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screamting · 4 years ago

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Dick’s first day of school snuck up on them.

Bruce drove him down in a rusty small blue honda civic from the 1990s. They’d picked it up off the lot for under 3,000 and were using it as a way to ferry themselves to the junkyard to pick up parts for their special car--but for now, they were using it to drop Dick off at school.

Drop Richard Malone off at school.

On paper, Alfred paid for Dick to attend Gotham academy. A private school. It had both boarders and day students. Dick would be a day student, so long as it was feasible.

...on the first day of school, Bruce drove Dick down to his alma mater (which translated to ‘place you never wanted to visit again,’) and dropped him off outside the gates.

“Want me to walk you in, Chum?” he asked, despite it not being any Malone’s alma mater yet, and Dick glanced back at him and shook his head sharply, mumbling a quiet “see you later,” before going off towards the gates.

Bruce turned to drive home and realized, belatedly, that Dick had never not been homeschooled.

He waited for afternoon to pick Dick up again, and resolved to remember to pick up milkshakes on the way back, so he can ask how the day was with a backup plan.

“It is not the right time of year to prune,” Alfred told him. It was far too close to school starting. Far too close to fall. “But, I suppose, it isn’t impossible . It will just be a good bit trickier to know which branches need it.”

Bruce obligingly bought a new plant from a chain store--a nursery would’ve properly pruned it weeks ago, but chain stores didn’t have that same attention. Alfred brought it home in a little green planter: a tiny bush cut into a lopsided circle.

“This isn’t, in fact, how to do it,” Alfred said, setting it beside Bruce on the patio table. “Can you tell me why?”

“..it doesn’t target the dead branches,” Bruce said, and Alfred gave a nod.

“It’s indiscriminate. And quite sloppy.”

He handed Bruce a pair of pruning shears.

“With it cut like this, it’s a little difficult to find the dead branches, but you’ll manage.”

...after a moment, Bruce shoved his hand inside the bush and just… gripped one of the little branches that didn’t have any leaves on it between his fingers. He glanced at Alfred, who nodded obligingly and gave a smile that felt far too much like it was meant for a child.

“How far back do I cut?”

“As far back as you can.”

Bruce nodded and pushed the shears in. And snipped.

The metahuman had power over plants, the paper the day before had said. She argued she’d been acting in self-defense. Her children were crying out for help. And so she helped.

(“‘ I is hearing the scream of a flower as its stem is twisted from the ground,’” Dick read aloud by Bruce’s bedside, trying to work through the recommended reading list for his level. One year behind his age level wasn’t bad for three years on the road, but it was a lot to catch up on all the same. “‘ I is hearing the soft moan of the old oak, like an old man dying, weeping, when it is felled.’ ”)

As the state of New Jersey did not recognize plants as people or her as the property owner, her appeal was denied. She would spend several years above minimum in Belle Reve for aggravated assault.

(even though the one she assaulted wasn’t there. Bruce hadn’t stepped into court. Bruce hadn’t said a thing. There was one phone call, and a woman, naked, trapped outside on a Gotham street, and then five other people stepped forward, claiming to be someone she’d attacked.

And he didn’t know what to think about that. If what everyone said was true was true, or if it was just falling into the fallacy of mob mentality. If it was easier to accept what was said as true. Even if he'd seen the violence first hand, it was him being attacked, that was different--)

He kept his mouth shut, and reached for the next dead branch, and clipped.

“...and how would I trim something that’s not dead, but it might… be overgrown? Or the wrong height?”

“Hmm,” Alfred said, still watching him. “Well, first we will need to get you a proper ladder.”

Justly imprisoned or not, the metahuman--a former botanist called Pamela Isley--would be in Belle Reve for several years.

Maybe he could change something in this town while she was gone.

Therefore, Mr. Malone came to the Gotham Parks and Recreation office, asking if when he got this 501c3 approved that he be allowed to enter Robinson Park and clean up the place.

And the budget-starved Parks office said fuckin’ do it if you’re brave enough, man , and sent him on his way.

It was… much easier than he expected, really. But perhaps the Parks department carried so little influence no one had even bothered to bribe them to keep people out. All the same, he’d listen to that backwards warning.

He drafted the papers in two days. He worked over it at dinner, trying to fill the gap that had once been occupied by discussing with Dick where to travel next and how to best avoid a million impending dooms. He had a free consultation with an attorney in the morning who looked up at Bruce over his glasses, eyebrows up, and reminded Bruce that the park was where mob deals went down and that grassy lady attacked a fella the other day.

Bruce said that was fine. He knew. He wasn’t here to cause a ruckus.

Legal documents. Articles of Affiliation. Mission Statement. It was helpful to have a second pair of eyes that actually expected the little bureaucracies innate in law, things that Dick and Alfred preferred to grumble at rather than knot through. Not that Bruce had been trained in law himself, but his school friend, Harvey Dent--

(was still in the hospital. Burn ward. He’d stabilized, but wasn’t often conscious--)

...Bruce submitted the paperwork after the Parks commission met with him, and then all he had to do was draw up a budget and wait. Alfred ‘lent’ Mr. Malone the startup money to establish a paper trail. After the initial donation, Bruce could make periodic donations to himself in various names; have miraculous windfalls whenever cash grew thin. Even without any backing or campaigns, he could make this startup impossible to fail.

...the problem is, Bruce has long proven his judgement is impaired.

When Dick returns from school not sniffling but vibrating with stress all the same, Bruce’s first thought is to run and start over somewhere else.

He thinks it might be an averted suicide response. The need to pack up and leave the current problems behind. With a hardline against being able to die, his mind latches onto another option. A fight-or-flight response that only hits flight when the problem isn’t something that can’t be physically fought off, like a tween coming into the car and sitting down in the passenger seat with a deep sigh.

...Bruce asks how his day was.

Dick says it was fine.

Bruce doesn’t ask if he wants a milkshake. He goes through the drive-through and buys some anyway. They go home and work how to install tail fins on the car frame slowly coming together in their garage.

...the ‘suicide’ response isn’t the only thing that lingers. Bruce isn’t really sure ‘lingering’ is the right term, actually. The flight response only arises when things can’t be handled directly in front of himself anymore, but the fight response--

Bruce has impaired judgment.

He proved it as soon as his first ‘suicide’ response sent him to the League of Assassins, and he decided to not flee the moment they made it clear nothing would continue until he took a life. He proved it when he wasn’t able to avoid dragging a literal child in the middle of a personal crisis into his mess, rather than leaving him somewhere safe and far, far away from him. He proved it with each near-death experience from Deathstroke in Metropolis to Isley in Gotham.

And yet, here he was again, finding himself cleaning up the Batman suit long after Dick was put to bed, adjusting it with better material to withstand a bullet’s penetration.

The people at the parks department weren’t wrong. It would be dangerous to work the area while the mob still operated widely inside it, and he would not cooperate alongside the mobs for protection. The alternative was therefore relatively obvious: get rid of the mobs.

Mobs weren’t exactly like a snake, but they did function well enough like one. Cut off the head. And like a hydra, if new heads sprouted--smother them.

...that, at least, he knew how to do. Kidnapping and recon, and finding information. Find proof of a mob boss’ wrongdoing and get a prosecutor not so cowardly to be bribed. Hand the information over. Don’t let them fail the charges. High profile dangerous people wouldn’t be kept in a local jail, but would likely be transferred to a higher-security prison, circumnavigating the cluttering, and with a focus on high-priority prisoners rather than most random people out on the street, they would be moved through the system more quickly, hopefully at least stalling out their operations in the meantime, if not shattering the whole system beneath them with the sudden departure.

This was the best plan he had, and it relied far, far too much on too many external variables--finding a clean court, getting a jury that felt safe enough to actually put their foot down, finding witnesses willing to testify, a prosecutor who wouldn't be bribed--

(fuck)

--and dealing with a Commissioner whose good graces he might’ve worn out.

…

But the alternatives were to allow this to continue growing, complicit by his own inaction.

(he was already complicit enough in too many crimes.)

(How did you clean up a world that you yourself aided in the destruction of?)

Prosecutors that couldn't be bribed?

They ended up like Harvey Dent.

Batman appears without Robin that evening, because it is a school night and Dick needs to sleep. He stops what crimes in progress he comes across and starts watching Robinson Park more closely.

He doesn't interfere inside it. He just watches. Plants cameras in the bushes and on the branches of trees, and zips his way out, to watch the footage and get to know the day and nighttime patterns of the area.

It… will take time. That's something he's not used to. Dick and he worked fast on the road, and even before that he was either handed his information by the ones lower down the chain or only spent a handful of days doing legwork to verify things that'd been missed. Instant gratification, he guessed he could call it. Just… dealing out a death and being done with it.

(And somehow, he'd drawn the line at known violent mobsters and Deathstroke.)

...he had to do a lot of meditation to get through the park video feeds. He had a lot of work stacking up between tracking down faces from the feeds. Police database of mugshots helped more than he expected. He started a tally of how many people in the mugshots were brought in bloodied and who brought them in to look into later.

After all, if Gotham was going to get rid of its mob problem, the police force would need some pruning, too.

Gotham recidivism was above 80%. Bruce gargled his coffee and tried very hard to not spit it out somewhere, because somehow, he was more tired by this statistic than shocked. A bit of, ‘oh, I knew it would be high, but really?’

No fucking wonder there weren’t enough cells in the world.

(What do you do when you can’t put anymore garbage in a landfill?

Learning what a fucking recycling program is might be a good first step.)

It's okay, though. He's totally got a handle on this. He's already been looking into what makes recidivism lower, and the difficulty of access to jobs for felons seems like a big one. Lack of change to living situations that caused pettier crimes like reselling material or shoplifting. The inside prison situation has an effect, according to Norway, which has a prison system Bruce isn't even hoping to replicate, even if he were a living millionaire with a clear conscience.

Reading other people's’ writings on recidivism has… definitely helped clarify things for him, even if all he can think of for the worst of criminals is still to lock them in a cell far away from everyone or until the death penalty finally takes it out of his hands.

But it is one thing to lock up a murderer who sabotaged a family performance and killed in front of an audience, and children, and child … versus locking up the child who killed trying to protect their family from an abusive partner.

They’re different. They have to be.

If Bruce has any right to be alive, he has to be able to believe in gray areas.

Bruce drops the first of several Maroni forerunners on Gordon's desk in the northern precinct. When he finds the precinct desk vacant, he pays a visit to the commissioner’s house instead.

The thought process is that it would probably be best to clarify that the dropoff isn’t an attack on the commissioner's authority. It’s an opening for compromise. Bruce will be mindful of the incarceration rates, but he won’t be leaving Gotham and he’d like cooperation from the police when it came to prosecution.

Unfortunately, he proposes it in the form of a paper note (written in his off-hand) slipped onto Gordon’s bedroom table where the man will notice it as soon as he returns for bed, which is much more threatening than he fully realizes.

(He doesn’t imagine Gordon’s daughter will find the note first and replace it just as she found it after reading. Then again, he doesn’t ever find out it happened, either.)

The county’s defense office wants to cut a plea deal with the gangster brought in, because no one wants to be the next Harvey Dent. The Assistant DA, a woman named Rachel Dawes, seems willing to try, but the department is extremely reluctant to support her, even as she steps up to take Dent’s place until another election can be held.

In the precinct, Bruce’s audiobugs catch officers he’s tracking placing bets on how long until someone finishes Dent off in his hospital bed.

Bruce decides he needs to be more aggressive.

Twenty-seven aggressive anonymous tipoffs and two synchronized FBI raids half a month later, and Bruce is startled when the door to his bedroom opens and Dick walks in. Bruce doesn't really jump in surprise anymore-- it’s more of… half reaching a position to fight, and stopping in a split second as he realizes the threat doesn't exist.

“Ah,” he says, “do you need--?”

“I was at school,” Dick says, answering the question in an odd way. He didn't need anything, he'd just come back from school--

Bruce’s neck snaps up to look at the clock, while the other part of his brain realizes that it’s nearly dark outside.

“Did Alfred--” he says, a panicky shame he’s not used to rising up within him.

“No,” Dick says, shrugging his backpack off and slumping onto bed. “When I realized you weren't coming I walked home.”

Bruce's throat feels tight. “You should've called.”

“Figured you were busy,” Dick says, watching the ceiling, “you've got more important stuff than school.”

Bruce remembers, the pain less raw with years, the slow agony of a school day, knowing there must be more he could do than sit through the farce.

He remembers that agony of adolescent uselessness clearly, pain dulled or not, but he’s also wisened to its falsehood over the years. There was little he could manage at the time.

“...I’ll set an alarm next time, but school isn't unimportant,” he says, keeping calm and controlled for an extra moment, before doing a double-take on the thought he’d had just a moment before.

Adolescence?!

School is over a month in. Dick’s anniversary is coming up soon. Bruce has gotten the Feds back in Gotham and an internal investigation into the police force for corruption. His nonprofit is finalizing some paperwork and looking into how to hire nonviolent offenders and start training them for small-time landscaping and cleanup by contracting with a local pre-established landscape crew that mostly does the outer and northern Gotham estates. Harvey Dent is conscious but minimally verbal in the hospital. And Dick is thirteen, officially a teenager.

Bruce does not know how teenagers are different from younger children. He does not recall being any different than he is now at either age. Only morose haze interspersed by flashes of overwhelming tension and temper.

Harvey once knew him at that age. Not that Bruce could talk to Harvey--not… as himself. The man Harvey knew was long, long dead, (or, it would be simpler if that man was dead, and Bruce as he was now was a new man entirely--) and it’s not as though Bruce could ask advice anyway.

Still. Maybe he will send Harvey some flowers they’ve started in the backyard...

Once the Justice League gets out of his living room.

Aside from Superman calling over the phone whenever he seems to please, once a month Martian Manhunter seems to show up, posing as just another social worker or lawyer or family friend, here to check in on how things are going with adoption, or the 501C3, or the… latest cookies out of the oven.

And if it’s not Martian Manhunter helping Dick sneak cookies off the cooling rack, then it’s Wonder Woman, which is somehow even worse.

There are not a lot of situations when Bruce would rather a mind reader with incredible telekinetic powers who could mentally and emotionally cripple him with a thought be in his presence, versus just a very strong lady who could rip him in two by breathing.

Diana Prince has made that situation a monthly occurrence.

She came this time while they were in the garage, putting together a much-overdue car engine. Alfred had insisted on dinner before business. Diana Prince stands in his house for over an hour by the time the rope finally came out and they got down to business. It is an hour too long. Bruce doesn’t think he’s had more than a few words of conversation with her since they moved into Alfred’s townhouse late summer, but he has heard the same questions out of her mouth far too many times.

“Have you been hurt lately?”

“No,” Dick says, because he only patrols on weekends, and Bruce makes sure he’s kept well away from anything that looks like it will have guns.

“Are you being treated well?”

“Yes.”

“Are you happy?”

“Y…”

...Bruce blinks for a second, before he realizes that Dick’s teeth are clenched tight and his face is turning faintly to another color.

“Dick…?” Diana says, before Dick gives into the rope, and says the truth.

“No.”

He’s not sure if anyone else can hear the air leave the room, but it does, and Bruce feels his lungs collapse in the vacuum left behind. His stomach shrivels into a ball.

He wants to run from the room, but his feet are too heavy and slow to move, so he just crosses his arms even tighter, and digs his fingers into his ribs.

“...why is that?” Diana asks. She doesn’t even glance back at Bruce when she does it. She doesn’t even glance away in the first place, even as Dick is screwing his eyes shut. The color his face has settled on is red, and blotchy, and fast.

Dick drops the rope from his hand and hiccups.

Bruce can’t move to comfort him.

...Diana looks between Dick, and the dropped rope, and pulls it back into the lasso loop. She stands.

“...I’m going to head outside for a bit and give you two some privacy.”

She turns and walks out to the garden, where Alfred is still watering the flowers.

Dick hiccups again, and Bruce is a stranger in his own body as he sits on the floor cross legged, and pulls Dick into his arms.

...he’s a lot bigger than he was when he was eight and curled into Bruce’s side, just minutes after his parents fell. Bruce puts his hand on the kid’s head, fingers running through the cropped dark hair.

“...Dick?” Bruce says. “Dick?”

He doesn’t get a response. He sits there, uncomfortably rubbing Dick’s hair, until Diana returns some long minutes later, announcing it’s about time she headed out.

“I’ll see you next month,” she says, mostly to Dick, who still hasn’t looked up.

Even as Bruce wonders if it’s a threat, something in his chest loosens when Diana leaves and Dick stays behind.

Eventually, they get up, and try to get ready for bed.

—

Harvey Dent wakes up again.

The last thing he remembers is a gun being pulled on him; a court case that he had to win, no matter what—

The nurses are alerted to his consciousness by the sound of his screaming.

Bruce Malone has no reason to visit him. No clearance. No nothing. All he does is run a small nonprofit startup, currently sending out applications to the very criminals Harvey put behind bars.

He doubts Batman would be welcome.

—

Gotham elects temp-head Rachel Dawes to permanent DA to finish out Harvey’s term by seventeen votes. Bruce doesn’t rig the election, though he thinks of doing so. Instead, he spends the week beforehand trying to disrupt the bribery network connecting the ballot counters to the remaining mob and asking Robin to go make sure the paperless polls aren’t hacked the night before.

...Robin isn’t happy with Bruce going out on his own still. But they compromise, some.

They send Harvey flowers.

They leave a note on Dawes’ desk. An offer, if she needs anything. They don’t want her to end up like her predecessor.

—

In the morning, at the first hint of workable weather, Bruce has some on-parole inmates and recent-releases standing in the middle of the park, shivering, holding shovels and rakes.

This is the first day they’ll be working together and training on the job. There will be a stipend associated with the work. Tools are provided. There’s just—they haven’t done this before. And neither has Bruce Malone, who failed to shake off his kid, Richard, who is sitting off on a picnic table not far away, arms wrapped around his snow pants and pouting furiously.

...He stays quiet as Bruce starts showing the group what they’re supposed to be doing— first snipping the large bushes down to size, raking the sticks and leaves into piles, and then coming up the back with shovels to help define areas for mulch beds around the bushes. Generally they would not be pruning this early into fall, but… the bushes have to go.

It’s step one (ignoring Bruce’s personal twenty-step plan midway through execution) to help keep the park safe and free-er of illegal activities: just being able to see into the damn park.

Once they actually start working, Richard gets up from his perch and glumly takes a rake, helping follow along and pulling the old foliage and branches into a set of neat piles a couple feet out of the way.

It would be one thing if Dick seemed to be having fun, but… he doesn’t really. He’s tolerant enough with the car (whose construction has largely stalled) but he’s never really had the kind of brain like Bruce’s which likes the simple, repetitive patterns of gardening, or kata, or math.

(“I don’t want to stay home,” Dick had said that morning.

“Then wouldn’t going out with a friend be better?” Bruce said over breakfast.

“I don’t have any friends!”

Bruce did not respond to that, and had escorted Dick to the park.)

...they pack up in the later afternoon, when the sun is still high but before banks close-- Bruce gathering up all the direct deposit information for the ones who sound interested in coming back, and paying the rest with checks. Dick waits in the car.

When they drive back home, something big, and blue, and midwestern is already in their kitchen, and is talking to Alfred about pie crust technique.

( Hell. )

Superman is wearing his full goddamn uniform as they enter. He turns and smiles when they come into the living room, raising up one big hand to greet them.

“Hey there! Decided I’d stop by.”

“....You did,” Bruce agrees, while Dick seems to perk up, eyes widening at the very large and blue man leaning on the counter.

Dick had met Superman already. Spent a week at least on the same spaceship as him. Stared him down over Bruce’s unconscious body. Somehow, it wasn’t stopping him from having that bright excitement in his eyes, now.

Maybe Superman was more exciting when he presumably wasn’t here to arrest anyone.

Presumably.

“Uh-huh,” said Superman. “And Mr. Pennyworth was telling me some about how things have been going for you here! Community service work. Sounds good.”

Sounded innocent was more like it. Sounded like prisoners in bright orange vests on the roadsides picking up litter for fifty cents an hour. Doing time, paying back society for all he’d done to it— yeah, he figured it would sound good to Superman.

“It is,” said Bruce.

Dick, maybe in a better mood now that they were out of the Gotham smog, saves him again.

“Are you here for dinner?” Dick asked, not quite on his tiptoes—not on his tiptoes at all, actually.

He’d grown again, Bruce realized. Now he stood almost to Bruce’s ribs, where once he’d had to stretch to reach.

“No, I didn’t think I’d be that welcome,” Superman said, smiling sheepishly, and good. At least he knew. “I’m just the messenger this time. Because we are going to have to start cashing in on that deal we made.”

For a moment, Bruce’s heart stills, and he feels Dick tense just a little bit beside him.

(Is it wrong, for a moment, that he’s still glad that Dick tenses when they both know it won’t be him attacked?)

“Woah, woah, no scary faces—“ Bruce’s face had not changed. “We just need your input. Information sharing, remember? Flash has had some weird things going on in his neighborhood and we thought maybe it’d be something you’d recognize.”

...Right.

Right.

He was getting protection from This League in exchange for cooperation, not just his dignity.

Before he could pull himself back into his body, Superman added, “and Robin too, of course.”

“Robin doesn’t need to—“ Bruce began.

“—Robin would be delighted ,” Dick said, raising his voice unnecessarily high and drowning out Bruce’s own.

Bruce looked down at Dick, mouth flat. Dick stared back up at him, scowling and arms crossed.

“You hate busywork,” said Bruce.

“It’ll be fine!” Said Superman, suddenly in his face , arms moving between him and Dick, pushing them apart, like they were dangerous to each other— “Flash was just going to bring his kid, uh, flash along with him, and thought it would be good for them to meet. Should’ve led with that. Just, giving kids friends in their own age bracket.”

Bruce had stood rock still, staring at the same spot Dick had been, now blocked by Superman’s arms. He did not look away.

“Yes,” Bruce said. “You should’ve led with that.”

—

...the next evening, his attempts at trimming his hair were interrupted by Alfred, who was quick to steal the scissors away and finish things himself. Soon, it was short enough he could slick it back for the first time in… a while. He pulled on one of his better dark turtlenecks. Business slacks. Dark shoes. Dark. Maybe too obviously a hide-away-in-the-background type dark.

They met Flash… on the other side of a zeta beam. Bruce hadn’t ridden one since first being escorted from the Watchtower to Gotham.

He hadn’t forgotten how uncomfortable it was, but it was one thing to remember in the mind and another to be given a reminder in the body.

Neither he nor Dick were in costume. There was no reason for Batman and Robin to suddenly be in Central. There would hopefully be no reason for anyone to suspect Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson to travel so far away from their little safe haven and attack.

Flash, however, did have some things to protect still, and so he waited on the other side of the zeta with his bright red costume made darker in the night, and an unfortunately bright smudge of yellow standing beside him.

“Hey, Bats,” Flash said, holding out a hand. “Nice to meet you nicely this time.”

Bruce was really glad he hadn’t given in to breaking this guy’s legs. That would have made this reintroduction unbearably uncomfortable. As it was, he met the hand slowly, and enough of a sound for acknowledgement.

Flash didn’t say anything about it, turning instead to Dick. “And you! Also glad to see you’re doing fine; hooow’s the ankle. This is my sidekick, Kid Flash.”

There was no time to answer to the ankle before Flash had introduced and thumped the yellow teen him on the back, getting the very encouraging response, “I’m not a kid I’m a teenager, ” which was too obvious to have needed pointing out, considering the cracks in his voice and the speckles acne surrounding his lips. “Don’t embarrass me!”

“I would never do that.”

(While Bruce remained cold in his skin despite the warm night, beside him, Dick let out a little bit of a laugh. Almost a few huffs of one, really. It was softening. It was enough to unfreeze Bruce some and get him going again.)

“You needed help with identification?” said Bruce, stepping forward to end the introductions.

Flash’s expression changed back to serious in a… flash. At least he didn’t look disappointed. Or surprised. “Yeah. Follow me, there’s a place a little more private down the street.”

That place ended up being a deli bakery. One that had very much closed for the evening, and had shuttered its windows for good measure. This made very little difference to Flash, who pulled out a key from a very discreet pocket, and opened the staff door in the back.

“They donate the day-old stuff to me,” Flash said, grinning, like that explained much at all. “Why don’t you kids go see if there’s anything set on top of the counters in the back?”

The little yellow flash made a sound that wasn’t quite a whoop, but wasn’t quite quiet, either.

And then the little hand reached out, grabbed Robin’s wrist, and pulled him through the door behind the counter.

“Woah, easy, chief.”

Flash’s hand wasn’t touching Bruce, no, but it was in front of him, ready to block and restrain in a movement as Bruce took a step forward to follow.

He turned to look at Flash, and met his same hard eyes looking back through Flash’s mask.

“They’re just gonna look around and see if they can find some food. It’s fine.”

Bruce knew that was just what they were doing, of course. He just wanted to— check. Just to make sure. It was a closed up shop of people they didn’t know in a city that was too dark and empty at night, save for a few well-maintained streetlamps and a pair of teenage girls walking down the sidewalk to the seven-eleven, sticking close together in the Midwest fall—-

“Let’s just get a seat and wait for them, and we can get started. How’s that?”

Flash had removed his hand, and was gesturing now to one of the booth seats near the bar. Not by the windows. Maybe far enough from the windows that anyone who looked in and saw a book light on would just assume management was doing the books late.

(Bruce’s jaw was not tight , it was just his teeth kept pressing down together. He sat down across from the seat Flash gestured to. It was better to get through work quickly, and head home.)

“Okay,” said Flash, suddenly in the booth with him. Bruce almost still felt the breeze of the movement as a book-clipped green folder was produced and laid out on the table. “So, this is a case that’s been going on a little while. Take your time and let me know what you think of it.”

The file was pushed over to Bruce’s side of the table, and he took it quietly, removing the clip and flipping it open.

He disregarded the notes and bios and instead turned first to the photos.

...he did not like looking through other people’s photos. All he could think of was that he would have liked a bit closer look at the doorframe, or just a little bit out of angle, or frustration at someone’s focus being a little bit out. That was why you took lots of photos of course, but it was still a gnawing anxiety in him that they were going to just miss something. All he had were his eyes through someone else’s lense and someone else’s word to take for it.

Which he was very bad at liking.

….but that was just what this was, he guessed. The case was from five years prior. A body of an older woman on the floor of an enclosed porch. Broken glass. Gunshot wound to the left shoulder, close enough to the heart she’d probably been dead within a minute or two, long before the first police officers had arrived. A bullet hole in the wall behind her. Fallen out of her chair. Glass window of the porch had shattered. A bullet had been extracted from the wall, looking like a .22– moderately furnished house with plastic sheeting over the couches. Wicker chairs. An expensive security system had captured what were rendered as stills of the moment the bullets entered the cameras view, and a man a minute or so later on the front door at the other side of the house, running inside, presumably to inspect.

There were other things. They seemed comfortably middle to upper-middle class, from the photos, and finally turning to look at the profiles confirmed it. 68. White. Retired with a moderate stipend. Married thirty years. No priors or connections that Bruce might consider linking to any of the people he knew. Just things like public intoxication, driving violations, a few fines—

Her husband was found with her, and owned the same caliber gun that had broken the glass encasement, shot the woman, and knocked her out of her chair before lodging in the wall. He’d run in from across the street to investigate the gunshot, he said. He denied doing the deed, and circumstantial evidence was not enough to make a conviction on—

...Bruce flipped through the folder again, frowning.

Flash, who had pulled out his phone, looked up. “Something?”

“...what is it you want me to say about this?” It was a neatly put together file. Very neatly. No real loose ends, if everything in it was true. What was he supposed to be catching, here?

“Just, I guess, your thoughts. Anything stand out?” He took the moment to arch his back and stretch his arms out a bit, one hand still holding the phone. Smiled a bit. Friendly.

Bruce frowned while looking at Flash this time.

“This is a test,” he stated, “and I doubt just to see if I’d throw out a name just to be ‘useful.’”

Flash blinked innocently at him, but he was still smiling. “I mean, haha, can’t blame us too much…? You found a lot of trafficking chains, but, I mean—“

“The case has already been closed, and you’re certain of who did it,” said Bruce flatly. He flipped the folder shut and shoved it back across the table. “I’d rather see the scene myself, but if the numbers are right, the bullet hole is too steep an angle for a flat lawn if the husband shot from shoulder height. Someone half his height, or someone kneeling or lying in the grass. He’s old enough to have trouble getting up from that position, much less from the edge of the yard, to run around to the front of the house and avoid grass stains from a new cut lawn. There’s not enough other information to know who might’ve had a motive to make it professional or not.”

…

Flash blinked at him, leaning his elbows on the table to watch. He wasn’t smiling or laughing anymore. Good.

“Yeah,” Flash said. Moved the folder off the table, to the booth seat, out of view. “Some kids were playing with their new .22 in the yard across from the house and accidentally shot her through the window. They confessed a few months ago.”

It was a small enough crime that news wouldn’t have made it to Gotham. Or been widely publicized at all, if ‘kids’ meant they were still minors. That would make them thirteen at most at the time of the shooting—

Bruce wasn’t sure if his throat was full of acid or metal as he said, “Is there anything else for me to look over?”

Flash hesitated a moment (an eternity for him, surely) and said, “Well…”

Bruce stood and made a straight fucking line to the door Dick had been pulled in and not yet emerged. Flash called out, “Hey—!”

….even as the hand fell on his shoulder and tried to pull him back, Bruce had frozen in the doorway.

On the other side, he could only see a bit— the doorframe was too narrow and he dared not step closer—but he could see enough.

He’d wondered, a little bit, why Robin hadn’t emerged when he’d begun speaking. Surely he was loud enough to be heard from the back room. They were only meant to be separated minutes. Just a quick mission. Now, he could see, though—

Dick, sitting on an industrial chest freezer, his legs kicking, not near touching the floor.

He was holding a popsicle. One of the fudge ones. Partly eaten and the top of the stick beginning to show, and Robin didn’t see how it was beginning to drip down over the crinkled plastic wrap, and would soon run over his fingers.

He was busy, looking at Kid Fash. Kid Flash squatting on the floor with a creamsicle, holding it up to the color of his suit, and visibly whining with an orange tongue, a pouting face—

And Robin ignored his own melting ice cream to laugh.

...Flash’s hand tugged on his shoulder again, this time gentle enough that Bruce felt it. He turned with the pressure, and headed back for the booth.

He sat down in it, across from Flash and his already-solved case folder.

“...this was not for case files, was it,” Bruce said, staring at the table between them, feeling very stupid and small.

“I mean,” Flash said, looking almost as embarrassed as Bruce was shamed. “...we did want to know. But… we thought maybe my uh, my cousin could use someone who could relate to him.”

Ah yes. For Kid Flash’s sake. For the boy who they’d never seen publicized before, who was complaining about his outfit color as if he hadn’t chosen it, who didn’t know that in Flash’s ‘occasional empty diner hideout’ he was allowed to run off and eat before being told.

Not for the boy that for the past month Diana’s pitying face had hung over, the boy who had eagerly asked to Superman to stay for dinner, and who Martian Manhunter would deliver sleeves of choco cookies to, even though they had more than enough money to purchase a box for themselves.

...perhaps Bruce should be glad Flash wasn’t the best at lying. Perhaps Bruce was too used to looking for tells, and mistook super speed masking for the truth.

“I see,” was all he said.

When he’d been a child, there had been plenty of others who knew death, and who had never moved him an inch for all their crying. He’d done his best to make that untrue for Dick the past few years, and now they knew each other’s grief inside and out.

Bruce did not know what else to do from there.

It was grief all the way down.

“He’ll need to learn how to counter people who might actually know how to fight speedsters,” he said, watching the table. “There’s pads in the basement, if he’d like to improve sparring with Dick sometimes.”

Flash blinked at him again. Flash sat up straighter, grinning. “Oh?”

“Oh,” Bruce agreed, looking up to scowl. “But for fuck’s sake, bring more than one casefile next time.”

—

On Robin’s anniversary, a gang fight breaks out in the Diamond District.

Something gone wrong. A shootout.

Bruce isn’t sure if it could’ve been called a shootout before the police arrive. By the end of the night, the building is on fire, and a gas vein has blown. Heavy smoke drifting down the street causes a panic, and then a stampede—

He doesn’t want to let Robin out tonight.

On the news, it looks like there are fights breaking out in the stampede. There are people lying down, specks of color on the ground as the helicopter news anchor tries to describe the scene. She’s pure professional. Cold eyes. Clear eyes.

The smoke momentarily engulfs the helicopter, and she begins crying.

He does not want to let Robin out tonight.

He will deal with the outrage in the morning.

—

(On Robin’s anniversary, Harvey Dent sees the fires and hears gunshots from his hospital room. He drags himself and his IV stand away from the bed, towards the window, and fumbles with the latch with ineffective hands. The nurses come with the heart monitor alert. When they sedate him, Harvey is still screaming “Burn it down, burn it down.” )

—

...as often as it happens, Bruce doesn’t think Gotham knows how to deal with tragedy. Wasn’t it common by now? Weren’t they used to it? But as much as the flags should’ve flown half mast and statues been erected, the world stood still— the next morning, school busses take the children to school, and their parents march out to work.

Bruce has a distinct face, but with enough makeup and a red wig, he can seem to be a different person for a while. He can dress himself up as officer and with enough confidence and disdain walk right passed the caution tape and into the crime scene the next morning.

Is it still accurate to call several city blocks a crime scene? Is it a crime scene at all?

There’s caution tape around it. He knows what the words mean in his head. A shape, more than a real definition, with real letters attached— a block of space that has crumbled differently from the world around him. A depression of buildings, some with more tarps laid down than others.

Most of the bodies have been taken to the morgue by now. Not all of them. But most.

Is he going to sneak into the morgue tonight? Is he going to cut open an innocent person who gave no consent to him? To do more than what their family may have agreed to? Will he just steal the coroner’s report and assume they did their jobs properly?

….it is Gotham. He will assume nothing until proven otherwise. Even now it feels like the police are more rattled than usual, like something has actually gone and bitten them and made them pay a bit more attention.

Inside the building where the shootout started, he starts to look for the bullet holes and take pictures. He looks for scorch marks to track towards the origins of the blaze.

He doesn’t find a blown gas vein, no matter how hard he looks.

There was a difference between a storage building and a warehouse. This was a storage building. It had perhaps had a secretary and some organizers. Someone in charge of keeping track of records. There had been unused parts of the building. Bare rooms without much beyond stripped light switches and unpainted walls. One or two empty office spaces, for meetings perhaps. For presentations.

It was on the second floor where he found the lab. What appeared to be the remains of a lab, in any case. It had been shot up through the floors, and the papers had burnt up in the fire. Police hadn’t officially come up this high yet. The stairs didn’t seem stable. Bruce had not specifically used the stairs. As long as no one saw him slip back down, it would be fine.

It seemed as if the lab had not been in use at the time of the shootout. Fortunate. The beakers were broken, but they were all clustered together near the sink, clean, and so presumably had all been put away after any use. There was nothing sitting out that seemed to have been mid-use. He would’ve believed a Bunsen burner might’ve started part of the fire, but there was none of that, either.

...there was one thing. A broken tankard in the corner that had caused most of the damage, to be certain. A high caliber round seemed to have punctured it, either from the floor below or fired from the hall outside. Otherwise, there would’ve been another body up here, or at least the remnants of one. But the sudden decompression seemed to have mostly left just… a badly scattered room and shrapnel damage on the opposing wall.

He was about to move to the next room when he noticed the faint texture inside the tank and a matching sort of stain on the ceiling above.

...he moved closer to the tank, holding his breath and not daring to hope (should he be hoping for something?) and investigated.

A thin layer of green-ish white powder layered the insides of the tankard. An explosive cloud of the stuff must have also flown towards the ceiling and stained it during decompression. He’d assumed it was an oxygen tank. Assumed wrong.

Taking out a few q-tips, he picked up a few wipes and sealed them away in an evidence bag, did another once-over of the room, now trying to double check everything and ignore his ‘assumptions’, but the burnt papers remained largely illegible, and the cleaned lab materials yielded nothing new.

He moved on to the next room, and slipped out quietly from there to check the rest of the street.

—

He arrived back home in different clothes just about the time that Dick (picked up by Alfred) returned home from school.

The kid looks at Bruce as Bruce enters the front room, and a silent but perceptible drone passes between them.

For a moment, Bruce simply looked back, wondering what it was he was supposed to say here.

Eventually, he fumbles in his pockets and pulled out dust-covered q-tips. They’d done this lots of times on the road, hadn’t they? And it had been fun, then. “Want to help identify oddly colored dust?”

Dick lets his head drop back with an open-mouthed groan at the ceiling, but he does come to the garage lab without… any other response than that sound and movement.

...Bruce was not sure what that meant.

—

Who the fuck was rigging exploding nitrous oxide cans to deliver green-dyed powdered LSD?

—

Monday, at the park, he tells the ones who show up they can stay and work in the park as they’ve been doing the last two weeks, or they can come with him to help clean up the areas damaged by the fire.

Most of them, eight out of the ten, peel off to go help with the fire damage. He can’t say he expected that. But they wander out of the park, keeping together in a group, and spend the day with magnet sticks picking up nails and crooked metal and stacking bricks up out of the walkway. They hose down the ashes to stop dust and at Bruce’s insistence, scoop the ashes into garbage bags instead of just washing it all into the sewer.

It gets him some weird looks, but no one is ready to argue with him after only working for two weeks, because these are the ones who stayed for that daily stipend-- there’s not a contract here; these ten are the ones who hate this work less than anything else they might’ve had available, so they break out two flat shovels and bag things up, wearing cotton masks to avoid inhalation. Bruce trots back to the park to get the truck and pick up all those bags for disposal.

He’s prepared for the ones they left behind to have skipped out early, unsupervised, but as he rounds the (now lower) hedges to look at their base of operations he finds… they actually have acquired an extra person.

No, the shovels aren’t moving and the hedges don’t look that different from what they’d been like this morning, but that’s still not abandoning a position. And instead they have some soda cans from the nearby vending machine, and are leaning on a termite-eaten picnic table, talking with rapt interest to Dick Grayson.

Bruce paused to take it in a second time. Dick certainly clocked him coming into view even though the kid didn’t turn to look his direction. Dick was still there, though, sitting on the other side of the picnic table with a fizzy orange juice and his legs crossed under himself. It wasn’t Bruce’s day to pick him up, Bruce was certain, and yet he had a moment where he had to think of it again to make sure, and checked his phone, and his pocket schedule. But his instinct was right, and it was indeed Alfred’s day to pick Dick up from school while Bruce worked here in the park--

He started to walk over just as Dick turned and raised a hand in greeting, letting the recruits cue into his presence before he was close enough to startle them. And yet, they were still startled enough to look at their shovels and very obviously say “shit,” even when Bruce was still too far away to actually hear it. Then, one seemed to realize they had cursed in front of a tween, said “shit” again, and smacked themselves on the forehead.

Dick’s nose wrinkled up as he smiled. Bruce couldn’t hear it, but he knew it was a laughter snort.

(He did not acknowledge his jaw untensing as he walked up to Dick who was smiling and sociable again.)

He came over intending to smile and say words and have a nice conversation, and… then he was close enough and realized he didn’t know what to say. Did he tell them not to corrupt Dick? Would they take that as him implying they were poisonous to others? Would Dick take that as him being protective and spoil the mild good mood? If he told them to take the rest of the day off since clearly things weren’t going to happen, was that dismissal? Or was that chasing them off? Would it be a threat to their paycheck, even though he intended to pay the day’s wages fair as always?

Things seemed to be going almost well lately. The park was slowly being cleaned and Dick was in better spirits than he’d been for two days since the anniversary--

“Oh, he stalled out, don’t worry about it.”

It is not embarrassment, but Bruce does snap out of his train of thought and back into the present. “Sorry,” he says, and looks to the two grown men in their baggy jackets and laced up work boots and secondhand hats. “We’re just finishing cleaning up some of the ash. If you come help move the last bit, we’ll all call it a day.”

As they got up and started shuffling away from the picnic table, Bruce did glance at Dick, and after a moment of still confusion, say, “Coming?”

...the expression Dick gives him was not a smile. But he did come.

They throw the garbage bags in the back of the trunk, and pack it largely to the brim. Surreptitiously, before Dick can climb into the passenger seat, Bruce digs out a simple dust mask and hands it to him. With barely a second look, Dick puts it on and rolls down the window before settling in. It’s smooth, and no one asks questions or looks much askance, because he and Dick are good by now at not announcing something is happening that is different than normal to the world at large.

(And Dick has become very good at seeing through that with Bruce, but Bruce is… starting to wonder if perhaps, he has taught Dick too well to hide anything that would draw attention that something was wrong. Like a wounded animal could run on a broken leg, or a predator bleed from the mouth, and neither would ever make a peep.)

They drove the bags of ashes home to hide behind the house’s perimeter walls, and Bruce tried to explain. The dust, and the huge plume of heat and smoke that could’ve blown even heavy particles down the street, and the sort of cues that psychedelics took from the state you were in. How most people probably wouldn’t exactly get a good trip, surrounded by gunfire and smoke. And maybe there was something else he missed, in the ash, unsafe for casual disposal, how he wasn’t certain he hadn’t missed something--

Dick laid his head back on the car seat, sighing through his mask, and Bruce stopped his mumbling.

Glanced over.

“...maybe I can… arrange for Flash to take a look, if you want to come along,” he offered as they pulled onto their street.

Dick sat up a little straighter, a little light in his eyes.

...he wondered, maybe unkindly (but mostly tiredly), if Dick would rather move in with the Flash and his sidekick. He didn’t have any real evidence for this. Kids did tend to be fairly excited to see friends around their own age, and just because someone might enjoy a trip to a festival didn’t mean they wanted to live in one.

...yet, Dick probably would’ve been quite happy, adopted into a renaissance fair circuit.

Maybe it wasn’t that Dick needed more friends. Maybe the issue was Bruce.

But it’s too late to change that now, isn’t it? Dick drew his line in the sand in front of the Justice League, and Bruce had given him too many secrets to have to keep, and there was nowhere else to go.

—

Bruce goes to Gotham Academy early. Very early. Two hours before pickup is meant to be.

Dick has gotten into a fight.

The parents of the other kid are already there when Bruce arrives and is shown to the principal’s office (it is in the same place it has been since Bruce went here) and ushered inside to the sound of anger and snapping threats.

The office is wood, with a centered carpet and a large mahogany desk at the center, and surrounded by three adults and two children, one of them his.

Dick doesn’t have a scratch on him, unless you count a faint bruise starting to show on his knuckles. The other boy, who is bigger and taller in every way, has a tissue up to his nose and an ice pack on his ear, and is simultaneously shielded and towered over by his two parents, neither of whom have stopped arguing with the principal since Bruce arrived.

He barely gets a chance to get to Dick’s chair by the wall when he is also pulled into the argument by a “Is this little heathen yours, Mister Malone?” from the mother.

Things are not going to improve from there, he’s pretty sure.

“What’s going on?” he asks the principal instead, who is a balding white man with age spots on his face and horn-rimmed glasses on his nose.

“ Master Richard here has assaulted Master Reynolds--” the principal begins.

“--and we will be pressing charges if adequate disciplinary action is not taken,” says the father.

“But what actually happened,” Bruce says, and somehow the noise gets louder in the room. Not the physical noise of three or four people talking at once, but also the hot dissent from Dick in his corner, the hidden bloodied fear of the boy he attacked, the principal patting the desk with his hands over and over, trying to call attention back to himself. Fluorescent lights bright as static. Itchy polyester fake turkish carpets even though his shoes. The room is small and red-orange with wood stained to look like cherry, yellow copper accents on the studs of cushions and trophies and the frames of portraits and certificates hung on the clustered walls--

Dick is suspended three weeks.

Dick is curled in the front seat of the car, furious that Bruce didn’t defend him enough and fight back, and get his sentence reduced or vetoed entirely. His body is balled up tight enough he’s no bigger than he was at eight, curled around the seatbelt in a haze of fury.

“He was picking on people ,” Dick says in a way Bruce knows means Dick had seen it before, but this time it had crossed a line. “ He should be suspended.”

‘He’ is getting two stitches and a formal apology written (ostensibly) by Dick. Dick will not be the one writing it, even if it’s his name at the bottom. ‘He’ will be in school, not in trouble for bullying but now with free reign to his targets without Dick to stand in the way. If Dick was even in the way before at all. If being in the way without being physical meant anything in this case.

“You’ll just have to be more subtle about it,” Bruce says, trying to be encouraging. Because Dick didn’t do anything wrong to step in. Maybe it didn’t deserve a bloody nose, maybe it could’ve been handled some other way, but he still hasn’t been able to wrangle the exact story out of anyone but he is certain that--

Dick goes “RRR” and kicks the windshield hard enough that Bruce startles and slams on the breaks.

Their seatbelts jerk tight and a car horn behind them blares.

...there is the faintest tap on their bumper, but Bruce is already speeding the car forward again, heart pounding too hard to stop.

There’s not even a scratch when they get out at their house later.

He goes to Dick’s bedside in the evening. Dick’s lying on top of his covers with the lights turned off in a darkening room, staring at the wall opposite the door. There was music playing before, but the CD player turned off as soon as Bruce turned the door handle.

He sits by Dick’s bedside and asks if he’d like to go out for the evening.

Dick agrees, but there isn’t much laughter that night, except the sort Robin scares people with.

The mood is still there the next morning.

It is Superman’s turn to check in. Apparently.

The visit is unscheduled (and probably because of�� Dick’s suspension) and today involves casserole, which Bruce is primed automatically to dislike.

"Yes?" Bruce says upon seeing big blue and buoyant in their kitchen, hovering over the kitchen island with a glass dish covered in aluminium and Alfred looking over a handwritten paper beside him.

"Oh, hey, good morning there," Superman says, as if he's surprised to see Bruce here when there was no other person for him to be there to see . "I was just dropping off the casserole recipe Alfred wanted to try."

…one of the only people for him to be here to see. But Bruce still doubted a casserole was a real reason for a whole visit. So Bruce tries again. "Did you need something?"

Alfred looks up from the paper with a frown and without a word starts shooing them out of the cooking space if they're going to be talking business. "I dunno. Was there something you needed to talk about?"

They make it to the couches of the living room, though neither of them sit down.

"No," says Bruce.

"Alright then," says Superman, who Bruce is learning is an asshole. "I heard some stuff happened with Dick at school?"

Which is entirely unsubtle and a very clear sign that Superman is not leaving until Bruce asks some sort of question or resolves whatever this is.

So fine. Bruce hasn't even had some fucking coffee yet. He'll ask a question. "What would you do if your child, who is aware that at nightime they can go out and punch abusers and rapists, during the daytime attempted to defend an underclassman, and as a result are threatened with criminal action or suspension while you are trying to lie low and causing a big fuss about it and fighting the decision will do the exact opposite of laying low, severely limiting their freedom regardless of if we win."

Like a coward, Superman's expression says he had been thinking of Dick as a kid who was not Dick , and sheepishly says, "I guess, what would your parents do?"

Bruce thinks he feels it this time. The expression on his face turning colder. He feels it the same way Dick can always see the change. "I wouldn't know that, now, would I?"

...this was why he left in the first place, wasn't it. This eternal loop of days upon days surrounded by people who just forgot or never could let him forget. It's been easier as an adult, almost-- it's normal now for people's parents to be dead. It's normal to not have people ask after them like limbs they can't see have detached. Even if Superman doesn't know his old name, doesn't know that stupid story about a boy billionaire and his rich family, its jarring to realize that even the most alien being on earth just assumes--

--well, of course. He would know all humans have parents.

But the bite in Bruce's voice is cold enough, and the way Alfred's slight shuffling in the kitchen goes quiet, it's enough to get through apparently-- Superman's head is ducked down embarrassed and he says, "right, sorry," because perhaps Bruce returning to Gotham to the fucking Wayne Butler's House should've been enough reason to realize he didn't have any family left of his own. "The person who raised you…"

"Nothing they said," Bruce interrupts, "has ever done anything about this."

…

Maybe he's angry. He hasn't had any coffee yet. But he turns to end this conversation and walk out to the garden, and hears Alfred's sigh from the kitchen.

But he's telling the truth.

Even if Alfred had found something new to say in the years since Bruce tried to bite his therapist's face off, if he's tried to say it to Dick, it clearly hasn't been working.

There is a thing like a piston beating up against his head. A hammering rhythmically at the front of his skull. One thing, then another, then another, then another, and when he wakes up the next morning to one more ring there will still be all the ones behind him, echoing through the halls still unresolved.

He wasn’t made to live like this. How was anyone made to live like this? One thing after another and another and when he wakes up in the morning there are still more banal, useless things to do in a world that eats up and eats up and eats up--

How does the grocery store clerk wake up each morning? How does she go to bed at night knowing the same thing will happen the next day, but worse, and more tired, and less pay, over and over, for eternity.

#batman #dick grayson #bruce wayne #robin #fanfic #roadtrip vigilantes

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abitscrewystein · 3 years ago

Text

Metal On The Brain

A rework of an old one-shot!

Warnings for: Blood Self-experimentation Self-harm Depression Separation anxiety Intrusive thoughts Trauma Hallucinations Heavy dissociation

The majority of the fight was a blur for him. He should have been more careful, thought through it more thoroughly. He should have factored in the sudden rainstorm that had passed only a half an hour ago. Marie was worried, he could feel that much from her soul alone.

The kishin egg they were hunting looked just as unsightly as the rest he’d faced thus far. In all, including those he collected with his previous partner, he had captured a hundred and twenty-five. This would end just as the rest had. They would stop its rampage, collect its soul, and move on.

He was only eighteen, even then only barely. Marie, his current weapon partner, was only a month or so younger than him.

The thing was about as high as a two-story building, bearing claws and jagged teeth, its flesh just barely clinging to its bones. Its spine jutted out like cracked spikes, only putting more strain on its already-stretched flesh. Disgusting, but he’d still enjoy tearing it apart.

He was angry. He should have listened when Marie suggested they take a while for him to calm down. He didn’t listen, and he’d regret it for the rest of his life. Any time he looked into her eye.

He glared up at the creature and took note of all the data present.

Blind bloodlust; Advantage to Stein Large equates to slow; Advantage to Stein It had rained; Disadvantage to both sides He was angry; Advantage to the kishin

It had eaten so many souls by this point that it had begun to go berserk. When it finally noticed Stein, its full attention was turned from its intended victim. Stein rolled his head, cracking the joints, adjusting the grip on his weapon. Not loose enough. Too tense. Too angry.

He’d lost all that work for what? Some woman Spirit won’t last a year with. Damn that woman.

Stein charged the beast, using his advantages. His speed, delayed reaction response from the kishin. He was able to keep most of his friction on the ground, making a conscious effort to step on the drier of stones in the cobble street. He slammed his weapon into the back of what might have been a knee once and jumps back as the thing tumbles to the ground.

It would have been the perfect position, but there was one problem. He misread it. It wasn’t as slow as he thought it would be.

It backhanded him, like swatting a fly. Humiliating. Degrading. Taunting. The young meister flew through the window of a crumbling shop and slammed into the counter. He wishes he’d have woken up faster, that he’d come to his senses quicker. That wasn’t the case.

When his eyes opened he saw Marie, kneeled in front of him, worriedly looking him over. He had plenty of glass embedded in his back, and what he’d guessed to be at least a mild concussion. He groaned, his eyes finally coming back into focus.

Some part of him wished that they hadn’t. He saw the kishin’s hand —at least seven feet in length— reaching in through the broken window. Stein tried to reach out, push Marie out of the way, try to tell her to change back into her weapon form. Too late. Too slow. Not enough time.

It grabbed her by the head, dragging her outside. It held her daintily, taunting him as he staggered and nearly tripped over the edge of the window. He warped his wavelength, felt it buzzing under his skin, ready to send a burst of force into the creature. Too late. Again.

He felt his stomach churn as one of its claws stabbed through her eye. Popped like a grape. He still remembers her scream, echoes of a nightmare of a mistake. One damn mistake, one miscalculation, one stupid decision, and there she was. Hanging from its claws, passed out, tears streaming from her remaining eye.

He jumped onto its back, grabbing those spikes of bone and tearing across the skin with his charged wavelength. Its arms were long enough to grab him as well. Another miscalculation. Too much anger, not enough room to process before the fight.

Stein grimaced, feeling its bladed claws slice easily through his clothes and his flesh. Agony. Marie. Rain, water, pain. Pain. PAIN— No! Think. Strategize. Rationalize. Where did it hit me? Concussion... Abdomen, chest, back. Metal claws. Metal.

He took a breath as far as he could considering the grip the thing had on him, and reached inward. His wavelength surged, crackling with energy saved from Marie’s own soul. The blast was more than enough to shatter its hand and make it drop his partner.

Another wound to add to the count. Sprained ankle, potentially fractured talus and metatarsal bones. A shockwave of pain shooting through his leg. Can’t stop. It wasn’t dead yet, and he only barely caught Marie before she would have hit the ground.

He set her down and dodged an angry swipe above his head. He grabbed onto its wrist and ran up its arm. Good thing he always keeps something extra. A scalpel. Versatile, small, easy to conceal. Easy to use, as well. It’s quick enough to slice across the kishin’s throat.

Stein staggered and fell when he hit the ground, the monster’s form dissipating and compressing until it was nothing more than a floating red orb. That was far less important than making sure his weapon partner wasn’t dead. He couldn’t lose another one, not so quickly after losing the first.

Once he had confirmed she was alive, he promptly passed out.

He was vaguely aware as agents from the DWMA came to collect them, the lights of an ambulance, hospital ceilings. All covered by a hazy, painless fog. All he could think of was Marie. Was she alright? Would she live? Considering his rather extensive wounds, he probably should have been wondering about himself as well.

When Stein was finally somewhat lucid —at least for his standards— he noted that his bed was next to Marie’s. The nurse explained that she’d been asking about him, exasperated and worried. He learned he’d been asleep for nearly a week. Understandable. Bodies need time to heal, and do so best when resting. If he hadn’t been asleep, he probably would have made it harder on himself. He hated doing nothing.

They stayed in the hospital for quite some time, though Marie was discharged earlier. She spent most of her time with him, quietly muttering apologies when she thought he was asleep. Why would she feel guilty? Why did he feel guilty?

Weapons are trained and willing to die for their meisters. How fucked up is that...

Worse than that, how could she forgive him? He was reckless, he lost her an eye because he was angry and didn’t listen to her. It was her. She was always there for him, always willing to help. Stabilize, quiet the insanity of his internal dialogue. She wasn’t afraid of him. He couldn’t blame her, really, she’s an incredibly powerful weapon. Named for the legendary Mjolnir. Though, she’s a tonfa. Not a hammer.

She made his recovery easier. She brought him food, helped him remember how to laugh and smile. Sort of. He could still feel the weight of everything in his chest. For the first time in his life, he regretted his actions. It was a disturbing new feeling, and he hated it.

He started getting anxious when she left to do other things. Fell into dissociative states, filled with anxiety at the lack of her presence. A doctor and two nurses ended up rather bruised, and he ended up strapped to his cot. Frustrating. Annoying. Too many memories. Something could happen. Anything could happen to her, and he would be helpless. Useless. Pathetic.

Of course, nothing happened. She would come back, same as always, worried when she noted his distress. There was something else, though. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe she was finally getting tired of it. Tired of his constant panic attacks when she would leave. When he would beg her to stay just a little longer.

It was such a relief when he was discharged. He didn’t want to go back to his apartment with her. There was a pang of overwhelming guilt when he looked her in the eyes. Eye. One eye.

He started to take missions more seriously. Controlled himself, though only barely. He slipped back into other old habits, instead. Finding animals to gut. Gouge. Slice. It felt... helpful.

He made her a Death Scythe at twenty-two. He was proud, more so of her than himself. They were a team, but she consumed the souls. She absorbed their power, something he could never imagine doing. He took some pride in his work, but he was more happy for her. What he felt for himself was... Fear.

What would he do? She was going to be transferred to Oceania. She told him she wanted something simple, something easy. As if life for anyone from the academy would be either of those things. Still, he told her to go, that he was happy for her, that he’d be fine. He was lying.

Stein found himself with random episodes of anxiety. Voices creeping around in the shadows of their now-empty apartment. Everything about those rooms was wrong, now that she was gone. It was too lacking. She’d brought most of the furniture with her, which made sense. Most of it was hers anyway, not really his style.

When he tried to ignore his emotions, the anxiety, the depression, they just came back stronger. He had no one to go to. Spirit was married, they had a daughter back when they first got together. So young. Not to mention, Spirit was terrified of him and his wife always glared daggers when he saw them.

He had to stop thinking about her. She’d send him emails, voicemails, which he started to ignore until she just stopped. Somehow, that made it even worse. He couldn’t get any of it out of his head. He needed a barrier. Something, anything to make it better.

He moved out. Bought some broken-down building with what he’d saved up. He busied himself, fixing it up. No one really came out there, so it was perfect for a man hiding from everything. A hermit. Closed off in more ways than one. He refused the offers from Lord Death to keep working for him. Finished several degrees online.

It kept getting worse. He kept getting worse.

He needed a barrier. Something between him and the rest of the hell in his head. Finally, after four years without her, without anyone... He snapped. The walls warped around him, his vision swam, his head was filled with images. Blood. He needed blood. No one to slice, no one to alter. No experiments to carry out.

He pushed himself into a corner, heaving breaths that felt like lead. His stomach churned, the whispers didn’t stop. He wanted it to stop. Needed it to stop. He stumbled as he stood up, leaning on the wall as he walked. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going. He could stop it. He had to.

It’s all in your head. All in your head. In your head. Something between me and my mind. In my head.

“In my head.”

He’d collected enough scrap metal for another hobby, made little trinkets and gadgets. He found something that seemed fitting. Ironic. An oversized screw. He had plenty of medical supplies —dubiously acquired— . Drugs, sutures, stitches, scalpels, pliers, bandages...

He spent so long in that over-lit operating room tearing himself apart. Putting himself back together. Pull apart. Stitch together. Over and over and over. Gave himself several more scars. The last of which was heavy and metal. He’s not sure how he survived. Maybe his soul was too spiteful to let him die.

That was something else, entirely. Altering his own soul. That’s something he doubts he’ll ever remember. He didn’t record it, didn’t take notes. Couldn’t, really. He could hardly breathe, much less speak. It was all so oddly numb but fascinating to watch, see his own blood pooling beneath him.

When he came back from the brink, he noted the mirrors. So many of them propped up everywhere, just so that he could operate on himself. He studied his reflection, his hazy eyes, the fresh stitches across his face and his chest and his arm. The moment he saw the screw embedded in his head was the moment he fled from his body. It felt like a camera had zoomed out to show him his broken flesh.

Somehow, he survived. Lord Death called on him, said he saw what happened. The shinigami insisted he continue working for the DWMA, if only to keep himself in check. He could run the lab like a clinic, if people dared to go inside. Mostly he did autopsies.

He adjusted. He got used to the occasional migraines, found that turning the screw readjusted his thought process. It became a strange little habit, but one he felt calming and helpful. He began to enjoy himself again, just a little bit, a new spark in his life.

Or in someone else’s lack of life. Poor Sid, someone he remembered from school. Stein hadn’t interacted much with the other students, but Sid was a good man. A good a person as any for such an odd experiment. Even if it was commissioned by Lord Death. A human soul and a corpse was an odd package to find on his doorstep. Never a dull moment, he supposed.

He had some fun tormenting those students for their remedial lesson. He remembered how good it felt to be in control, to be intimidating.

Things felt normal. He became a professor. He liked teaching.

Then a witch infiltrated the academy. She woke the kishin, Asura, from his eons-long slumber.

But that’s another story.

#Monologue ; One-Shots #File ; Professor Stein

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reyesstrand · 5 years ago

Note

Ohhh I love the list 😏 #25, #90, whichever you’re feeling 😁

thank you for the prompt!! 💗

all prompts are from this list! read on AO3 here!!

Both of them having risky jobs is something that they’ve had to come to terms with.

It doesn’t, however, mean that either one of them enjoys it. Especially when the other is left helpless, forced to watch and trust that they’ll be okay. Which is where Carlos is at right now, incessantly tapping his foot as he tries to actually do his job and keep bystanders back, while also submitting to his need to know if TK’s okay. They talk about these things, it’s one of the pillars of their relationship that seems to grow stronger every day, and Carlos knows that his boyfriend is good at what he does. But it doesn’t take away from the gnawing nervousness and sense of unease that settles over him, all curled up in the pit of his stomach ever since he heard from Michelle that Owen sent TK and Marjan in for the rescue, since they confirmed signs of life five minutes ago.

“You need to breathe,” Michelle tells him, as she lingers at his side, waiting for the family trapped in the bellows of the house fire to be retrieved by the team so she can check them over. She has her supplies bag hiked up high on her shoulder, and has both ambulances prepped for a quick transfer to the nearest hospital. Carlos side-eyes her, but when she lifts a brow at him in retaliation, he sighs and makes a big show of inhaling deeply.

“I’m fine,” Carlos says, walking in step with her closer to the scene, offering an added presence of authority to hopefully enforce the border between the still-smoking house and the neighbours trying to get a better look. Michelle stops a safe distance away from the house, locking eyes and nodding toward Captain Strand before she glances back at her best friend.

“I know you’re freaking out,” Michelle’s voice is very matter-of-fact, and yet is somehow also comforting; it helps when she reaches down and squeezes his hand. “You don’t need me to tell you this, but TK and Marjan have good heads on their shoulders, they’re going to be fine.”

Carlos presses his lips together. “I know that logically, chica. It still stresses me out, though.”

“If it helps at all, they just located the kids,” Paul seems to come out of nowhere as he speaks, but Carlos happily welcomes him as he taps his radio as an explanation. Marjan’s voice, small and sort of echoey through the speaker, suddenly spills out onto the street, as she reports to Owen that they’re making their way out of the house.

“What about the parents?” Carlos asks, suddenly wishing he hadn’t even brought it up with Marjan’s startled voice comes through next, as she half-shouts: TK, get your ass back here!

Paul’s eyes meet his, both of them alarmed, and Michelle’s fingers squeeze his.

“Marjan, tell me what’s going on in there,” Owen says, voice strained but still somehow steady as his fire-captain tone emerges. All of them have stepped right into the main fold of the 126 as they linger by the ladder-truck, the same look of worry stamped onto all of their faces. “Marjan?”

“Sorry, Cap,” Marjan sounds a little more breathless than before. “TK went into the southside of the house which we couldn’t confirm was stabilized before and—and I lost sight of him. I still have the kids with me.”

“Get them out, now,” Owen’s jaw clenches, gloved fingers tightening around his radio. “TK?”

It takes a few moments, but the other end of the line does crackle. Finally, TK’s voice comes through, and Carlos feels the briefest release of pure relief.

“I’m good, Cap,” is all that TK gets out as a response, before there’s even more crackling.

“Get out of there now, both of you,” Owen says, voice dripping with unease. The others shift nervously all around them, forming a semi-circle around the captain. Carlos looks down at the grass under his feet, scuffing his shoe for a moment before he meets Michelle’s eyes. She mimes breathing, swooping her palm in an elegant motion towards her chest as she inhales and pushing her hand downwards as she exhales through her parted lips. She does it again, quirking yet another brow at him, and he mimics her.

While Marjan speaks out an affirmative, TK says, as if it’s no big deal, “I might be a few minutes, Cap. I’m making my way out with the parents, and I have one unconscious male.”

“TK—”

“On my way,” TK says, and Carlos’ stomach twists. Someone should be helping him; he could be helping him, but Michelle seems to read his mind because she curls her fingers tight around his wrist and holds on.

Marjan appears in the front door, two young children in tow. Paul and Mateo run forward to help them down, and Michelle jumps into action with her team. Carlos watches in awe as they work deftly and seamlessly, bringing up oxygen masks to cover the young girls’ mouths and checking their pulses. Marjan’s eyes flash with nervousness as she rips off her helmet once she’s ensured the kids are going to be okay, no doubt directing it towards TK’s recklessness. And coming from the queen of viral stunts herself, that’s saying something. Carlos finds himself agreeing wholeheartedly.

“I’m going back in to help,” Marjan says defiantly, pulling her helmet back on, despite the beginning of Owen’s order to stand down. She’s already made a few more steps toward the house when three figures appear; she instantly moves forward and helps the woman down from the porch, while TK carries all of the man’s weight. Michelle waves her team over and Tim wheels a stretcher up, all of them counting down from three before hoisting the man up. A neck brace is secured around him as Michelle speaks calmly and clearly calls the shots, checking his vitals. TK stands back, pulling off his helmet, and Carlos steps into his space.

“Hey,” TK smiles at him, looking a little sweaty and streaked with soot, and Carlos pulls him close. He’s happy that he’s okay, and that he helped save the whole family, but his chest is still tight with fear over how risky the whole situation was.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Carlos asks, voice rough with emotion that has kind of crept up on him. TK’s eyebrows immediately pinch together, worried at his tone but also probably the unfaltering nervousness written all over his face. TK opens his mouth to speak, but not before Marjan siddles up next to them, looking equally pissed.

“I second that,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Dude, you gotta talk to me. I thought…”

Marjan trails off, shaking her head, and Carlos closes his eyes.

“We’re a team, we’re a family. We work together, man,” Marjan continues, and by now, she’s got a hand on TK’s forearm. “I won’t lose you.”

Before TK really bonded with this team, he might’ve rolled his eyes; but Carlos knows how much he cares for everyone, and has forged special relationships with each person from the 126. Carlos knows how deeply TK cares for Marjan as a friend, and his face seems to crumble at the sight of her pain, and within seconds of the last of her words coming out he’s got his arms wrapped around her in a hug.

“You’re right,” TK mumbles, and Carlos’ breath catches as he watches the two of them. “I’m sorry, Marj.”

“It’s okay, dumbass,” Marjan says, but she’s squeezing him tight. After a moment or two, she pats him on the back and pulls away. “I’m going to go chill Cap out so you guys can have a sec.”

Marjan gives Carlos a sympathetic look and a nod, and Carlos returns it, before she slips away and TK steps even closer.

“I’m sorry,” TK says, and Carlos makes a small noise. “I mean, I’m not sorry about saving them. But I’m sorry for—for freaking you out.”

“Scaring us shitless, really,” Carlos mutters, and TK smiles a little but he still refuses to meet Carlos’ eyes fully. “Hey, I get it. I don’t want you to feel bad, Ty.”

Carlos cups TK’s cheek and traces along his cheekbone with his thumb, watching as TK sinks into the touch.

“I don’t want you to feel like this either,” TK whispers.

Carlos knows in that instant he isn’t really mad at all, just dealing with the suddenness of his anxiety and relief mixing. He keeps touching his boyfriend gently, keeping in mind where they are and the jobs they both have to finish, though he plans to stay lost in this moment as long as he can. He takes a deep breath, hearing Michelle's voice in his head, and comfort washes over him just by having his boyfriend within reach. “Just try not to send me to an early grave, okay? And I’ll do the same.”

TK smiles more, and ducks his chin enough to kiss Carlos’ wrist.

“I think that’s a reasonable deal.”

#tarlos #tarlos fic #911 lone star #my fic #ao3theskyisblue #one shot collection

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zepybespectacled · 4 years ago

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Cyclops Story Proposal

This was my entry in the Bullet Echo Discord Server’s mini-competition for the origin story of one of their heroes: Cyclops! The One-Eyed Hunter

"Another day... Another task... Another battle... Nature is just a long war for survival..."

Corporal Calum McManus of the 77th Dublin Infantry Battalion was raised alone by a single father in the dense forests of Central Europe. Growing up, he was taught to be resourceful and to make do with whatever nature provided. Crafting, tracking, and hunting were the tools of his trade, and the young boy became intimately familiar with the kick of a buckshot round from his father's shotgun. When his father died, he moved back into Ireland in an attempt to connect with his ancestral roots.

With the country's woodlands all but gone, there wasn't much place for a man of his abilities. Thus, he enlisted with the military where his quick-thinking, resourcefulness, and skill with firearms earned him the role of a close-quarters specialist. Armed with an automatic shotgun, he and his squad cleared dozens of buildings and scores of sectors against terrorists and rebels throughout their service. For a while, Calum thought he had found his place among his people, until the Taoiseach of Ireland began approving various "Peacekeeping Missions" in foreign lands. Thousands of Irish soldiers died overseas, protecting corrupt governments who did not care what happened to them. It was no secret that the Taoiseach was under the power of the growing megacorporations and was undermining Irish power and stability to have the country sold to the highest bidder. Soon it was Calum's turn to be thrown into the meat grinder.

He was deployed in a foreign jungle, among people who did not even speak the same language, and caught in a bloody ambush that almost caused Calum to drown in a river as he fled from the insurgents. Losing much of his supplies in the water, he decided the mission could screw itself. His only goal now was to survive and make it back to their Forward Operating Base. "Civilization...? Power...? Normalcy...? Empty concepts made by cowards and weaklings so that the strong will die in their stead... "

Other than the rebels, the tropical jungle was crawling with all manner of parasites and predators. Days were spent on long walks, keeping his eyes and ears open and carefully navigating through the trees. Nights were spent in tense paranoia, trying to get minutes of fitful sleep and shielding himself from rain. He had even fashioned himself a makeshift Ghillie Suit from nearby plants. Eventually, his food stores ran low and he was having poor luck in finding animals to hunt. Calum felt lucky when he saw smoke coming from a village, until he saw the armed men that walked within and realized that the rebels owned the place. However, he did not intend to give up after getting so far.

"... Only out here... Only in the roar of battle does nature speak clearly..."

Under the cover of night he creeped in. He killed one guard with his knife and grabbed an isolated man, held them at gunpoint, and asked "Food! Where is the food?!" The scared man did not understand until Calum made eating gestures. When he pointed at a specific house, he knocked him out with the butt of his shotgun and quietly ran for it. Once inside, he quickly stuffed all the water and food items he could carry inside his repaired backpack when he saw a little girl staring at him. they both looked at each other in disbelief for a moment. Then the child started screaming.

Calum dropped the food in his hands and quickly ran for the girl, wrapping her in his arms. He knew they had heard her, and he had to leave now. This girl was his best chance at survival. He held her by the neck and dragged her outside.

"I HAD to survive... And if the girl was smart... She would have lived too..."

Men and women, some of whom were armed, all came running out of their huts, and saw a man covered in leaves and with wild eyes holding a child at gunpoint with a dirty shotgun. "STAY BACK!" Calum shouted. If they did not understand, he shouted louder and shook the girl and his gun. Every time someone tried to approach, he would shout at them, and if one of them tried pointing a weapon at him, he would press the shotgun so hard against the girl's head she would start crying out. He did this the whole time as he walked out of the village. Once he managed to put distance between him and the people there, he shoved the girl away and ran into the shadows of the jungle.

In the safety of darkness, he checked on the supplies he had managed to steal. He was not happy with the amount, but he hoped it would be enough to get him home. That was when he heard the plane engines.

Looking up, he saw the streaks of jet fighters against the stars in the sky. He only had a second to wonder about their mission, when he heard the familiar sound of screaming missiles. The ground shook and the night was lit up in an orange inferno as missiles slammed into the trees. Calum saw the jungle and the village he just came from become engulfed in flames a mere second before he ran for his life.

At first the screaming was in the distance, then it came from his own mouth as fire and smoke began surrounding him. His muscles burned as hard as his skin the whole time he ran until his legs gave out. Then he crawled as long as his arms would listen to him. Smoke filled his lungs and he felt chemicals burning his skin and eyes.

He would have fought death until his last breath, but it was not meant to be his final day. "My superiors thought it'd be better if I were dead... These people promised not only life... But my eyes too... There was no choice"

Calum woke up blind, and being told that while his body was saved, his lungs were damaged and he would never see again. He was found by an assault squad and healed until his superiors decided they couldn't afford a witness to the firebombing. A strange visitor came to his hospital bed and said his organization would have a use for a man of his determination, and let slip that he would be listed as MIA within the week. The man told him they would grant him sight greater than he had known, if he swore an oath to obey the will of their "Great Leader".

Calum knew what his government would do to him if he stayed. The men in power had killed for less. He refused to be part of their body count. He was a survivor, and he would do whatever it took to be the last man standing.

In the night, he was whisked away on a discreet transport, placed on a plane to God knows where, and laid down on a new hospital bed, where many strange voices told him that he would see everything as it truly was. The following days were spent in a blind haze of sedatives and pain as tools invaded his skull. Occasionally, the strange voices would speak in languages unknown to him, chanting the same words, sometimes for hours by his bedside. Calum lost track of how long he was kept there, until the bandages were removed from his face, and a lone voice told him to open his eye. "My sight... My body... My life... None of it was mine anymore. To continue to survive, I had to become a weapon... Their weapon... HIS weapon..."

At first, seeing again was painfully bright, and he could not bear to open it for long, but through medicine and therapy it got easier, and the headaches would fade faster. Soon, the new eye somehow started making use of his old ones if it wanted more sight lines, transferring the odd yellow glow to his dead white eyes. They told him they had given him his life and his sight back. Calum knew none of it was his anymore, but surprisingly he did not mind. These people not only saved him from certain death, but restored his vision and promised him a place of prominence among them. His loyalty, was a fair price.

He was no longer Corporal Calum McManus, and he did not want anyone to recognize him as such. He hid every part that hinted at his old life. Now, he was an ogre of the wilds, an Oni of the woods, a primal force that was neither good nor evil, but a reminder of the natural order, a member of a pack of predators who simply abided by survival of the fittest.

Force and Arms did not just recruit a soldier, they summoned a Cyclops.

#bullet echo #cyclops #fanfic

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saiilorstars · 4 years ago

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Rise Up

Ch.4: A New Firestorm

Previous Story: It Had To Be You || Current Masterlist

Pairings: Barry Allen x Female OC

Chapter Summary: The Snarts have made their way back to STAR Labs only this time they're in need of help.

Pronunciation of OC: Bell-en. The last syllable has an emphasis so it’s not pronounced like ‘Helen’ would be.

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother @anotherunreadblog @maaaaarveeeeel

Despite the team's best efforts, professor Stein was still under heavy health risks.

"Hold him steady!" Cisco shouted at Caitlin and Barry who were frantically trying to keep Stein's convulsing body still enough for Cisco to come in with a device similar to the Firestorm splicer. It was just hard to do when Stein kept spontaneously blowing blue flames.

"He's dropping out!" Caitlin anxiously said.

Cisco had managed to get in and put the splicer on Stein's chest, but his fingers fumbled trying to get it activated. "Come on, come on, come on, come on!"

"Cisco, we're losing him!"

But just then Cisco heard the splicer make a 'click!' and pulled back with a heavy sigh of relief. "Oh, Díos mío. Thank God."

"He's getting worse," Barry sighed and stared at the now unconscious Stein. It had been a cycle like this all night and they still had no real ideas on how to stabilize him permanently.

"Look, I did what I could to re-engineer Doctor Wells' original stabilizer to quell the reaction, but I don't know what he used as a power source," Cisco started out the side room. "Best I could find was the one from his wheelchair."

"And how long will that last?" Caitlin wondered as she and Barry followed him out.

"Well, that's the problem, we had already used up most of its energy trying to dampen the metas' powers during our little rogue air trip with Weather Wizard and company. I think we got a few days tops."

"And he's stuck in bed?"

"Yeah, when he wakes up, I'm gonna transfer the stabilizer to this, give him a power cane, get him moving," Cisco moved over to a table to pick up another silver device.

Barry knew that was only a temporary situation and sooner or later Stein would be in trouble yet again. "We gotta figure out a way to save him."

"I think I might know how to do that," Caitlin decided to share her spontaneous idea with them. She headed for the main desk and pulled up Stein's profile up on one of the computers across them. "When the Particle Accelerator exploded, the dark matter that collided with Professor Stein fused with the Firestorm matrix and altered the normal molecular processes that occurs within his body. Those highly reactive molecules needed something to bond with in order to stabilize. But now that Ronnie is no longer a part of Professor Stein-"

"Those molecules don't have anything to bond to," Barry realized the problem.

"And the longer he goes without merging, the more unstable he becomes."

"Ugh," Cisco foresaw a much bigger problem of finding Stein a new replacement. "All right, so, what do we do?"

"We find another... participant."

Cisco shot Caitlin a sarcastic look. "Okay, cool, so, how do we do that? Are we just gonna make a Tinder app for potential meta-humans? 'Cause I'm pretty sure merging with Stein and randomly bursting into flames sounds like the biggest "swipe left" of all time."

Barry disapproved of Cisco's lack of seriousness but did have to agree that it wouldn't such an easy thing finding someone willing to become Firestorm. "I mean, even if we could find someone willing, Stein can't just merge with whoever he wants."

"No he can't, but I have done some research, and found two potential candidates that might be compatible with him," Caitlin typed on the computer to bring up two young men's profiles. "They both were affected by the dark matter, and they were both admitted to the hospital showing symptoms of gene rearrangement mutation. And they both share the same blood type as Professor Stein and Ronnie."

"All right. I mean, this is more than organ donation," Barry felt the need to remind her. "We'll need more than tissue typing to see if their bodies are compatible."

"If I can isolate the genetic locus of the two candidates and cross-reference it with the mutations in Professor Stein, I might be able to find a match and save his life."

"What do you need to do that?"

Caitlin formed an apologetic smile, indicating she would definitely be requiring his speedy abilities.

~ 0 ~

Belén was uncomfortable. She didn't need to say it: her body outright showed it. From the way she awkwardly sat on the metal chair, to the way her hand reached for the prison phone...everything screamed "I don't know what to do here".

Luckily, Maritza had assumed the reason her sister came to visit. "I'm glad that you and Mom are salvaging the only family relationship left in this...wonky family of ours. I know that with time you'll be close, like it should've been from the start."

Belén gave a low sigh of doubt. As much as she wanted that closeness with her mother, she was aware that it wouldn't happen overnight and that it certainly wouldn't be easy. She told Maritza that and added her biggest fear: "I can't even be completely honest with her."

Maritza knew she was talking about Belén's double life as a metahuman. "Maybe it's better that she doesn't know."

Belén shrugged and looked to the side in thought. "Despite everything that's happened between us Maritza...I just want to say..." There was a clear struggle for her to say it out loud but she knew Maritza did deserve it this time. "...thank you."

Maritza blinked in surprise since she hadn't been expecting that. In fact, she hadn't been expecting any form of gratitude from Belén anytime soon - maybe not even in this lifetime after what she did. "Belén..."

"You did a lot of bad things Maritza but this was something nice..." Belén drew in a breath, "So...thanks. It's better to be friends with my mother than enemies. At least this way I get to see Axel and...he's good. Better, now, actually, since he's living with his grandmother now."

"I'm happy to hear that you're doing better now," Maritza offered a smile that Belén couldn't return. "I saw one of the newspapers with your article in it."

Belén blinked and stared at her sister with curiosity. Her article about the Azalea being alive had finally been published and was so far doing well with the public's response. They were eager and hopeful that their beloved Azalea was still alive. Belén just never expected for her sister to be one of the readers. "You read my articles?"

Maritza smiled again. "Of course I do. You're a hell of a writer and the fact you're making a comeback to the city is amazing. I'm glad that you're doing better, Belén. You deserve that. You deserve...everything."

And just like before coming, Belén didn't know what to do.

~ 0 ~

Barry intended on getting back to STAR Labs as quick as possible after he finished a bit of work at the station. If he continued to make unscheduled leaves then someone would definitely start to notice and that would be the last thing he needed at the moment. He hurried down the stairs with a needed case file in his hands, and in his rush to get to Joe, he bumped into a tall woman who then dropped her purse.

"I-I am so sorry!" Barry went to pick up the purse off the floor. When he looked up to see the woman he was met with familiar-looking brown eyes.

"That's fine," Veronica Green took back her purse with a polite smile. "I wasn't looking where I was going either." In his surprise, Barry couldn't say anything. Veronica tilted her head to examine the young man. "I know you, don't I? I've seen you…"

"Th-the...funeral," Barry stuttered to explain and seeing Veronica's confused gaze he shook his head and began anew. "I'm Barry Allen-" he stuck a hand to shake with hers.

"Oh, right," Veronica shook his hand politely. "You were my daughter's boyfriend."

"Well, not 'was'...am…" Barry watched her awkwardly process that news and wondered if the woman was about to hate him or mildly tolerate him. She didn't appear too friendly at the moment.

"Oh," was all that came out from Veronica's lips.

She hates me, Barry concluded.

"Barry? Hey!" he then heard Patty call for him and thanked every God he knew of for the distraction. It was incredibly awkward - even for his usual.

Patty came rushing up to him and Veronica, smiling widely. "You'll never guess what I found." But before Barry could even begin to guess she held up a plastic bag of teeth.

"Are those...teeth?" Barry made a face.

"Shark teeth," Patty excitedly corrected. "And I have an eyewitness that says he saw a shark walking on land-a man-shark."

"Man-shark?" this time Veronica had spoken up, letting Patty realize she had yet to know who the other woman was. "This city has man-sharks?" Veronica looked at Barry like he had the answers.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Patty inquired.

"Veronica Green," Veronica reached to shake Patty's hand. "I'm transferring from Star City."

"Oh, nice," Patty smiled as she shook the woman's hand. "Patty Spivot. I just started working here too."

"Right, I know. And I'm assuming you're working on...what are they called again? Metahumans?" Veronica's face said it all. It was an absolutely not. The things she was doing for her daughter she could not believe.

"Well…" Patty said after Veronica took an abrupt leave, "...she seems like a cheery one."

"That's actually Belén's mother," Barry watched Veronica head for Singh's office.

"Oh my God," Patty put a hand over her mouth.

"Don't worry, I think Belén knows that too."

Patty glanced at him, surprised by his statement.

Barry winced. "Don't...tell her I said that, actually."

"Only if you don't tell her what I said."

"Deal."

The two smiled at each other.

"So, um...do you think that's actually real?" Barry one again looked at the bag of teeth. He had heard and seen of all sorts of metahumans but a shark that walked on land seemed just a bit too much.

"Yeah, I mean, I know it sounds really wacko...but, I mean, nothing seems impossible now that we have meta-humans, right? And I thought it would be fun, you know, for us to work together again on a case."

"Yeah, I mean, I really- I'd love to work on anything with you. Um, it's just, you know, meta-humans aren't really my thing," Barry tried looking as convincing as ever. He didn't want Patty looking too much into the metahuman criminals lest she be kidnapped again.

"Really? I mean...I can handle it myself…"

Then again, if she was going to keep looking into it herself, alone, Barry would rather have an eye on her upclose. "No, you-look, how about I just- I'll run a test, see where the teeth came from."

Patty beamed. "That would be amazing! Thank you!" she handed the bag over to him.

Joe walked out of the office room and saw the bag of shark teeth. "How's your man-shark case coming?" he looked at Patty, amused.

"It's good. I was just gonna go and canvas the area, see what else I can dig up, and Barry here agreed to run some tests for me."

"Really?" Joe raised an eyebrow and looked over to Barry.

"Mm-hmm. So, progress," Patty beamed and said another 'thanks' to Barry before leaving herself.

"For real?" Joe inquired from Barry, eyes trained on the bag of teeth.

"If it's another meta I'd rather know first and lead Patty away from it before something like Sand Demon happens again," Barry explained.

"Mm," Joe walked over to the reception desk to leave behind some papers and then started back for his office.

"Uh, so did you hear we have a new co-worker?" Barry followed after him and glanced at Singh's office where he could see Veronica having an idle chat with him.

Joe followed his gaze to the office and nodded. "Wasn't expecting that from one phone call, I'll tell you that."

"Yeah I don't think she likes me very much…" Barry let his file flop on Joe's desk.

Joe started to laugh. "What parent likes their daughter's boyfriend?"

"Thanks," Barry said with a straight face. To his dismay, Joe only continued to laugh more. He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket and pulled it up to see who it was. "Hey, you know what, I gotta go. It's Cisco. It's about Professor Stein."

"Okay, go, I'll cover you with Singh," Joe shooed him off and just as Barry turned to leave he heard the man laugh again.

It was not funny.

~ 0 ~

In the cortex, Stein tried out his new makeshift silver cane that was meant to keep him stabilized in the meantime they found a possible firestorm partner. "Well, I must admit, I never imagined the Sphinx's riddle about a man requiring three legs would ever apply to me, but if this device keeps me mobile, then I will gratefully oblige."

Caitlin smiled at the man as he took a small trip in the cortex to test out the cane. "Hopefully, you won't need it for much longer," she gestured to the two profiles of the candidates that could possibly (and hopefully) work to save him. "There was no agglutination in the blood samples, and cross-matching was negative for both, and it appears that the dark matter from the Particle Accelerator explosion mutated their genes in a very similar way it did to yours. I think they're both potential matches."

"So who do we go with?" Belén looked at the two men on the computer screen. She could see one was far younger than the other but as far as she could tell they both matched Stein. "Do we pull popsicle sticks or…?"

Caitlin chuckled and shook her head. "My first choice is Henry Hewitt. He graduated summa cum laude from Hudson University with a double major in Applied Physics and Bioengineering."

"A Hudson boy," Stein said thoughtfully. "I like him already."

"What about this other guy, Jefferson Jackson?" Barry moved up to the computer to take a closer look. "High school quarterback, 4.0 student. He's got the physical attributes. And it looks like more of his alleles match than Hewitt's. Doesn't that mean that he's more compatible?"

Caitlin reluctantly agreed but it was easy to see that she really did prefer Henry. "On paper, perhaps, but Hewitt is a scientist. Clearly, he's trying to make something of his life."

"That's a bit mean to say," Belén sarcastically glanced at Caitlin as if she were scolding the brunette.

"I'm just...I think he'd be open to something like this," Caitlin raised her hands in defense.

"I think we should meet with both of them before we make a decision," Cisco muttered, thinking both candidates would probably have to think about it really hard before being able to come up with a decision.

"That's an excellent idea," Stein agreed.

"I'll see if I can get Hewitt here," Caitlin said fast.

"All right, in the meantime, we'll go meet with Jefferson Jackson," Barry turned back, looking at Belén and Stein for agreement.

"I have to go pick up Axel and bring him to Mrs. Andrews," Belén patted him on the arm.

"Hey, that reminds me," Barry walked up to her while the others dispersed to do their tasks, "I met your mother today at the station."

"Oh yeah," Belén smiled. "She said she started on that transfer thing."

"Um...yeah, it's just…" Barry hated to be the one to tell her because she really did look happy about it, "...I kinda got the feeling she wasn't very happy that we were back together again."

Belén's smile faded a bit as she considered the idea that perhaps never telling her mother they were alright now could've had a bigger influence than she thought. "Oh, oh I'm sorry Barry. You know, that's probably my fault. Last time she heard you were the jerk that broke up with me."

But Barry wanted to say that he felt it was a bit more than just that. There was something about the way Veronica had looked at him earlier that...sort of said she couldn't believe her daughter had chosen him.

"Barry, do not worry," Belén assured him it would be fine. She set her hands on his arms and looked so sure of herself, it made Barry dread the outcome if things didn't go her way. "My Mom's a grumpy woman but she's going to try and make things work with me. Once she gets to know you - and knows how happy you make me - she'll warm up to you."

"You think?" Barry raised an eyebrow at her.

"Absolutely," Belén chuckled and leaned in to kiss him. "It'll be fine."

"Okay," Barry relented very quietly. He didn't realize how much it would bother him if Veronica ended up truly not liking him. There was something he'd been meaning to tell Belén but so far was unable to find a suitable moment and place.

Belén mistook his silence as more worry and laughed. She repeated that it would all be fine, gave him a last kiss before truly leaving. On her way out, she missed their newest E-2 visitor lurking behind.

~ 0 ~

Axel bounced on his feet while he waited for his aunt Belén to buy him that ice cream from the ice cream truck. It was his reward for getting a sticker at school that indicated he'd attempted to write his name unlike other students.

"But you know that you won't get a reward every time, right?" Belén asked after giving Axel his Bugs Bunny popsicle. "I'm happy that you're putting an effort but you don't get a reward every time."

"Mhm!" Axel practically waved her off while he licked his popsicle.

Belén playfully rolled her eyes and ushered him towards the car. While she was putting Axel into the backseat, she could've sworn she felt burning eyes on her back. She hurriedly finished adjusting Axel's seat belt then closed the car door. As she moved for the driver's seat she made a diligent look around for anything strange but as far as she could see there were only students being picked up.

Get it together Belén, she berated herself and opened the driver's door.

She missed the brunette women across the street peering behind another ice cream truck. A dark smile spread across her face as she watched Belén drive off. "Gotcha."

~ 0 ~

When Belén returned to STAR Labs, she found Caitlin in a side room excitedly conversing with one of the chosen candidates for Firestorm. Cisco was sitting at the desk with a grim face at the two.

"What's going on?" Belén dropped in the chair next to him.

"Caitlin got Henry Hewitt to come," Cisco said but sounded nowhere near happy about it.

"What's wrong with him?" Belén asked quick, garnering a confused look from Cisco. "I know you hate him. It's in your voice, stupid."

Cisco smiled and shook his head. Before he got to explaining his reason of dislike for Henry, Barry and professor Stein walked into the room. Seeing them from the side room, Caitlin brought out Henry to meet them.

"Caitlin, what's going on?" Barry frowned at the sight of the man in the room.

Caitlin seemed happier than ever. "I'm glad you're back. This is Dr. Henry Hewitt. This is Barry Allen, Professor Martin Stein and Belén Palayta."

Stein shook hands with Henry. "How do you do?"

Henry seemed in awe. "The illustrious Martin Stein. I've read all your papers back at Hudson, especially on transmutation. Fascinating. You're a legend."

"Kiss-ass," Belén mumbled under her breath but she soon realized it wasn't as quiet as she thought because Cisco had snickered beside her. Even Barry had let a smile slip.

Stein laughed shyly at the praises. "Oh, please. I think you're overestimating my contribution to the field. I-I appreciate your enthusiasm."

Caitlin happily walked to the other three. "Isn't he great?"

"He's got an ego the size of Texas-" Cisco muttered, "-but, yeah, he's alright."

Caitlin rolled her eyes at him. "So, where's Jefferson Jackson?"

"We just need more time," Barry sighed. It turned out the younger candidate was more stubborn than they thought.

"We don't have more time. I couldn't find another power source for the cane and that thing's running out." Cisco didn't really like Henry that much but Stein was running out of time.

"So then...that's it?" Belén asked. "We convince Henry to do it?"

Caitlin smiled. "Oh he's already agreed. We can do the merge right now."

"What do you mean? You told him the details of the Firestorm Matrix?" Barry gave her an incredulous look.

"Absolutely, becoming Firestorm is a huge life change. He needs to know what he's getting himself into."

They were then taken when the two scientists chanted their apparent school's theme.

"Aw, look at that, that's so cute," Cisco sarcastically rose from his chair, smiling impossibly wide. "We'll have two Professor Steins if this works."

Belén laughed. "I don't think anyone could be professor Stein. There can only be one softie scientist here."

Being settled, they gathered up the potential new Firestorm and Cisco stood in front of Henry holding the splicer in his hands, giving Henry a final instruction.

"When I put this splicer on your chest you're gonna feel a rush. That's a molecular primer being released into your body. Then you can make physical contact with Professor Stein, and Firestorm Matrix will take over."

"Easy enough," Henry nodded, but the manner in which he said those words gave the impression he thought it was simple math terms.

"Ready?" Cisco asked both men this time.

"No time like the present," Stein held his cane for Caitlin to take. "Thank you, my dear."

"Okay," Cisco put the splicer on Henry's chest. The device immediately whirred to life as it sprouted three metal bars across Henry's chest.

Both Henry and Stein turned to face each other, their hands reaching to make contact with the other. Their tips flamed on before dying out, leaving the two very much separated.

"Try again," Caitlin encouraged them after a moment of confusion.

They reached out to merge again but not even flames had appeared that time. It appeared that it was not going to work.

"This is unexpected…" Stein pulled his hand back.

"Something's supposed to be happening, right?" Henry shot the others an irritated look. "Why isn't it working?"

Belén didn't like the attitude displayed towards them like it was their fault. "Genius if we knew we wouldn't be having this problem."

Cisco stepped towards the two men to take off the splicer from Henry. "Uh, well, looks like you two aren't compatible after all."

"So all this was for nothing?" Henry now openly snared.

"Believe me, no one is more disappointed than I am," Stein despondently sighed, but Henry flatout ignored the implications of the failure.

"Yeah, don't be so sure about that. Next time, try to get your act together before you get someone's hopes up." Henry stormed out of the cortex.

The group didn't know how to react after that setback. Stein would have to continue muffling through for the moment.

"So, what happens now?" Belén dreaded to ask. She and Barry walked down the street leading up to her house. "If Henry Hewitt can't merge…"

"We have to hope that Jefferson Jackson comes through," Barry said, shrugging his shoulders.

"You met him with professor Stein today, right? Did he look interested?"

"Uum…" Barry made a face that said it all.

"Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow," Belén hoped this other candidate would turn out to be better than Hewitt. They walked up to Belén's front porch staircase.

"Is there anyone home?" Barry looked at the dark windows of her house. Belén told him earlier in the day her mother would be staying at a hotel in the meantime they made good on the house deed.

"No, it'll just be me and Axel," Belén moved up to the door to unlock it. "I need to start packing, actually. I'm leaving Axel with Mrs. Andrews for the rest of the day so I can get a head start."

"But you're staying alone in the night?" Barry's tone indicated his outright refusal.

"Relax," Belén rolled her eyes and opened the door, "I doubt Zoom or Datura make house visits."

"I...Bells, do we really want to push that luck? Would it kill you to just stay with Caitlin some more time?"

"No offence to Caitlin, but what exactly makes it more safe at her place than here?" Belén smiled as Barry fumbled over an answer. "It's not like Caitlin has powers. Buuuuut…" she pretended innocence, "...you know, I wouldn't be opposed to some help with packing. Without the speed."

"Oh c'mon," Barry complained but was already coming in after her. Belén giggled while he began making his case on why he should very much be allowed to use said speed.

~0~

The next day, the group was more than happy to see Jefferson Jackson deciding to meet with them. The young man was fascinated by all the scientific machinery set around and had to take a moment to really get the jist of the place.

"I thought S.T.A.R. Labs had to shut down," he remarked after a while.

"You can say it's under new management," Belén innocently waved a hand from her spot at the desk. She figured he looked more or less the same way she did when she first stepped foot in the room a year ago.

"Cool. So, let's get started," Jax clapped his hands. "You got some kind of "Billion Dollar Man" technology that gonna fix my knee?"

Barry realized the other man was under the ruse they would be bringing him back to his regular self. "Actually, Jax, this isn't about fixing your knee."

"What are you talking about?"

"When the Particle Accelerator exploded, the energy wave that collided with you is known as dark matter," Caitlin began explaining.

"And it didn't just hurt your knee," Stein finished for her. "It-it changed the molecular structure of your body."

Jax raised an eyebrow at him. "Whoa, hold on, Grey. So you're saying I'm like one of those meta-humans I keep hearing about on the news?"

Stein was not amused by the little nickname the man had branded him with. "Yes, I am. Please, call me Professor."

"We think you have potential capabilities," Cisco tried to explain next, assuming they were freaking Jax out.

"What kind of capabilities?"

"The same as Professor Stein: the ability for your body to process fission and fusion," Caitlin answered.

Cisco raised the splicer device for Jax to see. "And you can harness excess energy and turn it into these massive nuclear blasts."

"And, if it helps, you can fly," Belén added whimsically, adding a moment later in a low voice, "Wish I could fly."

Jax was bewildered and glanced at Stein sitting on a chair, looking far too, well, old to do all those powers. "So you're saying you can do all this?"

"Only during times of convergence with a willing partner.

"Convergence?" Jax concluded what they needed from him and laughed. "You and me? No, this is crazy."

"No, Jax, this is your chance to right the wrong that was done to you," Caitlin frowned at his careless reaction.

"Yeah, sorry, you got the wrong guy," Jax made a signal he was going to leave. "I don't want nothing to do with this."

Caitlin wasn't going to give up and cut him off. "Wait a second, we are giving you the chance to be a superhero, and you're gonna say no that quickly?"

"Yeah, not my kind of thing," Jax said.

Stein began pushing himself upwards from his chair "If the man isn't willing to participate-"

"Look, I saw your test scores, Jax. Your grades were good enough to get into college, but you didn't go," Caitlin continued on, sounding angrier. "Why? Is this the type of guy you are? One setback and you fold? Well, then maybe you're not the guy for us anyway."

"Caitlin-" Belén meant to stop her but the damage was done.

"Well, maybe I'm not," Jax sourly agreed and stormed out.

"Maybe this just wasn't meant to be," Stein exceptionally walked out as well.

"Caitlin you shouldn't have done that," Belén got up her chair, earning a very sharp look from the brunette in return.

"He said no to being a superhero. Who does that?" Caitlin angrily looked at the others for back up. "I mean, you didn't say no when you had the chance. Cisco, would you?"

Cisco battled through a nervous laugh. "Chance to have superpowers? Sign me up."

"Look, we're asking Jax to change his entire life, to sacrifice what he does have," Barry tried simplifying it for Caitlin, because he thought she'd been a bit hard on Jax too. "I mean, that's not a decision that can be made lightly. It took me a long time to figure out this whole hero thing."

Caitlin still didn't understand. "Exactly, which is why we need someone who wants to do this."

"Where are you going?" Belén watched the woman begin to leave.

"To get Hewitt back. We have to try again," Caitlin said loudly and stormed away.

~0~

Later that day, Barry called in Patty to give her the results of her "shark teeth". As soon as Patty heard the results, she projected grave disappointment.

"Human DNA?" she looked up from the results.

"Yup, definitely not a man-shark. Not even a land shark, Ma'am," Barry laughed but Patty seemed pretty upset.

"Well, thanks for testing it for me," Patty sighed and turned to leave.

"What are you gonna do now?"

Patty stopped and thought for a moment. "I don't know, probably file it under "never gonna happen." I have another case anyway."

"Oh, anything I can help you with?"

"No, no, no, no, Detective said definitely n-not," Patty knew she was being a horrible liar but in her defence she warned Joe she couldn't keep secrets very well. And keeping the newest case that involved apparently the deceased Harrison Wells was a big one.

Barry immediately recognized her off look and worried. "Is everything okay?"

Patty did not make things better by laughing so nervously. "Sure, why?"

"I don't know, you're just acting kind of different…"

"No! No. I'm the same old P. Spivot, you know?" Patty inwardly smacked herself for being so obvious. She needed to leave fast. "I have to go, but thank you so much for testing this, and I'll see you."

Barry couldn't even get an "okay" out when the woman had already rushed out. He decided he would go to Joe himself for some answers. Why wouldn't Joe want him working on a case with them? It wasn't like him.

As Barry was coming down the stairs, he caught sight of Veronica coming out of the main office. Thinking of their oh-so-grand meeting the previous day, Barry thought he would try it again with some better results. He knew Belén was right in that Veronica didn't know him and perhaps they just needed time but it did bother him that this woman decided - out of the blue - that she wouldn't like him.

"Ms. Green?" he called to the woman engrossed with a file in her hands. Soon as she looked up Barry could see her eyes narrow a bit. "Everything...okay?" That was a stupid question but Barry couldn't think of another way to start.

"Of course. I just finished with papers for my transfer. I start this Monday," Veronica informed.

"That's great! I guess we'll be seeing each other more often then," Barry smiled but Veronica just stared.

"Yes…" Veronica didn't have to openly say that she wasn't as thrilled as one would think.

Barry saw that and inwardly sighed. "Ms. Green, I just want to say that I'm very happy you and Bells are working on a new relationship."

"Bells?" Veronica repeated her daughter's nickname with distaste.

"U-uh, sorry, Belén. That's just...what we call her sometimes…" Barry said slowly, seeing no such progress. Veronica still did not lighten up. "Anyways, I just…" he sighed, deciding to simply be honest with how he felt and see what happened from there, "...Belén has suffered a lot, I've seen it, and I think she could really use her mother. She deserves that."

"Yes, well, she deserves more doesn't she?" Veronica openly said instead, jabbing him with her double meaning. Her knowing smile on him didn't make Barry feel any better.

~ 0 ~

"She said that?" Cisco gaped after hearing Barry's story - which was admittedly funny in some point. The two were in the cortex, watching over Axel while Belén went for some coffee in the kitchen of the building. "Duuuude…" Cisco began to chuckle, much to Barry's offence

"Why does everyone think it's so funny?" he frowned. First Joe, and now Cisco? Next thing he knew Iris would burst out laughing next.

"I mean, it would happen to you," Cisco walked over to the desk where Axel sat. He glanced at the boy who was busy attempting to write his name on paper, oblivious to their talk.

"Thanks," Barry frowned. "I get that not everyone is gonna like me but...this precise woman happens to be Belén's mother. She has to like me."

Cisco smirked as he plopped down on a chair next to Axel. "Right."

"I mean, Bells won over my Dad so quick…" Barry began to pace in front of the desk.

"Well, Belén is adorable, so…" Cisco trailed off when Barry glared for his lack of seriousness. "Alright, no time for jokes, then."

"No," Barry shook his head and came to a stop. He put his hands on the edge of the desk and sighed. "I can...see a future with Belén, I really can, and in that future...I don't see this," he gestured to the situation.

Cisco raised his eyebrows, able to barely to hold his teasing smile back. "Belén Allen?"

"Hey!" Belén had walked in, eyes wide and on Cisco. "I don't know what you were talking about but I know 'shut up' fits perfectly."

Cisco found it even more difficult not to tease. Belén placed down a mug of coffee for Cisco on the desk, handed Barry his own then took her own.

"So, dare I ask what we were discussing?" she made eyes at Barry who was busy trying not to be as red as possible.

"Auntie Belén! Look at my name!" Axel waved his paper in the air, nearly smacking Cisco on the face a couple times.

"Let me see that before you paper cut this beautiful face of mine," Cisco took the paper from the boy and looked down at the squiggly-lined name. "Well, for a four year old, it's not that bad."

"It's my homework," Axel said proudly.

"Great job, Axel," Belén mused after seeing the paper. "Least your name isn't Annah-Belén with a hyphen and everything," she shook her head and shot Barry a look. "You and I know about long names, don't we Bartholomew?"

The speedster silently glowered.

"You guys," Caitlin came rushing into the room seeming very concerned.

"What's wrong?" asked Barry, but Caitlin came directly for the computers. She said nothing as she typed and pulled up a page on the one of the computers up on the wall.

It was a news-reporter in the middle of a newscast, the byline underneath reading something about questioning a Henry Hewitt.

"What's…?" Belén blinked at the screen.

"There was a scene at Mercury Labs where apparently Hewitt showed some sort of metahuman abilities," Caitlin explained, sighing deeply. "He nearly hurt one of his bosses and the witness said he was unusually aggressive."

"But...he has powers now?" Belén looked at the others for some help understanding that.

"Hewitt's dormant abilities must have been triggered when we attempted the merger," Barry realized.

"And that could be catastrophic," Caitlin crossed her arms. "If his powers are anything like professor Stein's then he requires a grounding mechanism to stabilize his volatility."

"Yeah, he's gonna pop his top," Cisco scoffed, wondering if he hadn't done it on his own already. The man seemed to carry a temper with him anyways. "And considering he's got a long history of violence - according to his police record - we probably don't have much time."

"Police record?" Barry threw a look over to Caitlin.

"I didn't find a police record," the brunette said defensibly.

Cisco scoffed. "Yeah, of course not, it was sealed, but guess what, ya boy hacked in and-" he started on the computer, "-hold on, wait for it."

"Yowzah," Belén's eyes roamed the heavy police record Cisco pulled up for them.

"One count battery, two counts aggravated assault, court-ordered anger management therapy," Cisco listed.

"He seemed like such a nice guy," Caitlin said dejectedly.

"Looks are deceiving," Belén remarked.

"Professor Stein is getting worse. And Hewitt's like this because of me. And now Jefferson Jackson will never come back because of what I said," Caitlin felt completely guilty for the mess she thought she was responsible for. "I just didn't believe that he has what it takes."

"This isn't because you didn't believe in him," Barry made her stop for a moment. "Sometimes, great possibilities are right in front of us, and we don't see them, because we choose not to. I think that we need to be open to exploring something new."

Caitlin valued his words, she did, and nodded her head. "I'm gonna go fix it," she mumbled and turned to leave.

"We have to keep an eye on professor Stein," Cisco got up from his chair. "Time is running out."

"Yeah," Belén moved over for Axel. "We'll be back later, then. I promised my mother I would show her my new place. Which reminds me…" she started smiling at Barry, with purpose, "...I know I said no speed for moving out, but...considering I'm a bit behind…"

"I got it," Barry nodded, promising her. "I'll go in later tonight, don't worry."

"Thank you," Belén ushered Axel off his chair and the two walked off.

"So...we're just not gonna tell her that her mothers hates you?" Cisco curiously looked after Belén.

"No," Barry replied instantly. With a warning finger for Cisco to keep quiet as well, he walked out too.

~ 0 ~

As soon as Belén had gotten word from her mother she was waiting for her back in their old home, Belén did her best to get there on time. If there was one thing her mother despised it was tardiness.

"My toys!?" Axel gasped the moment he saw various boxes already piling up around the living room. "Auntie Belén, are my toys in there!?"

"Don't worry Axel, your things are in your room," Belén assured as she closed the door. "Mom?" she called, leaving her purse on a stand by table.

Veronica walked out from the kitchen with a glass of water in her hand. Axel was delighted to see his grandmother and ran forwards to hug her. "Grandma, wanna play with my toys with me?" he asked excitedly.

"Not right now, sweetheart," Veronica smiled at him, speaking a soft voice. Belén honestly couldn't see that version of her mother as, well..her mother. It was always arguments and bickering with the others.

"Aaaw," Axel pulled back and turned away.

"Axel, go on out to the backyard for a moment," Belén instructed the child.

"Okay!"

"But stay away from Aunt Belén's flowers, alright?"

"Yes!" Axel promised and rushed for the back door.

"So you've been packing…" Veronica lowered her glass to observe the room. "I checked upstairs and...you're almost completely packed too."

"Yeah," Belén shrugged. "I want to get out of here as fast as possible."

"You know I'm not kicking you out-"

"No, yeah, I know that," Belén promised her. "I just…" her eyes began to look around the familiar living room, "...don't like being here anymore. There's too many bad things, memories...I can't continue living here if I want to function normally."

"You're almost set then," Veronica gestured to the packing boxes behind them. "I'm surprised you packed so fast."

"I had help from Barry, Mom," Belén rolled her eyes.

"Oh," Veronica could not help the face expression that settled.

Belén saw it too and frowned. "Oh c'mon, are you actually not liking him? Barry mentioned it but I just thought he was being dramatic."

"He told you that?" it appeared Veronica was offended and yet, upset that apparently Barry had disclosed this information.

"Well gee, Mom, considering I'm his girlfriend and he just met my Mom who created such a negative image of him...yeah, he did mention it because he was upset."

Veronica made a small noise and shook her head. She brought her glass to her lips and drank.

"Can I just ask what is the problem?" Belén sighed, so completely done with arguments between them. "You know nothing of me, and then you have the audacity to hate my boyfriend whom you've never even properly met."

"The last time I heard he broke up with you in a very harsh way," Veronica tilted her glass, pretending to be interested in the swirling water. "And that left you so bad you decided to go to a psychologist."

"Hey-" Belén struck a sharp finger at her mother, "-that was because of Maritza, Axel, Rayan, and the frikin black-hole that appeared in the sky as well! I decided to go to Dr. Baeva for me. I decided I wanted to feel better, to be better so I went for professional help."

"Belén-"

"No, Mom, you're being unfair," Belén said softly. "I bet grandma and grandpa were against at least one of your boyfriends when you were my age. And how about Nona Enger? Remember how that feels?"

Veronica's lips twitched into a smile. "Your father's mother was an outright..." she definitely wouldn't finish that sentence out loud.

"Can't you at least give him a chance?" Belén asked. "One dinner - that's all I'm asking. You can get to know Barry and see that he's really sweet and...and dorky, I'm not gonna lie," she smiled. "But overall he is someone that I can truly think about having a future with."

Veronica's attention was drawn most by the last statement. "That much, huh?" she asked with eyebrows raised.

Belén nodded. "Yes."

Veronica gave a small nod as she thought about the deal proposed. "Okay-" Belén's eyes widened, "-I accept. One dinner-" she raised a finger, "-this weekend."

The biggest smile spread across Belén's face. "Oh my God, thank you!" she rushed up to Veronica and surprised her with a large hug.

Belén rarely hugged her.

~ 0 ~

By the time Belén returned to STAR Labs, much had happened. But it was to her delight to learn that Jax had come through and merged successfully with professor Stein, creating a new Firestorm. Unfortunately, she also learned that Henry Hewitt was up and about again attacking people. Barry and the new Firestorm had gone out to stop him.

"You sure Jax can handle this?" Belén anxiously stood behind Caitlin and Cisco at the desk. "He did just get his powers…"

"He has this," Caitlin assured with a new sense of faith in Jax.

"Plus, he has professor Stein in his head," Cisco added with a wag of his finger.

Belén agreed it was true but it still didn't diminish all her concerns.

"Hey, guys, cutting the power didn't work," Barry's voice came through the speakers. "It's like the more we anger him, the stronger he gets."

"Powers based on emotions? Hm," Belén pretended to think for a moment, "Now where have I seen that before."

"That's it," Caitlin realized. "The more powerful he becomes, the more unstable they become. Barry, make him angry, and he'll blow his fuse."

"Are you saying that I'm unstable?" Belén shot the brunette a look.

Caitlin made an apologetic face.

"Don't worry, we'll get her back when you can go full-on Azalea again," Cisco nudged Belén on the side. "Imagine what new sides you can unlock."

When all was said and done, Henry Hewitt was brought back to STAR Labs and placed in the pipeline where he would not be able to tell a soul of what he learned in the recent week. It appeared like his powers had diminished with his last fight. Now as the new firestorm prepared to leave to begin training again, the group went on to say their goodbyes.

"Why Are we going to Pittsburgh again?" asked Jax after hearing Stein mention it to Joe.

"A colleague of mine was monumental in helping train Ronald and me. She's graciously offered to help the two of us as well."

"How's she gonna help us?"

"Well, there were many aspects of our abilities that we never quite achieved. Hopefully now, we can fully realize that potential." Stein said hopefully and turned to say goodbye to Caitlin. "Oh, my dearest Dr. Snow. Ronald may be lost to us, but he will never be forgotten."

Caitlin hugged him goodbye.

"Okay but when you start flying...take a picture dammit," Belén told Jax, making him laugh. "I mean it. That view would be phenomenal."

"I think they'd have more to do, Bells," Barry came by for her.

"I was just saying...you know, if you got a chance," Belén casually waved her hand on her side.

Cisco approached them with the splicer in hand, excitedly apparently. "I went ahead and recalibrated the splicer so the merging should be even smoother now."

"Are you ready, Jefferson?" Stein asked the younger man. With a nod, Jax moved over so that the two would merge better.

"All right," Jax said after merging, still sounding surprised of his new ability. He erupted in flames and flew up into the sky.

"I really want that picture," Belén mumbled under her breath.

"Yeah c'mon," Barry tugged her by the hand. "You want to get lunch?"

"Mhm! So I can tell you the big news I have," Belén excitedly revealed.

"Interesting," Barry hummed in thought. He said a goodbye to the others and took off with Belén for Jitters.

"So, I talked to my Mom," Belén began as soon as they entered the place.

"You did…?" Barry made a face behind her.

"Yes, and I don't want you to freak out or anything but...she doesn't exactly favor you."

"No?" Barry feigned perfect surprise. "I wasn't dreaming?"

Belén sighed. "Nope. But I got her to give you a chance. You think you can do dinner with her and me this weekend?" there was a heavy alarm in Barry's face that questioned the sanity of the plan. Belén clapped her hands together, ready to plead. "I promise it will be just fine. You just have...to be yourself."

"I don't mean to be rude but I think 'being myself' is what got me into this situation in the first place," Barry released a breath he'd been holding in.

"She doesn't know you," Belén persisted. "She knows a part of you that...that wasn't you. Please say you'll do it? Pretty please?"

"Oh, sure, use that face on me, how can I refuse?" Barry sarcastically said.

"So...you'll come then?"

"Yes, of course I will," Barry nodded. "But you have to do one thing in return."

"What is it?"

"Don't leave me alone with her," Barry pleaded with a shaking voice.

Belén laughed but agreed nonetheless. Throughout the rest of their lunch, which turned out to last much later, Belén started giving Barry helpful tips for when they met with Veronica later that weekend. While Belén was confident that her mother would end up liking Barry she also thought that a little help couldn't hurt either. When they were finished, the two arrived at the CCPD for different reasons. Belén promised Patty they would have that pending coffee night - which switched to a movie night considering Belén had just come back from Jitters. Barry had a bit of work to finish before he could call it a night.

"So, any movie you're interested in seeing?" Belén asked Patty as the two walked out of the station.

"Something actiony?" Patty suggested and Belén just laughed.

"A cop wants to watch an action movie I'm not surprised!"

But the two had barely made it across the street when a loud clash stopped them in their tracks. Green vines had wrapped around trash cans and threw them towards the two women. They lunged in opposite directions to avoid being hit. Soon as Belén looked up she saw a woman in a glimmering green bodysuit and long ginger hair coming for her. There were bits of green plants adorning the corner of her eyes.

"What are you-"

The ginger made a wag of her finger and struck forwards a hand. Belén was hit with a thick vine tendril and blasted back against a street pole, effectively knocking her out.

"Oh my God!" Patty didn't waste a minute and whipped out her gun, taking aim at the ginger who was coming for them. "Put your hands in the air!"

But the ginger smirked and reached a hand out, making Patty begin to shoot. Poison Ivy swiveled with her vines to avoid the bullets successfully. Hearing the bullets, Barry appeared as the Flash to see what the trouble was and came to the horror sight instead.

"Flash," Poison Ivy's lips curled into a delighted smile. "Zoom wants you dead. But for now I'm here to collect for Datura."

"Over my dead body," Barry frowned. He sped Patty and Belén into the station and then returned. Poison Ivy had yet to even blink.

"Don't make me hunt my prey at this hour," Poison Ivy's darkened red lips curled into a sinister smile.

"Why are you hunting her in the first place?" demanded Barry.

"For Datura, of course," Poison Ivy held her hands out, ready to attack when someone blasted her with a high-tech gun. She cringed and fell forwards to reveal a hooded man.

The hooded figure made to leave just as he'd appeared but Barry sped after him. "Who the hell are you?" he grew tired of asking the same questions.

When the hooded man pulled down his hood, Barry wished he would have never asked.

The man turned out to be Harrison Wells.

From afar, the same brunette women who had watched Belén now watched the scene unfold with satisfaction. "Here we go," she glanced in the direction of the precinct with flashing red eyes.

#ocappreciation #arrowverseocs #the flash #barry allen #the flash fics #barry allen fics #the flash imagines #barry allen imagines #oc: Belén Palayta #oc: Belen Palayta #oc: the azalea #fic: rise up

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stanbillyhargrove · 5 years ago

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Demons Ending A pt 1

Billy Hargrove x Reader (Cat)

T/W: Self Harm (Cat), Abuse, Eating Disorder Cat has a lot of issues

BIG WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT, DRUGS, SUICIDE

This will be a multi chapter series with fluff, smut, angst, all the things

Billy's POV

Living without Cat was hard. It left an aching hole in my life that I tried desperately to fill. I studied constantly and got a job at a mechanic shop downtown to fill out my days and keep my hands busy. Flopped down onto my bed after scarfing down dinner and passed out before I could start to dwell on the should of's, the could of's. But this weekend was important, it had been cleared in advance and was looming over me now. I started to wish I had filled the time.

Saturday morning came and I groaned in protest of the sunlight suddenly streaming through the window. A thick layer of frost had covered everything, magnifying the sun as it shined through the window. Max beamed down at me, happy with herself after blinding me first thing in the morning.

"Wake up! Today's the day! Get out of bed, let's go!" She called, patting my cheek before running out of my room.

I stretched across the bed, a knot of anxiousness forming in my gut.

Today's the day.

As I got ready I remembered the day Steve and I had found her, bleeding out alone and I knew Steve would be drowning in the same anxiety I was. He probably hadn't slept at all.

I remembered what happened when we finally got to the hospital.

Steve and I walked into the hospital quickly. We were directed to a room by a nurse, her kind eyes taking in our red, puffy eyes and our stained clothes and gave us a sad smile before stepping out of our way. We walked into the room to see Cat lying in the middle of a stark white bed, her arms outstretched beside her and padded with thick white gauze. There were wires attached to machines that beeped quietly and tubes running into her arm and nose. Steve choked out a curse beside me and turned his face away from her. I felt like time stopped looking at her, my world narrowed down to her small frame and the steady beeping.

The nurse laid a slender hand on each of our shoulders, squeezing gently, "she's doing okay now, boys. You called us just in time."

"What's going to happen to her?" I murmured.

"Well, sweetie, she lost a lot of blood so she might not wake up just quite yet. We'll be admitting her to the psychiatric unit for a few days once she wakes up."

Steve cleared his throat, "she's staying here?"

"Yes, sweetie. Involuntary for the first couple days and then we'll see."

Steve caught my eye and I shook my head, just slightly, knowing what he was thinking.

He didn't listen, just blurted out, "she doesn't eat...and this isn't the first time that, that she's...she's really sick."

I shot Steve a glare as the nurse gave his shoulder a squeeze, "it's okay hun, we know. The doctors put in a feeding tube after she stabilized. We'll be recommending she stay and enter a rehab program."

"Can you force her to do that?" Steve asked at the same time as I asked "how long would that be?"

The nurse gave us a smile and took her hands off our shoulders, "we can't force her, we can just recommend it and it would take as long as she needs. Some people need a month, some people need two or three before they can go back home."

Shortly after, the nurse left us to sit with Cat, one of us on either side of her bed and holding her hands. We sat there, silent tears running down our cheeks until Cat finally woke up, her eyes slowly sliding open to find us staring at her.

"Wha..? B..? Stevie..?"

My voice hitched in my throat as I clutched at her hand, "hey, hey, Baby."

Steve was tense on the other side of her, his eyes glazed with angry tears and his chin wobbling.

She looked at both of us and our stained hands and clothes and knotted her eyebrows together, "where..? What..?"

"You're in the hospital, Baby," I explained, "Your mom's on her way home, should be here tomorrow."

"But.." she started, looking tired and confused.

"I called when we found you," Steve ground out, "they're admitting you."

I couldn't blame Steve for being angry, I felt the same way, but I did shoot him a harsh look at his tone.

Cat regarded him with a tight smile, her chin wavering as her eyes darkened, "it's okay, Steve."

I knew it wasn't okay, knew Cat well enough to know that she was throwing up walls, feeling betrayed by her best friend. I also knew it was for the best, even if she was mad at Steve right now. He was the stronger of the two of us, sacrificing their friendship to keep her alive. I wouldn't have been able to do that and I'd forever be grateful to him for having the resolve to stand firm, say enough is enough.

I could tell with the way that Steve's shoulders tightened at the lack of her using his nickname that he also knew she wasn't happy. He squeezed her hand gently before clearing his throat and standing up.

"I just...I'll be back."

He left us alone there, the beeping of machines seeming to echo louder. I laid my forehead on Cat's hip and let out a shuddering sigh. It felt like there was a large fissure where my heart was supposed to be, an aching gap in my chest that left me breathless.

"I thought you were dead, I thought...don't leave me.." I pleaded, twisting my fist in her blankets as I started sobbing, "please, please don't, don't leave me.."

Cat laid a gentle hand on the top of my head, softly shushing me as she ran her hand through my hair.

"I...I can't, please, please you can't, can't leave me," I choked.

Something broke in me as I sobbed, something that I had been hiding for a long time and suddenly I was crying out my whole life as I begged Cat not to leave. I cried for my mom, running away in the middle of the night to escape Neil. I cried for the boy who was left behind to be beaten and broken, for the boy who didn't get saved, who lost his childhood, his innocence. And I cried for Cat, the only good part of my life. The girl who was so broken in a different way, who was beaten down by her own mind, who had everything stolen from her. The girl who had set her own problems aside to lift me up until she couldn't hold herself up anymore.

Cat held onto me as much as she could, letting me cry until there was nothing left, her hands never leaving me.

"We could leave," I mumbled.

"What?"

I looked up at her, sniffing and wiping my face, "we could leave. Pack a bag and drive away. We can drive away and never look back, I have a little bit of money from the pool. We can get a shitty apartment somewhere, I'll work and take care of you," I rambled, my heart pounding, "put all our problems behind us and just leave, please? What do you think? Would you be happy?"

Cat's face softened, a wistful sadness taking over, "B..." she reached out a hand to cup the side of my face and gentled my head into her shoulder, wrapping her arms around my back, "I..."

I wiped my face quickly when I heard Steve clear his throat from the doorway, his eyes red and puffy with Hopper standing tall behind his shoulder.

"Hopper needs to talk to you, Billy."

Max interrupted my thoughts, barreling into my room, "you ready yet? We gotta go! We still need to pick up Steve!"

I regarded my sister with a warm smile, her excitement leaking out and calming my nerves a little bit, "yeah, Max, I'm ready. Grab your coat."

We'd gotten closer since Cat had been gone, Max tried hard to diffuse situations between Neil and I. It didn't always work, but having my sister on my side helped my spirits at least. Sometimes after a fight, her and I would hop in the Camaro and drive around. We'd stop at the gas station for a couple snacks, listen to music way too loud or just talk. I kept helping Max with her homework and she was doing really well in her classes now. Steve and I had become inseparable too. Sometimes if I didn't drive off with Max I'd pull up to his house and we'd spend the night drinking together. All of us even started having movie nights with the rest of the twerps. Steve loved taking care of those kids and even though they could be annoying I realized I was starting to like them too.

After picking up Steve, I started to think about my conversation with Hopper while driving down the road.

"Son," Hop's voice was deep and soothing, "I just need your side of the story. Then I'll sit here and watch her so you boys can go get cleaned up and rest."

I told Hop everything, ground my teeth when I started to get emotional and eventually laid Cat's story out to him. By the end of it, I was quaking, just barely holding myself together.

Hop laid a large hand on my shoulder, "she'll be okay, son. I'll make sure of it."

That was the final straw for me, my face crumpled and I fell forward into his warm shoulder, clenching my teeth as I wept. He made a shocked noise and took a moment before awkwardly wrapping an arm around my back and patting it. He was warm and gentle, like a father should be. He didn't take a crack at me for being a pussy, a faggot, he just let me cry and told me it would be okay. I wished that I could have had a father like him instead and that broke me more. After a while of letting me cry, Hop grabbed my shoulders and pushed me to stand on my own, looking down at me with understanding, "it's okay, son. Go on home now, get yourselves cleaned up, you hear me?"

I nodded and let out a puff of air, getting myself back together.

"Oh, and Billy," Hop started, "she can't run away from this. She's gunna get the help she needs, but not if she runs away."

My stomach twisted, I knew he was right, I had just hoped for something better, "yes sir."

Steve and I went home and didn't talk for a couple of days. We were allowed to see Cat the next day when her mom got back to town and then she was under lockdown, no visitors. At the end of the lockdown we were allowed back for a visit, at the end of which we were told Cat was going into the rehab program and would be transferred to the city a couple hours away. Better program they said. It didn't make it any easier, saying goodbye to her. Cat called a couple days later, after getting settled.

"Baby," I sighed, "when can we come see you?"

"B, they said I can't have any visitors for the first month."

My stomach lurched, "fuck. Are you fucking serious? I can't see you for a month?"

Cat's voice wavered, "I'm sorry, B. I'll phone whenever I can though."

I grit my teeth and growled, "it's okay, Cat. Just tell me when I can come see you. Get better, okay?"

"I will."

The next phone call from her was a week later. We spent a while talking about how we were doing and how Max and I were dying to go see her. Cat told me a little about her program but didn't go into much detail, she just said it was difficult but she was trying.

There was something on Cat's mind, I could tell by her silences, the way she seemed preoccupied while talking to me.

"Hey," I murmured, "what's going on? You seem spacey."

She paused and sighed before answering, "Steve. He won't answer my calls, is he okay?"

Steve, it was always Steve now. He was no longer Stevie.

"Yeah," I soothed, "yeah, he's okay. I just saw him yesterday, we've been together a lot. Took everything pretty hard but he's okay."

"Good, that's good," she breathed, "hey, my time's up, I gotta go. Tell him I'm not mad at him, will you? Love you, B."

"I will, love you, Cat."

I looked at Steve, chewing on his lip in the passenger seat of my car, he was getting more nervous the closer to the city we got.

"Harrington. You're gunna chew your fucking lip off," I joked, trying to ease his nerves.

"Hmm?" He looked at me and released his lip from between his teeth, it was bright red where he had ripped skin open, "shit. Nervous."

Cat didn't know Steve was coming with me, they still hadn't spoke since the hospital. I wanted to surprise her by convincing Steve to come see her. Steve had confessed to me one drunken night how guilty he felt, how heavily everything was weighing on his chest. That he blames himself for not noticing something was wrong when he saw Cat at that party and for not being enough to help her get better. I'd shared my guilt with him, told him that I shouldn't have taken so long to get there. That I should have known, should have been able to help her more. But we couldn't go back, couldn't change what happened and I tried my best to tell Steve it wasn't his fault. I'm not sure I convinced him but he did seem to stop feeling so sorry for himself.

"Why?" Max asked from the back seat.

Steve huffed, "I just..don't think she wants me around."

"Of course she does, she's excited to see you," I lied, not looking away from the road.

In reality, I didn't know. Maybe Steve would be right and she'd curse him out for not letting her die on the bathroom floor. Or Steve might scream at her for trying to leave us. Maybe that was something a friendship couldn't come back from.

That seemed to settle him a little, at least enough that he stopped trying to chew his lip off as we entered the city.

@elsie2018 @savagesuccubus @breadnbutternips @speedmetalqueen @florenceivy @charmed-asylum

#billy hargrove fluff #billy hargove imagine #billy hargove x reader #billy hargrove #stranger things imagines #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfic #stranger things #steve harrington #billy hargrove series #billy hargrove fic #billy hargrove fanfiction #fanfic

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biznichwrites · 5 years ago

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Hi, how are you? I hope fine! ❤️ I have (a little strange) a request. Can you write a one shot about Giyuu and reader being together, but reader finds out Giyuu is kissing another girl and runs away, with Giyuu following her, but reader ends up being hit by a car and she is in coma but then she wakes up and all happy and fluffy things in the end? Thank you, and sorry for the bother! ❤️

My one shot skills are a little rusty, I haven't written a true fan fic in about… 6 or 7 years LOOOOOL but I'll give it a try! I’m sorry I haven’t written this one for you yet, it left me a bit stumped for some reason.

I put this under a cut because it came out to be like 5 pages long (WHOOPS I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING)

Giyuu wasn’t one to kiss others, typically. He was always loyal, typically. The boyfriend you bragged to others about, typically. But typical wouldn’t over this situation now, would it?

Or at least that’s how you rationalized what you were seeing. You were coming to meet Giyuu for a party after classes and work, but you desperately asked him to come so you couldn’t back out now, even though you really wanted to. Maybe you could make an appearance and dip, you doubt your boyfriend would have an issue with that. As you walked up to the party you tried to call him to receive no answer, not to mention your texts from earlier weren’t answered as well. Well, that was odd, but maybe he took the initiative and went to the party ahead of you!

Pocketing your phone you walked up to the party and things fell into a hush. Well shit, that’s awkward. Shinobu was the first to snatch you from the crowds of the party and bring you to a quiet hallway.

“What the actual hell is going on?” The cute butterfly clip in her hair betrayed the strain in her voice.

“What are you talking about? I told you I was coming to the party and dragging Giyuu along.”

“Ah, well it seems there’s a miscommunication going around.” With a twist of your face and a confused tilt of your head she continued. “We were told you weren’t coming, but things should be fine.”

“Should be?” The short woman was always a mystery and full of sass, so you didn’t question much. Before you could even get a breath and leave the hall Mitsuri made her way down to you. Was something really that bad?

“I was so worried about you when I heard! I had no idea what was going on.” The pink haired woman had obviously had a couple of drinks and seemed as if she were floating.

“No one told me what happened and now I’m getting anxious. All day I’ve been at class then work, is anyone going to tell me?”

“Shinobu didn’t say?” A gasp flew from the other woman’s lips. “It was said you an Giyuu broke up!”

“WHAT?”

No. No, no, no. Not an option, you were going to be together forever.

“Someone was showing messages from you that said you didn’t want to see him again. But now I think about it, there wasn’t really any way to prove who it was…”

You wanted more detailed but you heard Giyuu’s voice though the party goers. So he showed up without you? With a rushed apology to the love guru of the dorms you bolted off to find him. You found him in the kitchen of the frat house, pouring himself two drinks. Two??? He didn’t look especially sad, or happy, or really anything.

You couldn’t say the same for yourself. There was some rage, to put it lightly. Especially as he turned towards you a girl popped up, pulling his face to hers to grab a few sloppy drunk kisses.

THAT BITCH. She had always been trying for Giyuu long before the two of you got together. You were so mad that you froze. You could hear two voices from behind you, sounding awfully like the women you spoke to earlier.

“See, Giyuu, I told you that wasn’t real. No one other than her would-” Whatever snide comment Shinobu was going to make died on her tongue as she came to the scene. You rage took a deep plunge, spiralling out of control in mere seconds.

So if you broke up with him he had someone to replace you that night? Was that really all you meant to him? And with a girl you never trusted to begin with? Even your friends knew better, but he, of all people, didn’t?

Tears blurred your eyes as his own locked with yours, making time stand still for a moment, and you darted past the crowds. You wanted to go home, you didn’t need to be here. Misturi called for you but it just made you run faster. Not today, you couldn’t deal with this right now. You made your way through the house, ignoring calls of your apparent ex-boyfriend.

You just wanted to make it to your car, at least you could shut everyone out and find some semblance of stability enough to drive home. Right as you hit the street you heard his voice calling clearly, something about wait, and despite your better judgement your head swung around to look at him. Why did he have such a horrified face on?

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

You woke up in a weird room. What the fuck is going on? Jesus, everything hurt. Why did your body feel so strange? A choked groan left your lips as your eyes adjusted to the light. This sucked, from what you could tell you were in the hospital. You didn’t even remember much about how you got here. Did you get black out drunk? Someone spike a drink with LSD and you tripped way too hard?

With effort you brought your hands up to itch your eyes. Well it was a shitty enough night, all things considered, you needed to get out of here and go home. When you went to stand up some alarms went off and you couldn’t stop the pounding in your head that followed.

“Damn, just shut up.” Your voice sounded scratchy, like it didn’t belong to you, but that was the least of your problems. With a huff you turn towards the door to get a nurse to turn off the machine, but Giyuu is standing there, looking shocked. Why was he looking at you like that? You’d just seen him a couple of days ago before class.

You’d never seen him move so fast. Everything in his hands was on the floor and he ran up to you and scooped you up in a hug. What was that noise? Was he crying? You would move your arms to push him back to see if he was okay, but the sheer number of IVs in your arms stopped you.

“I was so worried you wouldn’t wake up.” His lips brushed your temple and it left you in a state of shock. He was never so affectionate, not in any amount of time you’d been with him. Strange. “Let me get the nurses so they could discharge you.”

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

If you were to be honest the whole thing was a haze. The next day you were allowed to come home after a few scans. In fact it wasn’t until your discharge paperwork rested on your lap did you even realize it was going on. When the doctors said you had “been out for a while” you had expected a day or two, not 3 fucking months.

On your way out of the hospital you were absolutely losing your shit. Your job, your classes, your bills, THE PLACE YOU LIVE. Oh fuck, your life is over. Giyuu picked you up but you were getting car sick fast, but the glances you saw weren’t going to your place.

“Giyuu… Uh, where are we going?”

“Home.” So eloquent, a man of few words. “I’ll explain when we get home”

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

You sat on his bed, looking at your belongings filling the once empty space of his room. He said he had things figured out, this isn’t what you had expected in the least.

“You might be upset with me.” Maybe, things were just weird as hell now.

“I talked with your parents to make sure you were taken care of.” Shocking, considering he never really spoke to them, even during visits.

“So um… Your stuff is here. To make sure your account didn’t overdraw from rent your parents broke the contract.” Probably the only reason your phone was still working.

“Your classes… I finished them.”

“What?” You could only take so much, like damn.

“Your parents had them transferred to online versions, so I completed them for you. It was too late to withdraw and I know you didn’t want an F on the finals”

You didn’t know how to respond. Of course he said he loved you, but he really meant it. Like REALLY meant it.

“Giyuu-”

“I’m sorry. For everything.”

He didn’t really go past that, but he didn’t seem to want to let you go.

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

“I know I shouldn’t have.” Finally he told you what happened. He hid his face behind his hands, but you could still tell his eyes were on the verge of tears. “I was hoping to see you there, I wanted to see you face to face. I shouldn’t have started drinking, I should have thought about you.”

You hadn’t seen him cry over anything so much, especially for your sake. Even the anniversary of his sister passing didn’t get such a reaction. Slowly you moved closer, as best as you could where you were with recovery.

“Giyuu, it’s okay.”

“It’s not.” He huffed, but at least he was looking up at you.

“Well, yes and no. It wasn’t an okay experience, but things worked out, right?” Your hand rose to his cheek, cupping it as you brushed away a stray tear.

“Things working out, like I ruined your life?” He looked over, seeing a few faint marks along your body that weren’t there before. “I don’t know how to live with myself for letting this happen to you.”

You shut him up with a soft kiss. He really couldn’t deny you, now especially.

“I love you, Giyuu.”

“I love you, too.”

#ask #giyuu #giyuu tomioka #giyuu x reader #giyuu tomioka x reader #kny imagine #kny x reader #kny giyuu x reader #XXXXL JUST FOR YOU BB!#lilsushicinnamonroll #biznichwrites

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benevolentgodloki · 5 years ago

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Week 19

A new hero appears from the portal! Amora seizes her chance to escape this hell dimension and transfers all of her quirks to the unwitting Felix Wyatt, leaping through the gateway between realms as he tumbles into town.

Felix Wyatt - Level 1 Antiquarian

Positive Quirks

Clutch Hitter (better crits when his health is below 50%)

Balanced (more resistant to being shoved about)

Robust (more disease resistant)

Unyielding (less likely to take a death blow)

Negative Quirks

Deviant Tastes (not allowed to visit the brothel, Amora’s influence lingers on him)

Light Sensitive (does less damage if the light is too bright)

Tuckered Out (does less damage if his health is below 50%)

After greeting their new team member, the heroes invited him to join the next mission out. Toni, meanwhile sought the solace of alcohol. Ashley, overcome with guilt at suddenly being obsessed with material items checked herself into the asylum. Steve (legends’) joined her to combat his trouble with accuracy. Tony remained a martyr with his disease, stating it was only a minor inconvenience and he hated the hospital anyway. The money was better spent arming and shielding the team’s mission.

Team this mission: Frank, Emily, Stephen and Felix.

Mission: Explore. Cove. Medium. Level 1.

This was going to be a brutal initiation, the Cove being rife with unpleasant enemies and the mission not short, but they planned on being well-stocked and to help their new member as much as possible.

First corridor: Felix tripped a slimy trap but managed to dodge it.

Second corridor: Ambushed by cultists and a fish shaman. The team did impeccably, not a single smidge of damage taken. Emily got in with her blight attacks; Stephen reeled in the shaman; Felix buffed everyone’s dodge abilities and prevented anything from landing save a small drip of stress against Frank. Emily’s poison and Frank’s sheer pummelling took them out swiftly, Felix getting in the last whack.

Room battle: A nasty fight against Pelagic warriors, a shaman and cultist. The team were surprised and shuffled out of order. Felix took heavy damage and was almost down until Stephen managed a miraculous full heal spell. Eventually the group took the monsters out, though with Frank bleeding and needing to scoff a deal of food to feel better.

Corridor: Emily sprang a trap, taking damage, stress and a debuff, ouch! They found an eerie coral, which they had read would help purge negative traits. Since it was Felix’s first outing and Amora had left him with unwanted things, they allowed him to gain the blessing. He lost the ‘Tuckered Out’ quirk.

Room battle: Four Pelagic groupers. The team took some painful swipes but Emily’s poison and knife throws along with Frank’s slashing and Stephen’s dagger strikes dealt them enough pain to take them down. Felix buffed and added a drop of poison himself.

Camp: The companions rested. They healed one another up. Felix found a trinket and Emily dug out some food she had been saving for emergencies.

Oh no! The party were ambushed in the dark! Three Pealagic groupers slashed them up horribly though they beat them down. Worse for wear, the party worried for the upcoming battles.

Corridor: A pre-scouted battle with two drowned thralls and a deep stinger. Well-handled and only a little damage taken. The next battle concerned them more.

Room battle: The group did amazingly against a varied pool of monsters. They dodged nearly every attack and whittled them to death. Stephen got a couple of good heals in to top the party up.

Corridors: Having scouted ahead, they chose a safer corridor. Emily disarmed a trap. They scouted a secret room in the more dangerous corridor but chose to wait to see how they fared on the way round. Emily disarmed a further trap. Then they came across an eerie coral and permitted Frank to take the blessing. He lost his Scattering quirk.

Further corridor: Two thralls and a deep stinger attacked. Emily took an awful hit and was at death’s door. She rendered herself invisible while Felix healed her to stability. They took down the monsters but resolved to leave for town as soon as they completed the mission if they could pull through it.

Final battle: Gruelling fight but Felix helped everyone dodge most of the attacks. Emily’s poison attacks were the most useful here for damage while Stephen and Frank slashed in where they could. Everyone bruised, they looted the chest and headed townward.

Frank - Level 2

Gained a positive quirk: Fast Healer: Improves camping healing skills, replacing Steady quirk.

Gained a negative quirk: Dark Temptation: Can’t resist poking dark things.

Emily - Level 2

Gained a positive quirk: Mankind Hater: Bonus damage against humans.

Stephen - Level 2

Gained a positive quirk: Tough: More HP.

Felix - Level 2

Gained a positive quirk: Tough: More HP.

Gained a negative quirk: Automatonophobia: Scared of human enemies.

Success, oof X_X

Team members mentioned this week: @felix-wyatt @geniusbillionairephilanthropist @soulstcne @legendssoldierscientists @brokencraycn @moonbeammuses @the-renegade-child-of-time @surgeonofthemysticarts

#outofillusions #Pirate plays Darkest Dungeon

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j0x06ber · 5 years ago

Text

Stream of Consciousness #1

Thirteen years ago I was ten. At the time I was a seventy five pound, bright eyed little boy. I had big plans for my life. I was going to do well in school, go to college and begin a career writing fiction novels. I looked up to the likes of Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft. Easily scared, I recall when I was six or seven, I slept in the spare room on the second story of my grandmothers house.

One night, my parents had left for the night and I was in bed. The darkness of the room was overwhelming. It felt as though tendrils were reaching up the bunk bed I slept in from all sides. Waiting for me to fall asleep. A delusion of my young mind to be sure, but it felt real at the time. I could almost see them, swaying back and fourth and snaking their way up the wall. What really scared me though was the fire alarm. It looked like like an evil red eye and it would blink as it watched me. As I stared at it and attempted to slow my breathing I could have sworn I saw teeth forming around the edges of the alarm, slowly creating a distorted and twisted grin around the eye and in a fit of fear, I ran out of the room.

Afraid I would get in trouble with the babysitter, I snuck down to the second landing that lead to the entry way, and curled up on the off-white carpet. I was just out of her sight, but close enough to the light and noise from the living room to bring me at least a bit of comfort. I watched the swinging chair my baby brother was in and listened to the soft clicking as it swayed back and fourth. Eventually I fell asleep and was found on the staircase. My family still has pictures of me huddled up the corner against the rafter and wall. Like a scared puppy.

This was a reoccurring theme throughout my life. I would regularly wake up and see stuff in the night. Even into my early teens, I would wake up and see the figure of a man standing outside of my room, or tapping at the window. I would hear disturbing whistling coming from the streets and manic howls. I was always scared.

This followed me throughout my life. The fear is no longer a result of the figments of my imagination, but rather something tangible. I no longer fear the figures in the night. They’ve long since stopped appearing to me. I fear my life direction at this point. I fear the people around me. I fear failure and the thought of having to live a whole life alone and in perpetual destitute.

When I was ten my brother was hit by a car. I was a bright student and had caught the attention of my teachers that year, and they had extended the offer to send me to The Tech Academy. My parents, ecstatic at the thought of their son attending what amounts to summer school at San Jose University didn’t so much as blink before signing me up, and that summer I began attending a course on robotics and hydroelectric power.

On the last day of summer, I returned home from San Jose to the flashing lights and sirens of an ambulance and police cars. On the grass in the front yard my youngest brothers bike was sat out, mangled. The bike was essentially bent in half; the tires and handlebars twisted. He had been riding his bike without a helmet, and in a dare with the neighbors kid, attempted to ride across a busy street that was at the end of our road. For context, we lived on the outskirts of town near a mushroom farm. Because there weren’t police actively patrolling this area and there was almost never traffic, people would drive down this road faster than they would the freeway. One such woman was doing eighty when my brother attempted to ride across the street. She slammed on the breaks, but it was too little too late, and hit him as he attempted to recross the road.

He would spend the next year in a coma at the hospital. The doctors repeatedly told us it was unlikely he would ever come out of it, and that even if he did, with the damage to his brain he would probably spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state. My parents decided to foot the bill though and hold out hope. In the end it paid off for them. He began to display movement in his fingers, and in the following months he was able to lift his head and move his arms.

He essentially had to start from scratch at 6 years old. He needed to relearn how to walk and talk. It would take years of physical therapy before he was, for the most part, functional again.

My parents weren’t around then. The issues I already had with depression and social anxiety would get worse during this period of time; as I stopped talking to people at school to avoid conversations related to my brothers accident and opted instead to spend most nights alone in my room, working on school projects or reading.

As time went on my feelings of detachment from the people and world around me would continue to worsen. It was no longer a case of just not wanting to talk. Instead it felt as though an impenetrable wall had been constructed between myself and everyone around me. I couldn’t relate to anyone, I didn’t know what to say in casual conversation, and the very act of speaking to others evoked a fight or flight response. If you are familiar with the borderlands series, my response to social interactions was similar, albeit less exaggerated, to that of Patricia Tannis. During this time I also regularly felt like I wasn’t in control of my body or actions. Everything I did felt like it was being done by an outside force, and I was just a spectator to it all. Despite all of this, there were people that refused to give up on me and they would go on to become close friends throughout high school and part of college.

Everything came to a head during my senior year. My friends were all distant and I felt it would be best if I transferred schools. I decided to take online courses to finish my final year. This was when I met Stephanie. She would be my anchor to reality, my best friend, and for a while, my girlfriend. Come graduation I experienced a psychotic break and began hearing/remembering conversations that never happened and people shouting my name. As my mental state deteriorated suicide stopped being a distant thought and became an appealing means of escaping. A permanent exit from what felt like some sort of an extended nightmare sequence straight of a David Lynch film.

June 8th I drove to an abandoned parking lot and parked under a tree illuminated orange by the streetlights just twenty feet away and grabbed out a benchmade knife I kept in the center console of my dingy orange ford. I started slashing everything I could My wrists, my arm, my shoulders, my chest, legs. Everything but my throat. I fully intended to kill myself that night. I sat there, globs of blood dripping off my arm onto cracked pavement and the side of the my seat.

I didn’t die that night. My typing this as proof. The bleeding stopped, at which point I was too light headed, weak, and scared to finish the job. Instead I fell asleep, woke up the next morning, put on my jacket, and drove home. Eventually my family found out what I had attempted to do. It was summer and I couldn’t wear my jacket all the time. Eventually they saw a couple, and demanded to see them all. Most of them weren’t too bad, but the ones on my wrist and chest were deep, with the cut on my sternum going all the way down to the bone. I carry hideous scars now as a reminder and have to be conscious of what I wear so as not to make the people around me uncomfortable. and I was hospitalized for the first time.

Stephanie was a sweetheart and everyday would drive three towns over where I was being kept to visit. Bringing healing stones, snacks, and much needed company. If you’re not familiar with wards, they are lonely and often times scary places. You have a routine of therapy, but outside that, there’s nothing to do but walk the halls, and when the clock hits 8, it’s lights out and you have to go to your shared room. I had been roomed with a violent schizophrenic that never acknowledged me when I tried to speak to him.

During my time there I was diagnosed with Bipolar and agraphobia. For the next three years I would be subjected to a number of heavy duty anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers. In tandem they dulled everything. I felt like a zombie. I no longer had emotional range and was tired all the time.

I started college a month after release. It was at this point I found out that the college funds my grandparents had been setting aside to put us through college had been used to pay my brothers hospital and therapy bills all those years ago. No one had told me this, and throughout school my parents discouraged me working, stating that my job was to focus on school and extra-curricular activities. I began working three jobs to pay for my courses, but after two years of this, my car broke down and I ended up shelling out five grand to repair the engine, only to have the transmission break soon after, leaving me no mode of transportation. Stephanie moved away to start her dream job as a forest ranger.

This was probably for the best. She was a sweet girl and I was bad news. I broke up with her shortly after getting the news that she was moving, and ended up reconnecting and getting into a relationship with Leilani. Leilani was also a very nice girl and supported me in more ways than she should have. We had similar issues, and she was able to understand what was going on with me better than most people, but our relationship was short lived. I isolate and cut off contact with everyone when I have a depressive episode. I was under the impression it would be better for everyone if I dissapeared when this happened. That I shouldn’t burden my friends with my own personal shit. It’s what I was taught growing up, to man up and deal with the problem. Don’t make it someone elses. During one of these episodes, she found someone else, and we fell out of contact. I remember the last thing she sent me was “Please don’t cut me out again”.

Shortly afterwards I was hospitalized once more. I had been out of college for a year and was working on paying for a new car and getting the debt I’d been accumulating through medicine costs and therapy when this happened. I was slapped with almost ten thousand dollars worth of debt, and that leads to today.

I will soon be twenty four. My friends and those that supported me for so long are gone. They have been for years. I’m living at my parents and am working a dead-end job as a QA engineer. I wont pretend like none of this is my fault. I’m self aware enough to know my own actions have lead me to this point. I should have dealt with my problems rather than trying to bury them. I should have accepted the help and support my friends had offered. I should have, in general, been a better person. I’m hoping that somehow, typing this all out, I can make peace with everything leading me to this point. If not that, to at least make sense of it.

#stream of conscience #writing

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provincianx-blog · 6 years ago

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what i learned from unlearning everything that i know

lessons from middle school, aurora, and beyond.

at the age of fifteen, my mom forced my brother and me to leave our home in hayward, ca upon discovering that my dad had been using meth again and wasting all of his money on catfishes on the internet.

my mom and dad had been separated for longer than my brother and I were aware of, but my mom finally had the courage to really leave him in july of 2011. she loved him her entire life, but she was done taking care of someone that wasn’t taking care of her. she was done taking care of someone who didn’t love her enough to take care of himself. she was done.

while this seems incredibly simple, leaving hayward prompted what would turn into a 7 year identity crisis.

as an outcast at every school i transferred to, i found a community on this website with my best friends from middle school and random strangers who loved harry potter and other fandoms as ridiculously as we did. true commitment to friendship would transcend from anonymous messages on tumblr to mutual follows on twitter. and here we are: in the age of twitter.

upon switching up different meds, after over a decade of looking for mental and emotional stability, i found out that i have bipolar-1, which still doesn’t make that much sense to me, but i’m beginning to understand it more than i did before.

i’m grateful to have been obsessed with star wars when i first saw revenge of the sith on opening night because of my tita and her husband’s work perks. i loved padme and she was my first crush but also my first example of a strong girl in mainstream film in addition to mulan (bruh i used my mulan costume for like 3 years and never gave a single HECK). i would then beg my dad to take me to blockbuster to watch the original trilogy, where i met carrie fisher/princess leia, who would radically transform how i saw the world and myself.

i grew up with my tita and tito. they took care of me when they were in college, and they’re still taking care of me now. i want to be able to take care of their kids and love them as much as they loved me growing up. i love them with all that i am and all that i can give.

i studied politics because i wanted to make sure that my younger cousins and my baby brother would have a better world to grow up in than i did. it seems that my undiagnosed mental illness of nearly 14 years has been exacerbated by the political climate we live in today in 2018.

i learned so much about life by learning about my own history, and i hope that everyone has this opportunity in their lifetime. it feels great, and the only one who seems to really get it is ariana grande.

so here are 14 things i learned from being mentally ill and emo while being passionate about wanting to make the world a better and more habitable place.

1. don’t trust the feds: a lot of 2nd amendment boys actually don’t trust the government as much as people think, and the 2A comes from settlers’ distrust in colonial Britain. the problems we see today are because the GOP has lured these same people and their kids (and their kids) into their corner by advocating for organizations like the NRA; gun control has reached the Supreme Court, but the 2nd amendment took precedent (i believe). gun control must come from the state and local governments, but political participation in these arenas are very low, especially for younger voters. i, as someone who has been involuntarily hospitalized despite voluntarily seeking medical help, am not allowed to buy a gun in the state of california for 5 years. and honestly, i really don’t care because i don’t want to need a gun anyway, but the poor and the middle class in the south feels that they need guns.

2. stay woke: deray said this nearly everyday after michael brown was shot by darren wilson in ferguson, missouri. michael brown was my wake up call to reassess my complacency in the status quo and my participation in reinforcing anti-blackness. in the bay area, the n word was used so casually in places like union city/hayward that we became so desensitized to it. it’s still used casually, but non-black people like myself have no agency in saying it because we’re not black. it’s as simple as that. i began noticing how my family reacted to what would turn into the Black Lives Matter movement, and for the first time, i felt that i could no longer trust my relatives if they were complicit in the murders of black youth simply because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. i couldn’t even talk to them without crying because of how upset i got from the anti-blackness i would hear. i began to isolate myself and found community on twitter.

3. our youth is a reflection of how good things were and how good things can become if we learn to build community: in addition to the community i found on tumblr through avatar, harry potter, and the beatles, i found community with all the losers who had xbox’s instead of ps3′s. we would hang out and play search and destroy (which i still cannot succeed in after all this time smh agjhgarhdfhre) or 1v1 each other on rust. my nerd friends would let my brother and I play with them regardless of how much we sucked, and they hyped me up even when my KDR was trash. these friendships would then transcend from mw2, halo 3, and into runescape. my brother is now really good at overwatch, and the friends i made in middle school are also really good at overwatch. the difference now is that they’re making money off of it, and i’m just like, “let’s get this bread, nerds!” thank you for being there for me even though i sucked at everything i tried doing. i was reminded of this when i watched “mid90s” by Jonah Hill. our youth was such a pure period of time, but it was also the time we lost ourselves through imposing harmful social norms onto each other, such as the idea that a girl cannot be “just friends” with a boy. but - here’s the kicker - i’m queer, and i don’t really like cis-het men hahahahahahahahaha but whatever.

4. becoming american made me forget who i am: our immigrant parents teach us that the only way is to assimilate into white America, which is essentially what happened to black and brown people following the civil rights movement. the notion of egalitarianism/equality has been nothing but harmful for all of us nonetheless, fueling debates on affirmative action and pitting black people against asian people. one of my best friends from elementary school is in prison for trying to make a living with the resources and skills made available to him. he was apprehended in thousand oaks. he is a black man, and we grew up in the same environment, but his life has been so different since we were in elementary school. the concept of equality/egalitarianism stemming from civil war gains (13th-15th amendments) has manifested into the racial inequality we see today; in other words, the idea that white americans and POC are equal has been harmful because this has never been true and continues to be untrue. my filipino friends and i would get bullied by white latinos for not speaking english in america, which is why i learned to hate myself and my culture. i love myself and my culture, and i am fighting so that i can return home to the philippines someday.

5. our bodies are different, and that’s okay: can y’all believe that i got bullied for not having boobs in the 3rd grade? this is what happens when young girls are sexualized so early. boys participate in this, and they turn out to be shitty boyfriends later on. girls will be girls. girls just wanna be treated like human beings instead of sexual objects. i don’t think this needs to be explained further.

6. america is a settler-colonial state turned global power, and that is problematic: this country began with the murders and deaths of indigenous people because of imperalistic pursuits. it was built on the backs of slave labor from africa. it was reinforced by colonialism through the conquering of countries such as the philippines. we’re socialized to believe that there’s no place like america and that america is such a good place to be in, but that is only true for white Americans and POC who have integrated into white American suburbs.

7. know history, know self: - jose rizal

8. if my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable - carrie f. fisher

9. at times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of - carrie f. fisher

10. rebellions are built on hope - princess/general leia organa + jyn erso

11. we have nothing to lose but our chains - assata shakur

12. keep ya head up - tupac shakur

13. everything i’m not made me everything i am - kanye west

14. i remember you was conflicted

misusing your influence

sometimes i did the same

abusing my power full of resentment

resentment that turned into a deep depression

found myself screaming in the hotel room

i didn’t wanna self destruct

the evils of lucy was all around me

so i went running for answers

until i came home

but that didn’t stop survivor’s guilt

going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes i earned

or maybe how a-1 my foundation was

but while my loved ones was fighting the continuous war back in the city

i was entering a new one

a war that was based on apartheid and discrimination

made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what i learned

the word was respect

just because you wore a different gang color than mine’s

doesn’t mean i can’t respect you as a black man

forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets

if i respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us

but i don’t know, i’m no mortal man

- kendrick lamar

#star wars #fandoms #reflection #politics #writing

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just-another-winchester · 7 years ago

Text

A Thousand Reasons

Pairing- Dean x Reader

Warnings- Angst/fluff

Word Count- 3,168

A/N- I honestly loved writing this. I cried... sobbed actually, ended up going to the hospital to be revived. I am super happy with how this turned out. Witten for Beka’s Titles Are Hard challenge. @impala-dreamer. Betad by the ever so lovely Amanda, @amanda-teaches and partially written as she helped me a TON when I was struggling. Thank you both!! I loved this and hope you guys do too!

Summary- Dean and reader have an argument that result in reader leaving. 3 months later reader invites Dean to a concert where she sings a song from their past.

Dean Winchester was a temperamental man to say the least.

The man could break your heart and sew it back together with a few words and a beer. It drove you insane, but to be honest, Dean was your drug and, in this case, you did not mind being a junkie.

You had seen Dean angry, depressed, happy, and so many other emotions. You may as well be his wife at this point.

But you didn’t care, you loved your man, broken pieces and all. As strange as it sounded, that was one of the things that you loved most about him. You loved that he looked to you for love and comfort, that he counted on you.

You felt needed, important; you loved caring for people, and being able to comfort and console. It helped you stay sane, because sure, you were about as fucked up as a rabbit wearing a pantsuit, but hey, your boyfriend wasn’t exactly sane either.

You both acknowledged you were crazy, sometimes you joked about it, other times it made you sad, and then there were the times where Dean went overboard, not even crazy… just, afraid.

“Why Dean!? Why would you do that!?” you demanded angrily.

You, Sam and Dean had just finished a case with a witch, even though you were all tired, you had been letting your anger simmer for more than a day.

Dean turned to you once he got down the stairs, seeing Sam hurry away.

“Why? Because you were going to die, Y/N. What did you expect me to do? Just sit there and let it happen? I had to do something.”

Once the witch you were hunting realized that the three of you were after her, she cast a spell on you, a curse, to slow you down. Quite literally. The curse practically turned on the slow mo inside your body. It slowed down all of your organs, and they just got slower and slower as time went on. Once two hours had passed, you realized your heart was slowing down, almost to a stop.

Well, turns out while you were sleeping, the lads called in Rowena, and found out the spell could be transferred. And that’s exactly what happened, they transferred it…

To Dean.

“You could have died Dean,” you pointed out.

“And you were dying,” he argued, “I’m not having this argument with you, not right now.” He turned to walk away, but you wouldn’t let him.

“Dean, don’t you dare walk away from me. Instead of transferring it to yourself you could have been spending that time actually hunting down the witch! Calling Rowena, I get, but transferring the spell to you just wasted more time.”

“Well, I’m so sorry you don’t like the way I saved your life. You’d had the spell too long, it was about to stop your heart. If it was transferred, it would be just like the curse was recast. I had more time and you and Sam hunted down the witch.”

You shook your head.

“You put yourself in danger, and you transferred the spell without even talking to me Dean.”

“That’s because I knew you wouldn’t agree to it,” he said.

“Exactly, you knew and you decided you wanted to just do whatever the hell you thought was best. So, instead you had a witch screw around with magic, with my body and then nearly killed yourself in the process. You weren’t protecting me Dean, you were hurting me, because then I had to see you that way. I can’t work under pressure like you can.”

“Y/N!” Dean yelled, “I wasn’t willing to risk it, I’m sorry you’re mad at me, okay? But I know what I was doing, and I’m not going to sit around and argue with you about it,” he said.

“You always do this Dean, you play the martyr without thinking about anyone else!”

“Well someone’s gotta.” He responded, holding his arms out like it was obvious.

“Oh right, and it always has to be you?”

“Yes! Because it’s better than watching everyone I care about, suffer! And ya know what, if I had the chance I would do the same thing.”

You bit your lip and looked away from him, holding your hands up in surrender.

“Ya know what… I can’t. I can’t do this Dean, I can’t be with someone who always takes all the weight. This is supposed to be you and me, us… partners. Not just you, I just, I can’t watch you do this to yourself… so I’m done.”

Dean shook his head and turned, just walking away.

At that, you turned around, walking briskly away.

You were left alone as you gathered your things, assuming he probably didn’t think you were serious, but you were definitely serious.

You finally packed up your belongings. You didn’t have a lot in the way of materials, but that didn’t matter so much since, for the most part, you had had Dean. But, now that was over.

You took one last quick look around the room, feeling your heart ache suddenly as you realized you were really leaving. Did you even have the guts to? The idea of walking away broke your heart, but you were so worried all the time, you were afraid you may not have another choice.

You finally left the room, walking through the bunker and into the war room. No one was around. Dean had probably gone off to the kitchen, and you knew Sam was in his room. You walked slowly up the stairs, your eyes scanning over everything, wanting to memorize it all.

Part of you wished that Dean was there, begging you not to go, to stay with him, telling you he was sorry and that he loved you. But the room was empty, and the only noise was the sound of the stairs as you took them one by one, until you were in front of the door, then out the door… then gone.

3 Months later

You didn’t particularly love life on your own. It was just a tad more scary than life with Sam and Dean, but at least with them you knew someone had your back.

You had decided to put away hunting all together. You couldn’t handle it anymore, because it reminded you of Dean, of every kill, every pull of the trigger or swing of the sword, fist knife or anything, and it all left you with was an ache in your heart at the memory of the man you left behind.

A normal life suited you to a degree. You’d started college, decided to get back into playing guitar. You spent a lot of time listening to your music; you enjoyed music, it helped you forget heartache, which was ironic because sometimes it seemed like all the songs were about heartbreak.

You didn’t know why, but you had sent Dean an invitation to an event that was going on in your county. It was a sort of music festival for underappreciated artists to get up and sing covers of their favorite songs or to show off their original work.

You were sure Dean wouldn’t show up, but you couldn’t help but hope.

The song you were going to sing was one he wouldn’t recognize anyway. You knew it was dumb, but it held a special place in your heart. It was the song that was playing in the background of your favorite memory with Dean Winchester. It had been turned down so low that it was almost nothing, but you’d heard it, and it was still your favorite song…

___

Dean, what are we doing out here? I mean, I’m all for romance and moonlight, but I like a little heads up other than you grabbing me and yanking me out to the car,” you said to your boyfriend

Dean didn’t answer, he just smiled. There was a glint in his eyes, something that made you smile along with him and chuckle slightly as he finally pulled the vehicle over onto a nice grassy side of the road.

Dean stopped the car and got out immediately. You frowned and moved to get out with him but, by the time you unbuckled, the door was open and he was standing before you with a smile, holding his hand out to you.

You gave Dean a smirk, unsure of his motives, but at this point you didn’t care as you took his hand and let him help you out of the Impala.

Dean began to lead you through some shrubbery, which was slightly annoying as it pricked at your arms, but it was all worth it when he came to a small clearing.

It was almost nothing, just enough to fit a truck with a little room around it, and that’s what it did.

An old truck was sitting in the middle, two battery operated lanterns rested on the hood. You could see something hanging over the side of the bed of the truck. “Dean?” you asked. “What’s going on?”

Dean, once again, just smirked and pulled you along, leading you to the edge of the open truck bed until you finally saw.

There were blankets strewn all over the bed, and the familiar green cooler rested in one corner.

“Am I forgetting an anniversary or something?” you asked, a wide grin appearing as you studied the scene before you.

You could hear Dean chuckle beside you, shaking his head as he pulled himself into the truck bed.

“Nope,” he answered, reaching down to help you up.

You happily gave him your hands, one foot reached up to stabilize yourself as you felt your body being lifted by your boyfriend.

Dean smiled at you as he urged you to sit down, sitting down himself against the blankets and pillows as he pulled out a couple beers.

Once you were seated and snuggled against his side, Dean pulled out a small radio and turned it onto a music channel. He turned the music down low as his arm wrapped around your body, his hand at your hip to keep you close.

“So what’s all this about?” you asked Dean softly, taking a drink of the beer as Dean looked down at you, a satisfied smile stretched across his lips.

He shrugged slightly, his hand slowly beginning to rub up and down your side.

“Guess you’ll have to find out,” he said, his grin turning into a smirk as you sighed at him, rolling your eyes.

The two of you sat in silence for a few more minutes, nothing but the hushed music from the radio and the sounds of crickets chirping in the night.

Finally Dean set his beer aside, standing up before looking down at you, his green eyes glistening as you gave him a look.

“Wassup?” You asked with a slight smirk.

Dean held his hand out to you.

“Dance with me,” he said with a grin. You raised a brow.

“Excuse me?” you questioned.

“The other day you said you always wanted to dance under the stars. I couldn’t think of a way to do it poetically, so I thought I would do it… literally,” he offered, his hand still extended to you.

“Dean, you hate cliche. You realize this is possibly the corniest thing you could do. Serious chick flick moment,” you informed him.

Dean shrugged. “Actually, I don’t like chick flick moments with my brother or in public. With you, alone, it’s just different.”

You smiled as you looked up at him. “So, you don’t mind corn with a side of cheese so long as it’s just me?” you asked with a chuckle.

“Sure, if you wanna put it that way,” he answered.

“And what if I mind it?”

Dean thought for a second. “Then I just wasted an afternoon, and you have to humor me,” he answered, again waving you to take his hand. “Now come on. Are you gonna make me dance alone?”

You looked at him with a laugh at the thought as he gave you a look.

“Don’t make me do the Irish jig, Y/N, you know I will,” he joked, finally just reaching down and taking your hands, pulling you up as you laughed at his comment.

He pulled you up so that the two of you were nose to nose. You could feel his breath on your lips as you looked up at him, a grin bright across your lips as he took only seconds to close the gap between you.

The kiss was soft, his plump lips, slightly chapped, moved against yours as his arms moved around your back to hold you tighter against him.

You smiled against his lips, your heart so full as he kissed you sweetly, a sort of need in his movements. But, it wasn’t sexual, it was just that he needed you, to be close to you, to feel your lips against his. And, you felt the same way.

When he pulled away his lips mimicked yours, turning into a wide grin as he looked down at you.

“I don’t know how to dance,” you informed him.

“Neither do I.” He grinned. “Let’s just sway… that’s dancing right?”

You chuckled, nodding as you stepped up onto his boots.

“Oh yeah, definitely dancing.”

Dean slowly began to move, making his motions small so he didn’t accidentally knock you off and step on your foot.

He gently moved back and forth, one of his arms wrapped around your waist, holding you flush against him, your chin resting on his chest as you looked up at the taller man.

You felt like you could dance for an eternity but, before you knew it, you were both getting tired. Dean didn’t release you, just reached over and shut off the radio as the silence surrounded you.

“I love you,” you said to him. Dean just grinned, dipping his head to meet your lips once more before the night was over.

_____

The memory was a fond one. Despite the way things ended between you, you knew there would always be the good memories.

Now here you were, still holding on to what you had, so much so that you even invited the man here, although now you were wondering if that was such a good idea.

Too late now, because it was your turn to sing. You smiled as you stepped up on stage. The band already had the song prepared, because you had informed them earlier what you wanted to sing.

You stepped up to the mic and looked around the crowd. It was a small community, and you saw the people who you’d become friends with over the past three months. You were excited to be on stage, but as the music began, you felt heartsick.

youtube

I love it when we're at a party in a down-town crowd

Oh but I can hear you call me baby with the music up loud

Red wine, good times, no I don't mind being with everyone else

And then there's night's like tonight that I, I want you to myself

The words reminded you of that night, of Dean. You felt yourself getting lost in the music, each lyric tugging the strings of your heart. You pressed your hand against your heart as you began the chorus.

And tonight I wanna drive so far we'll only find static on the radio

And we can't see those city lights and I love the way you look in a firefly glow

Saying everything without making a sound,

A cricket choir in the background, underneath a harvest moon

Standing on your shoes in my bare feet, dancing to the rhythm of your heartbeat

Oh woah, and we're dancing to the rhythm of your heartbeat

You smiled at how similar the lyrics were to what happened. Going into the second verse you held back a few tears.

I wanna feel it like a kick drum, beating faster in your chest

I wanna feel you holding onto me and make me hold my breath

You pull me closer, my head on your shoulder, baby we won't beat the song

We'll make a fallen star wish, one more slow kiss, what are we waiting on?

You reached the chorus for the second time, the words moving through you, empowering you as you sang with passion, the mic in one hand and your other hand curled into a fist as you sang. You arrived at the last part of the song, an ache in your heart at the words.

I wanna feel it like a kick drum, beating faster in your chest

And tonight I wanna drive so far we'll only find static on the radio

And we can't see those city lights and I love the way you look in a firefly glow

Saying everything without making a sound,

A river rolling in the background, underneath a harvest moon

Standing on your shoes in my bare feet, dancing to the rhythm of your heartbeat

And we're dancing to the rhythm of your heartbeat

Once you were finished singing it didn’t take you long to hop off stage. You stepped away from the crowd, needing a moment to yourself as you relaxed.

“Hey,” you heard, causing you to spin around to face Dean, in shock that he was even there.

“Hi,” you said uncomfortably, biting your lip as you felt your heart pick up speed.

“That… that was impressive,” he complimented. “I didn’t know you could sing.”

You smirked slightly, nodding but saying nothing.

You and he both averted your gazes for a moment before meeting eyes again, Dean sucking in a breath to speak and looking down at the ground as he stepped closer.

“Ya know, we uh… we’ve missed you,” he said, his green eyes lifting to study you.

“I’ve missed you too,” you said, causing Dean to smile.

God you’d missed that smile.

“You could come back,” Dean said outright, causing your heart to thump inside your chest as you looked at him. Your eyes met and you reminded yourself you shouldn’t cry, but, oops, you did. A couple of tears slid down your cheeks.

“Dean,” you started, biting your lip. “I have a thousand reasons to stay away.” You watched Dean as his gaze fell and you sighed. “But… I need just one to come back. Dean… please. Give me a reason to come back to you,” you begged him, watching as his green eyes looked at you.

He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, sucking in a breath, but letting it out with silence. He took a step closer as your eyes met yet again.

Silent words passed between the two of you, the look in his eyes, the look in yours. The memory of not only that night, but all the good times, and all the bad, fresh in your mind as the two of you shared a moment.

And you knew.

Dream Team

@spn67-sister @queen-of-deans-booty @ria132love @winchestergeekfreak

#dreamers title challenge #dean x reader #supernatural #reader x dean #reader x dean winchester #dean winchester #dean fanfiction #dean fic #winchesters #fluff #angst #you x dean #dean x you #dean winchester fanfiction #dean one shot #dean fluff

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wifeymomz · 4 years ago

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OUR BIRTH STORY

Sunday 5/12 (mother’s day)

I woke up and went to the bathroom around 8am. I noticed there was blood in my urine with some clots and it was brighter red. I called wifey over and we thought it might be the mucus plug. We decided to call labor and delivery just to make sure we didn’t need to come in for further evaluation. After speaking with them, they said go ahead and come in. I was so nervous that something was wrong, but wifey is always reassuring. We go to labor and delivery and they hooked me up to the baby monitor and blood pressure cuff. The doctor performed an ultrasound and it looked like my water bag was still intact and baby looked good. After being monitored for an hour or so, they noticed that my blood pressure had increased a few times so they wanted to collect urine and blood. After another hour or so, my blood pressure had stabilized. Another doctor came in to speak with us about the results of the urine and blood tests which came back normal except they found protein in my urine which could mean I had preclampsia. The doctor offered us 2 choices: collect urine for 24 hours and f/u with my regular OB or they can do an early induction. We went with the first choice because it didn’t sound urgent enough that I needed to go into labor early and I didn’t want to be medically induced

Got home close to 1pm and our families were already at the house waiting for us to celebrate mother’s day. Sidenote: the weird thing is I had a weird dream the night before that we delivered on mother’s day.

Monday 5/13

Went to Kaiser to turn in my urine that I had been collecting for testing

Tuesday 5/14

Had a follow-up appointment with our OB. She reviewed that my blood pressure was okay, but the protein in my urine was elevated so I still wasn’t out of the clear for preclampsia. She suggested that I check my blood pressure daily and if it goes above 140/90 to call labor and delivery for a possible induction. She reviewed what that would look like and I had asked if there were options other than pitocin. She offered to strip my membranes (gently separate the amniotic sac from the wall of the uterus) which would be a natural way to induce me since she knew I really didn’t want to be medically induced. She warned me that it could be painful but I agreed and it definitely was uncomfortable. We were still scheduled for a follow up appointment the following monday if I didn’t go into labor yet and at that appointment we would schedule an induction if needed.

I went home so worried about a medical induction but also about possibly having preclampsia because it could be a serious condition if it gets worse. I just wanted to trust the baby that she would come out when she was ready.

Wednesday 5/15

1am-I woke up to a pain in my lower back that would come and go for the next few hours, so I thought they were contractions. They weren’t intense but definitely uncomfortable. I started googling whether or not I was actually having contractions after having my membranes stripped and it said yes…

4am- wifey and I took showers just in case we were going to go to the hospital soon

Unfortunately, wifey wasn’t feeling well so she rested/slept most of the day when she could. I just wanted her to get better before we went to the hospital

I tried going back to sleep but I just couldn’t, so I left wifey upstairs and went downstairs. For the rest of the day, I had contractions that killed my lower back and it was just so hard to get any rest since they were 8-10 minutes apart for hours. I sat on an exercise ball, walked around or bent over on the couch during my contractions. It was a sharp ass pain in my back and all I could do was breath through them. Eventually, wifey came down and we ate dinner, watched TV and tried to manage my contractions. Around 10pm, I called L&D since the contractions were now 5 minutes apart and more intense. They suggested to call again when my contractions were 3-4 minutes and to take a shower to help with the contractions which really did help!! The hot water felt so good on my back. It was a good time for us to get our bags and other items into the car. Around midnight, the contractions were 3-4 minutes apart so we called and they said to come on in. We got to L&D around 1am and were in triage.

Thursday 5/16

In triage, they checked my cervix and I was 4cm dilated. Thank goodness even though I wish I were further along since I had contractions for 24 hours already! I did have bloody show, but they were concerned since I was bleeding more than normal. They also asked what my birth plan was and I said unmedicated, which surprised them. A midwife came by and we were discussing my birth plan. Initially, we were supposed to be transferred to room 3 and then she said if I’m admitted within the next hour we could get room 7 which is what we wanted because it had the tub. It was so meant to be since unmedicated was our goal. One of the doctors came in to do an ultrasound and confirmed that the baby’s position was sunny side up which is why I was having so much back pain. Around 3:30-4am, they did a cervical check again and I was 5.5cm dilated and wanted to move forward with admitting me. We were transferred to room 7 and our nurse had suggested two different positions to try and change baby’s position: one was side lying with one of my legs up on a stirrup thing and the other was at the head of the bed in quadriped position with my knees as far apart. I tried both but eventually just wanted to do the sidelying position. When I had some contractions, the nurse applied counter pressure to my lower back which really helped and offered me hot packs. It was such a relief because I knew wifey wasn’t feeling well either and needed some rest. At 7am, they had the shift change and our nurse’s name was Kathy. gosh I thought it was a sign because one of my best friend’s bday was today and maybe baby would be born. Around 10ish, they checked me and I was 9cm! we were like thank goodness 1 more centimeter and I could start pushing!

Wifey texted our fam to maybe head over just in case she would be born today. Her parents were already in the waiting room and my family started to get ready to head over. They checked again at 12noon and I was still 9cm. Every time they did a cervical check it brought on the worst contraction to where I would scream and cry. Our nurse gave me a TENS machine to use, which she said helps with back labors. It somewhat helped as a distraction from the actual pain. They offered me pitocin and I declined. I told wifey that I would accept it if I’m still at 9cm at the next check. Around 2ish, they checked again and I was still at 9cm so I accepted the pitocin. Now the contractions were closer together and more intense! They also offered me nitrous oxide and initially I said no. The doctor suggested to use the tub to see if the baby will change positions. The tub felt so nice and somewhat helped my contractions. After the tub, I asked for the nitrous gas which was helpful with helping me breathe through the contractions. the pitocin killed me because the contractions were closer together and more intense. At some point, they broke my water bag to see if it would help me get closer to 10cm. It was such a weird sensation because it was just a warm gush of water coming out and it didn’t hurt.

I hadn’t gone to the bathroom in a long time and each time I tried and sat on the toilet I swear I was going to shit. The contractions were so strong! They did a bladder scan and luckily i wasn’t full yet. After several hours, they had offered me an epidural several times because they knew I was exhausted. Their intent was to get me some rest, but I really didn’t want it even though my contractions were painful and exhausting

8 or 9pm, they finally said I was 10cm and I started crying because I was so scared they wanted to give me an epidural or c section if I didn’t need it. My nurse then proceeded to straight cath me so it would help in my labor. Finally around 10:20, I was in active labor. We pushed in various positions. Initially on my back but that was painful because of my back contractions. Then we tried on my side but I didn’t like it either. Then we elevated the head of the bed and I was on my knees and forearms which I liked a lot. We were there for a while and it was comfortable. The nurse that was with me was somewhat helpful and she tried to help me find comfortable positions. With my contractions, it felt like I was taking a shit and my bottom hurt so bad. Wifey tried to help me breathe through them but I knew my body wanted to get her out. At one point, I had spiked a fever so the OB came in and discussed that if I still have a fever in 30 minutes they will have to give me antibiotics and then that would mean the baby would have to go through a course of medications when she was born. We also discussed other options of helping get baby out such as the forceps and vacuum. After hearing that, my body went cray and wanted to push my baby out of me. It was contraction after contraction. My nurse went on break, so another nurse, Brie, came in clutch. She was an amazing and calm coach that guided me through the pushing.

May 17 (Friday - Babygirl’s due date)

My OB confirmed that baby did change positions and I was so thankful. I was even more determined to push because they said they could see her head. At the very end, the OB said we’re almost there but you still need to keep pushing..I was so exhausted. At this point I had been up for almost 48 hours straight. I looked at wifey and said “i’m so tired, can we vacuum her out?” and she said of course do what’s best for you, I know you’re tired. Once we gave the yes, it went from 0 to 100 real quick. A whole team of people came into the room to prep and at the last 3 contractions, baby girl was being slowly vacuumed out. I started to see her head as I pushed out and then at 12:45am, 6lbs 7oz, 19 3/4 inches... there she was with a loud ass cry and of course we started crying from joy and just relief that she was finally here...

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sasukeuchiha-eternalmangekyou · 8 years ago

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~Curse Mark~

(Part 7) - (Part 8) - (Part 9)

Contents: -Bitter Rivals and Broken Bonds (Sasuke Vs Naruto) (Kakashi’s Lecture)

Bitter Rivals and Broken Bonds

The aftermath of Sasuke’s struggle against Itachi results with him once again in the hospital. His injuries were healed by Tsunade, but the mental strain continues to rotate his unattended thoughts. His anger masks how upset he is rather well, concealed to any watching eyes. His loss is on repeat, followed by the effects of the mangekyou’s Tsukuyomi. Through the genjutsu, all those painful memories are resurfaced, those intricate details long forgotten by age return full force, kindling a spark of irritation that’s been covered until now. Despite the proof of being no match against his brother in strength, the severity in taunts Itachi delivered burrow into his mind worse than any source of his own berating faults. His fears were brutally brought forward, shoving his self-confidence off the edge.

Regardless of the needed time alone to fight off the vexation of such a defeat, Sasuke endures visits from his teammates who only have good intentions, but even those inclinations get treated as hostile. All of his gained amiability (small portions being shown over time) get drowned out. As we’ve seen, when Sasuke finds out Itachi is back and is after Naruto, his instinctual focus was his friend’s safety, not revenge, which speaks volumes about his progress. However, after seeing Itachi caused no harm, his agenda falls back to vengeance with exceedingly poor results.

When Sakura is there visiting, Sasuke is detached from the world, outside voices and sounds are all muffled, and any form of communication is distant. It nearly appears as if neither Naruto nor Sakura take into account or recognize how deeply affected Sasuke truly is due to this derailing event that only added to his tragedy. Although they have the best intentions by providing company, a lack of empathy on either end is considerably provoking to the Uchiha who would prefer silence to their interference even though it’s not what’s best for him.

“You’re still too weak. You don’t have enough hate. And you know something? You never will.” – Itachi (flashback in Episode 107: The Battle Begins: Naruto vs Sasuke)

Those words Itachi spoke, aligned with Sasuke’s already deprecating mindset, add fuel to the fire of his aggravation. With those thoughts plaguing his mind, it’s an easy feat to target Naruto as an outlet. His predetermined irritation towards his friend’s fast progress allow room for Sasuke to think if he could still prove he was more powerful than someone who was dead last, then at least he wasn’t falling too far behind, that there was room for recovery. It may seem selfish and a tad theatrical in the melodramatic department, but fighting is his defense mechanism to regain self-worth.

During this time, Orochimaru sends the Sound Four to escort Sasuke to the Hidden Sound. He’s aware, due to the connection the curse mark serves, that Sasuke’s mind is beginning to fully succumb to his own anger, revitalized by his defeat. The original goal was to have the Sound Four convince Sasuke to come in terms of trading power for his life, but Orochimaru intended to take Sasuke’s body for his new vessel immediately to release himself of the inflicted pain his arms caused. If he didn’t transfer soon, all he’s done thus far would be wasted. His immortality and objectives were on the line and despite original plans, he was being hasty.

Sasuke challenges Naruto to a fight, to which the other agrees thinking the terms were equal in their inventive desire to battle. But there was more at stake for Sasuke, something he didn’t convey in words, simply brash behavior to ignite their rivalry and bestow a sense of confidence once more.

Sakura’s focus immediately shift towards the curse mark as she watched him walk away. Recalling the scene displayed in the Forest of Death and an identical look in Sasuke’s eyes that he had when fighting against Zaku, warning bells go off. She has yet to tell Naruto due to him asking her not to, but her instincts ridicule the thought of allowing them to fight against one another for no purpose. Not only is she familiar with his nonconstructive actions when enveloped by that power, and hatred in addition, but her worry flares, not wanting to witness Sasuke lose himself again.

Sasuke is ruthless in their fight, not holding back any punches. He keeps a solid lead, only faltering once Naruto relies on the rasengan to combat his teammates speed and quick paced attacks. The equivalence in their abilities are not matched yet. Where Naruto sought a friendly fight, Sasuke didn’t share the idealistic means anymore. Now when seeing the rasengan for the first time, Sasuke didn’t know how to counter it, bringing the chidori forward. Neither aware of the explosive/deadly means a collision could cause. Then as Sakura runs out to stop them, Kakashi timely appears and pushes the two apart before Sakura could get hurt.

His attention then falls to Sasuke, assumedly correct in thinking the fight was provoked by the isolated incident concerning Itachi.

“What were you thinking? Were you really going to kill him, Sasuke? You’ve really got to watch this sense of superiority you have. That chidori, it was not the size you’d aim at a comrade from the Leaf village. When are you finally going to grow up, Sasuke?” ‘Did meeting up with Itachi cause this?’ – Kakashi (Episode 108: Bitter Rivals and Broken Bonds)

His words reveal clear disappointment, but also worry that Itachi unraveled all the improvement in Sasuke’s attitude towards teamwork, his friends, and general outlook. He finally got Sasuke to the point of seeing beyond revenge, but the carefully crafted progress was undone with ease, all conveyed in the simple glance they shared before Sasuke took it upon himself to leave with no reply.

Upon seeing the external damage Naruto’s rasengan caused to the water tower, Sasuke once again felt the stab of weakness burning its course through him. This was the unyielding evidence he took to his flaws and with his mental stability at an all-time low, he reverted back to anger, fist slammed against the wall before he ran off. His mind was already devoured by the adrenaline rush the curse mark provided in the past, but didn’t rely on it in this fight either. But using the chidori against Naruto wasn’t much better.

Kakashi notes Sasuke’s superiority/inferiority complex. It’s visible to him, but also a shared trait he had in the past. Being a Jounin squad leader wasn’t his choice, but Hiruzen moved him from ANBU to this position for several reasons. The reflective traits his former team held, keeping an eye on Naruto if the Nine Tails ever became a threat to his safety, and to keep Sasuke from walking a dark path.

“To Naruto, Sasuke is a comrade and a rival at the same time. In fact, it’s the competition between them that keeps him going. That’s why he won’t stand for it when Sasuke tries to belittle him. He’s been dogging Sasuke’s steps every inch of the way since their first days at the Academy. As far as Naruto is concerned what you and I think doesn’t matter. There’s only one person’s approval he really cares about. Sasuke. On the other hand, it’s hard for Sasuke to watch Naruto’s strength and skills develop at such an astonishing rate. He’s come along so fast. Sasuke must feel like he’s standing still. Naruto has something powerful driving him on and so does Sasuke.” “You mean revenge. His hatred of Itachi may be driving him on too fast.” “Sasuke can’t acknowledge Naruto’s abilities. He’s afraid that if he does acknowledge them, he somehow diminishes his own. It can be hard work maintaining a rivalry.” “Well, it’s not a very healthy rivalry.” – Kakashi and Jiraiya (Episode 108: Bitter Rivals and Broken Bonds)

The mentioned acknowledgement of Naruto’s abilities causing Sasuke to diminish his own is a huge key factor. It debilities Sasuke to accept it after all the training and drive he accumulated over those stressful, lonely days spent harboring a faulty future determined by one thing. Kakashi knows he and Sasuke shelter a past of calamity, scorning themselves for the consequences of seclusion it offered afterwards. Upon being mindful of the relatable pain, Kakashi never took to voicing it before. Much to the understanding of his formed rut, he hasn’t moved on from losing his team. Yet he can see it manifesting in Sasuke, especially if he walked the path of revenge. He knows the future damage that was only further blinding by the curse mark’s effective manipulation qualities.

Kakashi heads of to find his student instead of sticking around, only to reassure Sakura for a brief moment. Sasuke in the meantime offers himself seclusion to think, believing it would calm his torrent of thoughts. Questioning what he’s been doing, what it’s all been for if the outcome proves he’s nowhere near ready to face Itachi. After all, his whole life has been spent preparing to kill his brother, and this significant realization ruthlessly discourages him as he dejectedly searches to locate a blame, unwilling to simply accept he’s just not ready yet.

After tracking Sasuke, he pins his student down. Kakashi then looks to the curse mark, much like Sakura had done previously. Sasuke’s will pertaining to suppressing the curse mark is exposed to be a fragile, and faintly maintained notion Kakashi can’t put faith into any longer. Not that his confidence relied on it much from the beginning, but it aided in the denied obligation of involving himself. Despite trying to ease Sakura’s worry beforehand, he finally realizes it wasn’t going to work, leaving Sauske to figure out the issue at hand on his own. His mind is too cluttered with fighting against himself, pinning his want for revenge, and his need for a life surrounded by care, at odds.

Orochimaru mentioned to Kakashi that he’d take advantage of Sasuke’s goals. It’s not as if he is unware of how tempting the curse mark’s powers can be to someone captivated in the nonsensical logic and determination vengeance adds to Sasuke’s wavering priorities, but it presses him to speak his following lecture. By telling Sasuke to give up revenge, he hopes to protect him from that fate, one that tampers with a false happiness that’s not found at the end of that specific road.

Changing his life, living simply with what he gained in positive light, was a clear possibility he hesitated to accept. And with the curse mark’s ability to bring his weakness to the forefront of his mind at any given time, he faltered his steps. And being left alone to combat this, he wasn’t mature enough to identify or distinguish the gifts in living, too ingrained in seeking the negative aspects. That chide Kakashi gave earlier about growing up also referred to Sasuke looking at things from different angles, breaking his tunnel vision because the world is full of people that suffer on many inequitable levels. He’s young, which makes his problems seem centered and cruelly overwhelming to the point that he’s unable to distinguish those around him who are similar. The repercussions aren’t drilled into his brain, be that lack of voices to remind him or purely the hollow structure of his life, but he’s so easily taken advantage of that it’s a daunting concept.

“Let it go. You’ve got to forget about revenge. Believe me, in this work, I’ve met a lot of guys who feel the way you do. Trust me, for those who follow the path of revenge, it never ends well. You’ll only tear yourself apart. And even if you succeed and you get your revenge, what will you have then? Nothing. Emptiness.” “Shut up! What makes you think you know anything about it? It’s easy for you to talk. You have no idea!” “Easy. Just try to calm down.” “Maybe if I was to kill the most important people in your life, anyone who has ever meant anything, maybe then I’d listen to you. Because maybe then you’d have some idea how I feel!” “Hm, it’s an interesting theory. But I’m afraid you’re a little late to put it to the test. Everyone you’re talking about has already been killed. I’ve been around longer than you have, Kid. I’ve seen my share of troubles. You’re not the only one who knows what it’s like to lose somebody. So, it looks like neither of us have led a charmed life exactly, have we? Still, we’re not all that bad off. At least you and I have been lucky enough to find new comrades to help fill the void. Anyway, I do know how you feel. With the chidori you’ve been granted a gift of awesome power. It’s not a power to be used against your comrades, or to seek vengeance. I think, in your heart of hearts, you know what it’s for. Okay. End of lecture. You decide whether what I’m saying hits the mark or not.” – Kakashi and Sasuke (Episode 108: Bitter Rivals and Broken Bonds)

Right here is a crucial moment. Sasuke loses his naturally displayed calmness, drops his shields, and yells at Kakashi, even threatens him. Never being one to shoot his transgressions, let alone openly express and verbally identify the specific part of the past that hurts him the most, he allows himself to be particularly vulnerable which is a rarity. Although Kakashi doesn’t state it, a crack was made in his student’s walls as he confesses that he too knows what it’s like to lose others.

A moment of realization is shown, a true instant of Sasuke understanding that his narrow-mindedness was getting the better of him. Perhaps if this was known sooner, I’d think a more solid comprehension would’ve had time to settle and Sasuke’s reliance on Kakashi wouldn’t be as roundabout as it is portrayed. His confusion begins to reappear once the lecture comes to an end.

Sasuke’s lack of clarity sets in, the scale of priorities already beginning to sway. Is giving up revenge really worth it in order to find happiness? Or is killing Itachi to avenge his family more important than bonds regardless of the cost? Seeking a better life, for peace, has never been an option before now. It almost felt counterfeit, forged on lies, to think acceptance in a recreated life was possible when his innocence to the world’s vindictive nature wasn’t instilled in him any more.

In no regards is the curse mark ignored since it sparked the lecture to come to fruition, but Sasuke reacting in an elusively fashion, thinking with a free mind. It’s not pulling him in or bending his will, reducing his ability to think clearly. He can shove it aside, but the second the pressure gets to him, all that restraint is lost. And a perfect example of that is the opportune arrival of the Sound Four.

#Sasuke Uchiha #Sasuke #Orochimaru #Curse Mark #Kakashi Hatake #Kakashi #Naruto Uzumaki #Naruto #Sakura Haruno #Sakura

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