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sideshowyelling · 5 years ago

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Penance

@folkloric-love

A villager of The Hamlet blames The Abomination for a missing person. The Flagellant defends him.

Even in The Hamlet the quiet times were few and far between.

The tavern, and all of it’s seedy connecting rooms, tended to be tad bit too overwhelming for The Abomination to take most days. The very first time he had wandered in after his initial arrival in town, it had felt as though all eyes were on him the moment he walked in. It wasn’t as if he were even the strangest looking person there between all of the travelers and hired mercs that could be found trying to relax and decompress after various harrowing journeys in such a desolate land. He’d managed to convince himself that they weren’t all staring at him like they knew just what kind of a freak he was, and he’d had a few surprisingly decent drinks that night, but in the end he had come to terms with the fact that the tavern just wasn’t the place for him.

The Abomination was truly unwanted in the town center though. He’d pass through from time to time, often seeking news about when he would next be expected to venture out and do the job he was being paid to do, terrible as it may have been. It had taken a while for the townsfolk to learn exactly who he was, and to pass the rumors of what beast lay trapped just beneath the surface around town to one another. The more whispers and muttering The Abomination heard around him though, the more foul looks and sneers he noticed coming his way. He’d learned long ago to keep his head low, look to the ground, and don’t give anyone the chance to do gods knows what to him.

It would have been nice to be able to say it was the tactic that had kept him alive all these years, but he knew well that when it came down to it that it was the very curse that had him shunned that protected him from the most dangerous of the civilized world, in the very most gruesome ways.

No, the town center was not for him, and neither was the Sanitarium, even though he had often figured that he may be able to engage in some interesting conversations there, discussions of science and the alchemical treatments that could aid in curing the ill. He’d ventured in once, out of necessity more than anything else, and the entire experience had left him absolutely shaken with nightmarish flashes of his past coming back to haunt him once more.

Though… it wasn’t an entire loss. His time in the Sanitarium was what had first brought him into the sanctity of the town’s Abbey. Perhaps the only quiet place in town, there were very few who would dare disturb the relative peace that could be found within it’s walls.

And so The Abomination had found himself, once more, at a point in his life when most of his free time was spent hiding away in a church and seeking what refuge he could. He’d only returned to town hours ago, exhausted and still damp from such a dreadful traipse through The Cove. Though his traveling companions had survived the endeavor, the journey had been harrowing and now that they had returned safely all he desired was a night’s rest somewhere dry and indoors. They all needed time to wipe the horrors from their mind, and ease the stress that had been building up for days now, and they all did so in their own ways.

Despite the fact that the Tavern and it’s pleasures tended to be a more popular choice for the resting adventures, the Abbey was never empty, and never completely silent. Vestals and Crusaders alike could be cloistered away muttering quiet prayers to themselves and pouring over verses they had long since learned by heart, and they tended not to look towards The Abomination as he passed, and for this he was quite thankful. He knew them well, and that to them he was nothing but a blight on their church. The few times they did lock eyes though, they had said nothing. The Abomination was silent as he said his own prayers, and though they knew not what he prayed for, he caused no trouble for them and so he was left to his own devices. Today he shuffles past without a word, and they seem to take no notice, their murmuring going disrupted. It’s a surprising comfort, really.

There are a few lingering souls using the Transept, and as The Abomination makes his way towards the frontmost pew, a strong stench of alcohol hits his nose, and as he looks for the source of it he finds a man knelt before one of the grand idols built in the room. There was a mostly empty bottle in one hand, and a damp handkerchief clenched tightly in the other, and the man was more so letting out choked sobs rather than effectively praying.

“Please… please- by the gods please bring her back to me.” He whispered, but in the quiet of the church it was all to easy to hear just what the man was muttering to himself, and The Abomination felt an uncomfortable chill run down his spine as he took his seat on a pew a short ways away from the man. “The vile monsters of this land have already taken so much from me- from all of us -I… She’s just a little girl! I can’t lose her too!”

There was an uneasy air that settled in the room over everyone who was attempting to seek answers through prayer, and as hard as The Abomination tried, he simply couldn’t tune the troubling words of The Villager out. He bit the inside of his cheek and stared down at the floor before him as he listened to The Villager snivel and cry, muffled only by his hand and the handkerchief he had pressed against his face. He thumped the bottle in his hand against the ground, and for a moment The Abomination was worried that it might just crack and shatter, spill what little of the bitter drink was left. Instead The Villager used it to push himself back and up, dragging his hand down his tear-stained face. He swayed where he stood, rubbing at his eyes before he let out a heavy sight and turned to leave, only to stop short when he saw The Abomination sitting only a few strides away.

“You...” The Villager muttered, the tail end of a growl lacing his words as he took a half step forward. Then, without another word he reeled the bottle that had been hanging loosely in his grasp back, and he hurled it at The Abomination.

Thankfully The Abomination wasn’t drunk, and with wide eyes he quickly jumped out of the way before the bottle could smash again him. It shattered against the back of the pew he had been sitting at only a moment before, and just like that all eyes were drawn to him at the sound of shattering glass. Everyone else in the room watched, The Vestal, The Crusader, and the few others who had wandered in seeking refuge. Nobody moved, nobody spoke, and The Abomination took a shaky breath as he held his hands up to show he meant no harm.

“Please, I’m sorry, I-” The Abomination said, unsure of what exactly he was apologizing for, but there was a look of rage on the man’s face that he hadn’t often seen in anyone, and The Abomination could only hope that his only weapon had just been broken over the back of his seat.

“Smithy said he saw a monster done took her….” The Villager slurred, gritting his teeth as he balled his fists once more, and he shuffled closer to The Abomination. The look in his eyes… The Abomination had seen this look before. He’d seen it in the eyes of his traveling companions as their minds broke under the stress as they delved deeper and deeper into each hellish crevice this land had to offer. The look of a man who had no desire but to hurt, to break others down until they felt the same pain he had. “Never seen a monster dare rear it’s ugly head here in town though. Aside from one that is...”

It didn’t take a terribly smart man to figure out exactly what was meant by that, and for an instant there was a chilling cold that ran through The Abomination’s veins. The monster’s blood, poison…

“I am not a monster...” The Abomination said, his voice strong and sure. He’d said this a thousand times to a thousand different people. “I’ve hurt no one here, and I’ve no desire to do so. I’m so sorry for your loss, but your anger is not with me it’s with whatever beast out there has taken your child...”

“They drag all of these… these mercenaries, they bring them in to protect us, and what happens? They let the damned monster in too! Tell us it’s gonna keep us safe, all’s gonna happen is we’re gonna get our throats slit in our broken homes after everything good’s been taken from us.” The Villager rambled, and as he stumbled forward, he took a wide, almost flailing swing, and The Abomination raised his hand to grab The Villager’s wrist, pushing against him to try and shove him back. By the gods he was exhausted, fatigue long since having taken hold of every limb, of every muscle that was keeping him upright, and he could feel his strength failing him. As the two of them struggled, The Villager pushed down against The Abomination, and with a grunt The Abomination was felled, dropping to a knee and holding his arms above himself to shield himself from whatever blows would surely come his way.

The chill that had run through his veins shifted, growing hotter and hotter with fear and rage at such mistreatment. He felt as though he were being ripped apart from the inside out, something dangerously close to breaking free as he simply held his arms above his head to shield himself as a heavy handed fist rained down strike after strike on him, and he knew his forearms would be covered in bruises the next day, if he survived the night that is. Unhindered attacks like this always had a terrible risk of being taken well beyond the attacker’s original intent…

Pain bloomed, his defense wavered, and shame flooded him because he knew that the Vestal and Crusader would simply stand by and continue to watch, let him take this beating for simply being who he was. For a brief moment he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if- when -the beast within him truly came out. Would their fragile tolerance of him shatter? Would they too take the chance to try and cast him out once and for all?

Just as quickly as it all went down though, the blows ceased and with a grunt The Villager was yanked back and away from The Abomination, and with just a bit of hesitance The Abomination lifted his gaze to see what had halted such a furious assault.

“The penance hall is downstairs.”

The Flagellant. A man dressed in rag that still managed to hold such a strange, commanding air about himself. Perhaps it was the acrid smell of blood that seemed to hang off of him at all times. Perhaps it was the light tint of it that stained his clothes, his skin. Maybe it was the loud, heavy thud of his flail hitting the ground as he let it hang loosely in his free hand, his other wrapped painfully tight around the man he’d found beating his fellow mercenary. Silence fell over the transept save for a few quiet gasps and the sound of shuffling feet as the others backed away, and The Abomination found himself at the feet of both The Flagellant and his attacker, looking between them with wild, almost glowing eyes.

“A man… who would protect a monster is no better than the monster himself...” The Villager slurred, quickly yanking his wrist away from The Flagellant, and he did so with ease to the point that he almost stumbled back as he did so. “Holy man such as yourself ought to know better..”

“And a man who seeks salvation and guidance such as yourself ought to know better than to come in here starting trouble.” The Flagellant said, his voice low, the barest hint of a growl tainting his words as he stepped closer to The Villager, effectively placing himself between him and The Abomination. “The Transept is a place of peace and solace, and yet here you stand attempting to dole out punishment that is not yours to give.”

The emotions that flashed across The Villager’s face could only be described as nothing short of volatile. Drunken rage mixed with absolute despair, with shame and desperation and confusion that such a prominent member of the Abbey would stand against him and guard such a terrible beast. “Neither is it your place to stop me!” He bellowed, stumbling forward towards The Flagellant until their chests bumped and they were nearly face to face. He raised his hands and gripped the tattered remains of what had once been a cloak tightly, yanking him closer until their faces were mere inches apart. “A man who protects monsters deserves nothing, perhaps only to be beaten in their place...”

There was a grin that spread across The Flagellant’s face in that moment, twisted crooked and long since broken, and behind him The Abomination could only watch in a mix of awe and terror as his protector dropped his only weapon and raised his arms instead. He would shield The Abomination from harm, and welcome it home instead.

“For him? I would take all you could give without hesitation, my friend.” The Flagellant said.

“No,” The Abomination finally called out, his voice hoarse and cracking. “Please stop, just leave us be...” He said, before The Flagellant held his hand up to silence him. His pleas would fall on deaf ears once more, just as they always had.

It truly did look as though The Villager wished to spew more vile words at the two of them, curse them for their stance and demand that The Flagellant stand down and let things be as they were, but there was a flash of concern in his eyes as he took in the sight of The Flagellant so ready and willing to suffer at the hands of a stranger for someone who the Abbey had at one point shunned entirely. The Flagellant, a beast in his own right, thrived in this hesitation.

“I’ve stood by this man in the darkest pits that the land has to offer, where the truly most vile beasts lie in wait. There are horrors down below that make men far stronger than yourself break into nothing more than empty shells of who they once were, who feast on the bones of those who fall at their hands and haunt the dreams of those who manage to escape and live another day. He’s a man who has traveled where even the light can no longer help you, and all that we have left is blood tying you to this world, and though I may not care for his tainted form and damned soul, we’ve fought side by side and truly lived. I know for a fact that you are wrong my friend.”

And The Flagellant reached forward with surprising speed, grabbing the front of The Villager’s shirt and bringing him all the closer, knocking their heads together in an aggressive way.

“He is but a horrid abomination in this transept, but I have learned in my time that simply because one is a monster does not mean that one is guilty.” The Flagellant snarled, his upper lip twitching back to show missing teeth. “And so I say once more, if you so feel the need to lash out, then turn your violence on me. His suffering shall be mine and it will be divine!”

There is a moment of tense silence that falls over the Abbey halls, punctuated only by heavy breaths coming from The Flagellant himself as he stares down The Villager who had dared to disturb the sanctity of this holy place he so often sought his own salvation in. His grip on the man’s shirt slowly eases before The Villager is let go entirely with a small shove, sending him stumbling backwards until he could right himself proper. There was fear in his eyes, perhaps of the possible retaliation that might await him if he so much as tried to face The Flagellant again, or simply of what a man as unhinged and entirely devoted to such an extreme ideal could do to him with little to no provocation. He looked like a wounded animal, hunkered down like he expected a beating of his own. Instead, The Flagellant simply turned and pointed back towards the entrance of the Abbey, and barked a single order that had The Villager scrambling away as fast as his feet could carry him in his state.

“Leave!”

The man left with the sound of heavy footsteps echoing behind him, growing more and more distance until the slam of a heavy wooden door could be heard, and all at once it was like a collective exhale had been released. The Vestal and The Crusader slowly made their way forwards once more, back to their seats in complete silence and perhaps shock, but The Abomination paid them no mind. His head was swimming and he could still feel his heart pounding in his chest, but the burn of toxic blood had begun to die down and it no longer felt as though he were about to be completely overtaken by a force well outside his control.

The pain in The Abomination’s arms began to flare up though, and he sat back for a moment to push his shackles up just a bit further and rub over the abused skin. His eyes were locked on The Flagellant as he turned back towards him, bending down to pick his flail up from off the floor, and he cleared his throat to get rid of the shakes as he pushed himself up onto his knees. The Abomination may not have ever expected The Flagellant of all people to be his one and only protector, but by the gods was he grateful. “You didn’t have to-...” He said, only for The Flagellant to cut him off before he could even begin to thank him for coming to his aid when nobody else would have.

“On your feet now, Abomination. I know you’ve done nothing to hurt the people of this town, but despite what I said, you and I both know you’re are far from innocent. You seek salvation from a curse brought on by your own hubris, yes? You do not belong up here with the truly holy folk. You belong down below, taking absolution by your own hand rather than waiting for prayers to be answered.” He said, stepping around The Abomination without a care to head back towards the stairs near the upper left corner of the Transept that lead down to the Penance hall. The heavy ends of his flail scraped across the ground as he went, making a truly wretched sound that sent chills down The Abomination’s spine.

“Follow me, and pay your toll in blood…”

#This had like 2% effort put into editing and checking for errors #So if there are errors #or if it sucks #that would be why #Darkest Dungeon #the abomination #The Flagellant #Abomination #Flagellant

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sawmillturtle · 5 years ago

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Butterflies

A Quick Note From Turtle:

This story is based upon the “SU AU Gone Wrong” fan comic by @spudinacup and is supposed to take place during the second chapter. My initial thought was to write the events of the chapter from Pink Steven’s point of view and try to capture his thought processes. Unfortunately, I failed in this. When Spud posted her notebook, it clearly states that Pink Steven can understand why others act the way they do, but cannot feel empathy or sympathy for anyone or anything. Looking at this 7,832 word behemoth, I realize that I made him a bit too eager to want to sympathize with everyone. He wants to understand. This seems a bit off the target. Of course, I had to take a few liberties to do what I wanted to do (like the butterflies) and to fit everything into the space I had to work with, but Steven being a bit OOC was not one of the liberties I intended to take.

Well, it made for a good story anyway. This was several weeks worth of work to pull off and many hours of listening to Pink Floyd music on repeat. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed making it. Spud, if you get around to reading this, I want you to know that this was intended to be a love letter to your amazing artwork. In that, at the very least, I feel I succeeded.

As a side note, try to figure out what I hid in this story. There’s a secret. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot if you know where to look. I’ve already given you a clue.

---

Hello?

HELLO?

Is this what it means to be alone? To hear only his own thoughts, and to hear those thoughts echoing in the void of his own mind like sounds reverberating off the walls of a cavern? He doesn’t know. He has never been alone. There has always been the other one. Steven Who Was. For sixteen years, the two of them had been together. Steven Who Was had never realized that he was there, but that didn’t matter to him. He’d always been there, a part of Steven Who Was, watching through their shared eyes and feeling through their shared emotions. Steven Who Was had been more than just a part of himself: Steven Who Was had been his closest friend.

There is only him now. Steven Who Remains. The other one is gone. It is hard for him to feel anything, although this isn’t because his emotions have been numbed by tragedy. At least he doesn’t think so. No, he simply can’t recall how to feel. The traces of those emotions seem to be there, in some distant part of himself, yet trying to latch onto them is like attempting to catch the faint smoke of a dying campfire with his bare hands. When he attempts to do so, they slip through his fingers and drift away.

Anybody can look at me and see that I am no longer human. My humanity died with the other one. But if I’m not human anymore, what am I? Am I even still Steven? Am I Pink Diamond? Am I something else entirely?

In their early years, the Greg Universe took Steven Who Was on a road trip to Empire City. Steven Who Was must have been about six or seven at the time. They’d been there for eight days as the Greg took care of business that he hadn’t bothered to explain to Steven Who Was. Probably something to do with his music career. On one bright Sunday, they’d walked by a church where the people inside were singing about how they’d fly away, oh glory. When Steven Who Was had asked what they meant, Greg had given a basic explanation of religion and of the human belief in eternal souls. Steven Who Was had not been impressed by it, nor had Steven Who Remains.

There is something about it, though, that nags at his mind. He stands in the bathroom, watching the blood run off of his hands and into the sink basin, thinking about eternity, the afterlife, and what it means as far as he is concerned. The blood swirls around the drain, mixing with the clean water and vanishing in ribbons of grisly crimson. That had been his blood. The blood of Steven Who Was. That Steven is dead now, but he still exists.

Just what happened to people like Steven Who Was? Is his eternal human soul on a cloud somewhere, playing a harp and flapping its wings? If so, what is he? If Steven Who Was went to human heaven, is he even Steven anymore? He looks like Steven. He remembers being Steven. If asked by anyone (and someone will inevitably ask; of that he is certain), he will surely tell people that he’s Steven. But if the body is dead and the soul is gone to some hallelujah by-and-by glory land, what does one call whatever is left? There’s no word for it, because it isn’t natural. Humans leave their bodies behind and Gems leave their shards behind, each shard containing a fraction of what once was.

Nod. That seems to describe him, doesn’t it? A shard. A fraction. A portion of something that was once whole. Is he any different than those pieces of the cluster existing in the Earth’s core? Is he in any way different from the Gem experiments that attacked Steven Who Was and Connie? He has trouble convincing himself of the contrary. He’s not supposed to exist like this. He’s not supposed to be… him. The other one, Steven Who Was, is supposed to be a part of him. Without that essential part of himself, what is he but a shattered remnant?

If he is thinking of himself this way, if he has trouble even seeing himself as anything but unnatural, what will the others think? He can hear them through the door, fighting over the body. Lapis and Peridot. Peridot knows that the body is compromised. No heartbeat. Lungs deactivated. Fixing Steven Who Was is not possible. Lapis doesn’t want to believe that. She’s even now screaming at Peridot to try again.

You are going to want me to do something. I know this already. You will expect me to heal the body.

Can he blame her? No. He wants to be able to do something. He wants more than anything for this to be some terrible dream. He doesn’t want to be washing the blood of Steven Who Was down the drain. He doesn’t want to think about how broken and helpless the body looked, lying on the grass. He doesn’t want to remember how optimistic Steven Who Was had been just minutes before, singing about the brightness of the future. Nothing to fear. No one to fight. If only Steven Who Was had known, if only he’d known just how much they actually had to fear. That the fight to come would be their last together.

Hear that sound? It’s not the sound of water running down the drain; it’s the sound of hope dying. I couldn’t keep Steven Who Was from dying. When it came right down to it, I failed him. I failed all of them. Steven is dead. If I’m not to blame for that, who is? The Gem with the scythe, obviously. But who wasn’t there to protect him from the Gem with the scythe? Who wasn’t there to provide backup and support when there was a clearly dangerous Gem on the loose?

Me. I wasn’t there. They’re all going to blame me. They’re all going to look at me, see the echo of a dead man. Every time they look at me, they’re going to see him and blame me.

Is the Greg going to see him that way, too? What is the Greg going to think? At some point, he is going to have to confront the man who had been their father. At some point the Greg is going to see the body, or be told about it, and then he is going to see him. Steven Who Remains. What will happen? What will he say? Steven Who Remains certainly doesn’t think he’ll embrace him and call him his son. There will be no tender moment, no air guitar or story from the past to bring them together. There will be only---

There is no point in following that line of thought any further. Whatever is going to happen with the Greg, it is not going to be pleasant. Furthermore, dwelling upon it will only add to the heavy burden sitting in his mind already. He shuts off the water and closes the bathroom mirror, catching a glimpse of his reflection for the first time as he does so. The diamond eyes stare back at him. He is the spitting image of Steven Who Was. Looking into his own reflection is like looking into the face of a dead man.

Anyone else looking at me is really going to lose their mind.

At this, the thoughts really begin to flood in. What is he going to tell Connie? What is he going to tell Garnet or Amethyst or Pearl? All of these beings who had loved Steven Who Was the most, and now all they have left is a rapidly cooling corpse and him. He is, he can admit, a poor substitute. He doesn’t even know what he is. How is he supposed to give them the answers they will demand of him? How is he supposed to give the answers he demands of himself? None of them are going to understand. They aren’t going to see him as anything but an abomination, a constant reminder of an unspeakable tragedy. Even Bismuth, who had attempted to treat him as she had always treated Steven Who Was, was betrayed by the look in her own eyes. He saw it there as she took him by the shoulders and led him

(home?)

Come to think of it, is this really his home?

On the bathroom counter, more and more of those butterflies land, fluttering their wings. He knows they aren’t real, but Garnet’s lessons to Stevonnie have paid off. She taught them to visualize intrusive thoughts as white butterflies, and now that is all he can picture. They swirl around the bathroom in a mass of white, hateful wings. He can almost feel them behind him, forming into something familiar, something he doesn’t want to think about: the colossal face of Steven Who Was.

“Now what will we do?” Butterfly Steven mocks. “I’m dead, you’re an abomination, and it’s all your fault!”

I can’t… I have to remember Garnet’s training.

“Hear what I’m telling you,” Butterfly Steven snarls. “My death is on your head. Everything that happened is because you failed to act.”

You're… not real.

Feeling the thoughts overwhelming him, smothering him, he thinks back on Garnet’s words: It was just a thought. It’s okay. But that advice was for fusions acting as one, wasn’t it? To keep fusions from becoming unstable. He isn’t a fusion any more. He supposes that the advice is still sound, but just thinking of fusions breaks his concentration and sets the butterflies to swarming again.

“Down in the mouth?” Butterfly Steven calls. More and more his voice sounds less like Steven and more like the one who killed him. The rubber hose bitch. “You should be. I mean, what are the others going to say? Well

(well well well well let me get a look at the menagerie)

“I won’t--”

Can it.

Ease off.

“Your pain is only beginning, whether I’m here or not,” Butterfly Steven says as his form begins to dissolve. “You’ll see.”

Pain? He isn’t sure if that is the right word to use, because he has a hard time remembering what pain is. It’s the campfire smoke all over again. He thinks he might have an inkling of what it means. He knows the textbook definition, but processing and feeling that emotion seems impossible with his humanity literally slashed to pieces. He is certainly in for an ordeal, and he needs no emotional processing to understand that.

“Get the machine going again!” Lapis yells from the other side of the wall.

“You don’t understand,” the smaller voice of Peridot replies. “I don’t know how else to tell you--”

On that, Steven Who Remains turns from the sink with a sigh. The blood is long gone. He is just delaying the inevitable, standing here listening to the fighting and letting his thoughts torment him like this.

Your pain is only beginning, whether I’m here or not.

Feet away, a mere stone’s throw, another butterfly appears. He stares at it for a moment, then disregards it.

“Again!” Lapis demands. Peridot is pleading with her now, but Lapis is having none of it. Another butterfly appears. He looks at it, and it looks back at him.

Relax, it seems to be saying as he moves past it and opens the bathroom door. I’m just a harmless butterfly. A product of your shattered mind. Don’t mind me.

“I’ll tell you again,” Peridot is saying as he steps out, “that it’s not going to work any more than it already has.”

Need for results has driven Lapis to desperation, and she lashes out at Peridot, coming close to violence. Bismuth admonishes them both for their behavior, but it isn’t Bismuth’s raised voice or words that bring everything to a standstill: it is the sight of him as he steps out into the light. He gives them a wave, as if he’s just a normal guy entering a normal room where normal things are happening. Where there’s not a dead body on the couch and bloody gems on the counter top. Where he’s not a ghost, a vapor, a remnant of what was.

Some part of him, perhaps some lingering yet dying part of his remaining humanity, hoped against hope that Lapis and Peridot wouldn’t be giving him the looks they’re giving him. Lapis looks like he’s just walked into the room and ripped a giant fart; Peridot looks either terrified or furious, though he can’t figure out which. Maybe both. Bismuth is uncomfortable. She stutters, curses, asks him for something.

Information. She wants to know his name. What should they call him? She doesn’t say the rest, but she doesn’t have to. It lingers in the air like a bad odor: What should they call him now that Steven is dead?

First name given: Steven.

Just Steven.

The reaction from Lapis is swift and unpleasant. She flies off the handle again, gesturing wildly at the body and screaming at him that the dead boy is Steven. Bloody water from a nearby bowl ascends into the air, fueled by her rage and sorrow.

Basic tact would have told him that this response would be the wrong one, but such things seem beyond him now. While his mind is a torrent of conflicting thoughts, a lot of his actions seem almost programmatic, as though he is nothing more than a computer carrying out commands. The words slipped from his lips as easily and effortlessly as rain water sliding through the gutters. He found this had also been true when he’d gone into the bathroom to wash up. While the blood had caused a lot of turmoil in him, washing it off had been almost routine.

Facts are facts: I’m not human anymore. I can’t feel the emotions I used to take for granted. I can’t restrain myself like a human. I can’t remember how to laugh. God, I can’t even remember what it feels like to laugh.

Can I even call myself a Gem? Even Gems laugh. What in God’s name am I?

“You want to be Steven?” Lapis demands, bringing him out of his own head. She points back at the remains of Steven Who Was. “Heal him!”

“Show them,” a nearby butterfly mocks. “Show them you can’t do it so that they’ll hate you even more. Look at how Bismuth has to try and shield you from Lapis. Look at the anguish in Lapis’ eyes. What do you think is the source of all of her pain right now?”

Me. It’s coming… from me.

“Where is it coming from?” the butterfly prods. “Say it again.”

It is coming from me. Looking at me, seeing the ghost of him, hurts them all.

“Hurts them?” the butterfly says. “It isn’t just hurting them; it’s tearing them apart.”

There is blood on Lapis’ hands as she stretches out her palms, demanding answers from him: if Steven heals people, why can’t he? He reaches down and clasps his gem. The gem that used to belong to Steven Who Was. It’s a self-conscious gesture, of that he’s quite aware. He does it anyway. It’s almost… a human gesture, as if there are still remnants of Steven Who Was inside of him, sputtering and fizzling out like dying embers. He looks towards the body.

Is there really nothing he can do?

No action he can take?

Pain riddles the voices of Bismuth and Peridot as they attempt to explain the frailty of organic life to Lapis. Rather than give her some peace of mind about the situation, it seems to fuel her anger. The bloody water that has been drifting towards the ceiling in grisly balls now swirls into a macabre spiral above their heads.

“You can’t do anything,” the butterfly says.

Are you sure? Why am I even listening to you?

Receding into the shadows, the butterfly vanishes and is replaced by two others. The first reminds him that Steven’s death was his fault. The second reminds him again and again of how broken he is. He isn’t fully human anymore, but he certainly isn’t a full Gem. He hasn’t been a full Gem since the day Rose Quartz gave up her form.

(a single pale rose a pink diamond a liar did she just make me so she wouldnt have to deal with all her mistakes)

Distant memories, those. Again, he is struck by how hard it is to remember emotion. He can certainly remember Steven Who Was in the pink room, shouting at a simulated version of his mother. He can remember Steven Who Was being sad and angry and conflicted. Yet, upon recalling these memories, he can not remember the emotions themselves. The emotions and the memories should come as a single package, yet they do not. There is a strange disconnect he can’t explain. In a strange way, it is like the day Steven Who Was and the Greg and Lapis Lazuli went out on a yacht

(ship)

(smoke from the engine)

on the open sea.

The day had started out nice enough. They'd done some fishing, soaked up some sun. Lapis had refused the Greg’s hat. At some point, the engine had exploded, causing black smoke to billow from below deck and bringing them to a standstill.

(horizon darkened horizon there were storm clouds there was rain and then she came)

(you i’ve been following you)

Are these two really going to fuse again? That’s what Steven Who Was had been thinking, over and over again, as Jasper got down on her knees and begged Lapis to become Malachite for a second time. Yet despite Jasper’s promises that she had changed, that things would be better, Lapis refused her. To be more precise, she formed a large water fist and punched her so hard she became a speck in the stratosphere. To latch onto those human emotions, to understand them, made him feel like Jasper did that day. He all but begged them to take him back, but they turned a cold shoulder to him.

Only, they aren’t just turning a cold shoulder. It’s like they’re pushing him away. Or punching him away. Each time he reaches for them, they seem more distant. Less defined.

Coming closer and closer to not being there at all.

Through all of his musings, his hand hasn’t left his gem. He’s been standing here, staring at Steven Who Was with a blank expression. Lapis has been growing angrier with him by the second. He is brought back to reality by a soft plink. A drop of red water from the hurricane above them. It runs down his face and drips off his nose. Another falls. Then another. Blood rain.

In the split second it takes him to register this, all hell breaks loose. Lapis, who has been clenching her fists and her teeth and glaring daggers at him, loses her composure and screams. Her grip on the vortex shatters.

Waves of bloody water pour down on everything.

Your pain is only beginning, whether I’m here or not.

Lips are moving, mouths are speaking, Bismuth is screaming, but he can’t hear her. Everything seems to be moving in slow motion. Lapis has him by the shirt, her enraged eyes mere inches from his. In this instant, several thought processes go through his broken mind. She’s demanding that he cry over the body, that he save Steven Who Was as Steven Who Was once saved Lars. He dismisses her as a threat in an instant. Lapis, as angry as she is, is not going to hurt him. He also knows that these demands might have been within the powers of Steven Who Was

(move your ass cry help him fix him)

but they might not be within his own.

I can’t even remember what it’s like to feel sad. How can I possibly cry over the body?

Can't remember.

“Hear how much pain she’s in,” a nearby butterfly says. “It’s your fault for letting Steven die. You--”

What the butterfly says next is lost as Bismuth gets between him and Lapis and pushes them apart. He stumbles backwards, his hand finally leaving his gem. When he regains his balance, Bismuth is still between them. He fixes Lapis with a glare. She is no threat, and she is merely acting upon her grief and emotions, but she has still pissed him off.

“You're feeling anger?” the butterfly says, sounding surprised. “Seems like you’re still feeling something after all.”

Saying that this was emotion is a bit of a stretch. He knows he didn’t like being roughed up and he knows he doesn’t like being pushed around. It is a certain amount of… displeasure. It certainly seems like what he remembers as anger. Is it because he had reacted instinctively to it? Were emotions more difficult to grasp onto if he was trying?

When the other Gem, the one who looked like some kind of sad clown, had poofed all of his friends and killed Steven Who Was, there had been emotion then. There was no doubt about that. He’d been furious. His hands had trembled with effort when Bismuth had arrived and reminded him that shattering Gems was wrong. It had taken everything inside of him to release that terrible scythe and let the clown bitch live.

I wasn’t trying to be angry. It just came.

Was that the key to all of this? If so, why did the emotions not come even when he wasn’t trying? Why could he not remember laughter? Why could he not remember the joy of a smile or why being around friends and family elicited feelings of love?

A quandary for certain.

Child Steven

(i think the gems refer to him as classic steven)

had a day perhaps a year or so prior to the end of the war in which he was snowed in with his family, listening to stories of how the Gems kidnapped him and stole the Greg’s van. That day was one of the happiest in the memories for Steven Who Was, and one that Steven Who Was often looked back on with fondness.

A happy day, indeed. But why? And why did Steven Who Was also think back so often on a certain week when Connie fell dreadfully ill? What was it the humans called this strange experience?

Fever. Connie had a fever. Steven had been at her side the entire time, cooking her soup and applying cold washcloths to her forehead. Mrs. Maheswaran told Steven that he needn’t spend all of his time fawning over Connie, that she was more than capable as a mother of taking care of her daughter.

“My time is Connie’s time until she gets better,” Steven told her, spoon-feeding Connie small amounts of hot soup.

Hands shaking, Connie reached up and stroked Steven’s cheek. It was a small, quick gesture, but it

(felt wonderful)

just made Steven more resolved to stick it out to the end.

Like the jam buds they were.

Two fantastic ingredients, jam and biscuit, which when combined together, make each other even better.

Balloons was an even better analogy, at least in mind of Steven Who Was. He sometimes liked to picture them as two balloons, floating higher and higher, their strings intertwined. There was no doubt in the mind of Steven Who Remains that Steven Who Was had been in love with Connie almost from the outset. Despite Garnet’s claims that “love takes time and love takes work”, Steven hadn’t experienced it quite the same way. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her, something in him had clicked. That’s why he’d saved her glow bracelet in the freezer. That’s why he’d tried so hard to impress her with his funky flow.

Now all those dreams he had are in ruins. The balloons have popped.

I've got to figure out what I’m going to tell her when she inevitably shows up.

Got to figure it out.

That was going to be fun, wasn’t it? Well, you see Connie,

(feeling optimistic connie ha boy do i have a whopper of a tale for you)

once everything finally quieted down and Steven was gearing up for some well-deserved R&R, a Gem we’d never seen before showed up and gutted Steven with a scythe and lopped off his arm. I should have done something to help, honestly. My bad.

Again, the butterflies begin to grow in number while Bismuth tries to get Lapis quieted down.

I can’t let this happen. You and Connie are supposed to be endgame.

Can't let it happen without trying to fix it.

Explain to Connie why the boy she loves is in pieces? Not if I can help it.

You both deserve better.

Would it make it easier for everyone if he at least tried, but still failed?

Not likely.

Understand, please, that I want Steven to be better as much as any of you.

This last thought sets him in motion. He moves away from Bismuth and Lapis and towards Peridot, who is attempting to block access to Steven Who Was with her body. Steven Who Remains never even breaks his stride. Peridot ends up diving out of the way to keep from being stepped on. She scuttles under the table, bumping it and sending a bowl of blood water crashing to the floor. She cowers behind Bismuth’s leg as they all watch him approach Steven Who Was.

Is the world supposed to look like a glitchy video game?

Not this way. No.

How could it be?

I feel like things are---

Am I imagining it, or are things beginning to go loopy?

I see Steven Who Was, but something is wrong. It’s like things are beginning to shift all around me, go out of frame. I feel more broken than ever.

“Have things become a little too real for you?” a nearby butterfly asks.

Become too real?

“Comfortably standing at a distance is one thing, but how do you feel now that you’re right next to him?”

Numb. I feel numb.

I feel broken.

Have things always looked this fragmented? When did the blood get back on my hands? Is that supposed to be there? When did they reattach his arm?

(become too real)

(comfortably standing at a distance is one thing, but how do you feel now that you’re right next to him)

(numb)

Okay, enough of this. Not only is he being watched, but Steven’s very survival depends upon his ability to produce some effective healing tears. He can’t let himself become disoriented and delusional. He shoots a look at the hateful butterfly, which vanishes into mist. He reaches out and touches Steven Who Was, hesitating for but a moment. Then he takes him by the hand and looks down at him. No tears come. He is not surprised.

Just an hour before, they’d been one. He’d been a part of Steven Who Was, and it was easier to be human. Steven Who Was had been smiling and singing and loving on his family.

A single event had destroyed all of that, but he will fix it if he can. He hopes beyond all hope that this will work. Little bits of memory trickle back to him as he leans down and kisses Steven Who Was on the forehead. He thinks he feels something, so tiny it is like a

(little remnant of magic)

pinprick. He experiences something that he thinks might be an emotion called hope. It begins to form inside of him, starting small but gradually swelling. He stands back and waits. Peridot creeps forward and looks at the heart monitor. Bismuth and Lapis follow, all of them waiting for the flat line on the screen to spring to life. For those terrible zeroes to increase, to show that there is some sign of life somewhere deep inside the cold body.

There'll be an improvement any moment now.

Be better. Get better. Live. Please.

“No improvement,” Peridot said at last. Bismuth cast a cautious eye at Lapis as Peridot said this. The hope balloon that had been getting bigger within him pops and leaves him feeling deflated.

“More,” Lapis says to him, her voice cold. “You should have done more. You should have cried.”

Ah, just leave me alone, he thinks as he strokes the hair of Steven Who Was. Can’t she see that he wants it as badly as she does? More than she does?

“But if you want it so bad," a nearby butterfly says, "why didn't it work?"

You already know why it didn't work.

"May I suggest that it didn’t work because you’re not capable?” the butterfly says. “Just like you weren’t capable of saving Steven. I feel--”

Feel this.

A puff of smoke and the butterfly is gone. Steven Who Remains turns his attention back to the conversation at hand. Bismuth is of the opinion that Steven wouldn’t cry because Steven can’t cry. She elaborates upon this by pulling out the scythe. The one that started this whole mess.

Little pinpricks of fear erupt inside of him and become an almost primal need to get Steven Who Was as far from the killing weapon as possible. He doesn’t understand what the device is capable of, or if it had the ability to do even more damage than it already has, but he isn’t taking any chances. Neither is Peridot. She recoils from it as if the mere act of touching it would cause her to lose all of her character development.

Sick device used by a sick bitch of a Gem, Steven thinks, cradling the body. Bismuth is talking about how Homeworld used it to “rejuvenate” rebellious Gems, but Steven isn’t listening. He is regarding the Rejuvenator-- and now Bismuth-- with caution and distrust.

Can you put that damn thing away please?

You should have gotten rid of it.

Stand farther away at least.

Up on the second floor perhaps?

“I don’t know what it did to the Crystal Gems,” Bismuth says, looking toward the bloody collection of gems on the counter, “but if this thing reset them, we’ll find a way to get them back. They’re the O.G. Crystal Gems, after all. It’ll take something far worse to keep them out of the game.”

Do not underestimate the terrible tool in your hand, Steven thinks, dragging the body as far away from Bismuth as he can.

Believe the stories you hear. If not them, then believe your own eyes. Look at Steven Who Was.

It's mere moments after Bismuth bends down to talk to Peridot again, seemingly about a way to help or fix Steven (Steven isn’t really listening), that Steven himself rises from the couch. Bismuth has placed the Rejuvenator on the counter and has carelessly forgotten about it.

Working quickly, he grabs the hateful device in both hands and holds it there. He looks down at the bubbled gem of the other one. The rubber hose clown. He looks down at the tool in his hands again.

Good God, what could drive her to such an act? Who is she? Why would she just show up out of nowhere and kill? What purpose does it serve? She claimed she didn’t know Steven wouldn’t poof. She even tried to apologize for all of this, but--

“That'll be a serious mistake,” the voice of Bismuth calls out to him, breaking him from his thoughts. He looks over. All of their eyes are now upon him. “Don’t do it, Steven. Why don’t you just put that down?”

Keep away. I have to do this. For me. For Steven Who Was.

“You don’t need to do anything foolish,” Bismuth says. “Why don’t we just talk about it?”

Going to do it. Going to end it.

Through all of this, through all of the guilt butterflies and the accusing face of Steven Who Was, the well-being of Steven has been at the forefront of his mind. If he hadn’t failed him, Steven would be alive now. If Steven was alive, he and Connie would still have a future. If the rubber hose girl hadn’t showed up, Steven would still be alive. It all came down to the rubber hose Gem and the horrendous tools of death and destruction she’d brought with her. Well, he could right at least one wrong.

The Rejuvenator cracks as he snaps it in two. There is a short buzz of electricity as the circuits inside die, then it becomes a useless stick. It would never harm anyone ever again. He looks back at the other Gems to find that Bismuth is once again restraining Lapis Lazuli, except this time she isn’t coming at him to make demands; she is ready to

(show me how much she hates me)

come at him full force and destroy him if it comes right down to it.

On this note, Bismuth gulps and reaches out a shaky hand towards him. He makes her nervous. He makes her uncomfortable. She has tried valiantly to hide this from him, but it has become too much for her to bear. She can conceal her true feelings no longer.

“It's okay,” she says to him. “Do you feel better?”

Time to respond. To say something in return. To give her a little something. To show some humanity, or some emotion, or some empathy. Why can’t he open his mouth? Why won’t the words come? It seems like it would be appropriate to say something, but some part of his programming tells him that it isn’t necessary to say something. It seems to him that in this case, his programming is wrong. Either that, or his programming is as broken as the rest of him. Still, he maintains his silence.

“To be honest,” she says after a long and rather awkward period where he simply stares up at her with his diamond eyes, “I wouldn’t want that thing around me, either.”

“Go on,” a nearby butterfly says. “Ask her if she meant the Rejuvenator, or if she was talking about you.”

There is a knock on the door, cutting off this exchange and causing the butterfly to evaporate. Before anyone can think to answer it, the Greg throws it open. He is holding a baseball bat and screaming Steven’s name.

Is there any way that this day can get any worse?

No. Not unless Connie shows up.

Pain drips from the Greg’s voice and tears run from his eyes. He runs to Steven Who Remains and embraces him. He expresses his relief at finding his son alive. Apparently, Bismuth shot him a text at some point. This is… awkward.

“You have no idea what you’re going to say to this man, do you?” a butterfly sneers as it flutters past. It moves towards Steven Who Was.

Are you serious? Get away from him!

Receding more and more as it grows closer, it laughs at him. Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong.

A moment later, Steven Who Was turns his head and looks at him. Whatever the Greg is saying is lost as Steven Who Was lets out a groan and lurches from the couch.

Distant memories begin to flood in again, taking control and making the world seem glitchy and hazy.

(ship shaped like an arm)

(smoke or dust on the horizon of homeworld)

On a distant planet, they fought a good fight against the greatest tyrants the universe has ever known. One by one, each of these tyrants was brought to Steven’s side. The last holdout, White Diamond, refused to bend, and stood proud upon her platform, passing judgment upon them all.

The events of that day, the day of their first separation, are firm in his mind. Of all the things he has trouble remembering, this is not one of them. White Diamond, big as the Trade Center Building in Empire City, grabbing Steven in her mighty fist. Her pointy black claws raising his shirt and digging into his belly. The gem they shared coming out. Then he was there. Pink Steven. This was a brand new experience for him. For both of them. A bold new… what’s the human word?

Horizon.

You begged me that day. You looked at me, fell on your face. NO, PLEASE. I NEED - I NEED IT!

Are those words coming out of his mouth now? Oh, sweet heavens they are.

Only...

“Coming out” might not be the right phrase. More like “tumbling out”, “slurring out”, “sliding out”. Steven Who Remains is reminded of the old zombie flicks Steven Who Was used to watch on television late at night. These brute beasts with guts hanging out or rotting limbs dangling would lurch around and groan and grunt.

Through a massive swarm of butterflies, Steven Who Was reaches for him. Blood pours from his empty eye sockets in torrents. The blood pools on the floor beneath their feet.

In this moment, Steven Who Remains reaches in desperation for Garnet’s words.

Waves of fear crash over him, followed by waves of guilt.

Your training! Remember your training!

Lips barely matching the words he is saying, Steven Who Was speaks again: “I need it!”.

Move back to the couch. You aren’t real. Aren’t real. Aren’t real. You’re dead.

But he is having trouble convincing himself of that. He finds himself reaching for the outstretched hand of Steven Who Was, as if they are going to fuse back together again. He can also feel the pool of blood in which he is standing. The blood is between his toes, down inside his flip-flops.

I can’t handle this!

“Can't handle it! Can’t handle it! Can’t handle it!” the butterflies mock.

“Hear him now,” they laugh. “How strong he seemed, banishing us and chanting ‘Just a thought’ like a mantra. Where is your precious Garnet now?”

What is happening to me?

You’re not real! None of you are real! He’s not real, either!

Saying it over and over again in his head makes the visions begin to break apart, but they have one more trick: When Steven Who Was moves closer, Steven Who Remains can smell the decay coming from him. It is one of the worst rotten meat odors he’s ever experienced. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He thinks back on that day of training: Take a moment to ask yourself if this is how we fall apart.

When he opens his eyes, the butterflies are gone, Steven Who Was is back on the couch, and the Greg is calling out to him.

I didn’t mean to let you die, Steven thinks, looking over at Steven Who Was. I didn’t mean for this to be how we fell apart.

Was that fear on Bismuth’s face? She looks like she expects him to fly off the handle at any time, or expects the Greg to look back at the couch where Steven lay. What will happen when he sees his son’s body?

A disaster, that’s what. He will lose his composure. He might even go insane. Steven was the only family he had left, unless you count cousin Andy. Greg has no one now. He is all alone.

Child of the Greg. Son of Rose. I’m sorry.

I am so sorry. To you as well, Greg. This should never have happened

Caught up in the moment, an emotion comes back to him, raw and unexpected but real nonetheless: it is sadness. For the first time since this tragedy happened, he is able to feel something other than anger.

A simple, brief

(fleeting)

glimpse of the humanity he had so long taken for granted.

Out on the beach, the rain begins to fall. There is a distant roll of thunder. Is it poetic or cheesy to think of it as the sorrowful tears of the planet Steven had given his life to defend? Probably cheesy, but there it is. Everyone had shed a tear for Steven today except for him, even the goddamn planet itself. Why is he so incapable of this simple act, when it might prove to be Steven’s saving grace?

Of course, there is the possibility that Bismuth is right and that the Rejuvenator has somehow reset him to an earlier state. Strangely enough, he doesn’t feel reset. He remembers Steven’s life. He remembers their experiences together. If he is a reset Gem, shouldn’t he be more… Pink Diamond? Shouldn’t his memories be erased as well?

The answers will not be quick in coming, if they ever come at all. Likely, the only answers they’ll ever get will be from the rubber hose Gem. They’ll have to unbubble her eventually if they want to unravel this. No pun intended.

Corner her. Threaten her. Make her talk.

Of all the ideas that have gone through his head this day, this one is by far his least favorite. He doubts the Gems will be on board with it, either. Pure aggression is not their way, unless it is an absolute last resort.

“My human is dead! What do you know about what you did to me? How do I fix it?”

Eye to eye and with the Breaking Point pointed at her Gem, maybe it would work, but it seems ugly and messy and… Homeworld. He won’t resort to those kinds of tactics. Not even on her.

I almost did, though, didn’t I? When I held her gem in my hand.

Turned it this way and that. Looked at it. Dropped it on the ground. Pointed a sharp object at it…

To go down that rabbit hole was to risk having another episode, and he won’t do that. He will figure out how to get answers from her, but that isn’t the important thing to focus on at the moment.

Look at the Greg’s face. Look at the concern there. He hasn’t turned around yet. He’s still looking at me! Should I say something? Should I do something?

But he can’t. That part of his programming, the broken part, will not allow it. It keeps saying that it is unnecessary. Is it that, or is it some botched signal? Is the reality that he doesn’t want to be the one to break the old man’s heart?

It shouldn’t have to be anyone’s job to break his heart! We shouldn’t have to do this! Steven shouldn’t be dead!

Was that all there was to it? He feels something. Some emotion. Weak as a dying heartbeat. He reaches for it, but it slips away. He reaches for it again. It grows even fainter. It vanishes.

Gone. Had it been guilt? Apprehension? He doesn’t know.

I hate being a fraction of a person. A shard. A being who cannot feel emotions or react to social cues or show even the slightest bit of sorrow to an unspeakable tragedy.

Cannot or will not?

Put in simple terms, he can’t even tell if his inability to behave like a person is because he isn’t a person and thus can’t be expected to act like one, or because some mental block is keeping him from doing so. Do Gems even get mental blocks? He supposes that it’s possible. Gems can get emotional hang ups after being lied to, they can grieve for six thousand years, and they can eat and drink and pee in the ocean. Would it not, then, be possible for something to affect a Gem in such a way that it makes them unable to act in certain ways or feel certain things?

My best friend was just murdered by a crazy clown. Like something out of a Stephen King novel. I’d say that qualifies. We were all so happy. It was like the hand of fate came down on us for no reason.

Finger of God type stuff. Like we were too happy. Like the war was our destiny, and we weren’t suffering enough or something.

On that note, he dismisses the thought. He has never put much stock in religion. The reality is that they weren’t struck down by the hand of God; they were attacked by a crazy fuck with a scythe.

It really is as simple as that. If he has some kind of complex, it is because of her.

Now he has to determine how he is going to deal with it. How they are all going to deal with it. When he’d been standing in the bathroom, Butterfly Steven said something that had been cruel but true: this isn’t his life. This isn’t his home.

The others will feel the same.

Child of the Greg, son of Rose he is not. His diamond pupils and pink glow make that abundantly clear.

Is there going to be anything for me here when this is all over and done with?

Grown up Pink Steven might end up being a complete pariah in a world built by the blood, sweat and tears of classic human Steven.

The idea, surprisingly, does not fill him with dread or apprehension. He finds that, due to his emotional limitations, it is hard to care about much of anything except for Steven Who Was. He supposes that he cares about the Greg, and he supposes that he cares about the friends of Steven Who Was. A concern for the well-being of another has very little to do with emotion. When it comes to himself, however, it is a different story. Gems are not known for their drive for self-preservation. When Sapphire had run away with Ruby, Ruby hadn’t given much thought to whether she would be shattered or not, responding instead by asserting that there were tons of her. Pearl had thrown herself in front of weapon after weapon to keep Rose Quartz safe. Steven had given his life without hesitation in his efforts to protect his friends.

Dream big, but don’t put too high a value on your own life. That’s the Gem way.

Is that right? Certainly seems that way. And to boot, it stirs up some emotion in him. Is it indignation? Anger? Outrage at such a blase attitude? Before he can grasp it to identify it, it slips away.

Gone again.

I need to get a grip on that somehow. Need to learn how to process emotions without Steven there to do it for me.

Have to. Don’t have a choice.

Become my own person. Losing Steven Who Was may have left me a shattered remnant of what we once were, but maybe I can learn to be whole. Maybe I can break my programming like the original Crystal Gems did when they rebelled. Maybe I can learn to deal with emotions, and function like the Gem that I am. Learn to grasp things and respond and shed this callousness. Maybe then I won’t be quite so

(comfortably)

numb.

#steven universe #steven universe future #su au gone wrong #spudinacup #pink floyd #pink steven #steven universe the movie

11 notes · View notes

littlemisssquiggles · 5 years ago

Note

Ok so In this one anime uh, Owari no Seraph, there’s this child that got experimented on and literally turned into a weapon for the military. Could this happen to Oscar?..

Never watched Owari no Seraph before but what you said pretty much describes my Pinehead headcanon anon-chan.

My hunch is that at some point during V7, Ironwood might convince Oscar to undo experiments on his aura. Initially it was on the grounds of helping the young farm boy reconnect with the old soul who had locked himself inside of mind. The experiments were meant to force Ozpin to come out isolation by having Oscar undo circumstances where his life was placed in immediate danger. The last time, Oscar’s life was on the line, Oz returned to help him only to disappear afterwards.

The idea I have is that Ironwood would put Oscar a series of stress tests to force Oz to return. But when those tests fail and only serve to anger Ozpin and make him even more withdrawn, that’s when Ironwood would come forward and propose the notion to possibly separate Ozpin’s soul from Oscar’s via Atlas’s experimental aura technology and research.

So out of desperation, Oscar agrees to go through with the aura experiments. Unfortunately, similar to the stress tests, the aura experiment fails as well since it proved too painful for Oscar to fully go through without killing himself in the process. So the experiment was ceased but not before Ironwood was able to discover something very unique about Oscar’s soul.

Since Penny Polendina was the first artificial lifeform to possess an aura, I have a feeling that that’s going to come back into play for V7 or at least some point during the Atlas Arc.

My guess is that following what happened to Penny during the Vytal Festival, Ironwood ceased his aura experiments. My theory for Penny is that she was made from the harvested aura of Dr. Polendina’s original daughter who possibly died prior to the series.

The experiment was supposed to be Penny’s second chance at life but what it led to was the doctor watching his beloved child die twice before his eyes. I’d like to think that Penny’s ‘soul’ is still intact, safely contained somewhere in Dr. Polendina’s lab or something of the like. My theory is that following the events of Beacon, Dr. Polendina confiscated the remnants of his daughter’s soul that Atlas had used to create Penny since he didn’t wish for Ironwood to use his daughter like that again.

I’d like to think that Penny is still alive but not really. My theory for Dr. Polendina that he’s a grieving father who hasn’t been ready to let his daughter go for years and has tried everything he could to keep her alive. While Ozpin is probably the man that sparked Ironwood’s curiosity about the soul, I’d like to think that Dr. Polendina was responsible for proving to the general that the soul can be harvested in some way.

My hunch is that Dr. Polendina was keeping his daughter’s soul that was harvested years prior under safe keeping. I still wish to believe there is a connection between Dr. Polendina and Arthur Watts.

Like perhaps Watts was formerly the doctor’s apprentice and adoptive son who was once very close to him and his family. And what if…the original Penny used to be someone close to Watts.

I know we all know Penny as being a teenage girl around the same age as Ruby and the other huntsmen and huntresses (y’know age sixteen to seventeen-ish). But imagine if…there was a twist that Penny was actually the younger robotic clone of Dr. Polendina’s daughter who was previously the loving wife of Arthur Watts who died tragically of an incurable disease?

Perhaps this is why Arthur was banished from Atlas (or left it). What if…when his wife was going to die, Arthur performed inhuman experiments on her in an attempt to salvage what was left of her? This resulted in him successfully extracting his wife’s soul. Watt’s had made plans to further his experimental research in the hopes of figuring out a scientific way to resurrect his wife but when Dr. Polendina discovered what Watts had done, the doctor was devastated.

Dr. Polendina reported Watts to the Atlesian authorities on the grounds that ‘his experimentations were a crime against human nature, punishable by law’.

What if…Dr. Polendina caused Watts to be banished from Atlas and he’s held a grudge against him the most for more reasons that just getting him thrown out of his own home.

What if…the studies on the human soul was originally Watt’s idea and the research that Ironwood eventually used to conduct his own experimentswas his as well. So basically, what if…Ironwood stole Watts’ research while Dr. Polendina encouraged him?

Hear me out on this one.

Imagine how twisted of a twist it would be if Dr. Polendina caused Watts to lose everything— his career, his reputation as a scientist and researchers and all the hard work he had done because Dr. P believed the work that Arthur was doing was immoral and inhuman.

Work that Arthur was only doing because he was desperate to resurrect the woman he loved. The same woman Dr. Polendina loved. His own daughter.

Dr. Polendina thought Watts was a monster. The mad doctor, he called him the night he betrayed him. Yet still, Dr. Polendina allowed Ironwood to steal and continue Watts’ research in secret.

And to add more insult to injury, he even condoned the General creating that robotic abomination (Penny) he had the gall to parade around as his ‘daughter’. As if that mindless machine could ever be the real Penny. Watts’ Penny.

I kind of like the concept of Watts’ taking pleasure in contributing to Penny’s destruction and feeling no remorse for her. Even if Penny was a younger artificial clone created from the soul of Dr. Polendina’s daughter and Watts’ wife, unlike Dr. P, Watts could never see this broken machine as his beloved.

Pardon the deviation to discuss Watts and Dr. Polendina. It all ties into my theory on Oscar, I swear. I don’t share or indulge in much theories of Watts but for the longest while, I have liked the thought of him sharing a connection with Dr. Polendina. It’s the musing that makes the most sense to me and having Watts share a connection to Penny fits too.

In the beginning, I figured original Penny was Watts’ sister who was terminally ill and he had tried to resurrect her with his research on aura experiments that Ironwood stole. But now I think it would be a much better, bigger twist is the original Penny (that I’ll hereby dub Penelope Polendina) used to be Watts’ deceased wife and that the Penny we know is just a young robotic clone of Watts’ wife. Just a copy.

Imagine how tragic that would be? For Watts’ to learn that Atlas had secretly used his own research that they had condemned him for to produce a robotic clone of his former wife powered by her soul he had harvested years ago, puppeting her around as an innocent young huntress representing the kingdom when she was in fact a weapon. A lifeless doll they had crammed his wife’s soul into.

And to make matters worse it was all done under the consent of the same man who has caused Watts’ damnation? The man he once called master. The man he once called father.

Dr. Polendina had stopped Watts from saving original Penny but allowed Ironwood and his military to use her as a tool.

When I picture the backstory between Watts, Dr. Polendina and Penny like this, it makes it sound so depressing yet fascinating.

Arthur Watts intrigues me as villain since, like Hazel, I’d like to believe there are more layers to him than meets the eyes that contributed to him becoming the man he is presently.

Not trying to say my hunches are true. Just saying it would be cool if his story took a turn in a direction like what I described. Doubt that will be the case for the canon but I am curious to see what Watts’ story will be for the Atlas Arc. That’s my small hunch for how him and Dr. Polendina are related.

Resuming talk on Oscar now, how all of this stuff I said with Penny ties back into Oscar is that—if Penny proved that it is possible for one soul to power a machine capable of producing an aura then what say you for an entire army of machines fueled by one potent soul. A soul that is a culmination of many souls gathered over centuries of lives.

My hunch is that at some point Ironwood would get the idea to create an infinite army of robotic soldiers powered by Oscar’s soul as his so-called ‘new approach’ to stopping Salem.

So to really answer your question anon-chan. Do I believe Ironwood would turn Oscar into a weapon? Yep. I think that will play into his moment of treachery for V7. Whether or not it’ll happen that way is up to the series itself to show. Either way, I’m firmly sticking with my ‘Ironwood’s Immortal Legion’ headcanon I talked about here. That’s my main hunch for now.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#Anon-ninja #squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #arthur watts #penny polendina #rwby theories #rwby volume 7 theories #pinehead headcanons #squiggles pinehead headcanons

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coeurvrai · 5 years ago

Text

Okay I’m back with a bowl of crunched up Yum Yum noodles and a nearly full glass of water. Let’s get back into the saddle.

You can’t talk your way out of this. Her blood is on your hands, not mine.” She leaned closer to him.

“I can live with that. You’re trying to paint it as something it’s not.”

“It was murder.”

“She was a slavhka, raised from birth to slaughter Kalyazi, and as necessary, other Tranavians.”

“That doesn’t make her a monster!”

“We’re all monsters, Nadya,” Malachiasz said, his voice gaining a few tangled chords of chaos. “Some of us just hide it better than others.

Not to beat a dead horse, but still, what in the actual fuck? Nadya, you have murdered people before and in fact, they were all Tranavians. The book tells us that you are supposed to be fine with murdering people.

“That doesn’t make her a monster!” Nadya, you are out here calling any and all Tranavians “heretics” and “abominations” and unworthy existing or living as is because their mere existence is an insult to you and the Gods because they rejected the gods and turned to blood magic instead. Pot calling the kettle black.

Also I still have the energy to roll my eyes at that quote, and at the phrase “a few tangled chords of chaos”. What the fuck does that mean, ED?

Now she was aware of just how close they were, her hand still clutching his arm. His gaze strayed to her lips. She managed to keep from blushing as she let go and stepped away—she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he could still fluster her while she was angry.

She closed her eyes. Heard him step away. When she opened her eyes again he was sitting on the chaise, elbow resting against the armrest, chin in his hand.

I am literally willing them to not have a Moment at this very moment. I cannot be fucked dealing with their stupid relationship bullshit. Also, despite getting mad at him for killing Felicíja, she still finds the time to get all blushy blushy at their proximity and him looking at her mouth.

God, Nadya, you just suck.

Malachiasz changes topics and mentions that at dinner, she’ll be sitting close to the king since she’ll be sitting with Serefin, and that she should be prepared to strike when they get the opportunity to.

The door opened. Nadya whirled, but relaxed when it was only Rashid. He grinned.

“Well, that was fun.” His face fell as he picked up on the energy in the room. “Maybe not fun?”

Rashid returns! Obviously his supposed relevancy to this story has come into play again, because he’s here. Also, “fun” would be the last word I would use to describe what I’ve just had to experience.

Nadya sighed, finally collapsing into a chair. Malachiasz watched her carefully, like one watched a dog that had just bitten them. Had he assumed her harmless? That she would simply comply with any decision he made? They were still—at their core—enemies in this war. She hadn’t forgotten, not even while she found herself worrying about his safety and wanting him by her side.

Well considering the utter fact that by all rights, you were pretty easy to convince to come on this journey and to participate in this plan when you shouldn’t be, I’m not surprised if Malachiasz views you this way. Also bullshit, you being enemies in this war means absolutely nothing when you’ve literally defended your choice to show mercy to Felicíja, a blood mage, who is also your enemy! Because she’s Tranavian, and you’re supposed to hate any and all Tranavians, and kill them as is your holy and god-given mission!

Malachaisz gives her a handkerchief to clean herself up with.

He was a nightmare—the echoes she still felt of his power were troubling—but he was gentle. Anxious and strange, a boy caught up in a world that had broken him, all while trying to do something good for once. She wondered if her anger that was so quick to spark was just her fighting against the pull she felt. Was Nher fascination merely because she had been sheltered her whole life and never known someone so drastically different from herself? Or was it more? Was it because he was dangerous and exciting, all while being completely infuriating yet thoughtful?

Nadya, I am so utterly disinterested in your constant fabricated bullshit push and pull with Malachiasz right now. You’re an idiot. That’s all I really have to say. This isn’t good writing for enemies-to-lovers because the whole pretense of being enemies is to just to fabricate some angst and then will be thrown away so ED can jump into the lovers part of the trope. And you’re a fucking idiot.

Nadya can’t reach the gods atm because the reception isn’t that great.

Rashid states that next they have dinner and Nadya comments that he doesn’t look right being dressed in servants’ clothes.

“I’ve already failed the first etiquette test,” Nadya said. “That bodes well for the next one.”

Malachiasz stretched out towards her before thinking better of it and setting his hand on the arm of her chair instead. She found her eyes drawn to the tattoos on his long, elegant fingers. They were simple, straight lines: two on either side of each finger and one down the back that started at the bed of each fingernail and ended at his wrist in a single black bar.

Knowing Nadya, someone will say something at dinner and she will stab that person across the dinner table. Also, those tattoos sound fucking dumb. At least make his tattoos tell a story like Russian criminals’ tattoos do when they get them in prison or whatever. His tattoos just sound stupid, they’re all lines.

“Everything is a game,” he said. “It’s all a play for power. We didn’t want it, but you’ve caught the attention of the elite, so you may as well keep it.”

She swallowed hard. “I can handle myself.”

“I know, Nadya.”

I do not need this right now, shut up. Also that’s a lie and we all know it, Nadya.

Malachiasz asks Rashid about the gossip he’s gotten from the servants around the palace and he recaps everything we basically already know: about the queen, about Serefin and his father, about the Rawalyk, and about Pelageya.

Apparently, this is news to Nadya and I still don’t understand how it isn’t common knowledge already that Pelageya, a Kalyazi witch, is around and alive and is a companion to the Tranavian queen.

Like, apparently the people of Kalyazi, but especially the devoted and the Gods, hate the witches almost as much as they hate the Tranavians, so much so they committed a witch hunt and glorify their supposed purging from their country.

Nadya and Malachiasz exchanged a glance, their fight momentarily forgotten.

*long, drawn out sigh*

Rashid also mentions the meeting that Serefin had with the Crimson Vulture, and the salt mines.

“That’s not good,” he murmured.

“Wait, which one is Crimson?” Nadya asked. The rankings didn’t make any sense.

“Żywia is the second in command.”

Nadya didn’t like that he knew and used their names when no one else did. She didn’t need to be constantly reminded of what he was.

Just because you’re being meta and poking fun at your own worldbuilding doesn’t mean that you get off for not fixing it and not making the rankings make more sense. It’s not a get out free jail card, ED.

Also shut up, Nadya. You keep saying that but then nothing of real substance comes out of it, so just shut up about it.

“Perhaps the king’s visits to the Salt Mines means he’s working with the Black Vulture and the prince is attempting to undermine that?” Rashid said.

“I’d always thought a schism among the Vultures would be impossible,” Malachiasz said. “But I think we’ve stepped into something bigger than just a silly pageant for a queen. If the Salt Mines are involved, definitely so.”

The Rawalyk‘s relevance to the plot is what, again?

Also what do you mean you thought a schism would be impossible? I know you’re Evil McEvil, but you’ve claimed to have broken away from them for good. Like, you’re proof there’s a fucking schism. Like fucking what lmao

“Still,” Rashid said, “the king seems to have forsaken his usual retainer of guards in favor of the Vultures.”

“They’re not guards,” Malachiasz said.

“What are they, then, Malachiasz?” Nadya asked. He was becoming increasingly agitated. Nadya wasn’t going to ignore the tremors of doubt she had when he appeared to falter.

He waved a hand. “It would be like your Kalyazi tsar having clerics act as guards. It’s not their purpose, they’re not supposed to be so deeply connected to the secular throne.”

Nadya sighed. “Except religion is interwoven into our government. It’s not a thing to be shoved aside.” She didn’t like comparing monsters with her religion, but it was an apt enough example.

What? I get what secular means - that it’s separated from religious matters, as in the phrase “separation of church and state”, but that makes no sense. Is he supposed to be referring to just Kalyazin here? I would kind of assume so, because that’s the only way this would make sense. But then Nadya corrects him the next paragraph!

Because the whole nation of Tranavia is secular. Their society is based upon rejecting the Gods and being non-religious. Like that phrasing is so fucking weird. Like I get the gist, Vultures and the Court are usually separate because Vultures don’t even recognise the Tranavian king as their ruler because they have their own king, the Black Vulture. But wtf with “secular throne”.

#sarah reads ws #blood tw

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migleefulmoments · 5 years ago

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Debunking

We’ve talked about this scene before- the Kurt rant given by Santana. Naya just said she was uncomfortable and she mentioned that Chris was upset. sugdendingle just posted that Chris “liked” her Tweet where she called out how much she didn’t like it. She added a second comment that includes:

sugdendingle

None of the other cast were personally attacked in the ways Chris was and to the extent Chris was. I don’t know what Ryan Murphy’s issues were with Chris but he clearly he had some....I’m talking about real life here. About how Ryan Murphy and his writers used the character of Kurt to personally attack Chris Colfer on a regular basis and it’s clear Chris agrees to some extent as he liked my tweet.

That scene in season six was one of the worst examples but hardly the only one. Chris not being traditionally masculine was like a running joke on that show. As was remarks about his voice, his appearance, his sexuality, how he danced, etc. Yes other characters faced insults but it never got as personal as it did with Chris and it wasn’t as extensive either. The insults to Kurt went on right to the end of the show you can’t say the same for the other characters. It’s just really sad that Chris had to endure a work enivorment like this especially considering he was bullied when he was younger.

Abby adds:

My opinion. The poor treatment stems from extreme jealousy. For many, many reasons. And of course c’s refusal to do as he’s told.(X)

Debunk #1

None of the other cast were personally attacked in the ways Chris was and to the extent Chris was. Was Chris harassed by the writers “more than any other character”? I spent a few minutes looking at Santana’s rants-and Santana seems to be the ranter on Glee. I don’t believe her rants about Chris’s failings is any worse than she she said about Finn’s weight. Rachel or really Lea’s nose being too big had an entire episode-and several comments through the years- and Kurt staged a flashmob at the mall to talk her out of plastic surgery. Sam was called Trouty Mouth as a running joke including a song “Trouty Mouth” sang by Santana.

“Every time you open your humongous mouth to do an impression or to moisten a enormous stamp for a lazy giant you take on step closer to everyone seeing that you’re actually a dork” (X)

“I just heard the news that Trouty Mouth was back in town. I’ve been keeping a notebook, just in case this day ever came. Welcome back, Lisa Rinna. I’ve missed you so much since your family packed their bags, loaded them in your mouth and skipped town. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to enjoy a crisp pickle, but couldn’t find anyone to suck the lid off the jar. I assume you’ve been working as a baby polisher where young mothers place their infants’ heads in your mouth to get back that newborn shine. So glad you’re back. I haven’t seen a smile that big since the acclamation abominable snowman got his teeth pulled by that little gay elf dentist. Love, Santana” (X)

This gets loooonnnngggg so under a cut

This one she also hit at Tina’s Asian eyes and Rachels nose- though I didn’t include that part.

Santana: Hold up, could we all just get real here for a second? I hear that Rachel has a bit of a schnoz. I mean I wouldn't know because like Medusa I try to avoid eye contact with her. But can we all just stop lying about how there aren't things we don't want to change about ourselves? I'm sure that Sam has been at the doctor's office and riffled through pamphlets on mouth reductions. I'll bet Artie's thought about getting his legs removed since he's not really using them anyway. And I'm definitely sure Tina has looked into eye de-slanting. Tina: That's extraordinarily racist. Santana: Just keeping it real. Tina: Sorry Santana, I'm a beautiful person. I'm in love with myself and I would never change a thing. Mike: Is that why you're wearing blue contacts today, Tina? [whispers] Self hating Asian. Tina: Not too many Asian sex symbols, Mike. I'm just trying to mirror what I see in magazines. Finn: My dancing kind of bothers me. It almost killed Rachel but I like the way I look. Santana: Oh please. You have weird puffy pyramid nipples. Sam: [tries to look at Finn's nipples] Finn: [slaps Sam's hand away] Santana: They look like they're filled with custard. Or you could dust them off with powdered sugar and pass it off as some sort of dessert. Look, maybe Rachel is fine with having an enormous beak. Maybe she needs it to crack hard seeds. All I'm saying is if you look in the mirror and you don't like what you see, you should change it.”(X)

“I’ve kissed Finn, and can I just say… not worth a buck. I would, however, pay a hundred dollars to jiggle one of his man boobs”. (X)

Santana: “Please stick a sock in it or ship yourself back to Scotland. I’m trying to apologize to Lumps The Clown. I am sorry, Finn. I mean, really, I’m sorry that the New Directions are gonna get crushed by the Troubletones. And I’m also sorry that you have no talent. Sorry that you sing like you’re getting your prostate checked, and you dance like you’ve been asleep for years and someone just woke you up. Have fun riding on Rachel’s coattails for the rest of your life, although, you know what, I would just watch out for her come holiday time if I were him, because if I were her, I’d stick a stent in one of those boobs and let the Finn blubber light the Hanukkah lamp for eight magical nights.” (X)

Santana: “Why is everyone staring at me like I’m Finn and I just won a butter eating contest” (X)

She even hit him during The Quarterback “Okay, I know that Finn had his doubts about God but I am convinced that Squishy Teets is up in heaven right now plopped down next to his new best friend Fat Elvis helping themselves to a picnic of baby back ribs smothered in butterscotch pudding and TaterTot grease so this is for you Hudson” (X)

She also did a combo Finn/Sam rant “Not only am I giving you full visitation rights to the set of rambunctious twins that live on my rig cage, you get the chance to show that pastry bag Finn that he can’t mess with Sam Evans. And not just because you can unlock your humongous jaw and swallow him whole like a python…” (X)

The Kurt rant

“Kurt I took what you said to heart, and I thought long and hard about it, and it occurred to me that you may have a point. Okay, maybe Brittany and I are too young to get married. I mean, after all, that's why it didn't work out with you and Blaine, right? Or maybe it didn't work out because you're a judgmental little gentrophile with a mouth like a cat's ass. Maybe Blaine got tired of hearing your shrill, self-aggrandizing lecture about how you felt the two of you were at the very apex of the gay rights movement every time you so much as cooked macaroni and cheese together or farted. Maybe Blaine didn't want to be with someone who looks like they just removed their top row of dentures every time they smile or someone who doesn't dress like an extra out of one of Andy Dick's more elaborate wet dreams. Maybe Blaine grew weary of dating a breathier, more feminine Quinn Fabray. Maybe he finally got freaked out about your strange obsession with old people that causes you to skulk around nursing homes like one of those cats that can smell cancer. Maybe he got tired of watching you drape yourself on every piano you happen to pass to entertain exactly no one with, say, some song that Judy Garland choked on her tongue in the middle of or some sassy old Broadway standard made famous by another dead alcoholic crone. Maybe Blaine woke up one day and said, "You know what I don't want to marry a sexless, self-centered baton twirler. Maybe I need someone who knows more than three dance moves: "the finger wag", "the shoulder shimmy" and the one where you pretend to twirl two invisible rainbow-colored ribbons attached to your hips. So, you know what, maybe that's why it didn't work out. Maybe it has nothing to do with me and Brittany. Maybe it's just that you are utterly, utterly intolerable. Maybe that has something to do with it."(X)

Conclusion: Chris was not attacked more than other actors on Glee. The writers were pretty vicious about the physical characteristics of Rachel’s nose, Finn’s weight and man boobs and Sam’s nose. They also wrote about Damian’s height referring to as Leprechaun. All are very personal attacks about the actor; not the character. Finn’s boobs were used as fodder for humor after he died so the idea that no other character was humiliated throughout the show is untrue.

Debunk #2

I don’t know what Ryan Murphy’s issues were with Chris but he clearly he had some. Ryan didn’t write Santana’s vicious lines-Brad Falchuk did. I spent enough time researching this and finding late-season interview is hard but earlier interviews show that Ryan really respected Chris and Kurt.

Ryan did an interview with NYT in 2010 Q:Is this story in any way autobiographical or a reflection on your own experiences growing up?

A:It wasn’t really true to my experience at all. But I know so many people that it was true to. It was very true to Chris Colfer’s experience, and working with him for the past year, he would tell me stories. It’s amazing to me — last year when we did the “Glee” tour, every time Chris Colfer came out on that stage for his bows, 100 percent, he got the loudest cheers and applause, from all groups of people. Little girls, parents. A lot of people have embraced him and he’s part of their television-going family, so to see an episode in which he’s physically threatened is very upsetting for people, I think. But it puts a face on it.

Q: It’s still rare to see gay characters on prime-time network programs, let alone one who is out in the way that Kurt is, and at a young age. Is there ever any pressure on you to tone down the portrayal of that character?

A: No, surprisingly not. Three episodes into the series last year, when we did the “Single Ladies” football number with him, he became an audience favorite and people started to write about that character and Chris Colfer. I think that character is in many ways the most important character on television, particularly for kids. When I was growing up, there was nobody like that. I think that character changes lives. I think that character launches conversation, both good and bad, and that’s a very powerful thing. I’ve done shows where if a character is a little bit controversial, the network and the studio are like, “Could you please tone that down?” They never did that at all with this character, and they were all very supportive of the story line. (X)

“Growing up in Indianapolis, Murphy sang in his church choir and immersed himself in high school musicals. His father was a semi-pro hockey player who was baffled by a son who requested a Vogue subscription when he was 5 years old and performed in his bedroom, holding a hairbrush in front of a mirror. He may not have understood his son, but he accepted him, even when Murphy revealed that he was gay at 15″.

“Having a dad that loves you as a young man is a very powerful thing that you carry into the world,” Murphy said. “Because no matter what you do, in some weird, unconscious way, if you’re a guy, you always try to please your dad. I think it’s a great thing to put on television. You’ve seen the gay character that gets kicked out of the house or is beaten up. You haven’t seen the gay character that is teased a little bit, but wins and triumphs.”

“The scene in which he tells his father was taken verbatim from Murphy's own life. Murphy felt that the scene was "a great thing to put on television", because, while gay characters are often isolated and attacked, audiences have rarely seen an openly gay character who "wins and triumphs". He further explained, "The show is about making you feel good in the end. It's about happy endings and optimism and the power of your personal journey and making you feel that the weird thing about me is the great thing about me. I've done other shows with gay characters, and I will say that in many of those cases, the gay characters didn't have a happy ending. And I thought you know what? Enough."(X)(X)

We also know that Ryan created the role of Kurt specifically for Chris.

We don’t know what happened with the fall out(s) on set. Chris said he wouldn’t work for Ryan and

“To this day, I'm devastated by everything that happened with that show." (X)

Other interring things I found:

“Over the course of six seasons of Glee, which petered out earlier this year, there was plenty written about backstage drama, fractured relationships and the death of star Cory Monteith from a drug overdose. All Murphy will offer are his own misgivings about his role on the show. "I was there with them all day long, and then we'd finish work and we'd go out and have fun all night, and I guess in a weird, twisted way, I was trying to relive the childhood I never had," he says. "I thought they wanted a parent, and they didn't. They didn't want me to tell them what to f—ing do. They didn't want me to tell them how to treat each other or what the world was like at the end of the day. I wish I could go back and do that differently with a lot of those actors. Some of them I'm still very close to: Lea Michele, Chord Overstreet, Darren Criss — but there were some that didn't work out well, and I regret that. I guess I just wish I had been able to let them figure it out for themselves."(X)

Conclusion: Ryan is a grown man and didn’t have it out for Chris. He respected Chris and used the Kurt role to tell his story of being a gay boy in small midwest town.

Debunk #3

The poor treatment stems from extreme jealousy. For many, many reasons.

Abby has claimed Ryan is jealous of Chris many times over the years-it still isnt’ true. Ryan is a very successful producer, writer, creator. I found a few quotes to back that up.

“It's a peculiar thing to be asked by Murphy, 50, the closest thing the TV industry has to a proven hitmaker, save, perhaps, for Shonda Rhimes. Over the past decade and a half, he's made pop-culture juggernauts out of plastic surgeons on Nip/Tuck, high school misfits on Glee and witches, nuns and nymphomaniacs on American Horror Story. And in that time, he's become a name brand himself, more famous than all but the biggest stars in his sprawling casts. The showrunner, both pop savant and provocateur, has one of the richest eight-figure deals in television and a coterie of loyalists that includes Gwyneth Paltrow(with whom he's about to pitch a musical dramedy), Julia Roberts, Jessica Lange and now Lady Gaga. He's hosted President Obama at his home for a $40,000-a-couple fundraiser, and when he mentions his friends Norman, Barbra and David, he's referring to Lear, Streisand and Geffen.(X)

"There's a limited number of creators in film or TV where if you put the title plus their name — if you say, 'Steven Spielberg's blah blah blah' or 'Marvel's blah blah blah' — you're going to get a different answer than if you don't," Landgraf says, "and Ryan is one of those guys."(X)

Chris is a successful writer and if he is successful in writing and directing the TLOS movie, he could be a power player in Hollywood. But right now- even with his Time 100 award, he isn’t anywhere near Ryan Murphy. I suppose Ryan could be jealous of something other than Chris’s success but I have seen no evidence of that.

Conclusion: Nope.

#cc #ccer #ccers #cc fandom #cc family #cc blog #crisscolfer #darren criss #santana rant

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ilovehighhats · 6 years ago

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Missteps, Mad Max short story

One wrong step can take you in the right direction.

The story was written for the amazing @ihaveauseforyou , who bid on me (I’m still amazed!) in Fandom Trumps Hate auction. Thank you.

And for the hundredth time, I’m really, really sorry it took this long!!!

Here’s a link to AO3, if you’d rather read it there.

Under the cut the first chapter - with pics!

MISSTEPS

oOo

PART ONE:

PERIL AT NIGHT

oOo

Life is cheap in the wasteland.

There are things that kill you with their absence. Water. Shelter. Food.

There are also things that can take your life because of the sheer abundance of them, a gluttonous surplus, pointless and unproductive. Heat. Speed. Stupidity.

My own stupidity has threatened to kill me countless times. At first, I fought it tooth and nail, then I welcomed it, but now it’s been my companion for longer than I care to remember. It’s like a cup of coffee in the morning, waking me up with an adrenaline rush of realization. A last-second stop over a chasm, final gulp of water from the canteen, not-too-distant roar of an unfamiliar engine behind me.

Funny, how its so familiar now that I act on pure instinct; duck and cover, freeze and observe.

The well I passed two days ago is right before my eyes. An indent in the ground on the precipice of a rock formation that used to have a name, once. In times, when people used to go here to experience a break from their comfortable lives. Now it’s just another eroded hulk, an oversized road-sign, telling everyone to keep away. Better to get around it, not over. What kind of idiot would try to go over, right?

Someone once or twice called me a fool. I never argued. Too true.

Yeah, so I failed the simple task of crossing over the mountain, which brought me back almost to the bottom of it, and then I thought, stupid, stupid, stupid, that the well I passed on my way will be as accessible now as it was two days ago.

Did I mention how stupid I am?

There are two cars there; some kind of abomination that used to be a jeep, and a sleek monster with a corvette-like body and then a bike, much like mine. As I watch they stop just before the well and start to lay down the camp. My lips mumble a litany of ‘fucks’, but it’s no use. It never changes anything, anyway. All I can do now is observe as the group cosies by my water, cutting off my lifeline.

I know there is no other water source nearby. I just drank the last of my supply. If they won’t move, I’ll be doomed.

As I mentioned, I’m stupid.

Fuck.

oOo

Morning dew is always a life-saver.

My eyes hurt from watching the camp until wee hours, trying to get as much information as possible. Patterns, characters, resources. So far it’s nothing too extravagant, and I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off sneaking in there while they sleep.

For now, I relish the ghost of moisture on my skin and think about anything but my present situation.

I can't remember the last time I took a shower. For sure, I have been cleaned, sometimes. Hosed down or gently sponge-bathed, rarely anything in between the two. But the last time there was an abundance of water, so much that I could submerge myself in it, or stand under the spray? Or use soap? Scented shampoo?

It used to be so normal, so natural. Not even a blink of awareness went with gallons of liquid poured down the drain. A lifetime ago.

The purr of the bike has me looking out at the camp again. They laugh, and for the first time among the baritone of male voices, I can hear a faint squeal or a scream.

Someone young.

Or a woman?

Sure enough, a lithe figure dashes toward the bike, followed by an angry shout and a bark of command. She’s overpowered in an instant, drag back to the shabby tent.

I can hear her yelling. Trapped animal, angry more than terrified, angry at her helplessness.

The man on the bike is laughing revving the engine and goes away leaving only mocking echo of his voice and a cloud of dust.

Two other get into one of the cars and follow.

All that’s left is a pair in a tent with a woman. She should keep them busy for a little while.

The opportunity is too sweet to pass.

So, the idiot that I am, of course, I’m going down the slope, trying to scale the rocks as stealthily as possible. The closer I get the better I see the camp, and the louder the screams are.

“What kind of moron taints the thing he wants to sell? Don’t you think they’ll see the marks? You’ll drive the price down by more than half, only to wet your dick for a second!”

Feisty little thing. If she lives through the ordeal, she’ll be back on those guys with a revenge like fire and fury. I know the strain in her voice; it’s not fear. It’s gulped down desire. She already relishes how she’d like to punish them. Too eager to get the upper hand.

Foolish, but understandable.

I listen to her ramble on about the money and the stupidity of the men who would spoil a prime-quality bloodbag, and I desperately try not to focus on her voice. Why won’t they just gag her?

But then, as I carefully fill the canteen, the woman’s voice stops abruptly, cut off mid-sentence. Muffled shrieks are all that follow, or perhaps it’s only my imagination. Maybe it’s another flashback.

I mumble to myself, trying to convince the ghosts beside me that what I’m thinking about is moronic, to say the least. Also, unpractical. Very dangerous. Sprog never understands. I have to be wiser than a child. But I know how a person feels when they’re seen only as a commodity. Only as a source of blood, or meat.

The liquid is almost overflowing in my water bag, and I still idle by the well. I should be running back to my bike, and getting the hell away from here. The sun will be up in no time, and I should be on my merry way nowhere.

The decision is made for me.

“Stupid cunt,” one of the man shouts, and then there's a flurry of movement. A pale figure leaps from the tent and dashes towards me, stopping after a few long strides.

I’m caught surprised, awkwardly crouched, almost as if my pants were around my ankles. Which is funny, seeing how the woman, stark naked in contrast to me, is proudly standing with her spine ramrod straight. She casts me a quick measuring look, processing the fact that I’m not one of her captors in a blink of an eye.

I’m still frozen when one of the men comes after her.

Her skin is white, abnormally so given the world we live in, and an unruly mane of dark hair is spilling down her shoulders and back. The sight is something I’ve seen before. It’s something I want to forget, and at the same time, I longed to see it again.

And here she is, a negative of a memory, blurring the reality.

Jesse.

The man lunges and grabs her hair, and she tries desperately to get free, to wrestle him away. Thin arms frantically punch, but to no avail. His knee is effortlessly and efficiently aimed right at her sternum, while he keeps her palm with a shank away with his free hand.

She crumples onto the ground after the blow.

A lifeless lump that used to be a person.

Jesse.

I’m moving out of pure reflex and muscle memory now. It’s not like I’m not aware of what I’m doing, no, I know exactly that my fist will connect with the man’s face, and that my other hand will cut into his flank, deep into the soft, unguarded tissue. I hear him screaming and cursing, and I muffle the noise with a well-timed jab at his throat. Gurgling is wet and strained. Faint.

His corpse falls down limply on the ruddy desert sand and I’m perfectly aware that I just killed a man. Somehow, it doesn’t register as an offence anymore.

The woman whimpers and my rage is gone in an instant, replaced by a muscle tightening horror. My head snaps to look at her, and I’m ready for another fight. I really thought she was dead.

Before I have a chance to get closer I see her hand gripping the handle of a gun on her assailants' belt.

“Wait,” I rasp out. My voice is harsh from lack of use, the only thing I’m using it now being mutters and whispers to placate my demons. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

A wet gurgle sounds somewhere behind her and she moves her head to watch the other man crawling out of the tent. I use that to kneel by her and grab the weapon. Not taking any chances.

Meanwhile, the man retches blood one last time and falls flat on his face. Apparently, that fucker took his time dying. With the last spasm, he aims something that looks like a cartoonish revolver straight at the skies.

I’m immobilized holding down the woman's hand and can only start my litany of ‘oh shits’ to accompany the brilliant path of the flare up towards the stars. It explodes over us with a perfect bang, marking the stagnant air with a vivid yellow cloud of dust and a blinding flash of light.

The woman trashes besides me and I move away, taking the weapon and giving her ample space. She gets up and looks at me, holding her stomach with an ugly frown barely visible from behind her hair.

Jesse had the same kind of a wild bush on her head. She used to complain so much about it until I told her how I loved it. The curls were like living things, always shifting and moving about, looking coarse but in reality soft to the touch like a kittens fur…

“They’ll be back soon.”

Her warning snaps me out of the flashback and I nod.

With an unspoken agreement, we gather everything that can be used as a weapon, keeping a keen eye on each other. She hides in the tent and I follow to watch her dress, making sure she didn’t sneak any gun by me. She tries to do just that, of course. A growl and a warning glance are sufficient to alert her that I’m there, and she sends me a spiteful snarl. But the gun is laid beside her, in my plain view.

The skin on my back crawls with unease as I watch her yank on clothes, a mismatched set of whatever is available or can be quickly torn off a corpse. She looks just as queasy with the prospect of trusting me with her safety, as I do with staying by her, but neither of us has the luxury of a choice. I motion for her to follow, a quick snap of my wrist towards the hills, and she hesitantly climbs after me to my perch over the camp.

The men don’t make us wait too long after all the mayhem with the woman took only minutes. The bike is the first to be back, sneaking in from the flank, headlight turned off. The sun is rising, and everything beyond us is shrouded in the last remnants of the night. Jeep is coming from the other side, revving loudly and with the crew yelling obscenities.

Idiots.

While she glances down, I make use of the distraction to gag and bind her.

oOo

The camp is emptied of life in short two minutes. All it takes is a little patience. The thugs roll in, discover their friends, and by the time they disperse to look for clues or hide in a tent I have two of them down. The one that’s left chooses the worst spot to hide, at the back of a car. A hole in the door is no loss. He should’ve got behind the engine, or the tank.

I get the first unhurried pick of the spoils. The clutter of ammo and foodstuffs is easy to navigate. Some useful trinkets, ropes, rags… But then, the cars. The Interceptor was one of a kind. Now, that I'm used to the Reaver, his agility and mobility, I still miss the speed of a good V8. The roof and windshields, during storms. None of the pieces of crap here could compare. The comparison is not exactly what I'm going for, especially since it's the bike that I have to make do with.

Do I want to be a bigger target?

These past weeks and months had been calm, more than ever. It's easier to hide a bike, than a car. Less fuel is needed. It's not as valuable, like a house on wheels that a good car could be.

I won't be too greedy. Just want my peace and quiet.

Less and less things remind me of my past. The jacket went first, piece by piece. The Interceptor blown up, another one disintegrated by lowlife thugs, deep in the caverns of Furiosa's stronghold. Numerous trinkets I lost over the years, some without even realizing.

The only things I've left now is the harness and the pain.

The supplies I picked are enough to last me for long while. All in all, I'm done packing them in half an hour.

After I strap everything to the Reaver I get back up on the hill. The woman is panting through the gag, frowning up at me. It's weird, her eyes are almost shining in the dim light of the night.

I throw her a knife and part ways without a word. If she won't figure out how to get out of the binds, she won't be able to survive the wasteland anyway.

oOo

I used to like trees. The sweet and heady smell of pines hanging heavily in the salty air, as they sweated resin into the trembling air, was something I grew up with. There’s nothing nearly as sweet in this world anymore.

Or so I thought.

The woman is maddening. She keeps far enough that we don’t have to talk. But her silhouette is always in my peripheral. And wind sometimes brings a wisp of her scent. Despite the conditions - the dirt, the heat, the hopelessness - it’s unexplainably sweet fragrance. Just like pine needles warmed up by the sun. There’s an undertone that reminds me of the buzzing electricity in the air just before the storm.

Imagine that. A real storm, with water pouring down…

What would it take to lose her? The trailing is wearing on my nerves and I’m too exhausted by the ghosts haunting me, to have enough mental facilities for another person.

But then, so far she’s more like a dog, in her silent and distant companionship. I don’t have to talk to her. Only my demons.

Her schedule seemed erratic, but by now I’ve memorized her pattern. It’s strange but sensible: she walks mostly, saving fuel just as I do. And she's moving during the night as much as possible. I wonder what she’ll do once the Moon slims down.

Not my problem.

Somehow, she keeps up, for now.

oOo

I knew she would be trouble.

As soon as a shrub appeared behind one hill, I picked up the pace. It was getting dark, and I didn’t want to be near a potential food source during the night - too much danger - but then, I wanted the grubs. There’s gotta be grubs on a shrub.

Sure enough, it was Witchetty bush. A welcome surprise - I would have expected to see the first one way further East. But I’m not complaining. Far from it, I pick up my pace and survey the land before me in the fading sunlight. I thought the dunes would stretch further, but already the sand underneath my feet is coarser, rougher. There’ll be some more ergs on my way, but this is a welcome distraction.

With how flat everything is I’m pretty sure the woman would catch up to me in two hours at most. If she rides the bike, that is. I saw her last morning, circling close, but not too near. Still, the distance is small enough that I’m anxious just remembering that someone else is this close.

And I helped her get a working gun.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So, do I stay here for the night - that is the question.

Turns out it’s a no-contest - there were so many grubs in the dirt by the roots of the bush, that I ate my sweet share of them (mmm, almondy), and still had enough spare that I just had to roast them.

So I've set camp just by the wItchetty shrub, like a brainless fuck that I am. Rookie mistake. I’m so tired of the trailing though, I just want it to end - this way, or the other.

Would she kill me in my sleep, for the supplies and meat?

Quick night set above my head a while back when I was digging a pit for the fire. Scraps of wood and twigs from the bush are prepared beside it. I also made a hole to catch some water, and another one to relieve myself.

Now, all I have to do is to wait and see if my companion shows up.

Funny thing, I never thought a woman would trail me like a dog.

oOo

It’s well past sunset when I hear the faint roar of the familiar engine.

To think, I call myself stupid - what is left to call her, then? Retarded? Moronic? Few stubbies short of a six-pack?

Fuck. I’d drink a beer. Even a bloody shandy would be a godsend in this wasteland. Anything cold. Or with ice. When was the last time I saw ice with my own eyes?

The bike revs closer and closer. Not going to stop? She is a little too far to the North, to get where I am.

Does she even try to get here?

Before I grasp the meaning of her idiotic action, she wheezes past me, like a brain-dead twerp, roaring on the bike in the dead of the night. In total fucking darkness.

What the actual fuck?!

Up until now, I had a shred of expectation that perhaps her fast pace was due to some devilishly intelligent plot. Perhaps she could be some intuitive genius of the wasteland, utilizing some secret knowledge I didn’t yet possess.

But no. She was just undeniably stupid.

How disheartening.

I wait until the sound of the engine dies down and only then I light the fire. The pit shields the flames, and I have all the warmth to myself. In a minute I’ll cook the grubs, and eat two or three more. The rest will have to wait until tomorrow.

I wonder, if I’ll tread past the woman's lifeless body, or if the desert will bury her. She is too lucky anyway, to live through night riding in an unfamiliar terrain. Sooner or later she’d have to hit a bump.

For once, I fall asleep almost peacefully, with the bike behind my back, and the knowledge that no one trails close behind.

Sprog laughs as if the child could know something I don’t.

oOo

I jerk awake, startling a lizard which perched on my chest. Good thing it wasn't a snake. Out of pure reflex, I grab the creatures neck and wring it with a flick of my thumb. That’s breakfast.

Lucky me.

That toothless granny (what was her name?) chuckles with Sprog. Since when do those two keep together?

The camp is wiped in a minute, and after a leisurely leak, I ready to head my way.

Two minutes later I get why those fuckers were bawling at my shaggy head.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The woman turns out to be more intelligent than I gave her credit for. I stop at the tracks she left last night. Must have circled my camp - on foot. But nothing is missing, and I didn’t wake up, or rather - I did wake up alive. So, what was she doing that for? Why waste time and energy?

Should I trail after her now?

As I turn to look the way the woman went, Sprogs angry face whips right into my field of vision. A flash of memory, stop! Stop! Stop those bloody cars! - in an instant reduces me to my knees, whimpering. I barely feel fingernails digging into my scalp, for once conscious of how long and tangled my hair has gotten.

I should get up and run from here, but I can’t. The sand is still cool, as I weep futile and angry tears, looking straight into those icy blue eyes. Just like Jesse’s.

Why does it still hurt after all those years? Why does it still feel so recent, so real, so fucking raw?

After I’m done gripping elusive fistfuls of sand in an attempt to calm myself I start on my way. The opposite of the woman’s trail.

#fandom: mad max #mad max #max rockatansky #fanfiction #Fanwork: Fanfiction #fandomtrumpshate #fandomtrumpshate2018

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thepilgrimofwar · 7 years ago

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Bedside Manners

Sederis sat by Lirelle’s bedside as she slept, gazing over the living wood cast that encased her arm and the vine mesh gauze on her face. Arrenir was finally out of the infirmary on some assignment or other and Sederis took the opportunity to have a quiet chat with his friend without the blonde Dawnmender looking over his shoulder. Lirelle began to stir from her sleep, shifting under the sheets.

“You awake?” he asked.

He was answered by groggy grumbling as she tossed the blanket back, huffing and flipping onto her other side before returning to her original position a second later.

“Can't sleep. Ribs hurt on that side, arm hurts on this side.”

Sederis chuckled humorlessly. “Lest your ass didn’t melt off, or you wouldn’t be able to rest on your back either.” It was almost as if he was speaking from experience.

“Not comfortable either,” she said grumpily, pushing herself up and rubbing at her uncovered eye, the motion stopping as soon as she felt the rough wood of her cast.

“Nothing’s going to be comfortable for awhile,” he replied matter of factly. “They patched you up the best they could but there was a lot of flesh missing. Acid continued to eat at you until they brought you back here.”

Lirelle grunted, clearly nonplussed at waking up from her restless sleep to find her friend in the dark telling her about how bad it was. “What you want Sederis?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Just wanted to see how you were doing, if you’re well enough to complain, I’d say you’re doing pretty well. Considering you almost flatlined out there.”

Again she grunted, louder this time, sinking slowly back into the bed and piling pillows up under her. “I‘m fine. Can't sleep but I'm fine.”

Sederis moved forward to help her with the pillows, trying to adjust them to give as much support as they could, which was not much. “Good to hear from the girl herself. Arrenir has been fussing over you as usual. It wasn’t so long ago you were rolling about in a wheelchair so he’s not taking it well.”

Groaning, she picked up one of the pillows and feebly threw it in his general direction. “You're being as bad as him now except he doesn't do it when it's late.”

He folded his arms, dodging the projectile easily. “Don’t blame me, it was the only time I could get you alone to talk to you because he sits by your bedside every free moment he has.”

“Great, so I'm going to get tag teamed by the both of you sitting here and staring and telling me how lucky I am to not be dead.”

Sederis snorted dismissively. “Just this once at least, I doubt I’ll have the time or devotion to chase after you like a lost puppy.” He paused for a moment, then asked, out of the blue, “so are you going to keep them?”

She sighed, clearly he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, so all she could do was play along. “Keep what? The two of you who are now apparently my lost puppies?”

He waved his hand about as if clearing the air. “Never mind that. Are you going to be keeping your scars? You usually handle your own wounds and you never leave a mark, but this, well this will be quite the spectacle once it heals over.” Sederis gestured at her, the amount of wood holding her together a testament to how much damage had been done.

“Don't know. Don't really care. Depends on how bad they are,” she stifled a yawn, swiping her right hand over her face. “Depends on Leafbinders magic whether it leaves scars or not.”

“Depending on how bad it actually was, you might end up having an arm that’s less flesh and more something else. That’ll definitely be something.” Sederis paused again. “I guess scars mean nothing to you.”

“What? A scar is a scar. They don't matter.”

“I think they do. It’s proof. Proof of thing that have tried to kill you, and failed.” Sederis nodded sagely to himself. “It serves as a reminder too, of the things you’ve lived through.”

“Being alive is proof that whatever it is failed to kill you, not the scars. That's just ridiculous. Scars just mark the spot of the damage, that's it.” Grumbling some more, she shifted again in her pillow nest, still seeking a position comfortable enough to keep.

“Some would say that being alive isn’t enough. If not, every coward that scampers away from battle and survives would be as worthy of someone who has the marks to show that they were there.” Sederis shrugged. “Might be an Emberglades thing.”

“Or you know, they could do it to themselves to take it for whatever prestige you think they hold.”

“I suppose they could,” he nodded. “There have been cases before. Mostly to get themselves sent to the field hospital at the rear of the lines…” Her friend trailed off before sighing heavily. “But your point has some merit. I’ll admit this because I’ve been considering getting my scars removed for some time now, and I figured if you’re going to get yours removed from this… Experience, I might as well.”

“What, are you finally trying to attract a mate or something?”

Sederis gave her a look that had a mix of disappointment and exasperation. “I’m trying to figure out if a scarless leader of the Emberglades would better suit a post-war province.”

“You just said the Emberglades has some weird thing about scars so now you don’t want them? Sederis are you real or is this some stupid recursive nightmare I’m stuck in?”

“It’s a brave new era we’re entering into. No Legion, no demons, no undead- not an army of them anyway. The Emberglades might think highly of scars, but I think it might be time to start steering them away from their warlike history.”

She pulled a pillow over her head and for one glorious moment there was silence, but his presence in the room did not go away. “You’re not even in charge anymore, why do you even care?”

“Yet I’m still called the Lord of the Emberglades, and that makes me the poster boy. That’s probably the only reason how Solendis persuaded me to shave the beard I was trying to grow out.”

“I noticed that. Took him long enough.”

“It was growing out, it’d have been fine in another year or two.”

“You want to look like you’re wearing your pubes on your face for a year or two?”

“To eventually have something regal and respectable? Yes.” Sederis folded his arms.

“Remind me to always hold on to a copy of that picture for future blackmail.”

“I can’t believe you managed to get your hands on the… Unfixed picture.”

“Unfixed picture? What are you talking about? I took one of you on the bed with your fish snacks.”

Sederis swallowed. “You what?”

“You heard me.”

“How- When-” Sederis shut himself up and sighed heavily. “No wonder.”

“So if you held on to that abomination of a beard why do you suddenly care about scars?”

“Same reason. Things take time to change, and if I don’t start now, nothing will ever change.”

“That’s it, this really is some sort of fucking nightmare.”

“It’s comforting to know that you never will.” Sederis laughs, shakes his head and stands up to leave. “I’ll leave you to your purgatory. @retributionpriest because somehow managed to convince me to post the log

#sederis #lirelle

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astroprojections101 · 4 years ago

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The Signs as Characters from ‘BRIDESMAIDS’

Annie Walker - Taurus

Bridesmaids is a hilarious and groundbreaking female-driven comedy about addiction and friendship, two things Tauruses know how to do very well. They are loyal and committed people whose reputation as the most boring sign of the zodiac is forgiven for also being the best friends you will ever find on this fucking planet, and they KNOW this dammit!! They wear their friendships like purple hearts, but it also means they can easily get stuck in a rut and indulge in self-destructive habits like fucking terrible people and matching red shoes with red nail polish when the waves get rough. Not to mention it could take years (or a very messy rock bottom) before these bulls get the wake up call they need to make a positive change in their lives, as evidenced by Annie failing to do any of this until Melissa McCarthy literally bites her in the ass while watching Castaway, a movie I am SURE she has seen at least five times.

They can also be territorial and possessive. While Annie may seem like that down-to-earth, low-maintenance girl who side eyes women that wear $8,000 evening gowns to an afternoon engagement party, on the inside she is a red-faced toddler crossing her arms and stamping her feet because Mom won’t let her play with the iPad. Or, in this case, because her best friend since CHILDHOOD (seriously, who still has friends from childhood? TAURUSES, bitches! + people from the Midwest) is getting married and has, like many grown ass adults sometimes do, ~made another friend~. Suddenly, Annie is forced to, without prior knowledge or consent, confront the bull’s biggest fear: change. Which is a big fat scary no no for a masochistic Taurus who would rather pursue subpar fucks than make baked goods with an emotionally literate Scottish bae. Tauruses like Things As They Are even when they don’t, and Annie Walker is no exception. We stan a true Taurus queen.

Sorry, Libras. Branding the antagonist of the movie as one may seem counterintuitive for a sign whose entire identity revolves being nice and fair to EVERYONE and liking EVERYONE and getting along with EVERYONE, but that’s exactly why Helen Harris III wins the coveted title of Passive Aggressive Shithead Who Reminds You of 30% Of Your High School: everyone loves her, everyone wants to be her, and who can blame them? As a wise Jeff Winger once said, nerds go to space to impress the people who wore leather jackets in high school.

And Helen Harris is beautiful. She can pull off wearing an $8,000 evening gown to an afternoon engagement party (almost) without coming off like an asshole. Helen Harris can book spontaneous bridal salon fittings. Helen Harris could eat that fucking cookie (Annie could never). Even if it means gaslighting a woman out of a wedding party, getting bullied by bratty white kids or marrying David Wallace, Libras don’t know who they are without the bliss of knowing their personal brand of outward bullshit is loved and admired by all, even if that means suppressing their true feelings until their next tennis sesh at the Milwaukee country club. Helen proves this when she ugly cries to a woman she socially tormented for the better part of a year, and also proves this when she arranges for Annie’s emotionally literate Scottish bae to pick her up after the wedding. You can’t convince me otherwise.

Lillian - Virgo

It’s easy to put Virgos in that Friends Who Have Their Shit Together box, even if underneath that facade they are literally dying inside. But this is what I love about Lillian, who is yes, obviously a Virgo. Lillian is getting married to the man she loves. She curated a bridal party that genuinely knows and loves her. She gets someone like Helen to simp for her. So yes, she is that classic Virgo who doesn’t judge you for not having your shit together but also would never, ever forgive herself for sinking that low.

But Lillian also manages to laugh when she comes out wearing that Abominable Snowman of a wedding dress. She shits on the street and lives to tell the tale. She is able to make hard choices and set boundaries with her best friend. Lillian doesn’t judge people out of insecurity, because she knows who she is and accepts it.

I’d like to think there is a Virgo out there, punishing herself because she applied to three jobs instead of two that day, who sees a Lillian and realizes there is a future where she can be a #BossBitch without committing her entire life to proving it to herself and others. I’d like to think there’s a Virgo out there who sees Lillian and realizes she doesn’t have to let her friend copy her homework answers for the fourth consecutive math test because no, she isn’t responsible for her lazy friend’s inability to study ahead of time. Lillian is the representation Virgos desperately need - not just because she is a badass woman, but because she is happy. She is a role model for all of us, and you can’t get more Virgo than that.

Megan - Aries

This was a hard one. On the one hand, Megan is weird. But let’s be real, an Aquarius could never be entrusted with the codes to every nuke buried underneath the United States. They would take those codes and use it to yeet Mark Zuckerberg out of his 100 million dollar Palo Alto estate within the first hour of signing their W-2 form. No, Megan may be unapologetically Megan as shit, but it’s not because she’s an Aquarius. She’s bold, and forward, and unapologetically Aries.

Which is odd, considering that an Aries and a Taurus together is, well... an unlikely friendship combo. Both signs are strong-willed and stubborn as hell, but in a way that makes them want to declare war on each other’s egos, not inspire the other into becoming better people. But then again, maybe that’s why their friendship works. Where Annie throws an empty compliment at an overdressed woman she’s already decided she hates, Megan expresses a desire to climb a man five minutes upon meeting Annie. Where Annie sits on a couch watching Castaway instead of addressing her issues the way 35 year old women probably should have learned to do by now, Megan bites ass and reminds her of this this. Where Annie HOLDS IN VOMIT UNTIL SHE HAS DRIVEN MILES AWAY FROM A BRIDAL SALON, Megan shits right into that refurbished marble sink without a second thought. Get where I’m going with this? Megan does what Annie doesn’t, which sometimes is exactly what a Taurus needs to get out of their rut of self-pity. But of course, Megan doesn’t just exist to provide emotional labor to lazy Earth signs. She is an individual truly living her best life, and we love for her for it. Aries women slap like no other.

Rita - Scorpio

Brutally honest and a sexual goddess. What more can you expect from an unhappily married Scorpio? Rita is bold, sexy, and dramatic, who knows how to pack the punches so quick and dirty she can turn a Disney-obsessed woman child into a drunken bisexual as she sips her martini on a first class ticket she bought with her asshole of a husband’s tax fraud money. After all, who else besides a Scorpio would tell a woman she hasn’t seen since high school that her very own flesh and blood masturbated a blanket into oblivion? Scorpios are dark, brooding, and know when they are being taken for granted. Nowhere is this better exemplified than when Rita spills the piping hot tea on her shitty family that can’t see her for the goddess she truly is. Rita, you deserve better.

Becca - Pisces

Erin Kemper has a long history of playing maladaptively naive characters, but I will bet my next unemployment check that Erin based her performance of Becca entirely off a Pisces description she found on Cafeastrology.com. Because there is literally nothing more Pisces than Becca. The hair, the clothes, the willingness to go through hospital levels of self-sanitization for her husband so that she can finally bone? Trying to convince herself she’s also too tired so that she doesn’t have to admit to herself that her husband is an emotionally and sexually unavailable failure of a man who can’t give her what she needs until she experiences a sexual awakening 2,000 miles up in the air with her Scorpio biffle??? Yup. Pisces to a P.

Rhodes - Cancer

Aww, Rhodes. So sweet. So awkward. Why did they have to make you a cop?

Can we talk about why it is that almost every leading man who is emotionally mature and secure in his masculinity ALWAYS seems to elicit Cancerous vibes, even if they’re clearly not a Cancer? Actual Cancer men, take note. Rhodes pursues respectfully. He calls, even after Annie doesn’t call back. Rhodes attempts exposure therapy on a woman he has had sex with once. Rhodes WOULD get ghosted by 80% of the women he meets on dating apps (including Annie, let’s be real), and we love him for it. Because cancers are just that loving and loyal! So yes, we can excuse him for getting a stick up his butt sometimes when someone drops a perfectly biodegradable vegetable on the ground. He more than makes up for it.

Annie’s mom - Gemini

Geminis are either terrible or the best people you’ll ever meet, and Annie’s mom is one of the rare few that falls into that in-between category of chaotic good, adorable Gemini doing her best not to drive everyone she’s ever loved away with what little self-awareness she has about her Gemininess. Annie’s mom is bubbly, chatty, and queen of the chisme. She uses logic to justify calling her ex husband’s wife a whore, and talks like she has a doctorate degree in the unsolicited advice she offers her daughter. Until at least, she’s introduced to a sweet man, and all that logic and wordiness melts away into a gooey puddle of all those emotions she likes to think she’s above.

Bryn - Aquarius

There are a lot of stand out heroines in this movie, but none of them beat the comedic genius that is Bryn, an incestuous roommate Annie probably dug up from Craiglist’s seventh circle of hell. Aquari are trail blazing, unconventional, and friendly enough to distract you from the fact that their brain cells came from aliens. Bryn is no exception. Even an impulsive Aries would look at the opportunity to get an offensively tacky tattoo in the back of a van and think, “I’ll get Starbucks instead.” But an Aquarius thrives on making people uncomfortable with their Society Has To Catch Up To Me complex, and Bryn is no exception. After all, if they’re not scandalizing their depressed roommate with xenophobic tattoos and baths with their brother, then who even are they? A sheep, that’s who.

13 year old - Sagittarius

This specific breed of popular mean girl is either a Gemini or Sagittarius. I have nothing to back up this claim, but watching that horrible girl verbally spar her way into getting a 35 year old woman fired from a jewelry store is enough to turn me into a believer. That’s why it was so hard to pinpoint a sign for her. On one hand, this girl is probably responsible for the social anxiety of at least a dozen ex-BFFs. She also clearly knows how to use words to make someone wish they had never been born, so I can accept that this insecure adult’s worst nightmare has a few placements of mercurial badassery in her chart.

But the truth hurts, and no one knows how to finesse the truth like a Sag, who either doesn’t know what they’re doing when they tell a customer service rep they have no boobs, or they know exactly. Anyway, don’t project your friendship drama onto an undeveloped Sagittarius child, Annie. Or tell them they’re going to be pregnant at their prom (yikes). You do not know what you’re getting yourself into.

Annie’s Mystery Man - Capricorn

The sports jacket. The pipe. The vibes. This guy probably cured cancer back in the day and still hated himself for not figuring it out until he was 30. You could also totally tell he was sizing Annie up to see if she met his expectations of People Worth His Time (she didn’t). Capricorn man, you are right. None of us deserve you. RIP Hugh Dane.

#astrology #zodiac #bridesmaids #taurus #aries #gemini #scorpio #signsas

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jonathan-nevermore-smith · 7 years ago

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Journal of a Recovering Dead Woman, Part 1

Three hours after incident: I am still not hungry, nor do I feel a need to rest or sleep. I remain as alert and active as ever. I almost wish I could go down to visit the training grounds, I feel a jog could help burn off some of this energy. This is a new feeling, wishing to be up and active. Before I had no issues remaining perfectly still for hours at a time. It was my default state of being. I could choose to exert myself, to shift my feet, my weight, to blink, to wiggle my fingers, but I chose to do it, I never had a desire to do so like I do now. This is not my choosing.

Three hours, thirty-four minutes after incident: Desire to jog or otherwise exert myself has calmed down somewhat. Still feel the need to be in motion, so I have set to tapping my foot against the floor. I wish I had something to do.

Three hours, thirty-four-and-a-half minutes after incident: Initiate mender scolded me for tapping my foot. It was annoying to him. Foot tapping has ceased, I am now following his suggestion that I twiddle my thumbs.

Three hours, thirty five minutes after incident: Same initiate has returned to ask why I am sitting in the infirmary when I appear uninjured. Per agreement with Caeliri and Elleynah, I explained that I was here under observation after an accident involving mind-control, though there was no cause for alarm. We spoke briefly about shadow magic and his experience healing the after-effects from it before he carried on with his duties. Surprisingly, I did not detect that he was uncomfortable through our conversation the way most living individuals usually are. Perhaps it is the healthier color to my skin?

Three hours, forty five minutes after incident: I have discovered the Initiate’s name is Jonathan. Not the same Jonathan as Initiate Callum, though I feel the two might get along. He is a half-blood, his father in Stormwind while his mother resides here in Quel’thelas. We spoke again briefly, his shift had just finished, and he politely brought me some water. Though I do not feel thirsty, nor does my throat feel dry, it is refreshing to partake of it. Before the incident my sense of taste was diminished severely, to the point where the strongest of flavors seemed weak against my tongue. Heat or the lack thereof was likewise difficult to determine. This no longer seems to be the case, though I have not partaken of food in order to thoroughly test this. I have made a request of the boy, to bring me part of a dish of his choice in the morning when he wakes.

Four hours, seventeen minutes after incident: I have attempted to write several letters explaining what happened to Feyrintha, but each and every one of them seem inadequate. I am not sure if she is still wounded by our recent argument, but I think this is something best handled in person.

On a separate note, I still feel no desire to eat, sleep or drink, nor do I feel a pressure in my abdomen as per Elleynah’s question. I am beginning to wonder if I have actually changed, or if all that I am feeling is only temporary. If it is meant to be a joke, I would prefer it to end sooner to I can grieve it’s loss sooner.

Five hours, twenty-four minutes after incident: I have consumed a dozen cups of water within the last hour, and feel no desire to urinate. The coldness of the water is something I never experienced in my previous state, and I still find it novel after consuming so much. More so than the poisons that I used to addle my mind. I may have found a favorite drink. Feyrintha will be disappointed it isn’t wine.

Six hours after incident: I have volunteered to sweep the infirmary during my stay. An initiate has rigged up the IV to be mobile as I fulfill the task. I still feel this need to be active and mobile; I hope this will help that feeling go away.

Six hours, twenty-two minutes after incident: It did not.

Seven hours, fifty-four minutes after incident: I am sorry, Caeliri, but I am stepping down to the training area to try and work off some of this energy. I have swept, mopped, chauffeured paperwork and assisted with sterilizing equipment. I have no desire to sleep and do not think I could if I wanted to. For the future, I will only be mentioning a need or desire to eat or sleep if it actually takes me. I do not believe it to be likely at this point, and so will stop wasting ink on it.

Seven hours, fifty-five minutes after incident: Or perhaps I will not be. This IV is still attached to me, and I do not think carrying it with me down to the training yard will be permitted, nor would it be conducive to an activity such as jogging. Perhaps I can convince an initiate to temporarily remove it from me.

Eight hours after incident: No such luck. The Oracle and Greenseer have disciplined them well.

Eight hours, six minutes after incident: I am going to attempt to enter one of my half-conscious states from before the incident. They were similar to sleeping, and allowed me to pass the time in a meditative, dream-like state. If I remain conscious much longer I will rip this IV from my hand in order to escape this place, and I do not wish to do that. I have always tried to be a model patient, and taking advantage of your bond with me to avoid punishment would be wrong. My next entry shall be when I “awake”, or if I fail to achieve it. Whichever comes first.

Eight hours, eight minutes after incident: I cannot wait for this IV to be pulled from my arm. I wish it were not night, that the infirmary was fuller and I could request a few books. Or have a visitor. Something.

Eight hours, ten minutes after incident: I am afraid of what Gloomweaver will think of me. Will she find me an abomination? Report my changes to the order we both owe loyalty too? Can I even remain a member of such an organization? Will they allow it? Might I find a place to reside elsewhere?

Eight hours, twelve minutes after incident: What will I even do anymore? If I cannot call upon my old powers, I am little more than someone exceptionally skilled with weapons. I do not even know if I am susceptible to the same weaknesses I was from before. Do I have to breathe? Do I need to have a pulse? I am doing both naturally but do I have to? Are my bones still made of metal? If so, what kind? Can I still control most of my functions? Everything appears to be working on it’s own without input from me. I have so, so many questions.

Eight hours, twelve-and-a-half minutes after incident, Addendum to the previous entry: In my questioning, I have found that I no longer feel the need to get up and move. I do not often make prayers to it, but Light Bless.

Eight hours, seventeen minutes after incident: I have been holding my breath for the past two minutes. Before starting my test I inquired with an Initiate as to how long it can usually be held before unconsciousness takes hold, with an average of three minutes before unconsciousness and five minutes before brain damage. I have asked this Initiate to standby and revive me if necessary.

Eight hours, twenty-two minutes after incident: I am still holding my breath.

Eight hours, twenty-seven minutes after incident: Whatever has happened to me, I do not understand it. In an effort to allow Initiate Maurel to return to his duties, I have stopped holding my breath. Immediately my body resumed the same pace it did before my tests. I feel no ill effects from this test, or at least none of the effects that Initiate Maurel said usually occur in living beings. According to him I should not be capable of functioning right now, yet I am thinking quite clearly and have enough coordination that my writing is no different than what it was ten minutes ago when I began.

Eight hours, forty minutes after incident: In a continuing effort to see what I am capable of, I have filched a scalpel from a drawer while no one was looking. Before I was able to freely manipulate the various parts of my body, forcing it to heal wounds immediately, control my blood, force organs that never worked to react with a semblance of their original intent and purpose. When I was stressed it happened subconsciously, a subtle indicator of my mood. Seeing as I can already hold my breath for long periods of time with no negative repercussions, I am going to attempt to see if I can do the same with other functions.

Eight hours, fifty-two minutes after incident: My experiments shall have to wait. Duskward Jadeleaf found me just as I was about to cut into myself. She has confiscated the scalpel, and after a scathing rebuke she has reminded me that I should strive to be a model patient. I...suppose I got carried away in my attempts to discover exactly what I am now. I have requested that she not write a report as I promised I would write the truth of the incident in this journal, which will end up in Caeliri’s hands and eventually in my own medical file once I make a copy (she is also watching me write this as I am writing it), however I do not believe she will do so. I do not feel bothered by this, as it is proper procedure and she is doing her duty, as I should do mine. In an effort to help me “sleep”, she has offered one of her teas from her homeland that is said to expedite the process. She does not know if it will affect me (I have not explained what happened to me and do not intend to until we know the full extent of what exactly has happened to me), but it has helped others twice my height and three times my weight, so I have hope. I suppose you shall know in the next few minutes if it has or not, as I will be making another entry if does not. I think I will need to get an actual journal for this, not just loose parchment stuffed together and loosely bound. It will be good to keep for the future, a recollection and documentation of my changes as they were happening. Perhaps it will help remind me how good I feel right now when I hit a low. Perhaps it will be used in future cases. Either way, for now, I am ending this entry. I love you, Caeliri.

@dorksworn @she-wants-the-d20 for mentions

#Siildore Frostlotus #Journal of a Recovering Dead Woman

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la-manada-de-muerte · 8 years ago

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It happened in a burst

Alternate title: it happened in a blink That has caused a song to ger stuck in my head just like this idea did. I don't own peter, kurt, or jaime but i wish i did. 《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》

‘How dare they’ adi thought in fury when a woman had walked up to where she stood with her friends and started ranting at them. She didn’t even really know what her problem was.

However, she saw kurt flinch from the words while peter grimaced. That was all it took for her to know the situation was unacceptable.

She had managed to convince Marisol and Anani that they should have a day out. Anani had been very happy when Marisol suggested that those who had boyfriends should bring them along.

Marisol had even overruled Adi’s attempt to say that since she and Jaime weren’t dating that it would be only the five of them. “Adi, we all know that that is just a technicality” Marisol had said with a grin and a raised eyebrow as she dared her to challenge that comment.

It was for that reason that they were all there. Anani had pulled Peter and Kurt from their school. There were introductions between them and Jaime whom Adi had dragged with her with a shy smile.

The girls had broke down laughing when Jaime’s first comment had been asking if Peter was the one that had failed Marisol’s test yet still stayed with Anani.

Peter had given an embarrassed chuckle while Kurt had given a shudder and started eyeing Marisol as if expecting her to attack him. Marisol just gave Kurt a laugh and a wink.

The day had been going so well, the boys got along great with Jaime seeming to be a middle ground between outgoing peter and a more quiet Kurt. It was for that reason that Adi was so angry and she wasn’t the only one.

Anani looked furious but also a bit like whatever was being said really hurt her. Marisol was angry enough that sparks seemed to be unintentionally flying from her palms like the dying embers of a fire.

Jaime looked like he could not believe the nerve of the woman and it was after something that she had said that he became angry.

“ENOUGH!” Adi yelled at the woman as adi struggled not to starbolt her with hands or eyes. “I don’t know what your problem is but you need to go away before I MAKE you.” Adi said and the woman got in her face seeming to ignore the blue glow in her eyes.

Adi heard something about abomination, an affront to god, and something involving a word she had only heard when referring to things like cigarettes before it seemed to click.

This woman was so offended that Anani was dating peter and kurt. Offended that two boys were holding hands looking so in love with both each other and their girlfriend, Offended on behalf of a god that at least half the group believes in in some form, that she couldn’t keep her anger to herself.

Adi was still furious and she wanted to yell and kick the woman’s teeth out for being so horrible but she felt a wave of calm overtake her. This was a new experience to her but Adi found an idea forming in her mind.

She found herself slowly starting to grin viciously before she half turned to grab Marisol’s shoulder. Marisol looked momentarily startled but her mind had jumped in gear and realized what adi was planning.

Marisol felt a surge of pride that she had taught adi something. None of the others seemed to know what was going to happen as they watched and things seemed to be happening in slow motion.

Adi had grabbed Marisol’s shoulder and in moments was pulling her forward until their lips met. Marisol then took control deepening the kiss and Adi melted into it.

Neither noticed the silence it brought nor did either see the reactions of their friends. It took a few moments before the pulled back just slightly and Adi absent-mindedly said “i am so glad you aren’t wearing The Lipstick”

Marisol grinned and started laughing with her forehead pressed against Adi’s. Adi blushed before she started laughing too as if just realizing what she had said.

Adi faintly heard peter make a comment about that having been hot causing the group to start laughing. The woman was gaping at them when Adi turned back to face her.

“If your done? Otherwise, please tell your god that i will not be subscribing to his ways.” Adi’s voice was calm and slightly rough from the kiss.

“I would never follow a deity that controls through fear and seems to only want their followers to cause a reign of terror” Adi finished before giving a dismissive wave before walking away.

Marisol grabbed Anani’s free hand as well as Jaime’s before dragging them after Adi. Anani being dragged also dragged peter and kurt behind her in a chain.

“Now, THAT was the hot part” Marisol laughed. Adi looked shyly back at her friends to see if they were alright. Anani was smiling in a similar way to Marisol.

Peter was looking at her like he had never seen her before but was glad he had now gotten the chance. Kurt was looking at her in a way that was similar to the look normally directed at Marisol but held something that looked a bit touched.

Jaime was the only one Adi was having trouble reading. She couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or mortified or thought similarly to peter or Marisol.

It made her heart drop into her stomach. Would he decide that whatever feelings he might have had were gone? Would he decide not to be her friend anymore?

She had just been trying to shut the woman up and knew that only that would work. She and jaime weren’t dating but they were also considered a more normal relationship then peter, kurt, and anani.

Anani could have been an option but she was already underfire from the woman which left Marisol. Marisol was a friend, someone adi trusted, and someone adi felt safe with.

it made perfect sense to adi that kissing Marisol was the thing to do. So why was it that she now that she felt like she shouldn’t have done it?

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sav-wites-everything · 8 years ago

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A Study in You (Sherlock Holmes x Reader)

A/N: Why aren't there more pieces set in the time of The Abominable Bride?? I absolutely loved it, probably due to my love for the Sherlock Holmes books and stories themselves. Anyway, I wanted to write one with 19th century Sherlock and John! I hope you all enjoy it! xx

Warnings: mentions of drug use

The cobbled streets of London were crowded with busy people and lazy buggies. Horses clomped along the broken Baker Street, dirty boys shouted about the latest Dr. Watson story, and women under brightly colored parasols gossiped about the reclusive and handsome detective, Sherlock Holmes.

You quickly made your way down the cracked pavement, your own parasol hanging from your arm. The sun was out but it was hidden by a dense layer of smog. The buildings lining Baker Street were covered in a veil of soot that eventually stuck to everyone and everything. When you reached the recently polished door of 221 Baker Street, the hem of your lilac colored dress was black with soot. You grumbled to yourself as you banged the knocker three times against the black door.

Quick footsteps could be heard, a crash of what sounded like dinner plates, and a muffled yell before the door swung open with such force that the knocker banged against the door. A rather disheveled man with an obnoxious mustache was standing in the doorway. His breathing was heavy as he attempted to smooth down his hair and fix his beige vest. It took a moment but you recognized the mustache.

“Dr. Watson,” you said with a grin, extending a gloved hand, “I’m (Y/N) and I’m here to get Mr. Holmes’ help.”

Dr. Watson took your hand and shook it cautiously. “Women don’t usually shake hands,” he said innocently, clearly in shock by your out-of-place gesture.

“A curtsy dirties the dress and a kiss wrinkles the glove. A shake is quicker and easier,” you replied curtly.

“I meant no offense, Madam, I apologize.”

“No offense taken, Doctor. May I consult Mr. Holmes?”

Dr. Watson swallowed hard at this question and ran a hand through his hair. “Now is not the best time. The detective is in one of his.. erm.. moods. Shall I send you a telegram once he’s straightened out?”

As if he had been called to dinner, Mr. Holmes in a royal purple smoking jacket and no shoes or stockings came flying down the stairs. He towered behind Dr. Watson who now looked simply perplexed. “John, I knew it was a client at the door so why haven’t you brought her up yet?”

Mr. Holmes was wild eyed and a strand of his oiled hair fell across his face. “I don’t believe you are fit to be taking clients at the moment. Your feet aren’t quite on the ground,” Dr. Watson said tight lipped.

To this, Mr. Holmes pushed his hair out of his face, buttoned his smoking jacket, and bent forward into a deep bow, extending his hand to you. “How may I be of assistance, Miss?”

You took Mr. Holmes’ hand and gave it a strong shake, to the surprise of the detective as well. “I may have a case for you, Mr. Holmes,” you say assuredly.

“My, you’re a case in yourself. A woman who shakes and does not curtsy.” Mr. Holmes’ ice blue gaze examined you from head to foot. You could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he learned everything about you. Gripping your parasol tightly, you began to grow nervous under his stare. In Dr. Watson’s stories you had read about him doing this but it was a completely different experience actually having it happen.

“Sherlock, could you not make the woman uncomfortable, for God’s sake?” John said, looking at you apologetically.

You quickly shook your head and took a step towards the door. “It’s quite alright, Dr. Watson,” you said, failing to sound convincing.

Mr. Holmes took one more look of you, up and down, before clenching his strong jaw and turning on his heel. “Follow,” he said monotonously. John stepped out of the doorway and gestured with a hand up the stairs. You cautiously stepped over the threshold and began to climb the narrow wooden stairs.

“Oh, Sherlock, look at the mess you’ve made,” you hear an older woman shrill from the top of the stairs. You step into the dimly lit sitting area of 221B and find a small woman picking up the pieces of what used to be a tea cup. You were close.

“Mrs. Hudson, you were in need of a new set anyhow. And please don’t fuss while I have a client,” Mr. Holmes said rather harshly. You were taken aback by how he treated the kind looking woman.

“Don’t talk to me like that, Mister. I’d have the right mind to send a telegram your brother,” she snapped back before turning to you with a warm smile. “Good morning deary, shall I get you a spot of tea?”

You grinned back at her and said, “No, thank you, ma’am. I don’t imagine I’ll be here long. I must say, I expected you to answer the door.”

The smile instantly disappeared from Mrs. Hudson’s face and she turned to Dr. Watson with a glare that could kill. All color drained from the army doctor’s face as Mrs. Hudson stomped past him, slamming the door behind her. “She’s not a fan of the stories,” he laughed nervously.

“Please, sit,” Mr. Holmes piped up, dragging a chair in front of two cushioned chairs. Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes took their respective seats and left you at the center of attention. You slowly took your seat, trying to figure out what to say first.

Ringing your parasol in your gloved hands, you began, “It’s my brother, he’s gone missing.” You paused, looking between the two men. Dr. Watson sat with legs crossed, hands folded in his lap, and a kind expression on his kind face. Mr. Holmes also sat with legs crossed but his elbows were propped on the arms of his chair, finger tips together and touching his lips. He wore an unreadable expression but gave you a slight nod, prompting you to continue. “He left for America about 3 months ago, expecting to return 2 months ago. My father insisted I not worry about it but it has been 2 months with not so much as a whisper of his whereabouts.”

“Why did your brother leave for America?” Dr. Watson asked formally.

Before you could open your mouth, Mr. Holmes interjected with an outrageous accusation, “He was running from someone.”

“While I live and breath, of course not. My brother was loved by everyone he met. He went to America on business.”

“What business then?” Mr. Holmes smirked at you as if he knew something you did not.

“Well, I don’t know. Father only said it was business. He claimed a lady had no use knowing,” you say through gritted teeth.

“You’re brother was running from someone. He hasn’t returned or made contact, to your knowledge, because it is still unsafe. Your family just recently came into a lot of money, am I right?”

Your jaw dropped but you quickly shut your mouth and gained your bearings. “Y..Yes.”

“And what did your father tell you the reason was?”

“An aunt died and left the family everything she had.”

“An aunt you’ve never heard of no doubt. No, that is not what happened. You’re quite worried about the soot about your dress, clearly new, and you don’t use the parasol. Clearly, you weren’t raised to use one. Also, you shake rather than curtsy or accept a kiss, startling signs that you grew up in a poor home of men. You’re uncomfortable with this new lifestyle and are angered by the change in manner your father has toward you. I’m sure your brother is fine in America, but if you so desire, I can look into it.”

You were stunned. It was one thing to read the unbelievable stories of Dr. Watson’s but it was surreal to be living it. Mr. Holmes spoke with such swiftness, his deep, smooth voice sounding so matter-of-fact yet reassuring. You couldn’t help but believe him. “No,” you said, your voice sounding distant, “I believe you. Thank you, Mr. Holmes.”

Both Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes stared at you in bewilderment. “You’re the only client that has accepted my word as gospel so quickly,” Mr. Holmes breathed. “John, close your mouth.” Dr. Watson quickly closed his mouth and looked away in embarrassment.

“Well, it only makes sense, Mr. Holmes. Everything you said makes sense. You’re right, I am rather uncomfortable with the sudden shift. And no, Mr. Holmes, I don’t wish to take up anymore of your time.” Mr. Holmes swallowed nervously. He didn’t say anything, he just stared. He stared at your face, studied it. All you could do was blink at him, frozen under his intense gaze. “You’re extraordinary,” you whispered, enamored by his blue eyes and sharp features.

Mr. Holmes quickly looked away and what you could only assume was a blush rose to his cheeks. You too looked down, embarrassed you had said that aloud. “How much do I owe you for your time?” you asked in a hushed voice.

“Nothing,” Mr. Holmes said quickly, standing up in a rush.

“Oh, well... Thank you, Mr. Holmes, for your...”

“Sherlock, please,” he interrupted, extending a hand to you to help you to your feet.

You took it, in a daze. “Thank you, Sherlock.” His name slid like honey from your tongue. Your chest tightened as he bent forward and placed a ginger kiss to the back of your hand. His eyes locked on your’s the entire time. You didn’t even stop him. You couldn’t. You had been so adamant on rebelling against being “lady-like” but Sherlock Holmes made you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. Your brain seemed to be on the fritz.

“I hope I don’t wrinkle the glove,” his smooth voice said with a smirk.

You felt your cheeks grow hot and you couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. “To hell with the glove.”

Sherlock smiled down at you, a deep laugh rising in his throat. His eyes crinkled as he smiled and his smile lit up his face. It was contagious. “Shall I take you to the door, (Y/N)?”

“I can find my way out, Sherlock, but thank you,” you said before turning to Dr. Watson. He was still sat in his chair, looking at the pair of you with an expression as if he had witnessed a murder. “Dr. Watson?”

He shook the expression from his face and stood up, straightening his vest. “Apologies, I was.. uh... lost in thought,” he stammered, extending his hand. You took it in a firm shake and beamed at him. “I hope your brother is alright.”

“Thank you, Dr. Watson,” you replied. “Goodbye, gentlemen.” You turned on your heel and opened the door to the stairs.

“I wish to see you again,” Sherlock said in a nervous manner. You paused in the doorway and turned slowly to see the detective, his face a deep crimson, standing with a hand slightly outstretched towards you. “Um, to follow up on your brother, of course,” he concluded, clasping his hands behind his back and setting his face with a nonchalant expression.

You grinned at him before saying, “I wish to see you again, as well, Sherlock.” His face softened and you nodded at Dr. Watson. “Until next time.” You turned and descended the stairs, your heart threatening to fly from your chest.

John turned to Sherlock as soon as he heard the door shut behind you. He let out a belly laugh and clasped a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “What a story this case would make! Emotionless Detective Can’t Stop Staring! Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Girl That Stole His Heart!”

Sherlock simply cocked his head toward his giggling companion and said, “I thought you were good at titles.” Leaving John to bask in the euphoria of seeing Sherlock loose control of his feelings, the detective walked towards the chair that you had occupied only moments before. He dragged his fingertips along the back of the chair and smiled to himself. “Until next time,” he whispered.

A/N: I’m sorry for how long it is! I’m thinking of a part two for this one as I’m working on a part two for “What Do You Know About Babies?”!! Let me know what you think and send in your requests!! xx

#sherlock holmes x reader #sherlock holmes #reader insert #sherlock x reader #bbc #benedict cumberbatch

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