#feeling reflective over the past year. i feel like i wasnt actually here for any of it. i feel like ive forgotten most of it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shoezuki · 4 years ago

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Tommy's prison/revival arc isnt well written actually

Anyways ive been wanting to talk on it a while for a bit here but havent had the Time or like. The thought to. But im gonna go off now.

First off im gonna say im ASSUMING this stream and plot of tommy being in the prison with dream is written entirely by tommy and dream. Wilbur May be involved in the latest stream but im not sure.

Bringing tommy back to life after only three days of him being dead did practically nothing to progress plot, the characters, or audience's understanding. In fact i feel that it damaged Other characters' potential and plot and already established plotlines.

The 'development' aspect

A really, really easy way to see if anything has changed or developed through an arc or plotline is to straightup just compare the 'beginning' to the 'end' in terms of the barebones situation. So;

Beginning: tommy is trapped in an isolated prison cell with dream, his own abuser who has hurt him in the past, for an unknown amount of time. He's terrified of dream and being stuck there with him.

End: tommy is trapped in an isolated prison cell with dream after being killed then revived by him, his own abuser whos hurt him in the past, for an unknown amount of time. Hes terrified of dream and being stuck there with him.

Okay. This is simplified obvious. But the point stands. ALTHOUGH the troupe of 'going back to the beginning' is common in the heroes journey its. It doesnt work here. Has tommy learned anything? Has he changed as a character? Is the severity of their situation any different? Have we, as the audience, learned anything new?

Im going to expand on that last point because i think it has the strongest potential argument. Technically for progression in literature and development of plot/characters, things can Change without them being Aware as characters. It can change just by the audience's perception changing or being challenge.

Slight example: i've been reading a webcomic called Your Throne. Its a fantasy/political drama about a noble lady who entered a competition with another noble lady to become the empress. The main lady lost despite her being a better fit, and the comic starts with the main lady trying to assassinate the empress. Its assumed and stated by the main lady that she 'ruined her life' and so thats all the readers know. However, later in the novel we see flashbacks to the competition itself and find that the two ladies were extremely close friends, neither wanting anything bad for the other, but it was the emperor himself who manipulated both of them for his own agenda. Those flashbacks gave us an entirely different idea of who the real antagonist is and completely changed the two main ladies' relationship. THAT is how the audience's understanding of the plot and novel can be used to change the entire story. We dont get such here though

Some things that were brought to light during tommy being dead/revived:

Dream is capable of reviving people infinitely

This was already implicated and assumed. The book dream has being a means of reviving people has been around Technically since schlatt's death. This just 'confirmed' what was known

Time works differently/feels longer in the afterlife

This doesnt really impact much beyond emotions and implications. If we had more insight into what the 'afterlife' is like beyond nothingness perhaps so. But really it just makes it so wilbur being dead for what feels like 9 years and tommy having been dead for 2 months appeal to emotions.

Wilbur is evil

This one fuckin sucks i cant lie HSKSHSISSGEGDV. Like i was gon go on bout it and i will but it jus sucks. We have nothing to go on besides tommy's word, no examlles of what Horrible things wilbur said could make tommy assume this, etcetc. Ill most likely make a seperate post on how this feels like we're just going to get 'wilbur is a horrible villain' type with him. But still. I feel wilbur Not Being Good isnt a new development.

Dream is going to revive wilbur

This doesnt feel new either, part because phil had wanted to revive wilbur before (ill get to that more later) and that tommy had kept dream alive/initially imprisoned him with the idea of him reviving wilbur.

Dream believes wilbur will break him out of prison

Okau this makes no sense to me actually. I cwnt understand How exactly wilbur would be able to do this? Or why dream believes he even Could? Mans been dead for like 9 years and all we Know of the afterlife is that its black... nothingness. How would 9 years of that make wilbur capable of busting the prison open?

So. Yeah. All in all this plotline hasnt done anything new, developed things, or altered people's perceptions. We just ended up back at square one. Back to tommy being traumatized, dream being 'evil' and horrible and doing villain monologues, and them being stuck together.

Other characters and plotlines

Im pretty damn sure tommy's revival fucked up a LOT of other characters' plotlines and potential development. Honestly i feel this has a lot to do with the writers not communicating with other ccs well enough. But Ill talk about specific characters from least to most fucked over in my opinion:

Sam

He's the best off. He hqd been there during tommy's death, had been close to tommy, had majorly blamed himself and his own mistakes for tommy's death. His grief and self hatred was actually really heartbreaking and well done. The attached character of Sam Nook being unaware of tommy's death and simply waiting for tommy to return was a really good parallel to sam's own grief and anger. like it really snapped sam the guy who cares for tommy and wants to do Right by him back together with him as the Warden of the prison. Mixed personal life with 'just business'.

I feel it wouldve been nice to have him like. Have more time to grieve properly and come to terms eith tommy's death and his own involvement/influence over the events. Him finding tommy alive again Could be a means of him like. Facing his own grief head on if done well.

Ranboo

Mostly in the context of him and sam's argument do i feel it got screwed over. The weight of them yelling at each other and trying to find who to blame and the implications that Maybe ranboo was the one who caused the security breach that closed down the prison on tommy just.... doesnt hit so hard anymore. Because how can there be blame and arguments and a 'who done it' mystery when tommy popped up all fine again?

Puffy

I dony know much of her involvement or how she found out tommy died (besides metagaming shhhhh) but i saw her monologuing of how they 'failed' tommy and like. Her whole 'he was so young we the Adults failed him' spiel is like........... inconsequential? Now??? Like no dont worry he died but hes alright now.

Philza

BET YOU DIDNY EXPECT TO SEE THIS FUCKER!!!!!! But actually though i want to talk bout how this ties into phil. A LOT. for Zalbr ❤. But also because i see ppl tying phil to tommy's death n like nah shutup u doin it wrong. Ill go off more in a Wilbur Post. But essentially: i dont like that dream is now going to revive wilbur. I feel they arent going to tie philza into this Despite phil having originally been trying to revive his son and studying on it and Attempting and Failing. But now suddenly dream can just. Say some magic words and Poof wilbur lives? So we're just going to Kill philza's revival attempts plotline and leave that hanging? This made his efforts seem pointless and Wack like oh why didnt you just Say The Magic Words phil????

Niki

I feel really bad for niki. She hasnt been able to do a lore stream during tommy's 'death' (she tweeted she wanted to but her computer wasnt working) and considering her entire character.... that shit is important. We seen it with Jack Manifold how tommy's death impacted Him considering he literally wanted tommy dead. And since niki is in a similar boat to jack of trying to kill tommy and it being her Only goal...... thats extremely important.

BUT. i feel there wasnt any communication. Did she or anyone even know tommy would be revived? Did no one consider they could At Least let her do a single stream on it? Like jack manifold????

We couldve gotten a Really good niki lore stream. I genuinely was so excited for it and i dont regularly watch her. But we seen it with jack manifold which is why i dont feel he got screwed because mans genuinely did So Good he could pop off with anything n i think it works in His favour. But now........ for niki. Canonically she never even knew tommy was Dead. So its like nothing even happened for her. Is she just supposed to continue on trying to kill tommy with no progression?

What i think would work

This is more me being like 'hey @ the dsmp writers let me in' type speculation sbosegussgs. But i was thinkin on a Really easy way to 'fix' this without rewriting lore and the streams.

Dream should kill tommy again now that he's been revived and Leave Him Dead.

More development for the characters who are affected by his death Especially niki. More time for grief and self reflection and development

A chance for the audience to figure out what the 'afterlife' really is.

Dream is supposed to be smart and a master manipulator or something right? Why doesnt he use being able to revive tommy as a bargaining chip with sam for his own freedom?

The audience would now Know dream's intentions with tommy better, that this death isnt 'final', but we could still see other characters' grief and reactions and coping without it feeling cheap. Ive seen some 'but people dont know tommy is alive so hes still dead in their mind' but that sucks imo.

We'd know more on dream's ability to revive people and that he can just Do It on a whim (which i think sucks but hey im trying) but no one else would know this canonically

Okay. Im done. If you read this. Thankyou. I love you. Hmu.

#mcyt #dream smp #dream smp critical #tommyinnit #dream #im puttin this in main tags took me too fuckin long to write for me Not to #death mention #ask to tag

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aegialia · 3 years ago

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self-indulgent reflection on being on tumblr

so i recently hit 1000 followers on here and this blog has existed for almost exactly 8 years, so i wanted to ramble about tumblr and my experience of it for awhile. under the cut so definitely feel free to ignore this.

i started this blog right around when i was fourteen and had just started high school. at that point, i was out to my parents (and no one else) as bi, i had an inkling i was Struggling with something but i had no idea what and felt like i couldnt actually acknowledge it, and i had left leaning but very vague politics. tumblr definitely has shaped my journey around sexuality/gender/mental health/politics, both for good and for ill.

for good:

seeing other ppl talk about being lesbians helped me realize i could be a lesbian w/o being a traitor to the concept of bisexuality. hearing trans ppl talk about their experiences and explaining non-binary stuff and dysphoria helped me understand what i was going through

i don’t like talking about my mental health stuff in detail on here, but suffice to say, i was Going Through it in high school. i’m still going through it now, but i am in a much better place (thank you medication and 7 years of therapy!). seeing ppl talk about the weird, dumb, awful parts of mental illness let me acknowledge that i was going through those things too, that i wasnt like evil for feeling like that, that i could change. people talking about adhd/autism was particularly helpful---being able to identify why i’d always felt like my brain just didn’t work right is the first step in the (ongoing) process of not hating myself for the way my brain works

politics is definitely the area where i think tumblr was the best for me. i got exposed to so many opinions i definitely wasn’t hearing in school, from intelligent, well-read people who could articulate theory in ways i could understand. tumblr didn’t give me my politics and i didn’t learn everything i know about theory from it, but the communities of people i was around pointed me in the right directions. tumblr was also a good place to learn how to react to criticism. this doesn’t seem to be most people’s experience, but getting called out over minor things on tumblr genuinely helped me learn how to take a step back, look at my behavior, apologize, and try to change, which, as it turns out, is a helpful skill irl as well

for ill:

wrt sexuality and gender, it’s probably pretty obvious someone who’s journey is ‘cis bi girl -> cis with a million different microlabels -> nb w a million different microlabels for both sexuality and gender -> nb butch lesbian who’s not super into romance’ would have some bad times on tumblr. the bi circles i was in made being a lesbian seem like an immoral choice, the ‘’’mogai’’’ (or whatever u wanna call them) circles made me feel like i had to divy up and perfectly label every aspect of myself in a way that really wasn’t helpful for me, the lesbian circles i was in made me feel like being a lesbian was about ending up in a monogamous butch/femme cottagecore relationship and that there was something wrong with me for not really wanting that. to be clear i think microlabels can be very helpful for people/a monogamous butch/femme relationship is a perfectly fine thing to want, they just didn’t work for me. im very very glad ive reached a point in my life where i dont feel the need to stay up to date on the latest discourse and am more focused on finding a way to exist that is comfortable for me and supporting my community irl. 10/10 would recommend to everyone

not going to get deep into it, but social media is. not good for my brain in general. i still enjoy using tumblr, but these days im pretty careful to step back from it frequently and treat it as an occasional hobby.

the cons of political stuff on tumblr are probably also very obvious. there are some just awful discussions on here and the culture surrounding the way we handle bad behavior and justice and accountability and working to become a better person and make up for the harm you’ve caused has historically been fucking awful and trying to unlearn it and find new ways to engage with this stuff is exhausting.

for all that i’ve changed over the course of having this blog, this blog has stayed pretty fucking static. i started out being super into diana wynne jones and the iliad and those are still two of my biggest interests and things i talk about the most on here. there are definitely specific things that have petered away (i started this blog almost entirely to keep up with good omens fan stuff and i pretty much haven’t touched it since the miniseries came out, i haven’t sought out pacific rim/supernatural/elementary/mcu content in years), but im still pretty much interested in the same things. i like relatively small fandoms, i like weird side characters, i like to be a grumpy child playing with my toys in the corner. when a fandom im in gets popular, i tend to stop engaging with it entirely (hello rqg/tma/good omens/enola holmes!). i dont think its a pretentious ‘i liked it before it was cool’ thing so much as a ‘people get Weird and awful when a fandom hits a certain level of popularity and there’s too much content and i really, really hate the bad faith arguments larger fandoms tend to spawn’ thing. i’ll consume content from big fandoms, but i pretty much refuse to actually engage with them at this point.

one of the stranger parts of my experience of tumblr is the social side. i’ve never really known how people make friends online---how do you go from liking each other’s posts and occasionally replying to them to actually being friends who communicate off social media? i’ve had conversations with ppl on tumblr and i’ve had sort-of friendships that are contained to tumblr where i’d like to get to know them better, but i’ve never figured out how to do that. my best friend’s job is pretty much to make friends/connections on the internet (she’s an activist and artist), my dad knows people everywhere in the world from twitter, and i’m just sitting here like a little old grandpa who doesn’t understand how you can have internet friends.

at this point in my life, i’m fine with this, but this has made me feel real fucking bad in the past---like, if everyone online, even the ppl who say they’re weird and brainbad in a similar way to me, can make friends on the internet, what’s wrong with me? particularly in high school and my first year of college, when i was just horribly lonely all the time, it made me feel super disconnected and like there was something fundamentally bad about me. these days, i’m a lot chiller about it. i use social media to engage with stuff i enjoy and share my thoughts about it. it’s okay that my social difficulties extend to me not knowing how to use the internet to socialize.

on a somewhat related topic, it’s wild that i have 1000 followers. obviously, that’s not an actually super large number and a huge number of them are probably bots or inactive. if you post consistently for eight years and follow lots of people, like i do, it’s not a surprise to end up with this many followers. it is also, thankfully, the sort of followers that are not fans. probably most ppl following this blog dont remember why they followed and dont know anything about me or my interests. this sounds like its meant to be depressing but it’s not. i like that my way of engaging w the internet lets me do pretty much whatever i want and no one will care. the mere concept of being. like. tumblr famous in any capacity, even just in one community/fandom, is viscerally horrifying to me.

i really enjoy the space i’ve created for myself on here. on one hand, going back through my blog is obviously embarrassing and full of hating my past self. on the other hand, i now have a very nice collection of things i enjoy in this blog. i like seeing what i’ve been interested in and (when i’m in a good mental health place) i like to be able to remember how i thought and talked about the things i loved when i was younger. im not at the place in my life where i can love a younger version of myself, but sometimes i can laugh at zir with a level of fondness.

i’ve always been paranoid about sharing details about my life on here (and the fact that my parents have always been able to see it certainly contributed), so the version of jack on here is a carefully curated version, who’s super enthusiastic about the things they love, was very conscientious about apologizing and trying to do better when ze messed up, and tried to be polite to others. that’s a younger version of myself that i’m closer to being able to have compassion for than the version i find in essays and poems and memories.

i’m starting grad school in ten days and i’m still using the blog i started when i began high school. tumblr has helped me in a lot of ways and hurt me in a lot of ways, but i still have to admit that it’s been a significant factor in shaping me. i’d be incredibly embarrassed to admit that irl, but it’s true. other than my family and like one friend, this blog is one of the only things that’s ‘known’ me since i started high school. i’ve changed so much in that time and im glad to have this weird little record of myself throughout those changes, even if i’d probably warn my younger self away from tumblr if i could go back in time.

tl;dr i have had a mixed experience on tumblr and i have mixed feelings about that experience. no idea if anyone read any of this very long, very rambling internet memoir

p.s. fun facts about this blog:

i’ve never changed my icon or blog title

i recently got a second version of the poster i got my blog title from. i chose my blog title by looking at what was hanging on the wall directly in front of me.

my original url was gloomthkin. this was not, as you’d probably assume, an otherkin thing. i had literally no idea what otherkin was at that point. i’d just learned the word gloomth from a bill bryson book and thought it would be cool n edgy to be the child of the quality of gloom. i changed my url after i learned what otherkin was and realized everyone probably assumed something about me that wasn’t true which i hated (not bc i had an issue w otherkin, just bc i don’t like ppl thinking untrue things about me)

during my good omens days, i once sent a tumblr ask to nail guyman which, in retrospect, was kinda rude. i stand by the content but id never send an ask like that now. he replied to it privately in a way that so deeply embarrassed and shamed 15 year old me that i’ve never gotten over it. i still get nervous and embarrassed when i see anything about him or his books

#gloomth and circumstance #this is definitely not required reading!#i just felt like rambling for a very long time about my feelings and my blog #w bonus blog trivia at the bottom that amuses me and probably no one else

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seijch · 4 years ago

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ANNOUNCEMENT: NOT A HELLO, BUT NOT A GOODBYE EITHER

omg hi ... im like . ashamed to come back after saying brief hiatus in october and then disappearing off the face of the earth til FEBRUARY but under the cut i will be explaining myself and the following, if youre interested (and a tl;dr at the very bottom if you don’t wanna scroll thru this obnoxiously long post):

the reason(s) i was gone for so long

what i was doing during that time (its just a personal account yall can scroll past this idrc)

the status of those um . halloween requests

the future of this account

i. so . Hiatus .

i know. i know . i probably mentioned it when i made the announcement post, but my mental health likes to go on one of those rides. yknow the ones where you go like up rlly fast then down maybe and then up then DOWN .... its like that. i needed a break and every time i wanted to come back or thought about it, something would happen and i would get stuck in my own head.

a big reason for getting stuck in my head was (and i hate to admit this ... i hate to admit that i have Insecurities On The Internet) my feelings of inadequacy regarding my writing. i love to plot fics, i love concepts and characters and making little headcanons but i dont ... know if i love writing rn. and i thought for the longest time that like . whatever ill just push thru it its fine ill be fine but it kinda wasnt lmao you can kinda see it in my halloween reqs and what become of them when i get to that but i began to feel like nothing i had put out or would put out would hold up prose wise (and normally i dont feel like this im much more “idc its my life im living it” but thats not a rant for tumblr LMAO). i still feel like that -- like im better as a reader than a writer. but . You Know :-)

tl;dr: mental state go brrrrr

ii. anywhere here’s wonderwall

when i left, i was in a steadily decreasing mental and emotional state, made worse by a situation at work that really was a case of petty jealousy on my end and rlly isnt very consequential now despite how much pain and resentment it gave me when it Was a problem so i wont get into it. the tl;dr of november and december was me using work as an crutch and distraction -- i know my job, i do it well, it helped me not think about my responsibilities and obligations and inadequacies. of course, as the holiday season grew busier n busier i was scheduled so often that i moved 88 or so miles (according to my apple watch, which i ONLY wear at work since im never anywhere else outside my house) and fell into a cycle of showering n sleeping at my house before going back the next day. (theres definitely something to be said abt capitalism and “grind culture” here but once again its not the time or place snsjkdfds)

at the turn of the new year, i happened to remember a birthday card i hadnt filed away for safekeeping from a friend of mine that id been horribly out of touch with til that point. i started crying because i realized how out of touch id been in general up until that point. the month of january was great for me: i was focused, happy, and in a much better place than i had been before. the end of it brought me down focus wise and im hoping that enough time away from my distractions will refocus me bc i ... need it LMAO and though ive burned out from that level of productivity and gotten distracted again im ... trying to stay positive which i think is the most i can do 😁👍🏼

media wise, i got real into stardew valley (but burned out bc i played it extensively as a way to wind down after work), the pokemon platinum romhack renegade platinum (still havent finished it bc of school n i played it w the intent to see if i could nuzlocke it ... bitch its so hard but its so fun bc of it), briefly assassins creed: odyssey (im one of those ppl who completes an entire region before i move to the next so you can tell i burned out of that one + wouldnt have the time to properly devote to it even if i didnt), got back into genshin impact after pulling for xiao (after not touching it for like . months), and danganronpa. yes . danganronpa 😐 i Know. i stopped playing it after the second trial of the first game bc i was so hurt by the outcome and picked it up in late january only to get sucked in (thank god i had the foresight to buy the second and third games during the steam winter sale). rn im at the start of chapter 4 if anyone wants to come in my asks and um . talk to me abt danganronpa

tl;dr: I’m Into Danganronpa Now

iii. you realize halloween was three months ago right

i mentioned this in the first section, but i love to plot things. every request is plotted or at least has a solid foundation. i had fun detailing what concept i wanted to go with considering what i was given, and there were some bangers i might touch up in the future. but heres whats going to happen to the requests themselves:

there are two finished requests. one will be posted tomorrow and the other will be touched up (just bc i finished it doesnt mean its good 🧍‍♂️) and scheduled for next saturday. as for the ones i never got around to ...

i will not be finishing those requests. i hate to be That Person, but i feel like we all expected this 🧍‍♂️ what i will do is post all of my notes for each request in batches -- requests that have an @ to go with them will be mentioned in the post proper, but anon asks will be pictured. (there are some asks that came from blogs who are now deactivated but i wrote down all the prompts and remember most of those askers so ill cross that bridge when i get there) there will most likely be an excerpt or two simply bc i think i mightve written a few plot points or interactions in the form of bullet points. i rlly am sorry about doing this but i remember looking at my notion doc with all the prompts and feeling ... like i wasnt measuring up n it wasnt just to myself or to some intangible concept of “other” id constructed but it was instead to those who requested n actually WANTED to see and hear and read my writing and i ...... im gonna admit thats another big reason i avoided this site.

regardless, youll definitely get what i have (and likely more than just my bullet points and illegible handwriting).

tl;dr: im sorry. what i have in terms of plot, concept, and interaction for every request will be posted, but i cant say ill ever complete them and mean it.

iv. so what now?

well i mean . im not entirely sure how sold i am on haikyuu in the content creation department (as a creator n to a lesser extent, as a consumer). as mentioned previously, its no longer my primary focus. it doesnt mean im not into haikyuu anymore; i have a lot of love for those boys but i cant rlly say im even caught up w recent fandom activity and also havent even finished s4 pt2 LMAO thats on my to do list

and despite all that, i still want to share my plots n concepts and snippets and maybe even fics. it wont happen anytime soon. it might not even happen. but i mean . its better than me saying i wont write ever again shjdkfs but either way ill probably use this blog as a personal blog w the occasional ask game for dialogue prompts (those are always so fun i love making up aus to fit like . the most mundane prompts)

as for my works (past and any potential future), ive opened an ao3 acc here n ill be editing n possibly expanding on my old works to post there. tumblr, to me, is The x reader hub, but i figure more x reader fics on ao3 is never a bad thing.

ill be deleting/posting drafted posts to the queue since they were all meant to be queued anyway as well as (sorry again 🧍‍♂️) deleting or answering asks in the inbox. (moots if you get a notif from me saying i rbed your post from months ago ... mind your business) im very hard to get ahold of and its ... a problem. expect an overhaul of the nav n shit to reflect my new direction n also because i feel like i cant tell if my passion for carrd is shared by the majority HSDKLFS maybe its better to read my info in a normal post ykwim .......

and of course . if youve read all this n decided im no longer worth the follow, i sure as hell cant stop you. thank you for wanting to, at some point, hear what i have to say -- it means more than you think.

tl;dr: writing will be edited and reposted to ao3, this blog will be a personal blog with a hint of writing (sometimes)

the tl;dr to end all tl;drs:

im back! i wont be as active as i used to due to a lessened interest in haikyuu in general, but i have an ao3 acc now where all my past work will be edited, possibly expanded, and reposted. any future work will also find itself there. my halloween requests will be posted in batches as incomplete concepts, plots, and snippets of scenes; i wont be promising to finish any of them.

there are still fic concepts im attached to and want to finish, but i cant promise any more writing on my end. this blog will be a personal blog with maybe writing, not a writing blog with my personal thoughts all over it.

regardless if you stick around or not, its been crazy sexy cool (equal emphasis) being on haikyuu tumblr even tho i wasnt around for long ... even tho its not my main focus anymore, im still excited to see what the future might hold 🤝

love, ari 💌

#did i have an announcement tag #announcement #also regarding work hsjkdfsd the company i work for didnt give my location the opening for the full time position i wanted #my managers all agree id be promoted if we had it but we dont so i . hee .#anyway um i hope everyones doing well #some of my moots changed urls while i was away and now i have no idea who anyone is #its like when you see your familys friends and theyre like omg youre so big now! i remember when you were a baby and youre like 🧍‍♂️#and you have to play along bc apparently they remember you hskdfsd #im not very funny in this post but i figured id rather be honest considering my lengthy absence #consider this my comeback stage

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championrevali · 4 years ago

Note

You said you were looking for writing prompts so how about a reverse AU type of thing where Prince Link enters a Rito archery competition disguised as a Rito (in a rito mask because the King doesn't want him fighting or competing so he does it in secret) and beats Revali (by one point) before disappearing. Now Revali is obsessed with finding out the identity of the Rito who beat him because he may or may not want to settle the score (ie court him.)

Oml I love this so much. I kinda deviated from the og idea a little bit just to work with what was going on in my head. I hope it’s okay. Also thank you to my Revalink discord friends for helping me some ideas for how to link (hehe, link) scenes, i was mega stuck for a hot minute.

I decided to split this into two parts.

(low key should I put this on Ao3?)

Italics is sign language

Word count: 1595

Ship: Revalink, Revali/Link

"Are you sure this will work?" Link asked, surveying the merchants many elixirs.

"Positive! I've tested them me'self. That elixir there will turn you into a Rito. Twenty four hours guaranteed."

Nodding, Link dropped a bag of rupees onto the counter. "I'll take five."

The merchant grinned, inspecting his new riches. "Pleasure doing business with you young man."

Link pocketed the elixirs, and hopped up onto his rented horse. The steed pulled against the reigns willfully, and Link wished Epona wasn't as recognizable as she was.

It wasnt hard to miss his royal steed, and if he had brought her he would be caught for sure.

No, he couldn't be caught. He needed to know whether his nightly training was worth it. He needed to know if he could beat the greatest archers in Hyrule.

Seeing the tall rocky formation from the stable was a great relief to the prince, as the long ride had tired him out. He dropped his horse off, and walked to a nearby pond. He squeezed his eyes shut and drank the elixir.

He probably shouldnt have been as shocked as he was when he looked at his reflection. Golden feathers speckled with light blue covered his whole body. Lifting his hand- or his wing to his light blue beak, he opened and closed his mouth in amazement.

Backing away from the pond, he stumbled a bit on his taloned feet. "How do Ritos walk like this?" Link thought, as he started his way to the village.

The older inspected the small boy up and down. "You're quite small to he in an archery competition... are you sure you can even pull back the string?"

Links feathers puffed up, embarrassed. "Yes I can..."

The Rito laughed. "Whatever you sat kid... What's your name?"

"Link." He said without thinking.

"Ah... same name as the pretty boy prince of Hyrule huh? Not exactly a common name is it?"

Link hesitated. "Right.".

The Rito waved him past the check in, towards the range. "Good luck."

Sighing, releaved, Link went over to pick out a bow. The range supplied bows so that no ones would have an opportunity to cheat.

"These are worthless pieces of crap" a voice announced near Link.

Turning to see who had spoken, Link saw a dark blue Rito, inspecting the bows.

"My bow is far superior to any of these... used bows..." the words dripped from the dark blue Rito's mouth as if he was talking about some muck on the bottom of his shoe.

"Isn't that the point though? That we all have the same quality bows?" Link inquired, curious as to why this Rito found used bows so repulsive.

"Tsk, and I suppose you also believe that it's not about winning it's about having fun." Sarcasm leaked from every word.

Link flushed, choosing to just pick up a bow and walk away. As he walked away he could feel the blue feathered Ritos eyes burning a hole in his back.

Link lined up with the other Rito, feeling utterly dwarfed by their height. He somehow kept his julian height, and was at least a head shorter than most others around him.

The blue Rito he'd ran into before was a few spaces away from him, also looking quite short next to his competitors.

The older Rito he'd talked to earlier stepped in front of the lineup. "The rules are simple. Furthest away from the target is eliminated. Missing the target is automatic disqualification, as is cheating. Good luck."

Taking a deep breath, Link adjusted his stance. This would be where he found out whether all of his training in secret was worth it.

Adjusting his stance, Link lifted the bow. It was heavier than he was used to, but his feathers seemed better adjusted to hold the weight. He pulled back the string, and let the arrow fly.

His arrow slammed in the second outer circle. Link smiled, proud that he was still in the competition.

"Tsk." Link heard to the left of him. That Rito he'd talked to earlier was looking at his target with distaste.

He had hit in the center circle, closer to a bullseye than any of the other targets. Yet he looks disappointed.

"Oh c'mon Revali, you'll get it next time." Teased the Rito next to him.

Link looked away, this Rito was too cocky for Link's taste. He nocked an arrow, preparing for the next round.

Round after round passed, Link becoming more and more comfortable with each arrow.

At last, he and one final Rito, Revali, were the only two left standing. The Rito shot him an overexaggerated, unimpressed look.

"Well I suppose we should just pack it up now... I can't imagine this will be too difficult."

Link clenched his jaw in annoyance.

"Nothing to say oh short one? Very well then." Revali turned back towards the target, tugging on the bow string lightly.

Link shook his head, turning back to the targets as well. He wouldn't let this overconfident Rito ruin this. He took a deep breath, pulling back the string.

Thunk

The echo of an arrow slamming into a tree. But it wasn't Link's arrow.

Revali was staring in shock at his arrow, stuck firmly in a tree a few feet away from his target. Link's own arrow was planted less than an inch from the center.

He had won.

"No! That was a mistake, I demand a redo!" Revali insisted, feathers fluffed up in annoyance. It might have looked cute if Link didn't know it was him the Rito was angry at.

"Revali you missed... meaning you lose... just accept it." A Ritos voice popped up from the side.

Shooting a glare that could kill, Revali slammed the bow back into the stand, and took off in the direction of the village.

After a moment of awkward silence, Link was crowded in a large mass of Rito congratulating him. He tensed, not used to having to being so crowded. Life in the castle was mostly him doing his duty of preparing to be king someday. His assigned knight and best friend Zelda and his father were the only company he was used to having.

Revali POV

Landing in the flight range, Revali cursed under his breath. "Those ridiculous bows... they're not the right adjustments... it's their fault."

He supposed the small Rito was a good opponent. Certainly was interesting compared to the usual supposed competition he crushed.

The way he held the bow was interesting as well, it resembled the bow hold of a Hylian. Perhaps he grew up near a Hylian settlement. Though that was highly unlikely. Not many Rito strayed from the village that they grew up in. Many would leave the roost and travel for a few years, but they most always returned to the village to let their family grow.

Revali smiled as an idea came over him. “Perhaps I could convince him to a rematch. Certainly he wouldn’t want anyone questioning the legitimacy of his win.”

Climbing into his hammock, Revali was satisfied that this would solidify his win, and prove that he was still the greatest archer the Rito had ever seen.

The village the next morning was buzzing with news that the great Revali had finally met his match. It took everything in him not to stop and tell the gossipers the truth, that the yellow Rito’s win was nothing but a fluke on the fault of his bow.

He took a deep breath and steeled himself. Find the Rito first, then prove that it was a mistake.

“Would you happen to know where that Rito would be? I would like to apologize for my outburst yesterday.” Revali lied through his beak.

“You just missed him.” The gossiper said, looking at him with- Oh dear Hylia that better not be pity he saw in her face. “The lad checked out of the inn not an hour ago, walked in the direction of the stable.”

Nodding, the blue Rito climbed up to one of the landing decks, and flew in the direction of the stable. Surely he would be able to catch his competitor before he got too far away. After all, not all birds had his gale.

Revali was frustrated. Not only was his competitor not at the stable. But no one had actually seen him leave the stable. The only thing to go by was that apparently his name was Link.

The last sighting of him was when he arrived at the Rito stable, yet no one had seen him leave.

Eventually Revali gave up. Moved on, he claimed. If anyone asked, he would deny that thoughts of the mysterious archer graced his thoughts every day.

And it was definitely because revali was angry about his mess up, not because he wanted to know how soft the others feathers were. It definitely wasn't because he was attractive. No, definitely not.

Shakes head head, Revali turned over in his hammock. It did no good to lose sleep over someone hed never see again.

But here he was, the day before he was to depart for Hyrule castle, thinking about that elusive Rito.

As the winner of first place seemed to be long gone, Revali was supposed to show off his skills to the royalty in Hyrule castle for winning second place. Perhaps king would be impressed and offer him a place in the castle.

Who was he kidding, of course the king would be impressed, he was the great Revali after all.

Cont. In part 2!

If yall enjoyed this and wanna be tagged for part 2, lemme know in the comments.

Thank you for this prompt kasaru_chan! I had so much fun writing it, sorry again that it took so long

@kasaru-chan @silvershadowdragon39 @imofficialbabyuwu

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handonshipper · 3 years ago

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If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Chapter One

Time. What was time? Was it a straight line that followed cause and effect perfectly? Was it a serpent that slid around in a circle, over and over again, repeating the same events with no chance of an ending? Or was it simply an abstract concept humans invented because of their never-ending need to control everything around them?

Landon Kirby didn't know. Time had escaped him. As he walked around the city he was currently in, he wasn't entirely sure how long he had been in the prison world. He wasn't sure how long he had been away from the girl he loved with all his heart. And the reality was, he wasn't sure it mattered. Whether it was weeks, months, or years, he would love her and he knew she would love him.

Landon took a step inside a warehouse and looked around cautiously. Several of the monsters were still in Mystic Falls, but he knew some had left. Landon was not going to stop being careful. He looked around the warehouse that looked similar yet different to how it had been a year previously, when Clarke had brought him here to find the third artifact. It seemed like a lifetime ago after everything that has happened since.

"Why do you still need me?" Landon had asked, confused as to why they were still there. Why he couldn't just leave.

"I don't need you. Daddy does." Clarke had replied, siting in a chair. "You're the golden child. The one he was trying to create, remember? The perfect son. The one who could create the new bloodline. Because of you, he'll be able to launch the species."

" I'm . I'm not interested in, like, procreating or whatever, okay? Especially if it means I'm spawning an army of evil minions."

"Oh, didn't I mention? You're just the host."

"The what? "

"The host. Biologically speaking, - you're the living organism... - "

"I know what a host is! I've seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Are you kidding me? Tell me you're pulling some kind of lame brotherly prank right now."

"You wanted to be special, right? The foster kid looking for a family, believing that you had a purpose if only you could find it. Turns out your purpose is to be a meat suit for the most powerful monster ever to walk the earth."

And Landon had. For a short time anyway before he died in this very prison world and came back to life.

His hand lowered down a bit to the bone whip hanging down beside his leg. He remembered the first time he had seen the headless horseman. How he had let it sweep him up and carry him out there towards Malivore. He was much less equipped to fight at that time. Now, however, he knew how to fight to survive. And he had been doing it nonstop since he arrived in the prison world after escaping Malivore.

Without making a sound, Landon walked over to the shelves. It was more empty than it had been before. Some people from Triad probably had cleared it out a bit after their attack on the Salvatore School. The organization was no longer active as far as Landon knew. He picked up one of the artifacts and looked down, examining it before setting it down. His mind was turning in thought as he looked at everything that remained on the shelves, and he started walking down the aisles, trying to see if there was possibly anything he could use to get him home. He had read some books while hiding out in places, trying to find a way out. He read about a few artifacts and decided to come see this warehouse.

If there was any chance at all that there was a way out here, he had to try. Even if he had no idea if they were here or even if they would actually help him achieve his goal. But he wasn't going to sit around and wait for someone else to find him. He was going to get himself home. No matter what it took.

Suddenly, Landon felt himself still as he heard the slightest noise. He turned his head and pulled out his machete with small stains of blood on it, ready to fight. He moved silently further away from where he heard the sound, careful not to bump any of the shelves as he prepared himself to fight.

Though once he caught sight of the creature, he felt fear course through him. He recognized it. It was the same creature that had made him hallucinate getting rescued over and over again. It was the same creature that ensured he couldn't trust anything he saw. And that terrified him. Stealthily, Landon moved around as the creature got further inside. Landon gripped the blade in his hand and got behind the creature for an upper hand. He moved to strike at it but got thrown back into one of the shelves, causing artifacts to clutter to the floor.

Landon winced slightly as he felt the cut on his arm but ignored it and quickly got up before going to fight the creature. After a bit of a struggle, he cut off its head. He started counting in his head, familiar with how long it took them to resurrect, and he picked up some artifacts off of the floor. He touched one and suddenly, the room was full of a white light that sucked him in.

After blinking a little, he began to process where he was. In front of him was the familiar Mystic Grill sign on the window of the bar and grill. He stilled in confusion, wondering how he had gotten there. In his lightly visible reflection on the window, Landon noticed the bright blue coloring of the Mystic Grill uniform on his body.

"Hello?" One of the teenagers from Mystic Falls High questioned, somewhat snapping him out of his thoughts.

In front of him were two teenagers, a blonde and a brunette, both about 16. The brunette who had spoken to him looked at him with a mix of confusion, annoyance, and expectancy. It was only then that he realized he was holding a tray with two drinks. She was a customer. His customer.

This couldn't be real. It had to have been that creature messing with his mind. It didn't make sense. There was no way he could have gotten out like that. And even if he did, he was missing his outfit and his weapons, which made him feel very vulnerable. He breathed out a little and gave them their drinks before leaving without a word.

His heart was racing a little as he looked around. There were people. All sorts of people. But it wasn't the first time he had hallucinate being rescued and getting out. Though usually Hope was right there with him. He wasnt sure what was going on. But a hallucination was the only thing that made sense. He found himself a few knives, a lighter, and a change of clothes and then went towards the Salvatore School, wanting to see Hope if by some miracle it wasnt a hallucination.

Once he arrived, he froze a bit, thinking. He had to make sure nothing came with him. He would stay in the woods for now just to make sure and then he would go in once he knew it was safe. Though he would feel a lot better with his weapons and mask. Landon was still expecting himself to suddenly be pulled out of this.

Landon got passed the gate and looked around a little. He distanced himself from the school but was close enough at the moment that he could see the people walking about as he hid. He couldn't see Hope from where he was yet so he retreated further into the woods, planning to find her again soon. Make sure she was alright.

By the end of the day, he still couldn't see Hope anywhere. He hesitated before sneaking inside the school at night. He needed to make sure she was alright. Then he'd leave to finish making sure nothing had followed him. Then he'd reunite with her.

Landon moved quietly up to her room, swiftly hiding once someone was about to pass, and he finally reached her room. He quietly opened the door, knowing if she saw him that the reunion would happen sooner than he planned. But if it did, he'd just make sure to keep an eye around everything else. Though Landon still wasn't sure this was real. He kept expecting himself to snap out of the hallucination.

He creeped open the door to her bedroom and stepped inside. There was only one bed, and she was not in it. He frowned a little and gracefully moved to her desk. Her room looked quite different. Full of things he had not expected to see. He looked down at things that were on her desk, wanting to get an idea of how long he had been gone. Though that still wouldn't answer the question of why he was suddenly at Mystic Grill in his old uniform. He looked at a photo of her family and kept his gaze on it for a moment before continuing to look. He saw notes for school. Labeled with a date from three years before Landon went into Malivore. This didn't make sense. And where was Hope?

He looked around and stilled as he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked younger. His hairstyle, his face's shape... it was all younger. He pulled up the sleeve of his arm and noticed the lack of scars. His recent wound was no longer there. What was there was a recent cigarette burn. He ran his thumb over it gently, barely noticing the pain. Was it possible to be in the past? Was this part of a hallucination or did he somehow escape and travel back in time? It didn't make sense, but he supposed anything was possible at this point.

Landon looked around and climbed out of the window before landing down at the ground before sneaking into the office once he saw it was empty. He assumed they must be in bed, though like always, he kept his hearing alert. Trusted his instincts. He went over to the secret small room and pulled out a couple of the weapons, shoving it into a bag he had found. He closed the secret door carefully, making sure to be quiet. Looking at the desk, he found confirmation that it definitely seemed like the time when he was 15. With this in mind, he slipped out of the office and left the school. He got himself a bus ticket to New Orleans and took a seat at the bus stop. His mind brought him back to the last time he was journeying to New Orleans.

"What is this?" Landon had asked as Hope put a magical bracelet around his wrist

"Think of it like a... 'click your heels together three times' kind of thing. If you ever need me, just press it, and my bracelet will lead me to you." she had told him, looking back up at him.

She had started to leave, and he pressed the button on his bracelet. She turned to look at him.

"I wanted to see if it worked." He had explained to her, and they had rushed to each other before kissing in front of the bus that had been approaching.

He looked away and stood up as a bus arrived before getting on, ready to find Hope. He was tense and relieved that not many people were on the bus. He knew it was going to take time for him to get used to being around anyone. But right now, what mattered more than his lack of social skills and the fact this could all be fake or the possibility of being ambushed was finding Hope. Though his body didn't ease up the whole ride to New Orleans, and he kept expecting to suddenly be back at the prison world with the monster.

#legacies #cw legacies #legacies cw #hope mikaelson #landon kirby #amazing post #handon #hope x landon #jigglejerk #fanfics #fanfic #legacies fanfic #the originals

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bakudekwho · 5 years ago

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Fireflies - Bakugo Kastsuki x Reader

Fireflies - Bakugo Katsuki x Reader - 3.1k words

Bakugo had always found himself enraptured by your presence and hated himself for it but when he saw you sneaking out of the dorms every night his interest only grew stronger until he found himself following you out into the woods quite late in the evening. Only to find you doing something not so conspicuous as he had initially imagined.

( YG/N ) - Your given name

( YL/N ) - Your last name

( H/C ) - Hair color

( E/Y ) - Eye color

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Masterlist Wattpad and Ao3 posts available on the masterlist

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Bakugo couldn't understand why you of all people, one of the most goody two-shoed people in the class snuck out of the dorms almost every night. He himself wasnt known to pay much attention to his other classmates but you had always interested him and when Class 1-A had moved into the dorms the interest only grew.

At the beginning of the year, he paid no more attention to you then he would a speck of dust, just like the rest of the students but as the year went on he began to notice things, you weren't scared of him at all maybe you found his anger and harsh temperament startling from time to time but in the end you always ended up laughing him off. At first that had bothered him... A lot... maybe more than a lot he loathed you for quite some time if he was being honest. He couldn't understand why you sought to beat him and that stupid nerd in everything as well. He and Deku may be at the heart of the rivalry but in every competition you were right behind them, it annoyed him at first just like his hatred for you did but after a while, he began to notice other less annoying things about you which only managed to make him more annoyed.

He didn't need distractions so when he began to pay more attention to you he only got a worse attitude when you were around. You sat in front of him in class and he always found himself staring at the back of your head during Mic's English lessons or noticed his eyes following you when you found your seat with Deku and the rest of his loser friends at lunch.

When this started happening he only found himself adopting a meaner personality than usual with you but again you just continued to laugh at his attitude. More than anything about you he hated the fact that he had zero impact on you while sometimes the only things that would pop up in his mind were stupid facts about you.

The first night he had witnessed you sneaking out was a school night, it was very unlike him to be up past 9 pm, he was an early riser after all and needed his sleep but it was the first time he had actually lost track of time wondering about you. He was staring absent-mindedly out his front-facing window when he noticed movement down the yard. He looked down to notice your unmistakable head of (h/c) hair ( he could identify it quite well after all he spent a lot of time looking at it ) but he was confused as to why you were out. Curfew was a solid 8 pm and they got in a decent amount of trouble if they were found outside of the dorms any later. He glanced at his clock and it read 10:23 pm. He was upset with himself for staying up so late but he continued to watch you none the less instead of going to bed.

You looked up at the school building, you were clearly checking to see if anyone was watching you. His lights were off so he doubted that you could see him but he refrained from moving anyways. Seemingly satisfied that no one was watching you you started quickly down the path away from the dorm into a wooded area. He was highly confused at this point and didn't understand why you had left the dorms at such a late hour and without anyone else at that. He knew he should just go to bed and ignore it but he couldn't help waiting up for you even if you didn't know it. The world wasnt safe for UA students anymore he was only doing his duty as a hero right...?

It had been nearly an hour before you returned, his clock read 11:15 pm and he noticed that you were now carrying a glowing jar. Being so far away he couldn't tell what was in it other than flickering light but he again had to refrain from moving closer to the window to get a look. Your quirk didn't have anything to do with creating light so this only interested him in your situation more. Though after you had entered the building he refused the thought of leaving his room to confront you. That would mean admitting that he had noticed you leaving ad coming back and he refused to acknowledge that he cared one bit.

This went on for some time, he would watch you leave ever night and come back with the same jar of glowing light. His sleep schedule now became accustomed to staying up until you came back every night. He always made an excuse for himself about it, never actually thinking of the fact that maybe he just cared about what you were doing literally EVERY night of the week.

He had enough at about the 17th time it happened... not that he had been counting or anything like that. He waited at the entrance to the boy's side of the dorm ad you walked right past him. He waited a few seconds after you had walked out of the building before following you. He followed behind you for about 15 minutes before you moved past the tree line and into a clearing. It was the same one where you and the rest of his dumb classmates help picnics on the weekends but it was now quiet and he could see little sparkling orbs flying around.

You moved into the clearing as sat under the single tree that inhabited it. Bakugo didn't go past the treeline in his fear of getting caught so he just watched you. Before he knew it there were floating lights all around the clearing. It took him a few moments to realize they were fireflies or lightning bugs as some people would call them and he finally came to the conclusion that the jar you brought home every night had fireflies in it.

He felt stupid, he had thought of some of the worst scenarios when he watched you leave school but this was not one of them. You left the dorms every night to simply enjoy nature and him being an idiot thought you were off meeting some boy from the other classes.

Feeling more like a stalker now than ever just standing there staring at you as you stared at the bugs with the jar empty behind you he turned to leave.

" I know you're there Bakugo one of your talents is not stealth no matter how you excel at everything else. " he stopped short as your voice rang out over the clearing.

He was practically frozen. " You're not very covert, " you continued " maybe if you're going to watch me through the windows you shouldn't sit pressed up against the glass. "

You had seen him??? He was sure your eyes had passed right over his dorm each time but maybe you were a lot sneakier than he thought.

He turned around and walked past the remaining trees and into the pale light of the clearing. " If you noticed me beforehand why didn't you just say something? " He asked. There was no point trying to come up with an excuse especially if you had seen him all the previous times you had left.

You brushed off his question " They are very pretty arent they, where I lived before we came to the dorms was so populated that they were a rare sight. " You finally looked over at him and he decided that one of the few things he didn't hate was the way the light from the bugs reflected in your eyes.

" Come sit with me, there's no reason for you to be standing there, this is the best place to watch them from. " You said eyes drifting away from him and back to the fireflies.

He didn't know what he was doing, he should head back to the dorms and get some rest but disregarding that he strode over to you and took a seat leaning up against the broad base of the tree.

This had to be one of the most ridiculous things he had ever done and he couldn't believe you weren't angry at him. He had practically stalked you into the woods in the middle of the night who even does that???

He had obviously lost himself in thought once again because all of a sudden you were laughing and he felt his ears turn pink. " What are you laughing at.. Extra " the word on the end was almost added as an afterthought but he couldn't bring himself to call you anything else.

" Well Katsuki, " you said using his given name causing his face to feel hot " your face looks funny. " That shocked him, he was normally the blatantly rude one but now he was the one being made fun of.

" Oh yeah and what's so funny about it? " He said

" It gets all scrunched up when you lose yourself in your mind, for someone who hates Izuku so much you two have a lot of the same habits. " You said plainly to him.

He felt himself sputtering at that "How... How dare yo- " he began before you cut him off.

" Would you like to catch some lightning bugs with me? " you said amid his sentence. He couldn't help staring at you with his jaw slack then. What was even happening in his mind? Did he actually ... want to do that with you, what a childish notion but all the same when you held out an extra jar to him he found himself accepting it and standing alongside you.

" I usually get around five, some of them fly too high for me to get so you might have better luck! " you said. You wandered around the field trying to gently coax some of the bugs into your jar. Bakugo just followed not even attempting to catch some of his own and just watched the delight in your face as you walked around after the small insects.

You turned and smiled at him and he could swear his heart skipped a beat. " You know I can't sleep without a light... " you started turning away from him again " So I come out here and get natures own light and bring it into my room. " You finished catching your third bug.

If anyone else had told him that he would have been on his ass laughing but it only endeared you to him more. You always came off as such a badass during school competing with even him for attitude on occasion and yet here you were catching your homemade nightlights and spilling what should be embarrassing secrets right to him.

" Why would you tell me that of all people? " he asked " You hate me.. " he ended it with stopping short. He finally said it out loud the thing that bothered him most about you. No matter how fascinated he was with your personality... you absolutely detested him and it all of a sudden felt wrong for him to be anywhere near you. Someone so good shouldn't be around someone as crude as him and that's what he hated, he hated that even for you he couldn't change himself he couldn't tone down the explosive attitude that came with his power because he had been doing it for so long he didn't even know how to.

You turned around and capped your jar of bugs and set it down on the ground behind you lightly before reaching out for his. He offered it up with no resistance he hadn't even tried to gather some of his own and now he regretted it, maybe it would have stopped him from letting his emotions get the better of him a few moments prior.

You placed his jar down on the ground net to yours and faced him again, he was ready for you to tell him that he was right, that you really did help him and he was no better than Mineta for following you out into the woods but you didn't. No, actually you walked right past him and over to the tree to sit down again and proceeded to pat the ground next to you once more.

He once again should have left at this moment, he knew he couldn't handle the vulnerability that he had at this moment, he knew it was time to shut himself down once again but he couldn't help it and so he walked and sat next to you once more.

You looked up at him and he really noticed the difference in height then and almost smiled. But he sat there and braced himself for you to talk.

" I like you very much Katsuki you're very intelligent. I don't think I've hated you. " You said smiling at him.

That astonished him to put it plainly, people often told him how amazing he was the yhad been doing it since he was little. It was always how strong he was or how intimidating. It was never on his intelligence which was maybe something he valued even more than his strength.

He didn't know what to say but you continued to speak " At the beginning of the year I didn't understand why Izuku seemed to admire you so much, yes you were clearly very powerful and your control over your power was impressive but you were so rude to everyone at the beginning that I didn't get it for a while, so I started to pay attention to you. " You swallowed once and looked away from him before continuing " You are extremely smart and even when it seems like you don't have a plan you manage to execute things in ways I know our other classmates couldn't think of so I started to admire you too and when I noticed you watching me when I left the dorm I was worried at first that you would bring it up in front of our other classmates but you pretended not to know so I pretended not to notice either. " You finally looked back at him again smiling at the clearly dumbstruck look on his face. " I felt safer knowing that you knew which direction I went in after a while. All the league attacks made me worry about leaving the dorms for quite some bit but I knew that even if you didn't like me that much you would protect me. " You finished talking and stared up at the moon " You're going to make a great hero Katsuki I can tell even now because just being in your presence makes me feel safe. "

The shock of your words finally settled in his stomach, " I ... make you feel safe? All I do is scream at you! " He exclaimed the first words that came to his mind without stopping himself.

" Yes you do, King Explosion Murder. " You said giggling at him.

His face turned red at the use of his stupid idea for a hero name... it had seemed cool at the time.

" We should go back, " You said standing up and shoved the empty jar into your bag while you held the full one to your side " We wouldn't want to get you to put on house arrest again now would we? " You stated all but ignoring your emotional output a few minutes ago.

This whole night seemed like one of not having control over his own body but he stepped towards you and took your face in his hands. Your eyes were filled with bewilderment as he leaned down and placed a kiss on your forehead and then proceeded to grab your hand.

" You're right, let's go back." he couldn't look at you his face felt so red that he wouldn't let you see him like this and so he forged ahead with your hand in his right into the woods.

---

It took about 15 minutes to arrive back at the dorms and at no point did his hand leave yours. Even when he opened the door for you his own hand found its way back to yours as you both walked to the elevator. When you finally arrived at the part that split off from the boy's side to the girls he turned towards you again. " You said earlier that you thought I didn't like you. " He said looking down at you for the first time since the clearing.

You hummed in agreement to this and looked down at your still clasped hands. " I'm now starting to think I might have been wrong. " You laughed grinning at him.

" You definitely were. " He said leaning down once more to give you a proper kiss goodnight.

---

+Bonus Scene +

He yawned as he made his way down the stairs into the common area. He hadn't made it back to his room until at least 12:30 in the morning and he thanked whatever was out there that today was an off day for him and the rest of the class.

He entered the common room and had to suppress a delighted smile as he saw you on the couch with Mina and Sero laughing at something one of them had said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and made his way over to where you all sat and tried to ignore the hot feeling in his face as he saw you light up at his presence.

" Good morning Katsuki! " You said brightly to him and gave him a dazzling smile that almost made his heart explode right there. Mina and Sero both looked back and forth between yourself and him. Not even Kirishima was allowed to use his given name that couldn't be right, even a few of his other classmates turned around at this and ogled the situation before them.

" Good morning firefly. " He said smirking at you, you smiled at the name and blushed a bit as he sat down right next to you and threw an arm right over your shoulders. Everyone now turned around at this point, they were used to him giving people nicknames but not... cute ones.

He decided he was going for the wow factor today for sure as he made himself look deeply into your eyes and laid his lips down right on yours in front of the whole entire class.

There was definitely a lot of gasping but what really made him smile was the high pitched scream from Kaminari " wHat ThE HeLl iS hapPeniNg!?!?! "

=============================================================

Thank you all so much for reading and I hope you have a super PLUS ULTRA day!

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nthrr · 5 years ago

Text

A Second Chance

Summary: 'Who are you?' He wanted to know, know every single thing about her, things that one shouldn't want to know about a person who holds a gun on them. A second chance at love for the ones that were robbed of it.

It had been days since he had had a good nights sleep free from dreams. He didn't know why but since his childhood he had dreams that had followed the same theme. A world full of fantasy, honour and war. In his childhood those dreams seemed like an entry into the unknown, a world full of wonders and action that a little boy thoroughly enjoyed and embraced. But as he had grown older, had gotten better at understanding the world around himself , the dreams changed, their meanings changed. Cheerful laughter and abundance of love that shone through the dreams changed. The first time he experienced a life leaving its body through his own hands, he was fourteen. Waking up screaming he had thoroughly frightened his parents. Chalking it up to nightmares didn't seem to work in their household because once is a chance, twice is a coincidence but repeatedly for past how many ever years that he had started speaking from, explaining to his parents a world from history books that they attributed to his imagination, that had frightened them. A slew of doctors came and went, medicines consumed but the dreams didn't seem to stop. He stopped taking those medicines when he had accidentally overdosed due to him being delirious with not having slept in three days. It was a great fight with his parents but slowly he had them accept that those medicines were not improving him at all. Turning to yoga and meditation brought him a sense of calm but those dreams, those dreams where he was an royal, the feeling of a sword slicing the air around him, an all encompassing feeling of motherly love and devotion , the feeling of complete content and happiness as if he had found his soulmate, they never left and to tell the truth , he would rather have them along with sleepless nights with nightmares than do without them.

Inspite of all this he had an loving childhood, and a promising career. His family owns the prestigious Mahismathi Industries, a pioneer in the field of technology. Being the only heir apparent of MI , his life and future is set. But the thirst of knowledge and the fire to prove that he deserves the position made him an overachiever in his studies and in the work he started doing for MI. His parents seem to be happy that he is thriving despite his struggles in mental health and that has lead to what is now a big problem for him. Marriage. The thing he totally despises. Don't get him wrong he has no qualms about love, and he had gone on dates and had a few one night stands. But marriage is different. It's a partnership more than anything else. What was he to say to his future wife, that he has recurring dreams and nightmares and that he'll wake up screaming somedays, babble in a strange language on others, sometimes wake up kicking and punching so would you please learn some self defense or sorry we cant sleep in the same bed. Or should he say I'll try to love you but sorry I think I can't because I already love someone, oh it's just someone I dream of regularly, and no she's not real, yes I'm pretty sure, no I would not like an admittance to a mental hospital thanks. He would be really glad when this marriage talk comes to an end.

He prays for this recent bout of sleeplessness to end , he is getting sick of his own growchiness. Hearing his alarm blare out he groans and covers himself with his sheets willing the world to just disappear away. A few minutes later hearing the second alarm go off he huffs before throwing away his sheets and stumbles to the bathroom. He considers calling in sick for a few moments after he sees his reflection in the mirror, he really looks like a zombie, but then he curses himself for his very own good work ethics. Besides the vultures at the company would swoop in at just a peak of a mistake to point and complain. It was getting ridiculous, he was only in a mid management position now, both him and his parents agreeing that he should start low at the food chain, getting an experience at different levels in the company. But some people at the board still try to sabotage him at every turn. The thing was they knew his place at the top is cemented but they still try at every chance they get. He could even appreciate the ones that go about it in a clever way, because they could be useful for him in the long term but those stupid ones, he just doesn't know what to do about them.

Cursing the board members mentally, he got ready and hurried out of his house hoping he won't be late. Just as he was about to start the car his cellphone went off. Seeing that it was his mother calling and wondering she would at this time of the day he answered the call,

'Amma, good morning, why are you calling this early, any problem?' He inquired.

'Amar, good morning my son, did you sleep well'

'Ya ma, got some sleep , what's the matter , is everything ok?' It wasnt like his mother to call him in the early hours of the day. This call was making him a bit worried.

'Yes, good, everything is fine, don't worry and stop being a pessimist '

'Tell that to my mother who calls early in the morning to a son who she's going to see probably in an hour or so' he countered back.

'Stop sassing me, lord knows I get enough of that from your father and stop chuckling, like father like son', He tries vainly to cover his laughs. Like father, as if, he hasn't seen anyone in his life actually verbally spar with his mother and come out unscathed.

'Ok ok sorry, I'm stopping so why did you call' If he doesn't stop his mother now he would still be getting told off an hour from now.

'Oh that, I just wanted to ask you to collect a package from Ragupathy uncle on the way. Its the family heirloom from Andhra that got lost and was got back in an auction, uncle has it and he said he would deliver it personally, but it seems he has an urgent business meeting coming up and wont be able to come by so he asked me to send you by to pick it up'

'Cant you ask someone else ma, I'm getting pretty late, and if it really has to be me I can even pick it up in the evening' he tries.

'Amarnath, didn't I already say your uncle is going away on a business trip , and no I cant send anyone else because it's a family heirloom and it costs twenty two millions. And how many times do I have to say you are the boss of MI and you are allowed to be late sometimes. '

'Cool down cool down, dont get tensed, your blood pressure is already high, I'll go ok, and i really shouldn't be late even when I'm the boss' This was an age old argument in their home and today wasnt the day that it was going to be resolved.

'Really cant change you dear, but that is also why you are the heir to MI and your cousin Balla is not'

'Dont you get started on him now amma, and got to go now if I'm getting your package too along the way '

'Dont grumble too much will you, doesn't suit you'

'Ok amma got to go bye'

'Hmm , drive safely dear , bye'.

Ending the call with his mother , he started the car and turned it towards his uncle's home. Arriving in under twenty minutes, he rushed to the door and rang the bell. The door opened to reveal panja aunty a maid in his uncles home who welcomed him warmly. Asking for his uncle he was directed to the study in the upper floor. Knocking on the door and entering he found his uncle rushing around trying to fit as many things as he could in the bag of his.

'Amarnath, thank you my son for coming so quickly , I really didn't know who to trust with such an important piece of item. Thank God you're here'

'Its no problem uncle, mom said you have an antique piece for her?'he ended it as a question, trying not to let his frustrations show about how late it was getting.

Giving a confirmation his uncle went to the safe in the corner and brought an ornately carved box about the size of a shoe box.

'Take great care of this Amar, this thing does not only contain our family's money but also our history and legacy. Be careful will you?'

'I'll be careful uncle, it's already 7 isn't your flight at 7.30'

'Yes , yes I'll go , dont want to make you late' his uncle finished with a laugh. His entire family knew what a workaholic he was and took great pleasure in teasing him at any given chance.

Seeing his uncle off , he secured the package carefully in the trunk so that it wont jolst too much on the drive and started the car. It was a solid hour travel to his office from his uncle's home and he wanted to shave off whatever minutes he could so he took the smaller streets that wound through the city rather than the highway.

Later he would wish he had paid more attention to the road and to the car that was tailing him rather than speeding. But it had brought him to her and he wouldn't want it any other way.

It was halfway through, on a stretch of road that had sporadically placed houses and rather bare in terms of human activity that it happened. It wasn't that he wasn't paying attention to the road but when he noticed a man laying on the ground with his bike toppled over it was difficult to stop with the way he was speeding. He didn't think he had hit the stranger but it really was too close for his comfort. Berating himself and lamenting the consequences for his momentary lapse in judgement he hurried out of the car to check on the stranger.

It really had been a close call, he observed, if he had been even a second late in applying the breaks , the man would have died and he would have become a murderer. Walking over to the man on the ground he saw no evidence of bleeding , which was good. Crouching down , he laid his fingers to the man's neck to check for his pulse. Noticing that he had a good , strong pulse, he started to try to wake the man. With no amount of him trying getting any results, he decided to call the ambulance.

As concerned with the stranger as he was, he hadn't heard the scuffles coming from behind his car. But a strange loud thud from the near vicinity of his car startled him from his position. More wary now than he had been before , he tried to get up and check what the noise had been about. But before he could even stand fully, he was grabbed by the ankles and pushed to the ground. With his winds knocked out and reasonably confused he saw the man on the ground get up grinning. With a dawning sense of realisation coming upon him he turned his attention to the car to see four men with clothes tied over their faces trying to force open the trunk. He realised It had been a ploy to get him off the car.

It took him longer than he would be willing to admit, to get sense of the situation. Three by the car, forcefully trying to open the trunk, and an another who had tricked him, who now that he focused was swinging his leg back to deliver a kick. The kick landed hard on his abdomen knocking his breath out. Pain for many would cloud their senses but for him it sharpend them. When the next kick contacted with his abdomen he held on to the leg and pulled. Bringing down his assailant he crouched on the top of him and delivered a swift punch to his face. With the following two more the man was knocked out cold. Suddenly hands grappled on the back of his shirt pulling him away from the man. Allowing his weight to freefall on the assailant he got away from the hold and faced his three opponents. Breathing in and out and centering his mind he got into a battle stance.

In his childhood while other children opted for sports or games Amar was always fascinated by martial arts. After much cajoling to his parents he joined them, and never looked back. Fighting came easy to him, he raised through the ranks and joined even more different types of martial arts classes. It gave him peace and happiness that couldn't be found in his life plenty. So this situation of him facing three goons that seemed to be amateurs at best did not panic him as it would any other. They came at him from all sides, trying to overpower him , but he side steps and fights. The fight finishes in mere minutes. Panting heavily he carefully notes what he could about these thugs. From the way they way laid him and opened his car without any power tools he could tell they were well accomplished thieves, but their fighting left a lot to be desired. They weren't fighters , just thieves, good ones but just thieves .

A sudden feeling of a cold hardness pressed against his skull brought him up from his thoughts. With the realisation dawning on him he scolded himself for not checking up on the other thug he knocked out at the start. The gun pressed against him trembled making him more nervous that that idiot would shoot him without even meaning to. Seeing that he had not been shot at already he tried talking to the man who had his life in his hands. 'Listen buddy, there's no need for weapons here. Lower your gun and I'll let you guys go without even letting the police involved. But if you shoot and then got caught it would be life sentence for you. Your whole life would be behing the bars. Think that through. Put your gun away and I'll let you take your guys away. '

The gun pressing even harder against his head made him stop . The hand that was trembling till now steadied. The gun pressed firmly against the back of his head steadied. The click of the guns safety rang across the empty road sounding to him as if it was the conch sounding at his funeral. The safety had been on before , he could have tried to escape but there was no use lamenting about things that could have been. He knew in a few moments he would be no more. As many say, his whole life did not flash before his eyes , but his dreams did. Times he was happy and content in his dreams came to the forefront of his mind. He could totally ignore the gun behind him and he could go out with thoughts that made him smile. More than the fear of death , the wait for when the bullet will tear through him was what scared him. In the silence that made even death noisy , he heard the creak of the trigger being pressed. Then the shot rang through.

The pain he expected was not there, nor was the feeling of either heaven or hell. Slowly opening his eyes which he seemed to have closed , he turned around to see what the hell had happened. There on the ground laid the man who had held a gun to his head , with a bleeding shoulder. The gun laid on the ground and was now being picked up. Following the hand he saw the other held a gun too which seemed to be the source of the shot that he heard. Moving his eyes upwards he stopped short. Because there with guns in her hands, in a plain shirt and pants was the girl he was intimately familiar with. Eyes sharp as razors, beautiful red lips turned into a scowl, a face that shone even when it screamed murderous intent, she was there, every inch a perfect copy of the dreams that he had.

'Deva' his mind whispered, 'Deva'.

He wanted to pinch himself awake but he knew that this was real because even in his dreams he could never get the magnetism that shone off her eyes right, that was being directed at him. He didn't even mind the gun that was now pointed at him, again.

'Who are you , what the hell happend here ' she asked with a voice filled with authority. He found himself smiling hearing her voice. It was just as enchanting as he had always imagined it to be. 'What are you smiling for' she asked again with more force now. His smile had infuriated her.

'Who are you?' He wanted to know, know every single thing about her, things that one shouldn't want to know about a person who holds a gun on them.

'Devika Rajendran , deputy inspector of police , now give me your name or be ready to be dragged off to jail' she stated with a raised eyebrow and a relaxed stance. The confidence that she carried with her, it sent shivers down his spine making him want to needle her so much more, so that he could watch the way she got wound up and let go.

''Amarnath Chandran, software engineer at Mahismathi Industries ' he replied , holding back his true position at MI. He wanted her to look at him as if he was just any other normal guy, not the heir to a multibillion dollar company. It was experience that had him introducing himself as an IT guy rather than his true self. But looking at her he somehow doubted that she would bend down or simper at him. And it was that which made her even more attractive in his eyes.

'Well Mister Amarnath' he cut her off before she could finish the sentence,' its Amar, call me Amar'

If possible she looked even more less impressed by that statement. 'Mister Amarnath, I have to ask you , why was this guy pointing a gun at you' a hint of coldness seeped into her tone.

'I have no idea who these people are , they hijacked my car and tried to steal the antique that i had in my trunk, and trust me no way am i involved in any shady business Devika' and seeing the expression on her face become frostier he hastily added 'Maam, Devika Maam'.

'Cut off the name calling and show me your ID' she neared him and held out her hands.

He didn't know what was going through his mind. It probably was "she's here, she's real" and not "let's go to jail today". His response should have been "sure, let me get it from my car" and not what he said.

'I dont have it on my person at this moment but I could bring it to you by noon today. Your office is at the city headquarters isn't it'

If it had been him at her place , he probably would have done worse than slap the cuffs on his had and dump him in the back of the police jeep with the other thugs. He didn't care much for it, but at least the view was nice, or the back of her that he could see.

It took his mother half an hour to get the news and come to the station with a lawyer to get him out, the time which he spent most enjoyably watching her in her true environment. He seemed to infuriate her, smiling wider every time she managed to catch his look and glare at him. It was good that his mother came when she did or he didn't know what she would have done to him. But as soon as his mother came her entire ire transferred to his mother. Watching both the woman verbally battle he was glad that he wasnt caught in between but he would gladly accept that and more if only she could be in his life. They were two strong women who didn't want to give each other an inch of leeway. Finally Devika stomped towards the holding cell and opened the door with such a force that nobody could mistake her anger for anything else.

But before she could leave he grabbed her wrists making her turn towards him with such an anger in her face. It made him want to go to her and pull her in a tight hug and never let her leave. But he had an apology to deliver. Letting her go he lifted his hands up in an apology.

'I'm sorry I touched you without your permission, I just wanted your attention for a second. I'm sorry that I deceived you, it's my fault. The reason for it is simple. I didn't want to be away from your company just yet. You captivate me Devika, from your confidence to your inner strength that shows just as bright as your beauty, I wanted to spend more time with you. Your strength is beautiful, you are beautiful. Will you please accept my apology as a dinner tonight. Just an apology dinner, nothing else and if you never want to see me again you dont have to'.

Seeing the anger fade away from her face, and a confused look entering in, he smiled.

'Don't need to give me an answer now, tonight 7 PM at Jonas restaurant at the city centre, I'll be waiting, and if you dont show up I'll understand ' leaving the cell he started to walk out of the room and fortunately for him his mother seemed to have left already. Stopping midway he turned back to see her still standing in the same position. 'I don't know what you will decide tonight Devika, but either way have a good life officer'. He turned back and strode out of the room, whatever tonight may bring he was content in a way that he had never been. She may never come looking for him, but knowing that she was real, and that she lived a happy life somewhere was enough for him.

A smirk tugged at his lips, he definitely did notice the blush that stained her cheeks when she was with him.

Thank you @carminavulcana and @mayavanavihariniharini for welcoming me into this wonderful fandom.

Ao3 link

#baahubali #amarendra baahubali #devasena #fan fic

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thescottishbiscuit · 5 years ago

Text

So, I wanted to take today to write something.

It’s about promises.

And waiting.

As some of you know, this week was “Holy Week”. I am not one to really like labels and putting circles around things, people, or events- especially ones so organic and profound as this. But for the purpose of this post, that’s what I’ll use, for familiarities sake.

I often have to make myself sit down and reflect- as busy schedules, mental unclarity, and my own mountains often block from my view The Bigger Picture. But this week, Holy Week, I have been reflecting. I am right now. And this is what I see:

I don’t think it crossed anybody’s mind what Jesus was going to do, and what He was going to go through. Up until this point, they were following Him and learning to trust Him. They believed Him. And- they also had their own ideas about why He was here and what He was going to do. I feel like I sometimes have that perspective of being out-of-focus, in my own life. I find myself THINKING that God absolutely must follow through with something, when in all actuality- He’s not. Not in the way I was thinking of, anyways.

He is orchestrating it in an even better way.

Ok, yeah, great Sara- but that doesn’t smooth over a lot of things that happen, or don’t happen, in life.

Yep. You’re right. I feel this on a very deep, personal level. It seems as if God is a lier, just sitting up there watching us agonize in pain over things we bring to him.

I’ve felt that. More than once.

And yet, I still choose to trust Him.

Why?

Well, because I know Him. You might not feel love for your husband as he slams the door in your face and drive off for an afternoon, but...you know them. And just because I FEEL PAIN and can’t understand- doesn’t mean that I’m smarter than God. I know very little, actually. I don’t know why He lets little kids get cancer, pandemics ruin entire nations, and unjust laws to prevail. But, I do know Him.

And I know, from past experiences, that He is in the position to use pain for good. I will bet my last dime on that. Because I have experienced it. And we all live in such variety, that the time and circumstances used to orchestrate That Good from The Pain is completely unique, and noticed.

When Jesus sat everyone down at Passover and told them that He was going to die, I’m sure everyone’s worlds came crashing down. And not just that- I am pretty sure that they lost some or all their hope and trust in Him. I would have felt a bit cheated- since the idea of someone RISING from the dead was foolish, at best. Why did He bother with all of this- PROMISE all of this- if it was only going to end in death?

Why.

And, it did.

They watched Him literally torn apart, be paraded through town naked and bleeding, and suffocate to death. He breathed His last. And everyone scattered and hid. He was placed in a tomb. And the sun set.

The next day, He was still dead.

This is what I’m wanting to write about. The in between time. The Waiting. The Grey. The Middle. The time of uncertainty. The time where we doubt, and sometimes even give up.

I feel like we have a lot of hopes that are in a grave. Hopes that have seemingly died. Only, ours have been buried for years. Or maybe they are currently in the agonizing process of dying before our eyes.

Maybe they aren’t even buried yet.

And during this time, we are all praying. Waiting. Crying ourselves to sleep. Having our faith and our reason to believe in God tested. And...nothing happens.

What then?

I am pretty sure that Jesus friends were not thinking of the words He had spoken of not so long ago- saying that He would rise again. That He would come back.

They forgot His promise.

Or, didn’t believe it.

Have we been going over His promises for us? Have we been going over them every day, for sustenance?

Maybe.

Maybe we have gotten so tired of them “not working” that we just kind of...quit thinking of them?

Some of us are on the verge of giving up. And maybe, some of us have.

I love the person of Mary Magdalene. You know- the slut from the streets that every man in town recognized. She was now beloved and Jesus close friend. She loved him so much, and just wasn’t having it that He was actually dead. So, early in the morning she went to go and weep at His grave. The grave where all of her hopes, dreams, sense of purpose, forgiveness, and love- her Everything- was buried. And her heart was broken further to see it empty.

Through the cloud of tears and suffocating sobs, I’m sure she wasnt reciting a cute “encouraging” passage from scripture. She wasn’t remembering what Jesus had said about coming back.

She was grieving.

We know what that’s like.

But then...”The Gardener” appeared. He asked her why she was crying. And she told him why, and asked if he could please show her where the love of her life was, so that she could go and continue to mourn the loss of her life.

Of course, we have the luxury of knowing the rest of that story. The Gardener was, in fact, Him. And the tears she was crying turned immediately to those of joy and disbelief. Overwhelming joy.

The promise came, despite the three days of death.

Jesus was alive. And so was she.

Now, for us, we are still mourning. We don’t have a chapter reference for when our personal promises will appear. The “Holy Week” isn’t over yet. It’s only Saturday. Friday, He died. Today, we wake up to death. But, Sunday is coming tomorrow.

I don’t know about you- but if I was to ever give up hope for someone, it would probably be when they died. Could things not be any more bleak?? Seriously.

I know I am in the middle of a “Saturday” in the Holy Week of my life. And it’s consuming, draining, and a lot of times I find myself upset with Jesus. It’s humiliating to not know how to proceed, or if it will even come to pass. It’s painful. And, I think that it’s ok to mourn the unknown. Jesus still came back to His loved ones- even after they had basically lost all of their Hope.

So, I’m just saying- the things in our life that we are all praying for- if it seems like you have reached the end of your rope, know that you havnt. There is still Hope.

And it’s all because of Jesus. ❤️

#holy week #jesus #hope #waiting #prayer #trust #promises

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vanillamilkcloud · 5 years ago

Text

MAKE IT RIGHT || 01

pairing: jungkook x reader ft. taehyung.

word count: 4.3k

please understand that this does not romanticize abuse in any way. there is a lot of time in the recovery from it, not to mention your heart will both seek and reject any form of affection. abuse is highly wrong in any form and you should seek help if you are/know a victim.

warnings: angst, physical violence, fluff, another 500 tons of angst, degredation.

genre: 1950-60s au, [EVENTUAL] smut, fluff, angst.

chapter: 01 || 02

It wasn't uncommon for the nights of yours to be spent alone, turning in bed as the smell of cigarettes burn your nose. The putrid drug had an effect on your body though negative couldnt outweigh positive. Why would you give up the one thing that gave you sanity in this empty household? The mind could only be drawn to a blank whilst the chemicals fogged your mind in a delectable warmth.

Why was it that your body still ached for the one you called your lover? The long haired brunette, almost constantly having the taste of booze upon his lips, driving around on a motorcycle doing god knows what. You couldnt help but let out a quiet sigh. "Stupid boy." That's all he ever was. He only ever showed to your side if he needed a good fuck, or happened to be drunk and needed to yell his frustrations at someone. So perhaps that was how you ended up with a cigarette between your lips right now, red lipstick tainting one end while you sat on the porch stairs in nothing more than a sweatshirt and underwear.

The small puff of white smoke slowly dissipated in the air, [eye color] orbs glancing out to the black Fireflite. This was a bit out of order for what he usually drove. Some of the stuffs of his hair stuck out, light bouncing off the neatly gelled hair he pulled back to a man bun. Though the gel seemed to be gone along with any remainder of the 'lover' part of him. "What are you doing outside _____?" He growled out, making a sigh slip past your lips. The attire of choice and the drug induced high easily meant this wouldn't be a kind night for either party involved. When were the nights pleasant anymore though?

"How much did he have?" You called out, purely ignoring Jungkook. In the driver's seat sat Min Yoongi, the only dealer in town.

"As much as his wallet could make, sure you got him sweetheart?" Brown eyes looked up at you with a faint though genuine concern. It was widely known that Jungkook had gotten violent around you more than once, though his sober state seemed to satiate the pain that brimmed in your heart. Most wondered what it would take until you broke.

The sound of the passenger side opening cut your timing to reply short, following after the elder male. Jungkook's feet didnt seem to work coherently beneath him whilst he attempted to stumble to the door. Your arm slipped around his waist to help; Yoongi took the chance to let himself get away in the vehicle with a screech on the asphalt. The taller, high male let himself push you away without a second thought. "Get away from me you fuckin' whore." He growled.

"Jungkook-"

"Did I stutter or somethin'? Beat feet!" He yelled, your feet forcing you a single step backwards. The feeling of his eyes scanning over you felt incredibly wrong but the tone he chose couldn't help but to make you laugh at him. The way he looked with puffy eyes and greased back hair, bun falling to pieces as you both stood there. It was endearing in a way. Not in the right way though. This laugh from your lips should have sounded like a melody in Jungkook’s ears but drugs were a dangerous thing. His judgement would remain clouded for the night no matter what you both did.

“Last I checked, I also lived here,” You retorted, making your way past the taller to go inside. His eyes seemed to bore holes in your back as if you were the devil. If anything it was a beautiful form of pure destruction in Jungkook’s eyes. The feeling was something you had grown used to feeling numb from; at least for the most part, it still hurt a lot. There was no way to negate the pain though. Your shell of a lover was already cracking once again for that night.

Everything seemed to slow for what was only a few seconds, turning into hours. You had turned in the slightest to be able to see it; Jungkook had taken the bottle he left at a side table in your house before throwing it. The glass had luckily not enough force to break against your skull, though you still stumbled to the floor with a broken laugh. Such a sound didn’t seem right to fall out of your lips, so oddly broken yet full of a darkness that he could not comprehend. You let yourself take the bottle off the floor.

“Well?” The word carried so much more of a weight that shouldn’t have been possible. It took him a moment to give you an eyeroll, then a demented smile. There was nothing saccharine about this anymore. His natural bunny smile had seem estranged as his next words flew with an ease.

“What? You didn’t think I knew you talked shit about me? That you say you love me but also say im the reason for everything!” Jungkook yelled, snatching the bottle from you before throwing it to the floor. The small slivers of red dressed the bottoms of your ankles and shins as the male in front of you looked unphased. He was purely virulent.

“Maybe if you didn’t feel the need to fucking go out and cheat, then end up here only for me to put on all that make up to hide the bruises!” You retorted. Within an instant you had earned another blow, though it wasn’t deserved in the least. Nobody ever truthfully earns the right for their lover’s to treat them as nothing. Unless you happened to be named Jeon Jungkook. The tears streaming down your cheek washed what remains had been left of your makeup, the faint bruises and scratches still covering your skin. It all felt too much once again though there wasn’t a point in showing that to this man in front of you. The slim hand that went to pull your locks back with a hair tie revealed the vibrant hues painting your collar and neck. Some were ‘love’ bites, others were the marks of a choke hold from yet another fight.

Nobody could try and deny that you looked like you were fighting for your life.

“Tch, can’t even hit back.” Jungkook shook his head and you rolled your eyes. How were you suppose to? Even if you tried it was still way more likely that he’d just catch your hands, there was no way you could actually manage to get your hands to get him back. He clearly couldnt remember the times you had tried. So there was only one other option that seemed to fit in your head for the moment. Your knee went upwards at a straight perpendicular to collide with his groin, and he hunched over while you rubbed your eyes. It was a new sight in your eyes to see him as the one that was being on the ground. Jungkook’s form was refreshing in a noxious way.

[eye color] orbs looked down at him with a dull glow. It seemed to be something that you held in that threatened to bubble to the surface. Months and years of screaming, hands upon your skin in a pure route destruction, it was bound to pour over. So why wasnt there a better timing than right now? Why did he have such an insistence on keeping you around? The questions ran your head to a mush and back once again while you attempted to put yourself together.

The telephone was your first thought as your legs helped carried you to the bedroom. Jungkook had just started to get up though it clearly meant he'd be there in only moments. In the years you knew the male you had memorized a few phone numbers, one of which was the house, and the other that Kim Taehyung stayed in. Spinning through the numbers had wasted the few moments you had before the door slammed open.

"Hello? Who is it?" Taehyung's voice rang loud and clear, while Jungkook only looked furious. He didnt even bother to hang up before he was on you. Your attempts wiggle away were futile and his weight hurt just enough to make you stop, one hand around your wrist and he ass sitting on your thighs. There wasn't a way to get yourself out.

"Lil'sewer rat really called Taehyung? WowWwW~!! I'm so scared." He taunted, no care in the world that Taehyung knew fully well how to get to town, and their house.

"Get off!" You yelled, tears stinging in the corners of your eyes. Everything felt so incredibly wrong. Jungkook had leaned down to let himself whisper in your ear, that demented grin making your body shake more.

"Wouldn't you love to have him know ya's virgin? Golly bet he'd love to listen on in. Sure’d be pretty." He chuckled darkly as you couldn’t help but to try anything you could under him. The hold on your body was way too strong for comfort though and there wasn’t a hope for anything to get him off. Your ears were only faintly able to pick up the sound of the telephone once more. It had only come just as you screamed.

“I’m coming over, hang on.” There was a click, and Jungkook looked as if he had no care. This was the moment you had realized there wasn’t any sliver of love left in this state. How were you suppose to fight this? You only looked up at him with your eyes reflecting the lie of love you two shared. There wasn’t any more pretending to be happy with him. Jungkook’s head went down to press feather light kisses along your neck, making you tense though he couldn’t tell that. Nothing of this felt like how he promised. Your lover had always promised youd feel like a treasure, that nothing would be pressured. Instead you felt like a toy that he sought to break. Since when did love have to start feeling like a poison to you?

The question rang clear in your mind though it came to pass with the sharp snap of someone getting hit. That someone, was Jungkook. It took you a moment to register Taehyung’s arms around your torso and pulling you behind him. Such a touch was gladly welcomed in your heart though your body could only tense even more. Jimin’s arms let go as he could tell you weren’t comfortable. Taehyung on the other hand, he seemed to have a few words to exchange with your so called boyfriend. You looked up with tears still streaming your cheeks. It felt so damned wrong to want to protect Jungkook though you knew why more than well enough. He was where your heart remained regardless of what he could ever do to you. This was where Taehyung and Jimin were blind because any outsider would think there wouldnt be any love.

“Isn’t it the damned hero? Daddy-O couldn’t stay out of someone’s range.” Jungkook laughed, wobbling as he stood up. The male let himself lean against the wall before there was a half-assed attempt to hit Taehyung. All of the drugs didn’t provide assistance though as they served to only obscure his vision.

“What’s it to you?” Taehyung retorted. Jimin shifted slightly to stand between the two of them as a protective thing, and you took the chance to run to Jungkook’s side and hug him as tight as you could. There was an obvious amount of confusion between the other two males. Jungkook on the other hand looked even more annoyed, lacing his hand into your hair before pulling you off roughly. “Don’t fucking touch me when your body guards are here.”

“But Ju-”

“Get the hell OUT!” He yelled, Jimin blocking a punch that should have been directed at you.The orange haired male looked at you just after he stumbled, taking a moment before Taehyung held Jungkook back. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with the relationship and it wasn’t because of you. Taehyung felt his body on such a pure edge; it frightened him. How have you dealt with this for so long? This wasn’t the way to treat your girl no matter who you were. You let yourself fall against Jimin in the response of.. whatever Taehyung said. He took you up into his arms before taking a bag, stuffing whatever clothes of yours and Jungkook’s that he could find. Jungkook’s clothes only would serve as a strange comfort while the two decided they were taking you in at this point.

With a faint awareness you were once again outside though you felt a bit disconnected. It made sense that you were once again outside though at the same instance you hadn’t recalled yourself getting there. You also were not walking so it made sense. You looked to Jimin who seemed just as distraught as you did. Taehyung was nowhere for quite some time though. You attempted to pull yourself up on two feet, though it was a shaky stance for the most part. In an instance you were once again on the ground with tears racking through your body. The mere movements made your body sore but you couldn’t help it. There was no hope in trying to act like you were okay as the truth was that you were more broken than ever; the question remained to jimin and taehyung, how had they not noticed? All the half-assed smile and when you’d tense when Jungkook touched you, or your obvious nervousness when he looked at you wrong. It had only come to click in their minds now.

Jimin pulled you into his chest despite the obvious way that you didn’t seem to want it. It seemed to show that you needed to feel like something could protect you though. If it was Jimin and Taehyung, then so be it since your boyfriend was doing a shit job.

“Let’s go!” Taehyung’s voice cut through the air like a knife. Jimin took you up into his arms, both of you briefly glancing back to your friend. Blood ran from his lip and his cheek looked swollen. It was the most either of you two could see before you bolted from the yard. It had only occurred to you how they did not seem to come in a car.

“Where’s the ride?” You asked gently, your voice hoarse from the crying and muffled by Jimin’s neck. The male had taken you onto his back for the easiest solution to running.

“Impound, we got busted last week.” Taehyung answered with a light laugh mixed between his pants. You were put down carefully as it was determined they were a safe distance from your house. With a gentle hand you took the bag Jimin grabbed, pulling a pair of pants out before slipping them on in the closest alley. You then pouted a little while examining Taehyung. The cost of your protection meant the injury of someone else. His honey skin was dotted with blood that you had no idea of it was his or Jungkook’s. Skin was obviously broken on both of his knuckles, then his lip was busted along with one of his eyes slightly swollen.

“______, don't worry about me. Please.” Taehyung flinched under your touch before Jimin pulled you back lightly. “It’s only a shiner! Y’know I’ll be okay.”

“It’s not that simple- You know how he hits.” Jimin cut in, pulling you into him as you started to shake once more. It wasn’t as violent as before but it still had you remembering previous things that you didn’t want. Nobody necessarily wanted to recall abuse though either. So much of your body ached with the same pain that coursed through Taehyung’s. It was making you want to fall once more though you wouldn't let yourself. Taehyung took the bag in the meantime from Jimin, slipping his arms around you before the smaller male took you out of your thoughts.

“I’m gonna get the gang up, you two go back to the pad.” Jimin said, weary about his leaving. There was still a chance that Jungkook had followed after you three. He was also in the best condition to try and act as a decoy. You let a small nod happen before Taehyung crouched, in agreement with what Jimin had already said. He gave a small laugh as you slipped you bag on and climbed upon his back. It seemed more of an instinct to hide your face in Taehyung’s neck before you could register it. The male didn’t mind on the other hand. Jimin gave you a warm smile, before waving and running off towards the outskirts. Taehyung walked slowly as he continued his path towards home.

There wasn’t much in the remainder of your journey to Taehyung’s home. It was more of a welcomed silence filled with the sounds of crickets and street lights that had hurt your eyes. You would whine at the occasion though it only seemed to make you both laugh. Taehyung more than welcomed the sound even if it was a broken melody to his ears. So much had happened between you and Jungkook, yet nobody saw. How was one to not blame himself? The raven was a bit better at concealing his emotions than you but he still hasn't managed fully. You knew that he considered you as a sister, at least that’s what you preferred to say. It was obvious Taehyung felt more than that though you couldn’t quite place your finger on it for the longest time. There was no harm in not knowing though. You both seemed content with it.

Over the next few weeks, nobody allowed Jungkook near you. He had asked multiple times so he could give you a much deserved apology. Nobody thought that there was anything that could be a bigger lie, even you. Your body looked like it had recovered besides the few scars he had left previously. It seemed though that your mind was much farther behind. The boys didn’t try to hug you or anything still, unless it was Taehyung. With such a long absence of affection you seemed to get adjusted with the male easily. He happily let you stay as close as you could to him as well, Jimin sometimes joining in on the affection despite the rest of the gang teased them for being gay. None of it was meant to be an actual insult though as they had understood once Jimin explained what happened that night.

“Darlin! Where ya at!” Taehyung called and you couldn’t help but laugh at his fake accent. You peeked out from the hall as you had just finished washing your face. One of Jungkook’s older hoodies donned your figure though both had forgotten who it really belonged to. The elder just came to hug you, only to squish your cheek playfully before running away once again. You let out a soft laugh from the kind action. Taehyung had grown to love teasing you with the affection you sought. There wasn’t ever a complaint from it though as both of you thought it was fun. You took a moment longer to make sure that your face was clear soap before running down the hall after him. Taehyung had carefully hidden behind the door of his bedroom, smiling warmly as you squeaked the appearance of his arms around you. He pulled the two of you onto his bed before his larger form seemed to dwarf yours. You didn’t mind it though as you curled up into him, letting out a quiet hum while you relaxed.

“How’d everything go today?” You asked gently, the topic being left vague for the purpose of him filling in with whatever he wanted. Taehyung knew at the same time though that you wanted to know about Jungkook.

“He almost got into it with Yoongi today. Otherwise we were all okay. There was a few skirmishes with Jungkook and some other gang members,” Taehyung’s nimble fingers found their purchase on your hips, drawing soothing shapes through the material of your clothing. “As much as I want to say that he’s getting better, he isn’t doll. We all know you wanna help but we dont want you in the middle of that all. Once he’s not so fiesty he can come over with me okay?”

You let a small pout pass your lips with the words, though you understood why at the same time. This wasn’t meant to be mean but rather to protect you from Jungkook’s more violent tendencies.

Taehyung hummed quietly as he felt you move yourself closer to his chest. No protest came from the male, letting you bask in his warmth. You had to lean up slightly to press a kiss to his jawline. The small action seemed so much more intimate than the previous things. Perhaps Taehyung was looking into it more than he needed to. It didn’t seem to matter much though as his lips found purchase on yours. You seemed a bit shocked by it at first, pulling back to look up at him properly. He seemed to be flushed with the realization of his own actions. You didn’t bother to say anything though. Instead, you pressed your lips back against his once more.

He was the one to remained shocked this time, before he relaxed into the feeling of your lips against his. There was a familiar taste of strawberry chapstick on his tongue now though it seemed completely new all at once. His own lips had the familiar taste of tobacco from cigarettes, something that you hated but though it was much more delightful in your opinion now. You let yourself drown in the feeling of someone actually caring for you as your mind seemed to race. There was no way this was correct in any form but you also couldn’t find to say this was wrong. Perhaps using Taehyung for your own happiness was wrong, or having you pulled onto his lap was wrong. But you didn’t fight back with it.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Taehyung asked quietly, parting from your lips with a pant. Every fiber of his being said to stop this now but he had wasted so much time in simply staying by Jungkook’s side that he didn’t care anymore. None of the ruckus outside mattered, or the door opening. You still gave him a gentle nod before relaxing into his touch once more. His teeth nipped at your lower lip with a quiet hum and your lips parted with the instinct. The yell of Jungkook’s name didn’t register in your mind before you and Taehyung were ripped apart. You had looked at the hand around your arm only to end up connecting the sounds. Of course you had to be oblivious until Jungkook found you kissing Taehyung. He looked a bit softer than he had the weeks previous, hair still just long as curly as before while his features looked at you with softened eyes.

“We’ll talk about this.” He said gently, though his eyes were lit with an obvious fire. You stepped backwards out of of the room before carrying yourself out of the door. This wasn’t how you wanted things to start and the look between the two had made you deathly scared. Outside Jimin and Hoseok were brusied but just starting to getting up, especially with seeing you dart from the yard. They had an idea of what was happening seeing that Jungkook had made it passed the two of them.

“_____!” Jimin yelled out while following after you. Hoseok took himself inside to clear the scene before the injuries were too bad.

You carried yourself as far as your legs could push you, then even farther than that, your feet burning from all the running. There were a few spots in town that only you and Jungkook had gone to so your mind pushed you towards the closest one. It was just past town to a large field, full of sunflowers that you had insisted on stealing to put in your yard on your date here. The memory seered in your mind while you crumpled into the grass in tears. He had been so much more peaceful then and then the past few weeks seemed to be a test for you both. You pouted more as you couldn't think of any recent time that your heart hadnt been in pain, though it seemed like this was your fault for once. "I'm sorry.." You whispered. [ Hair Color ] locks fell in front of your eyes. Every fiber of your body radiated in pain and you knew that you couldnt get up. Your only hope remained to be Jungkook coming to save you.

Minutes after hours passed by as you heard police sirens, and the sounds of cars being driven too fast through town. The sounds were awfully faint up until you heard a rumble. You couldn't figure out why it made you no difference to you at first. That was until you felt Jungkook's arms around your torso, him falling onto his knees while his head laid on your shoulder. He didn't say anything for a bit as he didn't know if you would end up pushing him away. But he was more than delighted to see you lace one of your hands between his own.

"______," He murmured, worried about you for once in what felt like years. Jungkook's tone perhaps hurt more than it should. "I'm sorry." He whispered.

"It's alright." The two words were all you felt you could manage at the moment. It wasn't the easiest to try and figure out to say to him and he could tell. His lips brushed over the bruise on your neck, anger coursing through him as his grip tightened a bit too much. You let out a shaky whine before he quickly released. "I'll… I'll make this right." He murmured.

#jungkooksmut #oldschoolau #taehyungsmut #fluff #btsfluff #bts #bunnyboyisntmuchofabunny #taehyungthehoe #btsfanfic #1950s bts

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total-distraction-babes · 5 years ago

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Every year I throw an amazing New Years Party. It's what I always wanted, I wanted to be known for them and I have actually been introduced to someone and have them go, "oh, wait. You're the girl who throws those cool New Years Eve parties?" And it's lit me up from the inside because, yes, that is me, I'm so glad people talk about them and want to come to come to them.

Except not this year. It's the night of the 29th and I just don't feel like celebrating. I've just had my first "are you doing anything for NYE?" text and had to say no. I can't think of why I would want to celebrate.

The thing that makes my New Years Eve parties great is that it's not just drinking and playing games, I get people together. We reflect on our year, I make traditional dishes from all over the world and get them to partake in a bunch of different traditions that I've learned and picked up. We write a list of the things we want to accomplish, we envision what next year will look like. And it's always so fun and so hopeful.

It's just, I feel like I've run out of hope this year. Sounds awful. If you knew me you'd know how shocking that is. I've been called Christmas Spirit personified, I've been considered the one that brought hope into people's lives, there are people who said they believe in magic because of me. And I'm only like that because that's who I wanted to be. I wanted to be hope, light, magic and the girl who could brighten any mood. I was always a sad child, I wanted to be different. Me not being hopeful is like seeing a puppy who doesn't want to play.

I feel like that sad, lonely child again. I feel so tired of fighting it. I don't even want to talk to people, I know I have friends who care, more friends than I know what to do with but I don't want to bring them down. I sent my best friend a message a week ago about this but they haven't even opened it. I can't think of a reason to want to celebrate this year and I'm trying to be hopeful for 2020 but it's just not there.

I keep thinking of how my sister didn't like her Christmas present, how my brother didn't come back for Christmas dinner, how my parents seem to fight more and more, how my sister's boyfriend is cheating on her again and he's going to break her heart, how my main friends that I'm closest to have moved away and how we hardly talk anymore.

I keep thinking about how I just want to drink until I vomit and/or pass out, I keep thinking about how I just want to take sleeping pills again because then at least everything shuts up for a minute. I keep thinking how much better off I would be if I wasnt here and I don't want to think that way. I want to be happy, I want to be hopeful, I want to be better. I still have nightmares sometimes, not the screaming night terrors I used to have years ago but the nightmares still happen. Fewer and further between but when they happen I turn into a ghost. It's been years. I don't want to be that sad, lonely child again. I've gone through too much to go back there.

I know it's my fault. If I want things to change its up to me to change them. No one made me like this, I just need to make better decisions. And I'm working on that.

I've only drunk to escape about three times this year and I've not drunk at all in the past six months. I've not cut myself on purpose at all this year. I've not restricted this year other than an odd few weeks I had to pull myself out of. I've talked with friends more and opened up. I've learned to love myself which helped a lot, so many of my issues came from hating myself. See, I'm getting better. And slow progress is better than no progress.

It still breaks my heart that I don't have it in me to celebrate one my favourite holidays or to put on one of my parties that I love so much. I just don't know what to do if the hope isn't there. I want to find my hope before the year ends. Maybe I just need to make a list of all the great things that happened this year and listen to my 2020 playlist for awhile and get myself hyped up.

Part of me wishes that someone will surprise me with something on New Year's Eve. Maybe one of my friends will come back into town and I'll wake up with them in my room or maybe my brother will attempt to bake the cake I make every year. I don't know. I'm already feeling better after getting this all out.

Things are going to be okay. I always believe that, I still believe that. I guess that means I still have some hope within me.

#sorry for venting #i do feel better #this is an online diary #that doctor who quote 'where theres tears theres hope'#that one really impacted me and everytime i cry i remember it and it helps l #im going to be okay

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strugglingbeingateen · 5 years ago

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Weightloss

Weightloss is a bitch! And the only people that can understand what im talking about are the people who have been through it or are currently in the same boat as me. So far I have managed to lose 4 stone. Im proud of it but im not happy yet.

I have been told through out my life by various people that im not good enough because of how i look and it has shaped me into a person i no longer like.

As a child i didnt care that i was fat and the other kids were thin, i accepted myself for who i was, not how i looked. Unfortunately small minded people didnt and those who were too scared to be unpopular because they are scared their real opinion isnt cool enough decided to join in on bullying me and other kids with similar problems.

As the years went by what started off as one comment that stuck in my head, became many and then before i knew it i was depressed.

Yes, depression is a word people throw around here and there and others just think theyre attention seeking but the thing is, i had been such a happy person my entire life i never thought i could be depressed and then one day it hit me.

I felt stupid after months and months of wondering why i felt numb and why i would cry almost every day in my room alone, i realised i was depressed. I remember when it happened, i was pushing away all my friends with out even really knowing why, being horrible to them but deep down i knew i wasnt good enough to be their friend and i remember sitting alone in my room like i did every time i wasnt at school, id just lay in the dark and it was like a lightbulb going off in my head and i was just like...well shit.

Im not the type pf person who likes to share emotions or my feelings and im way to lazy to hand write a diary so this is what im going for, i dont care if people read this or if it just sits unread, when i have finished losing this weight i want to know how i felt through it all, because its easy to forget.

Anyhoo, it took me a long time to pull myself out of the depression and the way i did it was i started walking, this was the start of my first serious diet, i lost 3 stone on this diet. I was getting very very over weight and i decided the cause of all my problems was that i wanted to be thin and i wasnt.

What started off as a 2 mile walk a day soon turned to 4 and then before i knew it i was walking 18 miles a day, running 1 and a half and cycling 6 to 8. ( by this point it was the summer holidays) everything hurt and i was hungry all the time because i went from eating 4 peoples intake of calories a day to 1 and that shifted a lot of the weight but as the diet went on i got tired of doing so much every day and waking up feeling and looking the same at least in my eyes, so i quit.

I put on 2 of the 3 stone i had lost and i didnt even care. I had decided that being fat was who i was and who i am meant to be. Up until this christmas, i was around my family who are all relatively healthy and i was saw us all sitting and eating in the mirror next to the dining table and i just felt lost, everyone smiling and laughing while i sat staring at this reflection of me thinking how disgusting i was and how unhappy i was again and its all because i was too stupid to cut down and change the exercise to fit what i needed and a realistic goal each day instead of quitting entirely.

So i swore, this new year i am going to lose the weight and even though over the past 7 ish months there have been bumps in the road and a couple times where i quit, i got back up and am now 4 stone lighter than i was at the beginning of the year.

I know many people have secret opions on overweight people and some not so secret, i know a lot of people who call fat people ugly when im around and i just turn to them and say ‘being fat and being ugly arent mutually exclusive’ and i watch ad their face falls and they realise that there is a fat person standing right next to them, i then watch as they struggle to find the right words to say and stutter and i remember with this one guy i just said ‘look, i know im fat’ he looks so confused, he was stunned as if he thought i was completely clueless and he said ‘you know?’ And i remember laughing and saying ‘of course i know, i have eyes and a brain, i can put two and two together just as easy as a thin person’ he looked to confused and i just remember how funny his expression was and i just said ‘i cant believe you didnt think that i knew i was fat, even if i never looked in the mirror, the size of my jeans or down, the people shouting fatty at me would clue me on’

In my opinion, being fat and ugly are two different things, i think someone being ‘ugly’ is just an opinion each person has about different people, some to do with looks and other personality. I think beauty really is in the eye of the beholder because i remember this girl who was my friend, i thought she was absolutely stunning, so perfect and just amazing and then my brother genuinely didnt find her attractive in any way shape or form, he said ‘i dont know why you think she is so pretty, she is bland and is as thick as two short planks’

I defended her over and over again until i saw her true face, not the one that you might think, she didnt take off makeup and look completely different or anything, she was a natural beauty, i mean we fell out, actually its a bit more complicated than that, i fell out with a mutual friend and no one asked but she chose the mutual friends side, me and the mutual friend just ignored each other but this other girl, she used me to make herself popular, she spread lies and rumours about me and got her new found ‘friends’ to torment me, every day they would ask me questions about rumours that i didnt even know about and they harrassed me, she just stood there and watched, sometimes she would laugh but she would never get involved, i guess she was too scared or was telling herself she wouldnt stoop that low and bully me but the way i saw it was she enjoyed watching me be harrassed and embarressed and tormented every day, where ever i went and she wouldnt speak to me when i spoke to her, she just ignored me like we had never been best friends, like she thought she was better than me. Like i wasnt good enough. I ended up spending more time at home than in school just because i couldnt get out of bed in the morning because i knew what was waiting for me at school. My mum soon figured out what was happenening and wanted me to go to the head of year so i agreed, i would but i wasnt saying any names, not only because i didnt want to be a snitch but a part of me still had hope that we would be friends again and i didnt want to hurt her. I ended up moving forms from the one she was in but that still didnt stop them, my parents started getting annoyed that i wouldnt go to school and they would shout at me and every day was a struggle. I just couldnt believe that my so called best friend of 8 years could change into this bitch. If it wasnt for my other friend i wouldnt have gotten through it.

Once i saw this side of her i no longer saw her as beautiful, i still knew people would and i couldnt deny she was pretty but being beautiful means inside and out in my opinion and the only thing she was inside was rotten and she still is. Its been over two years now and im not in school anymore im in college, the people that bullied me, some go to my college and they laugh and slag me off when they see me but luckily the girl stayed on for sixth form. Me and the mutual friend actually made up a little over a year ago and actually see each other quite often, when me and the bitch originally fell out, i remember people that were mutual friends asking me why and i said because shes a bitch and they would defend her, i have seen all of them and each one of them have appologised and said they were sorry because now they realise how right i was. The original mutual friend me and the bitch fell out about actually hates her now and i have just realised recently that these so called ‘friends’ the bitch have, dont really care and when they go off and live their own lives, they will leave her behind because they dont really care and this bitch i have heard she has no plans for the future, not that there is anything wrong with that but it just goes to show that popularity may matter to her now but what happens when there is no one left to be your friend and to show off to.

Anyway after all this i have become a better person, not the best version of myself yet but im getting there, i have learned what really matters to me and who really matters and i dont want to be thin anymore, i want to be fit, healthy because the trusth is no matter how much i want to deny it being overweight is unhealthy, both mentally and physically. The reason i know im going im going to get where i want this time is because i am doing it for me, because i want to feel and look good, not to show off to others or take revenge on this bitch.

Anyways i know this probably wont be read, but in case it is, i cant be bothered checking on spelling and grammar so sorry if its a terrible read i needed to get that off my chest

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kashidoodles · 6 years ago

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Permission to use above images and personal story were granted by my friend, Faith, pictured above.

In honor of my friend who is not on tumblr, and since it is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I want to spread awareness through her story. Please share this!! <3

I know this site has some issues occasionally where maladaptive coping mechanisms for mental health issues are sometimes romanticized. But the truth of people like Faith is that these ways of dealing with your feelings and the person you become is not your friend. I’m paranoid posting this because I don’t want people to think I’m trying to get attention by using her recovery story, because a lot of media portray (inaccurately or in bad taste) eating disorders for that reason and I would never try to add to that. I also didn’t want to put her picture up in case I trigger anyone, but honestly, this was and is her reality. It’s a lot of people’s realities and I think it’s an important part of her story. There’s a lot of kids on tumblr that are exposed to people’s personal soap boxes, some of those people mean well, some don’t, but regardless of intentions they can and will influence others. This can include introducing, enforcing, reinforcing, or romanticizing unhealthy or extremely harmful ways of dealing with mental health, seeking validation for their feelings, or body image issues.

I don’t want to see anyone try to abuse negative tactics in general, but especially because they saw someone else doing it and making it look like a positive thing. And I want to say that I’m SO proud of her for recovering (spoiler alert lmao) and being the strong woman she is. I’m inspired every day from her perseverance, intelligence, and her entire view of the world. We’ve been through a lot together, and when something bad happens to me she always asks what I’m doing to cope first and foremost (and when we lived together she’d shove a chocolate bar under my bedroom door lmao) She taught me to be more like me, embrace myself the way I wish I had known how to my entire life, including my flaws and quirks. I learned how to function through my own negative feelings, how I can help myself (and not pretend my mental health issues don’t exist) because of her. I didn’t even know I needed to recover from past abuse and traumas until I talked to her. I owe her so much, I’m a significantly better person because of her being in my life. And to think she was almost never in my life at all is terrifying. But that could be someone else’s reality, so it’s important to me that people understand eating disorders. I know this is a lot of words, but please reblog this!! <3 <3 I truly believe her story should make it’s way around both for awareness, and as a light to those that eating disorders affect!! <3

Faith’s Story (Written by her on FB, again, permission to post on tumblr was granted by her):

“Since it's National Eating Disorder Awareness week I just wanted to raise some awareness for eating disorders and share my story- I debated heavily whether or not I wanted to post this. I don't like throwing my dirty laundry out there and I don't want people to think that this what this is. I'm not looking for anyone's attention, pitty, or validation; I don't need it. I'm happy and healthy now, that's what matters. I posted this to raise awareness about eating disorders, what they're about, and to give hope to anyone else struggling. I suffered from an eating disorder from a fairly young age, triggered by an abusive parent. But even after the parent was removed from my life I was still left with the eating disorder. I used restriction as means to control the memories, flashbacks, and trauma. Focusing on superficial things like my weight and calories was less painful than thinking about what had happened to me. It felt like I was constantly in and out of treatment during my teenage and young adult years. I always went through treatment with it feeling like it wasnt really helping me, and me just waiting for it to be over. After my last bought of treatment I accepted that I would never fully recover. I was physically stable and healthy and living a normal life, but I was still mentally controlled by my eating disorder everyday. No one expected me to get better. I didn't expect me to get better. I learned to live with it. I felt my family was always on edge waiting for the relaspe that would be the end of it all. And deep down in my head I figured one day my eating disorder would eventually kill me; and many times I hoped it would. I accepted the fact that my eating disorder would always be my evil little pal who was always there for me. It wasn't untill I met my current boyfriend that it all changed. He got me into the life of health and fitness. At first it was incredibly difficult. I was surrounded by triggers, and always came home from the gym crying because I saw myself in the mirror or I thought people were judging me. But he kept supporting me, keeping me motivated to fuel by body to help build muscle and support workouts. I was fortunate enough to have supportive friends who were there for me at my best and my worst. Slowly, going to the gym became easier, working out became less triggering and eating became more rewarding. I can now proudly say that I am fully recovered. It definitely didn't happen overnight but as years went by I continued to heal in ways I didn't think we're possible. I am way above my target weight and happy with my body. I know my eating disorder would have been horrified to see what I have become and I'm glad because I would have never found happiness with that attitude. I never thought I would learn to love and appreciate my body and what it can do. I never feel guilty about eating, I can enjoy any kind of food, and I don't feel bad about it. I learned how food could FUEL my body, and help me accomplish new and better goals. I'm not triggered or bothered my mirrors or reflections. I did what I and everyone else thought was impossible; I recovered. I'm not posting this to say that my journey is the way for everyone, but to say that full recovery is possible. There's a way for everyone to recover, and it IS possible and you ARE worth it. Whatever you are going through, the potential to overcome it is within you, no matter how hopeless life may feel. I would also like to add that eating disorders come in ALL shapes and sizes. You cannot tell how healthy someone is just by looking at them. Only 10% of people diagnosed with eating disorders are actually underweight. Being at a normal, or above average weight does not make an eating disorder any less serious; eating disorders can still kill those who appear healthy. Anorexia is not the only eating disorder. So is bulimia, binge eating disorder, EDNOS (eating disorder not other specified) and more. I understand comparison photos are controversial because they can spread the stigma that eating disorders can be visably seen, so please don't let this post steer you in that direction. My photos are here to share my story and apart of me embracing who I have worked so hard to become. If anyone has any questions at all, is struggling, or just needs someone to talk to my inbox is ALWAYS open. If you're worried you might have an eating disorder please feel free to take this free, anonymous screening test- https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/screening-tool “ And as she said she is always willing to talk to anyone, so if you would like to just message me and I can get you into contact with her <3

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ask-the-friendly-ink-demon · 6 years ago

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Terrors Of The Inky Past Prologue Part 2- New Life

A/N: hereee is part 2 of the four part prologue to my au!, sorry that this is coming out slightly longer than i intended it to be, i honestly didint know what else to put onto here, but yeah, sorry if this sounded like it doesn't make sense, making this took a real toll off of me while being sick, and i shouldn't even be on here while im sick af but oof i needed to finish this cause i need to at leash do something about my au oofs. also, this was made in april 11th and finished on may 21st

"if one were to perish within battle or were to die in a accident, how would you all feel? would you feel upset, sad, or even angry? what if it was a loved one? what if it was someone you really care for? what if.... you could bring them back from the dead with a little help...?" --- White, white and bright lights were all that he could see, he covers his face as he groans, the figure emitting a "ughhhh..." as he looks around, seeing a tall but lanky figure, the taller figure turns around, and knelt down to the other's level, and held out it's hand, the smaller average size figure looks down at the hand, and then back at the other, before slowly reaching out, and taking the other's hand, the tall lanky figure smiled as the two were fused into one, followed by a slow flashing explosion, Henry wakes up with a loud gasp as he jolts from bed, sweating as he held his chest, breathing as he pants, he looks at himself, his eyes widening "W-wait... w....what.... hap-" he turns around to see the door opening, and his eyes widen at who he saw, a familiar figure, a woman in her early 30s, having dark colored hair, with blue teal eyes, and having a gown on, Linda yawned as she rubbed her eyes "Henry...? why are you up so ear- huh?!" she was cut off by the other hugging her tightly, henry, softly whimpered as linda looked, and felt like she understood "Hey... hey it was only a nightmare okay?" she said as she rubbed his head "come on, you don't wanna be like that for the studios tomorrow right?" she said as henry's eyes widen, "wait... studio?" he asked as she nodded "yeah, remember? you promised joey you'd help him with something about bendy?" she asked as henry blinked, before a foggy memory opened up in his head as he rubbed his head "uh, yeah, yeah um what time is it?" he asked as she looked at the clock "oh! well you woke up from your nightmare just in time, the studio opens in a few hours, should be enough time for you to get ready!" she said as henry nodded, before he broke the hug, and watched her walk off to get ready for her own job, as henry can finally breathe as he rubs his own head, he feels like his whole body was hurting "ughhhh...." he groans as he rubs his own head, he decided to see if he looked any different, he shrugged and decided to see if anything was different, taking a moment as he walked into the bathroom, he decided to look at himself in the mirror, and he stares at his own reflection in shock. he noticed that he looked much younger than before, maybe around his late 20s, he noticed how he had a light stubble and brownish colored hair, with a orange like color near the top of it, even his hair color was different than he remembered, including his eyes, they were a nice, calm peaceful shade of green, he also looked more taller than he remembered, being around 5'7ish feet, though he somehow knew he was gonna get much taller in the near future for some reason, he looks at his own body shape, it looked much more healthy and althetic than worn and tired like he was in the studio, he then began to think back to when he and bendy were fused together, he stares in shock as he remembers joey pulling the lever "he.... he used the failsafe... he did it on purpose..... im.... im the only one who knows what happen, i don't even know if joey even knows it or what he even looks like.... god.... god damn it" he rubs his own head, he should feel glad that he's not in the loop anymore but, he's not, he's gonna be right back in the studio BEFORE it went to hell, and before the toons even existed, but for some odd reason he just knows that today's gonna be different for him, he just has a slight feeling about it, none the less he decides to get ready to go to the studio as he starts to think about what exactly happened. a couple of hours later henry reached the studios, he looks to see the difference between that building and the house as he tries to think about what the different was... aside from the fact that it was a actual studios and not a story build place in a house, before he could even question it, he yelps as he felt someone touch his shoulder "oh! sorry there henry old chum!" a familiar voice said as henry turns around, and his eyes widen, standing there, was none other than joey drew, instead of the old frail man he saw with a wheelchair and cane, he was more younger, with smooth, but slightly messy jet black hair, he wore a blue shirr, with a red vest, and sported a bowtie, along with cartoon like gloves that he made himself, his pants were a brownish color, and his shoes looking fancy, overall he had a snazzy looking appearance with his dark jacket on him, it did'int help that henry could see his strange yellow dark glasses, overall he was a bit frighten to see a more younger joey, he noticed as he takes his glasses off, his green and purple colored eyes staring at him with a confused look as his eyebrows furrowed "you alright henry? i haven't seen you this upset ever since halloween, oh now that was a fun time! sammy sure scared you good did he?" he said as he chuckles a bit. The Cartoonist on the other hand, was far but joining in, he was shocked to see this, but he does raise his own eyebrows at that, before somehow a memory formed up on his head "oh.... heh yeah, sammy did scared me pretty good did he?" he said as joey seem to laugh "ya darn right he did! now come on pal, we got some work to do!" he said as he unlocked the door, and the two walked into the studio. henry was..... shocked to see the inside of the studio, the walls were different, and cleaner, and it seems to be more lively, and the joey drew's studio logo wasnt even there, it said instead "HENRY AND JOEY DREW'S STUDIOS" somehow, he smiled at that, he looks at the nice reddish color the walls had, and how the style of the wood seems to be more like a oak color, joey seems to notice "enjoying the style change henry? i knew ya would, wally and thomas are good at doing their job, but norman helped out with the new logo change, it was fun seeing all of them work together, getting along, you should of seen it" he said as henry looked over, nodding "yeah, it does look good, you and the others seem to really did a good job with it" he said as joey seemed to grin "Well we got some time to kill before the others get here, wanna see what wonders we can come up with today?" he said as the cartoonist nodded, while chuckling, actually slightly forgetting about why he was so scared in the first place "heh, sure then joe, let's see what we can find out today" he said as the two started to chat while walking, all while henry was attempting to see what other differences he could find in the studio. a couple of hours later have passed as some more people got in to do their jobs, henry greeted sammy and jack, who were chatting, before they noticed henry, sammy looked taller than almost anyone in the studio, having a height of 6 feet, his hair having a mix of brown and blonde, his blue eyes darting those henry as he putted his hands in his brown jacket's pockets, tapping his dark colored shoes on the ground as jack notices henry too, he was the shortest, and possibly the youngest, being around 19 years old, and having a height of only 5 feet, having messy brownish hair, and wearing a nice hat, his joyful green eyes beaming with joy as he smiles at henry, before the two both waved as henry went over to them, with sammy being the first to speak out, his voice giving henry some familiar vibes "heya there henry, your here early for a change?" sammy asked as the cartoonist shrugged, but nodded "i guess so, just giving you two a heads up that joey wanted all of us over for a meeting again" he said as he nodded, while jack groaned "again? why do we do these things?" he said, before henry chuckled, even though jack was around 19, his voice sounded so much like a 30 year old man sometimes so it was quite funny to hear jack speak sometimes, which is why he's mainly slightly mute. still though the animator shrugged "he makes the rules, not me" he said as the three went their own ways for now, henry still had some time to kill before the meeting start so he went off to find his work desk, it was right where he remembered it being, he looks off to see that there was no new room when he left, which he was kinda glad for, he tries to remember what else was going on as he sat down, and just started drawing, halfway throughout he stops as he felt someone pressed a hand on his shoulder "hey there pal" a familiar voice said as henry turns around, to see norman, his eyes silently widen as he looks the same as he remembered him before he left the studios, same tall posture, same black cloths, same grey like hair, and of course, the same blue and yellow like eyes he seemed to have, norman smiled "what's wrong? did i scare ya? i thought i tolds ya that i sees everything henry" he said as henry chuckled, before something recalled in his head, a memory from when he heard about the tape "THeY dOn'T eVeN kNoW WhEn Im WaTChINg, eVeN when Im RIgHt BEhIND thEm!" henry started shivering but he was snapped back to reality when norman snaps his own fingers. the African American stares with a worried look "you alright there pal?" he asked as henry started breathing, taking a deep breathe as he gives him a thumbs up with a nervous smile "j...just peachy..." he said as the other seemed to smile softly "Well what's ya working on?" he asked him as henry looked at what he was doing "just, drawing i guess" he said as he does some finishing touches "you know, i never could stand the actual design of that cartoon devil, i don't know he seems... well uh.... naked" he said as henry shrugged "joey came up with the idea, not me" he said as he hums a bit, with norman looking rather nervous "well... it's not my own place to judge but have you ever.... thought about giving the little guy more... jazz?" he stated, to which the other looked up, actually surprised "um... well.... no really...." he said as he remembered something "joey never liked the old concept design we made for bendy... but i did" he said as norman sighed "no no no not that, i mean something new! something... original almost!" henry's eyebrows raised but he was interested "like, think about this, we have a upcoming show that's been getting a lot of fans, the only thing that parents complain about is that he doesnt have any other clothes so... why not give him some?" he said as henry's eyes widen "...norman.... your a genius" henry said as norman grinned "i know i am~" he said as the two chuckled, and henry began his work. Throughout half the whole ordeal of the drawing, norman watched as henry did his best to make a new, original, design of bendy, with norman grinning as he noticed how excited henry was as he chuckled a bit, eventually the animator was finished with the design as he showed it to norman as he inspected it, and the African American's eyes widen in shock and amazement, the design surely was VERY different than the original, for starters bendy looked more taller than he did, and unlike the other design there were two things, one is that he had a neck, and a tail, and the other was that he had actual, colored clothing, it was a jet black hoodie, with a red hood to go with it as he noticed the different gloves, they sported a green color, and he also had blue jeans on as well, the thing that norman liked the best besides the smooth head and horn design, were the shoes, they looked like tapshoes, overall the design was perfect, and he even chuckled at the little bendy badge too, and he noticed the bowtie, which raised his eyebrow "huh? you still gave him the bowtie?" henry seems to rub the back of his head "w-well uh if i ever plan on showing this to joey it's gonna have at leash one thing from the original design yeah?" he said as norman shrugged, but laughed "i guess so, but over all, the design is perfect, and unique, it really looks original, and a perfect design for a perfect show" he said as henry seem to smile "you really think so?" he said as norman grinned "i don't think so henry, i KNOW so" he said to him as henry smiled, and he hugged norman, with the other smiling and returning the hug "thanks pal..." he said as norman chuckled "no problem, anything for a friend" he said as the two parted ways, with norman going back to do whatever he was doing, and henry to go show joey the design. As Henry went to joey's office, he noticed that the other was getting ready to say his speech, joey perks up seeing henry "ah! henry! what brings you here this early before the meeting starts?" he asked as henry seem to nervously smile "w-well uh mister d-d- i mean joey, i was, doing something and norman gave me a really good idea" he said as joey raises a eyebrow "oh? and what is this idea?" he asks as henry seems to gulp, as he shows him the design, with joey looking it over, from top to bottom, as he gives henry a look "henry, this..., this design is..... is..." he smiled "perfect!" he said as henry actually perks up "r-really?" he said as he smiled "of course it is! im glad that you decided to show this to me! maybe someday we'll have him wear this kind of outfit" he said as henry seems to nod, but flinch slightly, now a bit upset that joey was still going to use the original design that they both made together as the official "is that all you wanted to ask me? the meeting starts in a couple of minutes" he said as henry nodded, as he grabbed the drawing "yeah... that's all, see ya later boss" he said as he walks out, as joey ponders on the sudden change in his friend's behavior, but he shrugs it off, he had more important things to worry about right now as he hums a bit, looking over a picture of him and a young boy, as he softly frowns at it, before sighing, and picking up his glasses, putting them on as he goes to where the meeting will take place. Henry sat down next to wally as the others were already there, henry noticed shawn, who seems to be humming as he looks over at henry, and waves, as henry waves back, next he noticed grant and thomas who seem to be having some small talk, before he notices susie talking with sammy, henry seems to smile slightly, it was... nice seeing them not as monsters for a change, he didint know what failsafe joey used but... maybe he could get used to this lifestyle, before long everyone grew silent as joey entered the room and went to start his speech, it was pretty much explaining some changes here and there, some minor stuff, along with adding a amusement park soon to the studios, as well as expanding it, making it big enough to house a lot of things, he even went on to explain that someday, there will be actual toons roaming around the studios, throughout most of the speech only henry and wally noticed this but joey seemed to act, a lot more different during the speech his tone was different, and the way he speaking sounded like he was 100% all of this would happen, the cartoonist started to get slight flashbacks to the loops again as he grumbled softly, rubbing his head, before long the meeting was over as joey said he needed to do something, as the others went off to do their breaks, wally was having a conversation with henry "man im telling ya, mister drew seems to be acting a lot different lately, more than usual, it's like he was so sure that all of this would happen, now im not complaining but like, i don't this it's that healthly for him to be... well that much obessessed over it, what do you think henry..... henry?" he looked over to see that the cartoonist was day-dreaming, or more like thinking heavily, henry was recalling more 'memories' he was having from his new life, before wally snaps his fingers, “mister Jarvis, you don’t look too good are ya sure your alright?” henry’s thoughts went into reality after hearing wally’s voice, remembering that boris snapped his fingers at one point to break henry out of a trance in the studios, the young animator smiling slightly at wally “y-yeah im a-alright” he said as wally stares, confused “Ya sure…. you’ve been real quiet ever since joey announced this whole bringing to cartoons life thing… I mean the moment he said that it’s like you experienced it before” he said as henry suddenly froze again, remembering bits and pieces once again as he started shivering, wally noticing as he looked around “Uh…… henry?” he snapped his fingers “ay! come on! If ya keep on acting like this im outta here!” he said as henry blinked, he groaned as he rubbed his head, before wally seems to chuckle "hey uh, remember that one time during your daughter's birthday i dressed up like the easter bunny? she was out of her own freaking mind, im telling ya if she didint get off of me sooner, i would of been outta there!" he said as henry, softly chuckles, with wally grinning "see! all ya needed was a little laugh and a smile! im telling ya henry, this whole thing is strange but, it's nice to know im not the only one who sees it!" he said as henry nodded, before glancing off at the distance, wondering how on earth did he get a daughter, when he blinks, recalling that he had a daughter and a son before, when he looks back at wally with a blank look “im.. gonna take a break, tell joey im going home early” he said as he got up and walked off as wally blinks “h-hey wait joey never lets us walk out of here early!” he said as henry paid no mind, wally blinking before he sighed “man, sometimes he can be strange like mister drew... but im not complaining, he writes the checks" wally said as he took a sip from his coffee. After the small talk he had with wally, henry huffs softly as he walks through the halls of the studio, slightly trying to remember what was going on, he had very few memories of what happened during the last loop so everything was slightly a fuzz, he did remember a big blur, and then he was here, in a different year, and now in a different universe but… he still have some sort of memories from the loops, the cartoonist humming softly to himself as he putted his hands in his pockets, he was about to go to his desk, before he suddenly hears… crying? henry raised a eyebrow as he listened in to the crying, before his eyes widen, it was joey’s crying, he hurries over to the room and saw the man himself, in the ink machine room, holding a frail child covered in ink, he instantly knew who the child was as joey turned around, with tears in his eyes as he stares at henry, his eyes staring into his as henry saw how much sadness were in them. “h-h-he was a-alive h-henry… h-he w-was a-a-alive f-for 1-10 m-minutes h-henry….. h-he…. h-he remembered….” joey said, hiccuping while tears were streaming down his eyes, he wasn't wearing his glasses, and he had a smile on his face, a smile that matched more akin to bendy’s but, it was a sad one as henry reached out, before joey hugged henry, crying into his shoulders as henry somehow remembered that they tried bringing bendy to life before, for a certain amount of times, all the attempts failing, henry even had a few tears rolling down his eyes as he hears joey's sobbing as he tried his best to comfort him “i-i missed him s-so much h-henry, i-i-i cant k-keep s-seeing h-him d-die over and o-over a-again! i-i need m-my s-son back! i-i need j-josh!” he said as he cried as henry looks over at the motionless body as henry shushed joey, patting his back. “it’s okay joey….. someday… you’ll see him again.. i know you will…” he said as joey hiccuped as he clutched his shoulders "…o-one more..t-try..h-henry…. j-just o-one… m-more c-chance….“ henry looks at him like he was crazy “w…wait what…?” he said as joey gives him a pleading expression as more tears seem to drip and shed down his eyes "h-henry please! j-just o-one more t-try! i-i need to d-do this! i-if i-it works t-then m-my s-son will c-come back! a-and o-our creation w-will f-finally b-be a-alive!… p….please….” he said as he sobbed some more, before henry stares, before he patted his shoulder, joey looked up at him as henry gave him a smile “…sure pal, anything for you” he said as joey sniffled, before giving him a broken smile "t...thank you my friend......i'll.... i'll clean this up, tell thomas to help me with the last attempt please" he said as henry nodded "yeah... i will" he said as he got up and walked off, before he turns back to joey, seeing him whimpering slightly, henry stares sadly, before he sighs and decides not to tell him about leaving early, he needed to make sure he was alright as he went off to tell thomas, as joey looked at the motionless body, tears swelling up in his eyes "what did i do wrong..... what do i have to do in order to get this right.... i just miss you so much son......." he said as he rubs his eyes, sniffling slightly as he just waits now for thomas to show up. after a few hours and after thomas came to clean up the mess, everyone was heading home as joey stayed back for a few more minutes, doing some research on his computer, before he looks at something that caught his eye, clicking the link and looking at a list, his eyes suddenly widen, as a smile formed on his face, this could be just what he needed to bring something back from the dead, he writes the items down on a piece of paper, taking a mental note to let henry know tomorrow as he grinned, this was it, this could be the last shot he has at trying to bring his son back from the dead "don't worry bucko.... daddy's gonna make sure your coming back alive" he said as he looks at the picture of him with his son, smiling softly at it as he takes off his glasses, rubbing his eyes slightly as he putted them back on, and shutted down his computer, getting ready to go home for the night, henry was on his way home when he stops for a moment, looking at the night sky as he stops at a stop sign while driving, the cartoonist looking at the beautiful stars with a smile, before he keeps driving back to his house, maybe he could get use to this new life he has, at leash he wasnt in a never ending story anymore, henry turns on the radio as he listens and hums to a song as he seems to get slightly lost in it, the song he was listening too was titled "country roads" as he hummed to it, driving back to his house, he just hoped that joey would be alright, but somehow, deep down in him, he has a feeling that it's not gonna be happy for long, he just hopes that day would never come.

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writeanapocalae · 6 years ago

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A Detective in Junction

Read it on Ao3 | Chapter 1: Diving Back In

Warning: This is a Sequel to A Doctor in Union and may not make sense out of order

Sebastian groaned, glaring at his phone where it sat on the bedside table, lit up and buzzing and waking him. He slept lightly, napped through parts of the day, and there were many nights in which he didn’t sleep at all. He’d only barely fallen asleep. He should have ignored it, wrapped an arm around Stefano’s shoulders and gone back to sleep. No one ever texted him though, there had to be a reason for it.

He picked it up, the air chilly against his arm. Stefano grumbled in his sleep, if he was asleep, as the cold traveled down his back from the shift in blankets. The phone didn’t tell him much when he answered it.

‘Located JO. -JK’

His glare deepened, not understanding the code. The phone number wasn’t one that he recognized. For a moment he considered it a joke, especially because of the JK, but then his brain turned on fully and he bolted up out of bed, and there was no way that Stefano wasn’t awake after that.

He had to go. He had to go now.

He called the number back, even as Stefano groggily pulled himself up into a sitting position, a hot hand soft on his back.

“Where is he?” Sebastian gritted out, the sleepiness still in his voice, making it play-doh and slow.

“I don’t know if I should say it over the phone, otherwise I would have texted the coordinates,” Kidman sounded tired but in the way that she hadn’t slept yet. Sebastian could hear people in the background, lots of people.

“I thought you said Mobius was gone.”

“It is, but that still leaves a lot of other people out there wanting the technology. I haven’t even made it to the facility yet; I’m just hoping that I’ll be the first one to enter it.”

A panic was starting to grow in Sebastian’s chest, his heart pounding. Stefano was rubbing circles against his shoulder blade, trying to calm him. Joseph, found and possibly alive. He’d been hoping, he wasn’t a praying man but he’d considered it a few times, for Joseph to be alright. He definitely wasn’t alright but he was, possibly, salvageable. This was the first he’d heard anything about Joseph since finding out he was even alive.

“Where are you?” he switched tactics.

“I’m at the airport in Chattanooga, Tenessee.”

Sebastian pulled out of Stefano’s hold and out of the bed, dragging his jeans on from where he’d dropped them the night before. Stefano was shadowing him, which he did so well now that he was healthy enough to move on his own, silent in the darkness. If he hadn’t been there when Stefano got better, he would have been terrified of the change.

“I’m on my way.”

“We’re on our way,” Stefano corrected. Sebastian looked at him, seeing only the light of his phone reflecting in Stefano’s eye and nothing more.

“Text me when you get here,” Kidman hung up.

“So, where are we off to in the middle of the night?” Stefano asked, scooting past Sebastian for his cane and then over to the light switch, making them both half blind with light.

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Sebastian grabbed a shirt and threw it on, not even looking at what it was. “And I need you here, to watch over Lily.”

Stefano opened a drawer in his dresser, pulling out a pair of dark olive slacks. “You sound as if it’s some sort of emergency and you should know by now that I don’t intend to make you go through something like that on your own. We can get a sitter for Lily.”

Sebastian paused a moment, uncertain. He was fairly certain that he’d never mentioned Joseph to Stefano. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t. Joseph had been such a huge part of his life and when he was gone, Sebastian had fallen into the worst depression of his life, not that he could claim all of that was on Joseph’s apparent death.

“It’s two in the morning,” Sebastian grumbled.

“Well, can it wait until an actually humane time of day then?” Stefano slipped into a pale yellow dress shirt, “You’re going to have to explain to both of us what’s going on, after all.”

“Yeah, yeah, shit, I’m sorry,” Sebastian rubbed at his face. “Yeah, I’ll tell you in the morning. I’m just, I’m going to get ready in the mean time. I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep.”

Stefano nodded but didn’t get undressed. He moved with Sebastian in silence, packing along with him. He noted the low amount of clothing that Sebastian was packing and followed suit, as if he knew that there wouldn’t be much need for a change of clothes in whatever adventure Sebastian was going on. Sebastian wanted to give in, to tell him right then what was happening. He didn’t want to go over it twice though. He didn’t want to argue with Stefano right yet, even though he knew that this would lead to that. He didn’t want Stefano going with him, didn’t want him ever falling into STEM again.

By the time morning came and Lily was awake he was a jumbled pile of nerves, no matter how softly Stefano touched him, pressing kisses to his temple and sliding his hand along his back whenever he could. The moment that Stefano left him to go downstairs, to prepare breakfast and get coffee going Sebastian sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to breathe, trying to think. He’d been thinking all night but he still didn’t have any idea what he was going to say, how he was going to say it.

He went downstairs a few minutes later, finding Lily and Stefano at the dining room table talking about something in hushed tones. Lily looked nervous and he couldn’t read Stefano at all, even though he could see much more of his face than he used to, Stefano getting more comfortable with his hair being a bit shorter on the right side of his face.

“There you are,” Stefano gave him a soft smile and Sebastian’s chest tightened, the anxiety swelling. He couldn’t do this to them, not when they’d all gotten settled in. He didn’t want to do this at all, but he owed it to Joseph, didn’t trust anyone to go in there in his stead. “Would you mind alluding us on what had you so worried last night?”

Sebastian sat in his seat, a cup of coffee and a plate of toast and eggs already waiting for him. He sighed. They were so good to him, too good. They didn’t deserve any of this.

“Kidman texted me last night,” he said, not lifting his head to make eye contact. “She found my old partner, back from KCPD, in an abandoned Mobius facility. He’s over in Tennessee and I-

“And you intend to go there and fish him out, is that it?” Stefano interrupted, his cup hiding his face. “This would be Joseph, correct?”

Sebastian balked.

“I told him about Uncle Joseph,” Lily raised a hand meekly. “You went into the bad place with him the first time, right? You think he’s still in there or do you think he’s a bad guy now?”

Sebastian looked from Lily to Stefano, his mouth still open. “You knew about him?”

“Lily used him as an excellent teaching tool to explain your sexuality to me,” Stefano waved the question off. “You do realize that there is no way that you’re going alone, correct?”

“You’re not coming with, neither of you,” Sebastian glared, trying not to let any real anger shine through, “Kidman will be there, I’m not going to be alone. And no, I don’t think he’s Mobius. He’s probably still in STEM.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Stefano placed his coffee on the table, crossing his arms. “I am going with you.”

“You lost enough to STEM,” Sebastian shook his head, “and to Mobius. When I said you’re never going back there, I meant it.”

“And miss your reunion with your boyfriend? I think not. Sebastian, you lost far more to Mobius then I did; I lost most of what I had before I ever went to them. I do not intend to lose you to them as well! Do not forget, as well, that I had a great deal of power in Union, that I understood how to bend through the logic of that place. I would be irreplaceable to you.”

“I’m eleven years old!” Lily added, “I don’t want to come with but I’m old enough to watch out for myself! I think you’ll do way better together than you would alone! Buddy systems and all that!”

They were teaming up on him and not in the way that he’d expected. He’d thought that they’d both be against him going at all. They must have both known how much Joseph meant to him, which didn’t make any sense to him, Stefano didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be willing to share him, especially not in a romantic sense. He found himself smiling, the anxiety not gone but the anxiety for their responses at least drowned out.

---

The airport was busy and it was hard to get through the crowds with their suitcases and the cane that Stefano hated so much. He pretended he didn’t rely on it as much as he really did but, after a few hours on a cramped airplane his legs felt weak and stiff. He wanted to hold Sebastian’s hand, not the cane, but he rested against it with each step.

He could feel anxiety prick at him, a thick buzzing in his veins, an urge to stop and breathe at the same time that it was propelling him forward. He swallowed it down. He didn’t need it. It wasn’t helpful. Sebastian needed him to be strong right then. He didn’t know if he could be. He kept thinking about going back down, wondering if he would wake up this time, since he’d barely been able to last time. He’d been lucky last time and he’d been lucky every day for the past year; that luck would run out eventually.

Sebastian raised an arm and Stefano jumped, not expecting it. Sebastian was on his bad side, which he did when he was nervous, thinking that Stefano didn’t recognize it. Usually it made him feel safe, having someone he trusted protecting that side, but he couldn’t feel safe now, he couldn’t feel much aside from dread.

Sebastian was waving to a woman, to Juli, who was waiting for them at one of the little cafes that cost a fortune. Stefano had only met her a few times, when he was healing, and he knew that he had made a terrible series of impressions in such a weak and meager state. He held his head higher, tried to be more imposing. He’d come a long way.

She didn’t smile when she approached them, just clutched the briefcase at her side and made sure there was no one watching her. She’d told Sebastian that Mobius was done for, but she was far too paranoid for such a response. He’d say that it made him uneasy, but he was already uneasy.

“I rented a car, come on,” she said, in place of a greeting. They followed her in silence, out of the air conditioning and out into the heat, to a small black car that was so uncharacteristic that it had to be on purpose. She opened the trunk and they both put their bags inside before climbing into the back, Juli driving.

Once they were belted in, Stefano’s cane over his lap, Juli opened the briefcase, pulling out some files and passing them back. Stefano took one while Sebastian had the other two and the car was started and out of the parking lot before they even had them open.

The file that Stefano had was on the Core, a ten year old boy named Jonathon. His last name was a large black stripe. Stefano’s hands started to shake as he read about the boy, about his high scores in standardized tests, about his wealth of empathy, about his love of art. He was just like Lily, even the terminology was the same as what Sebastian had quoted from Mobius. Lily had been taken away in the falsified fire though and, for Jonathon, the opposite was true, the fire had claimed his parents. There was no one to care that he was gone.

Jonathon was written as being clever and artistic, showing great promise but with obsessive traits. Stefano wasn’t reading in too much depth, he didn’t want to know all of the details. This all felt too familiar. He glanced over at Sebastian’s file instead, where he was reading on a young woman, Amber Fairen. She was a romance writer, 25, but none of her stories had ever been published. At the top of the page was the same terminology that was on Jonathon’s, just with a different number: Core Candidate #9.

“Are there multiple Cores?” Stefano asked, reaching out for the other file in Sebastian’s lap.

“Yeah, this is the most experimental version of STEM I’ve ever heard of,” Juli explained. “There’s no people involved, so you aren’t going to have to deal with civilians, aside from the Cores. I guess they saw that there were too many issues with just having a single Core in place and decided to try with three.”

“And the reasoning for there being a child?” Stefano continued. Sebastian was only half listening but he perked up at that, anger flashing over his features.

“Same reason as with Lily. There’s a level of innocence in children that haven’t been exposed to trauma and they are impressionable. They’re easy to control and manipulate.”

Stefano reached out to put his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. He could see the tension growing in his brow.

“No people though, that’s good, that means that there wont be any monsters, nothing like the Lost.”

Sebastian glanced at him. He swallowed. He’d never seen Sebastian so angry and he couldn’t help but feel like it was directed at him. He was just trying to get some answers though, know as much as he could before they went in.

“There’s another major difference, they implied a Lucid Unit for Cerebral Integration,” Juli explained. There was no answer from the two men and she paused, her eyes trained on the road before she went into it, collecting her thoughts, “I saw a little bit of the planning for the Luci, but I never saw it used, I didn’t know it was completed. It’s a sort of artificial intelligence that was put in place for ease of cataloging and mapping STEM, since the map could be changed by the Cores at any time. They’re also used to report any errors to the Mobius members who would enter for testing purposes.”

An artificial intelligence? Stefano had heard that such things were in development but he didn’t think anything like that would be usable so early. Mobius acted as if they were gods though, it was completely possible that they had surpassed the rest of the world by bypassing ethics and other pesky laws.

“You think the Luci could be dangerous?” Sebastian finally spoke up, handing Amber’s file over to Stefano. He didn’t open the next one. Stefano was certain it was Joseph’s.

“I’m not going to say they wouldn’t be. With the way the Cores and the other test subjects have altered the surroundings in the past, I wouldn’t trust anything to be safe really. Just take it slow.”

---

He didn’t think there was a chance, not really. He hadn’t imagined that Joseph could be alive, not after he saw Kidman shoot him, but then he’d gone back in after Lily and Kidman had told him that Joseph was alive. He’d been so distracted though, with rescuing Lily, with getting Stefano out of STEM and then back on his feet, that he hadn’t had time to really think about Joseph. Joseph, who had been in STEM this whole time, had been living in one of these nightmare worlds, with only two other people, who could have been allies or enemies.

He should have tried harder. He should have tried earlier. He shouldn’t have left Kidman to hunt for him on her own.

She pulled up to the facility, which looked like an old water purification building, with mildew growing up the walls and the grass overgrown and a few creeping vines climbing up the sides. Stefano gave him a small smile, a squeeze to the shoulder, before he unbuckled and climbed out of the car. Sebastian sighed, following his lead.

It reeked. It smelled like Beacon, like the sewers underneath it, where the water was a dark and deep red from all of the blood and viscera that was mixed in with the water. It smelled like rotten meat and cold bile and mildew and the sickeningly sweet scent of garbage on a hot day. As they drew closer to the door, which sat open with a chair shoved against it to keep it from closing. There was a pile of limbs and flies and mistakes, of the bodies that Juli must have dragged out of the building all on her own. She wasn’t looking at them, she was unreadable, her face blank as she went into the building.

It looked like a Mobius building on the inside, all white tile and cement, cold and barren and clean, aside from the swivel chair that was at the end of a long smear of blood. He squeezed Stefano’s hand. He shouldn’t have been here. This wasn’t Stefano’s job. Stefano gave him a small smile and a squeeze of the hand back, as if there was nothing wrong. Everything was wrong.

Kidman hadn’t been overly talkative before this, had always given more questions than she answered, but now she led them past offices and labs and examination rooms without a word. She was pale, a sheen of sweat on her brow. She looked like she was coming down with something. She may have been, just from touching all of those corpses.

The STEM room was more complicated than the one for Union, which was more complicated than the one for Beacon. There were three of those metal cylinders, the same kind that Lily had been in, in a cluster in the center, the wires and tubes coming from them bound in different colored transparent tubing to keep them separate and recognizable as they led to monitors. There were eight tubs around the tubes and they were ergonomic, actually built for comfort and short time use. The people who went in weren’t supposed to stay in, the trips were meant to be shorter.

There were blood stains everywhere.

“You should get dressed, do whatever you need to do before getting in,” Kidman explained. “I can give you a moment if you want.”

There were security cameras in the corners of the room. Those made him feel a lot less private than Kidman not being there would. He didn’t care if Kidman saw him naked, he didn’t have much shame in those regards, she’d seen him much worse than just naked. Stefano looked uncomfortable though and his eye was trained directly at one of the tubs as if it were something much more than it was. He was looking at it because he knew what it actually was.

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good,” he shooed her away, letting go of Stefano’s hand to stroke up his arm. He didn’t even turn to watch her leave, had his attention on the man before him, who was pale and still intent on that tub. “Hey, you okay?”

Stefano bit his lip and nodded. “We’ll be in contact, won’t we? She can extract us whenever we need to be?”

“I have no intention of letting you out of my sight,” Sebastian promised, wished that his older promises were still holding up. “But yeah, we’ll both have communicators, remember? If we get separated, we’ll be able to find each other. And we can talk to Kidman whenever we need to.”

Stefano set his cane down, resting it against the tub. He drew closer to Sebastian, his hands finding Sebastian’s waist and stroking along it to wrap around him.

“You’re scared.”

“Of course I am,” Stefano admitted, laying his head against Sebastian’s chest. “You heard what she said. There won’t be any people in there, aside from the five of us.”

Sebastian hugged Stefano back. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Stefano shook his head against him. “It means there will be less obstacles, I’m sure, less monsters, less casualties if we fail, but it also means less distractions.”

Sebastian pulled away from him a bit, “Less distractions? Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Before, when there were more minds connected, their obsession with normality, their ideas of what Union was supposed to be, made it harder to be manipulated for those of us who knew we were within a dream. I could create, of course, but when I did so in someplace other than my own space there was a chance that it would revert to how it had been. There will be less distractions in this STEM, which means that we’ll be able to change it without trying.”

“You think you’ll revert,” Sebastian sighed, realizing what Stefano was dancing around. He closed his eyes. “Stefano, that’s not going to happen. You were changed by Theodore, by Paolo, to become that killer. It’s up to you what you’ll become now. And I’ll be at your side all the while. If you think you’re going to falter, you can lean on me.”

“And if I hurt you?” Stefano asked.

“That’s not going to happen.” Sebastian kissed him, long and slow, reminding him that there was more to him than words. He was a man of action and that wasn’t always a good thing, but Stefano melted against his touch.

---

He had never expected to come back here. He had never wanted to. Juli had told them what to expect and it was so different from Union, but he still didn’t think that he was ready. He lay down in the tub, letting the fluids wash over him. His hands were on the sides of the tub though, knuckles white, and he turned to Sebastian, hoping for just one more argument, one more excuse as to why he shouldn’t come. He had been brave before, had acted like this wasn’t a compounding of trauma, but now it was happening, now it was real, and he wanted escape. Sebastian’s eyes were closed, his brows furrowed in concentration. They were going to do this.

“Don’t worry,” Juli put her hand on his shoulder, plugging him into the machine. “I’ll be out here for you. If it ever gets to be too much, you let me know. I’ll extract you as fast as I can.”

He nodded. That helped a little, even though he knew that if they came out they’d have to start over from the initial insertion point. He let go of the edges and let himself slide further under the liquid, taking one last look at the metal tanks that held the Cores.

This wasn’t like Union. In Union there had been only Lily and he hadn’t seen how they’d kept her in a metal chamber. There had been hundreds of tubs, like the ones that they were in, all of them citizens of that imaginary world.

He wasn’t ready for this. He’d ever be ready.

He closed his eye, following Sebastian’s lead, and suddenly he was falling back into the fluid, falling and plummeting, eye flying open to watch as so much of that white liquid fell away from him. He was unable to breathe, unable to fight against his drop into the depths. He felt himself start to choke on the nothing, reaching at nothing, wondering why Juli wasn’t pulling him up, wasn’t pulling him out. The liquid wasn’t that deep but he was miles down, the lights from outside a soft glow in the distance. He was struggling, trying to shove his way upward, but he felt a weight on his chest, a weight that was pulling him down. He opened his mouth but all that came out were the air bubbles that he so desperately needed.

He was dying. He had been a fool to agree to this. He’d known it at the time, too. But now he was drowning. Now he was suffocating. He was dying and it was pain and it was hands on his throat, in his lungs, shoving liquid into him.

And then it stopped and he was floating and there was no liquid around him. Either that or he didn’t need to breathe. He wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t suffering any more. He was slowly sliding down towards a field of pale blue grass, all of it reaching up for him, looking as if it would catch him and cradle him and pull him down into comfort. He looked around but he didn’t see Sebastian anywhere in this space. He wondered if Sebastian was in a place quite this beautiful or as terrifying.

He drew towards the bottom and he realized that there was no grass beneath him. The gentle swaying beneath him was not soft stocks but drowned fingers pale and blue from lack of air. They were attached to reaching arms, ready to grab him and keep him, to drag him down and make him one of them. He threw out his arms, trying to slow his decent, looking around for anything that he could grab onto. There was nothing but that field. He had no choice.

He kicked out, trying to keep the hands away. They did not care about broken or bloody fingers. The trailed their fingers over his socks, clung to his lounge wear, and held him tightly. He considered kicking off his pants in order to escape them but they were already holding him by the ankles, their skin so cold that it chilled him. It was elegant, in a way, the way that the hands all moved together, the field a garden of expression. It looked like an art piece that he would have made in a different life. Where he was now though, on this side of the exhibit, he was not so much an audience member as he was an unwilling participant.

The hands were heavier than the weight on his chest had been and when they grabbed they pulled, arms sliding into the field as if they were nothing more than tube worms. They were forced to release him as their fingers were separated by unadulterated earth. He stood among them, more tall ones waving at him, beckoning him closer, others trying to shove behind him. They were pointing him in a direction, towards a slanted building that kept flickering and flashing, glitching out into squares before scrambling into a different building altogether. There were five of them, if he had to guess, though it was confusing as some of them stole parts of others and they didn’t cycle in an order. The shorter ones were stretched out to match the heights of the taller ones, adding to the confusion. He did recognize the apartment building he had grown up in though and seeing it filled him with a dread that he had not allowed himself to feel while with Sebastian, ignoring his own painful childhood memories while recounting what good ones he still remembered.

There was no where else to go. He had to go towards the building. As he moved the arms shuffled and tightened, pulling down so he could cross, stepping on uncaring fingers as he went. Eventually the fingers ran out and the field looked like it was made out of black glass, only a few feet away from the entrance.

The building glitched, breaking into more pieces, breaking up further than it had any time before, and then shattering, colors and squares breaking apart and flying out, changing shape and color, forming a street that led to a town in the distance, wispy woods growing around it, trying to invade the cement past a weak wooden fence.

There was a fork and down the other side was Sebastian, who didn’t seem to be anywhere near as disoriented as he was. Sebastian was, however, smoking slightly and Stefano knew not to ask about whatever fire Sebastian had had to put out on his way here. He knew Sebastian’s past and he knew his nightmares. He didn’t need to bring them up.

He was glad to see that Sebastian was dressed like a normal person, no wandering around in the sweats that he had been in when they had stepped into the tubs just minutes before. He was wearing a brown, pinstriped vest and brown slacks that Stefano had never seen before, his white dress shirt unbuttoned a bit to reveal a hint of his chest, his neck unconstrained by a tie. Glancing down at himself he was glad to see that he was decently dressed as well, crimson slacks and a deep blue satin dress shirt, much more comfortable and much more him than the comfortable clothes he’d been told to wear. He recognized them as well, old clothes but feeling fresh and new, some of the first clothes he’d purchased once being released from the military’s care in America.

Stefano rushed over as best he could with the light limp that still threatened him so often, taking Sebastian’s hand in his own and drawing close. Sebastian gave his hand a light squeeze and offered a damaged smile, which Stefano would always take, even if it filled him with a concern he was still learning how to form.

“Regretting it yet?” Sebastian asked, trying to tease but there was no merriment in his voice.

Stefano tugged on his hand, making him stumble closer to him so he could press a kiss to his cheek, to pretend that what he had seen had not unsettled him and made his hands itch to create. “I would only regret it if I did not find you on the other side.”

Sebastian’s smile reached his eyes then, before they turned away, towards a lightly glowing figure down the road. Stefano turned his attention to her as well, although there was no where else he could look, eventually, as she was standing in front of a roundabout which held a large imposing tree. There was a wooden sign planted in the roundabout with a very familiar image of a tree that looked far more like a brain than could be coincidental.

“Hello,” the woman said as they drew near, her voice a perfect monotone. Stefano hated her immediately. Everything about her was flat and bland, even though she was glowing faintly, even through her bland gray pantsuit. “You may call me Luci. Welcome to Junction.”

Stefano was impressed. He wasn’t expecting the A.I. to look so human. It was accurate but uncanny, just slightly off in the motions.

She cocked her head, eyes looking them over in a mechanical manner and Stefano was brought to the conclusion that she was scanning thm. “I am an A.I., set in motion to accommodate and direct Mobius scientists through Junction. The fact that you do not recognize me give me cause to believe that you are an infiltration in the system. Name and registration, please.”

Sebastian looked at Stefano, but he had no registration here either.

“We were sent in for repairs,” Stefano explained, trying to come up with something believable, “and we are not altogether Mobius scientists. We were not given proper registration numbers as we were expected to meet other scientists here. Give us a moment to contact our superiors?”

She looked at him as blankly as before. “There have been no Mobius agents within STEM in 298 days. The Cores are out of alignment and need to be re-calibrated. There is a long list of repairs that need to be accomplished, but I cannot allow you entry until you have your registration.”

“Understood, my dear,” Stefano gave her a smile that would have charmed a real woman of her ilk. She did not respond to it. “We will return momentarily.”

He still had Sebastian’s hand in his own and he turned them to go back a few steps, pulling out the radio that was stuck on his belt, unnoticed until just then. Sebastian was looking at him quizzically but that was fine, there were many times in which Sebastian didn’t catch onto things as readily as he did.

“Juli? It seems we’ve run into a small hindrance.”

“Already? That’s impressive,” she sounded amused at least, if a little out of breath.

“We’ve met the illustrious Luci and she was hoping for our registration, could you make us some, right quick?”

He heard something drop heavily onto the floor, with a light squish that, paired with the lack of reality he was now in, reminded him greatly of his exhibit in City Hall. “Uh, yeah, give me a few seconds.”

He clipped the radio back onto his belt. Sebastian looked proud. He’d had people tell him that they were proud of him before, had people tell him how impressive his work was, but Sebastian was the first one who made him feel like it was true, that it wasn’t a stroke to his ego. He could still feel Luci’s cold eyes on them and, whatever mood that would swell in his heart was dashed before anything could come of it.

“Alright,” Juli sighed from her home on Stefano’s waist, “get the radio close up to it.”

Stefano returned to Luci and held out the radio, letting Juli state their names, falsified occupations, and a long list of numbers. Stefano tried to memorize his but it was too long and she only said it once before a small smile flitted onto Luci’s boring face.

“Welcome to Junction, might I point you in a direction of your choosing or shall I give you the list of malfunctions?”

“We’re heading for the Core, Joseph Cedric Oda,” Sebastian said, deliberate and to the point.

Luci seemed to think on that for a moment, getting confused more than a machine had any right to. “The Cores are not in proper alignment and may not be in the correct quadrants,” she explained. “Block 24A-31E is Core JO’s primary state of establishment, otherwise known as The Junction City Police Department.”

“Of course,” Sebastian gritted his teeth. Stefano didn’t understand why. They had both been detectives together, Sebastian had told him so on the flight over, so finding him in a place that he would find comfort and understanding in was not much of a surprise. “Thanks.”

“A pleasure to be of assistance,” Luci stilled, no longer active now that it was clear that Sebasastian was done speaking with her.

“Come on,” Sebastian squeezed his hand, “We’re going to need to get a move on, I don’t care if Juli said there are no monsters, this place gives me the creeps.”

Stefano nodded. Even with Luci offline he felt like he was being watched.

@chibi–raiden @detectivesebcas @angelicsociopath@sebcastellanyes @ruvikkin@lokis-queen-hepta-the-destroyer@samofgallifrey27 @supportivepsychopath @zellanoir

#the evil within 2 #joseph oda #sebastian castellanos #Stefano Valentini #fanfiction

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