the silly self absorbed girl next to you to shut the fuck up without addressing her directly. Veronica properly took in what had happened to her in the other universe, so Jughead looks at her with concern. It also deserves some note that “being with Archie” is said by Veronica with the same level of shellshocked upset as mariticide and patricide.

I guess Veronica and Betty jointly and severally decided that they couldn’t be the only ones clobbered with the trauma-smudged other lives that they led, so the immediate next scene is Jughead doing his bunker presentation, once again (“What you’re about to see is your past, but it’s also your future” delivered in the most doleful tone), this time to Toni, Cheryl, Fangs, Dilton and Reggie.

“Some of it may be disturbing” has to be the understatement of the year.

Then in a cute little wink to the four Asian boys playing two Asian characters switcheroo that has happened with Reggie The Character and Dilton The Character, Jughead specifically tells Reggie 3.0 that “at times, you might not even recognize yourselves.”

Kevin and Julian had no interest in seeing stories of a universe in which Clay and his human corporeal self don’t exist, respectively. I hate Kevin this season so very much (because let me say, tiresomely, again - he’s a misogynist and a manipulator unlike in other seasons) but this is an interestingly loyal choice. It doesn’t make me forgive the shit he pulled on S7 Betty, because I never will, but nevertheless, he earns half a point back from me. And Julian is just practicing good mental health and self preservation. Kudos.

Jughead doesn’t immediately exit the bunker once he turns Riverdale on the tv unlike what he did with Betty in the room (because beating a hasty retreat really was about Betty, right?). He starts to look at everyone as they settle into the story.

A couple weeks after THAT, they all reconvene, now with Angel Tabitha leading the discussion. Everyone looks deeply dissatisfied. “Now you know what your lives were like before the comet.” Because they all look so disgruntled and resentful, Tabitha tries to give them some perspective: “The people you loved, the people you’ve lost…” only to be met with dead silence. Jughead tries to brighten the mood with, “The good. The bad. The bear,” the last one delivered with a knowing glance at Archie. But Archie is still upset, I guess, that Fred Andrews dies in Archie’s teens not one but two alternative universes, so he is in no mood to smile about a pithy quip.

Since they’re getting nowhere with these people, Tabitha swiftly moves on to say an amazing thing: If they’d rather forget their past lives, she can make that happen. She delivers this line with the same level of calm like she’s offering everyone a cup of tea instead of a mind-wipe. Jughead tries to make it so this isn’t terrifyingly ominous by explaining that this is because Tabitha is “an angel” which he seems to conceive of entirely in the Hallmark greeting card/ Sistine Chapel baby angel sort of way. Angel Tabitha finds this adorable because it’s wrong. She’s the type of Catholic Angel sent down to kill the first born of Egypt, you know? The ones that have to tell shepherds and virgins, Do Not Be Afraid when they show up, because when they show up some unhinged shit is about to go down.

The quickest on the uptake is of course, Veronica Lodge. She was the group leader, I suppose, and is now speaking for the group. She announces that as a collective, the main cast of Riverdale opt to NOT remember the vast majority of Riverdale S1-6. The equivalences she lines up are once again very funny: Not Good Times = Serial Killers = Superpowers = Gargoyle King. I mean, Veronica’s superpower was toxicity where she, the person most touch-reliant for stress relief could touch nobody, so for her this is very true.

Angel Tabitha initially disapproves of this request, in a silent, nostril flaring way. Jughead the narrator, the truth teller & observer, immediately interjects, saying “It doesn’t exactly work that way” even though he doesn’t actually know exactly what Tabitha’s powers are or how they function. Tabitha corrects him immediately, that she can do a special (angelic?) kind of brain damage that leaves people with selective memories. She can in fact reshare “only the good memories” because she is merciful and thinks they “deserve at least that much.”

They do?

What follows is really the most unhinged thing ever, because we get the supercut of the “only the good” moments of Riverdale. Apparently. Allegedly. Which are:

-The core four laughing in a diner booth in S1.

-Archie bursting through the banner for the Bulldogs at the football game grinning (with the big where Cheryl hallucinates Jason and runs off crying deleted)

-Veronica zipping Betty into her cheerleader outfit.

-Kevin leading the kids in a sing along during Heathers

-Fred and FP reminiscing about the old days at the diner booth as their boys smile at them and each other (seconds before it got tense about who was going to pay)

-Veronica and Toni hugging and singing at the speakeasy

-Cheryl in a red unitard doing the Stupid Love number (which weirdly cut to Tabitha who was never there looking nostalgic about it)

-Cheryl running into Toni’s arms as she got rescued from the Sisters of Quiet Mercy conversion prison (but then without the ‘bad’ memory of being committed to that institution this upset-looking embrace would make very little sense) (cut to Choni looking very moved about themselves)

-Shirtless Reggie tossing a football at shirtless Archie (the day before Archie is supposed to go to prison) (cut to Julian, who for some reason is present to watch the ‘good moments’ reel making a meaningful face)

-The teenage boy objectification carwash where Veronica is bouncing around (but they failed to raise enough funds at that one) (Archie reaction shot goes here)

-Betty and Alice Cooper at graduation, holding hands and putting their heads together as Jughead forlornly watches his father drive off with his sister to join their mother, abandoning him once again (da fuck? whose happy memory is THIS?)

-The core four in the Jalopy (Archie shirtless and Veronica in a headscarf etc) (again, this Archie’s friends desperately giving him a ‘one nice day’ because he’s on trial for murder)

-The core four at the quarry, jumping into the water (same)

-The reformed Josie & the Pussycats performing, to everyone’s general glee . In that episode when Josie, the only one who achieved her teenage dreams AND became objectively successful came back to tell everyone how much they sucked. This cut is inclusive of the kiss that Archie plants on Kevin’s cheek. (Reaction cut to Clay making the smarmiest face at 50s Kevin, who absolutely refuses to react, sitting there completely stony faced).

-Kevin in full Hedwig regalia planting one on Archie’s lips is shown immediately after, which is weird because Hedwig comes way before the Josie & Pussycats episode. I think that’s because the song that’s playing has the lyrics “Deep in the dark/ Your kiss will thrill me” right this second and whoever edited it (Tabitha? God? Sabrina??) thought they would suit action to the word. (Reaction cut to Archie laughing about it while looking at Betty, who looks only patiently indulgent, while Jughead leans over, smiling, trying to catch Archie’s eye, but fails)

-Kevin-Hedwig again, this time in a 2 header shot with Fangs, singing (This shot DOES get a reaction out of Kevin, who looks not at Clay but at Fangs, but Fangs doesn’t look back)

-All of them tossing their graduation caps in the air (reaction shot to s7 Dilton giving that shot a soft smile, even though his other universe self had died by mutilation well before this point)

-Reggie kissing Veronica at her Speakeasy in silhouette (Reggie looks very pouty about this)

-Veronica kissing Archie in the closet at the spin the bottle party that Cheryl set up (which gets a smile reaction shot from Veronica while Jughead for some reason also looks entranced)

-Betty in her beautiful prom outfit coming down the stairs to Jughead with his corsage looking completely in love (which gets a Betty-and-Archie thoughtful looks reaction)

-Betty cheating on Jughead by kissing Archie because she doesn’t love Jughead anymore in Hedwig (this immediately follows the prom outfit reveal scene and I feel insane) (Reaction cut is Betty and Archie unreservedly pleased with this bit, but also Tabitha looking fond which - I mean that is so crazy making - Tabitha is pleased about the Barchie Cheating Kiss of Hedwig because this set Jughead on the path to his relationship with her, I suppose??) (The lyrics that are playing just as we cut to Tabith are “I fall in love again/As I did then.”

-Tabitha and Jughead kiss at the Diner when she’s his boss and his life is a complete shambles

This last ‘good moments’ bit makes Jughead look over at Tabitha, who is standing in the liminal space between the theater and the hallway, and pursues her as she starts to walk out. He follows her all the way outside, calling for her to ask, “Is this the part where you ghost me??”

She says she doesn’t need to stay to see how “the movie ends” since both of them know how it ends.

Jughead asks her to “stay.” She can’t because there would then be two Tabithas. Apparently other Tabitha can never enter Riverdale while Angel Tabitha is here. Tabitha wrote her other self a really exhausting life story - law school, biz school, civil rights advocate - and one that resolutely DOES NOT have Jughead Jones in it. Even though he’d been watching a whole reel of him kissing Tabitha with his arm around Veronica, Jughead insists that 50s Tabitha and himself never getting together means that Angel Tabitha should stay. (Logic does not compute).

He wants to know if the whole of Jabitha was real - where they had a life together, cohabited (set fire to newspaper publishers etc) and so on. Tabitha passionately insists that “it was all real. It all happened.”

Tabitha sits the two of them down to ask Jughead if he remembers their “epic date” at the end of the world, where they had two kids and grew them up and then yeeted them out of existence to be old together. Actually she doesn’t say that - she says “watched Titanic, ate at Pop’s” and it’s Jughead that says “we had a family.” She says that the time bubble where Jughead had a stable, happy, heteronormative married life with a kind, lovely wife and 2 kids “still exists.” Unfortunately, there is one path forward now from here. Here being 1950s Riverdale alternate universe where the youth of Riverdale collectively decided to give themselves selective amnesia. “And that is a good thing, Jughead, trust me!” Tabitha practically shouts.

See, they do this on tv - put words in the mouth of an unassailable character, to say to a beloved character - when they pull one over the audience. We generally trust Tabitha, and she’s staking her name and honor on this point, so we have to go with her on this one. The thing is, Jughead starts crying immediately - he looks crushed.

After a long moment of silent staring with very very sad eyes, Jughead quips that it’s very sad to him that Tabitha had to die to make all this happen. He’s made the logical leap that Tabitha can’t stay because she isn’t just Angel Tabitha she’s Dead Tabitha.

Tabitha retorts that she didn’t die. She says the comet was taken care of, that it won’t happen now because … reasons. Jughead makes an impatient “Augh!” sound, summing it up with “Classic time paradox” which earns him a ‘Oh, you’ type of headshake from Tabitha. They look sadly at each other until Jughead asks to kiss her goodbye. She agrees. The movie theater marquee says “Angels in the Outfield” is coming soon, which… wasn’t that made in the 80s? Anyway, Tabitha flirtily agrees (“Jughead Jones, You read my mind”). Jughead and Tabitha kiss in glamorous slow motion in front of the brightly lit marquee of the movie theater before Tabitha freezes time again and steps away from Jughead.

Jughead is all alone once again, standing there kissing air. Narrator Jughead intones that she’d given them “the greatest gift of all - our memories, edited for maximum joy. The good ones.”

The thing is, Jughead chose to remember all of it, because of course he would. That’s why I love him. He thinks it his duty as “the unofficial chronicler of their town.”

He goes back to the theater, to watch the deceptive super-reels. There’s Kevin? I think? in a tuxedo and bowtie which I assume has to be from prom (in which they all were forced to watch a traumatizing video that Jellybean made to attack her brother and Betty Cooper with). Jughead says that Betty was another person who opted to remember the dark times rather than just get brainwashed by the supercuts reel. “Betty understood that we are made up of moments of both joy and pain.”

I am taking this to mean that 50s Betty was cured of her very alarming stupidity by watching the smart S1-6 Betty do her thing (Because as deranged as that Betty could be, she was never as abjectly stupid as S7 Betty). 50s Betty is shown standing in front of her mirror in what looks like a blood flecked nightgown (that embroidery is horrible), recalling how her other self used to self-harm by digging her nails into her palms. She cries out of pity for herself, apparently, which doesn’t make me like her any better. There’s a lot to cry about in Riverdale, but I don’t know that THIS is the thing to focus on.

We cut to the diner where Jughead is being served coffee by Pops. Jughead is typing away in his booth. He says this is a “cosmic reshuffling.”

“But the stage was set for the final chapter of our epic saga about the Town With Pep, one that could only be called: Goodbye, Riverdale.” The song that plays as he says “Goodbye, Riverdale” is the opening song to the first episode, the one that goes “Tell me/ That I’m your baby/ And you’ll never leave me.” Jughead looks very sad as he looks down at the words, Goodbye Riverdale.

Who is saying this?? Which Jughead? Does 1950s Jughead have his narrator powers back now that Tabitha has gone? And WHERE has Tabitha gone? I mean up until now it’s really been Tabitha that was the Invisible Hand, right? He’s just been told by Angel Tabitha that there is only one path forward, so why is he calling this the FINAL CHAPTER? How does he know that it’s the final episode of the TV series he’s in? Was this the gift of Tabitha’s final kiss?!?

[robson-gurl]

isolated in my room so ETHEL PRINT!!!

i’m currently in hospital which is a whole nother story buuut i’m sick with a cold so they’ve isolated me in my room for the entire day and i was BORED out of my BRAINS!

soooo i made this ethel cain doodle to pass the time! i really like how it turned out and if you guys would be interested i could put it up on my redbubble to purchase prints or on a tshirt/hoodie/mug/phone case/coaster/etc

anyway let me know ur thoughts my fellow preachers xx

[mariiglo0m]

𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖊:

My name is Marii, I'm 17, I'm an art student, I love reading, creepy things, beetles, watching movies and my cats, Moon and Ruby (Gloom).

My pronouns are she/they.

𝐈 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 …

🕯️music: My chemical romance, Deftones, Lana Del Rey, The Cure, Slowdive, Radiohead, Evanescence, Paramore, Fiona Apple, Björk, Strange Boutique, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Jack off Jill, Kittie, Pierce the veil, Paramore, Type O Negative, Ethel Cain ...

🦷 movies: Coraline, Alice in Wonderland (2010), Fantastic Mr.Fox, Marie Antoinette, Donnie Darko, The crow, Corpse Bride, Ginger Snaps... (i have WAY too many favorite movies)

🧷 other stuff: Alice Madness Returns, cats and borzoi dogs, Gerard Way, crows, swords, collecting various weird and odd trinkets, Garfield, Snoopy and Gromit, cute mugs, Joan of Arc, fantasy and a heck ton lot of other stuff...

[tortoisebore]

i love ur little rambles so what do u think the losers coffee orders and music taste is (in hey sharpshooter or otherwise) 🤲

ooooo oooo ooo yes yes yes

((TORTOISE LORE on the days i have to work onsite at my job i almost exclusively set up shop at the coffee place across from the office & listen to my little music & drink my little beverages all day so this particular set of questions resonates with me so bad))

for consistency's sake coffee-wise let's say we're talking starbucks. i think most days sirius would go for something high in caffeine but with a little sweetness to it. a venti iced shaken espresso with oat milk and three pumps of classic sweetener, perhaps. maybe switch that classic out for chestnut praline at the holidays bc he's feeling festive. other days i think he'd want an absolute sugar bomb as a reward for getting through a rough week or bc he was really mature today and refrained from screeching at people in the street when they didn't walk fast enough & blocked the sidewalk when he was in a hurry. on those days he requires a big ole mocha cookie crumble frap or an iced cinnamon dolce latte with an extra shot for fun.

on his walk home he's listening to one of three playlists depending on the day. the first one is a fourteen hour pop girlie playlist that starts with style by taylor swift and ends with kiss me more by doja cat, with some ariana, gaga, spice girls, charli, no doubt, & even some abba thrown in the middle for spice. the second playlist is for mocha cookie crumble days and starts with your best american girl by mitski and features lots of phoebe, lots of taylor, lots of lana, some ethel cain for sure, some select fleetwood mac, maybe some stuff from the 1975's a brief inquiry album. it's all stuff he can dig into & be angsty with & have strong feelings to.

the third is a more generic thought-dump kind of playlist where he just throws in songs he likes. buttercup by hippo campus. the view from the afternoon by arctic monkeys. concussion by girlhouse. ilysb by lany. like....,.,moonage daydream. 6 inch. pink pony club. bring it on home. just a mix of vibes and genres & things he gets stuck in his head.

contrary to popular belief i do think remus is a coffee girlie and would pick a mug of good dark roast drip over tea any day. i think he's simple for the most part & would go after a good tall americano on days he needs the kickstart but a grande drip with light cream would be his everyday go-to. during the summers he switches to a cold brew or plain iced coffee with cold foam if he's feeling fancy. he likes to pretend he doesn't like the frilly expensive drinks but every time he & sirius get coffee together, sirius orders him a grande mocha with two extra pumps of mocha and whipped cream on top & he downs it in about eight seconds.

remus is a hozier stan confirmed. remus is a boygenius stan confirmed. he likes poetic lyrics more than anything so sirius puts him on mitski and taylor. i like the idea that his music taste was a little outdated most of his life bc his parents had a huge record collection that they inherited from his grandparents so he just....played music all the time as a lonely little kid looking for things to do. when he was nine the only album he listened to all christmas break was otis redding's the dock of the bay & that made him gravitate toward stuff like leon bridges & amy winehouse as he got older. he learned about spotify four years after everyone else did & still only has two playlists. his parents loved the 90s rock girlies and they listened to a lot of the cranberries and fiona apple CDs around the house, so all those albums are really nostalgic for him now. he puts sirius on jeff buckley & regrets it instantly bc literally all he does now is play remus' grace vinyl full-volume and remus is afraid they're going to get a noise complaint. you can hear it in the stairwell sirius the neighbors are going to get mad please

[pullhisteeth]

omg the eddie + crush by ethel cain post. you’re creating a monster (me)

you get me!!! <3 (using this as an excuse to expand on this whole moment so 18+)

our gorgeous mysterious sexy Eddie smells like marlboro reds obviously. and of course his mates move dope! and yeah he probably has never tried coke (it makes him too much money for him to pass on selling all of it) but he also has a problem saying no (this man dove headfirst into the upside down, we know this) so maybe he would try it at a party in the rich part of Hawkins or something. some trust-fund kid, a friend of Steve's from his days as king, shoves a bag in his face and insists he have it, and who's Eddie to decline a free bump? and we all know his dad's a bad guy, so maybe he is on death row but Eddie wouldn't be shy about it. he won't become his dad but he knows who his dad is and he isn't going to hide from it. AND he loves an all black moment!

he's nothing if not intimidating but that's why u love him, can't get enough of him, drawn to him the moment you lay eyes on him <3 and he spots you too from across the bar, can't look away, keeps catching your wandering eye. that night you smoke with him, shotgunning til your eyes water, sharing smoke like it's oxygen. you get to try the cuffs that he clips to his jeans, learning the imprints they make on your wrists when you're straining in them, desperate to claw his back as he pants above you or the crown of his head when he's between your thighs.

(you also get to see the garfield mug on the side in his kitchen and you learn that maybe all of this is partly a façade. and you laugh when he calls you pretty all earnest and caves for you, because how is this man, who is perpetually hidden by a cloud of cigarette smoke, and who covers himself in black and sells drugs to make a living, going all soft on you the moment your top comes off? but it's addictive, all the stuff hidden underneath, the way he loves on you and spoils you, makes you come faster than anyone or anything. you have this beautiful boy all to yourself, in all his scary glory, and it drives you wild.)

my girl Ethel gets it! <3

[jalvarez4131]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Vandor I Love Lucy Pink Coffee/Tea Mug True Friends Lucy & Ethel Collectible.