#i did dwell on the fact that time is irreversible and i will never get to feel how i did yesterday

[breeskins]

idk guys the summer kinda was just a blur but i did dwell on the fact that time is irreversible and i will never be able to relive yesterday and everything is changing and rather than actually making the most of the given time and making yesterday something i want to relive i’m just dwelling kinda scary ngl

[tender-rosiey]

mourn and want — gojo satoru x f!reader

a/n: angst version of gojo coming back so don’t say I didn’t warn y’a; also him saying my wife makes me giggle like HEHEEHE

satoru’s vision is blurry. he can’t see anyone except kenjaku and sukuna, though his thoughts immediately drift to you.

he can feel your cursed energy somewhere, but it’s so faint. it worries him so he quickly teleports to shoko and his students. his eyes strain as they frantically search for you, “where is y/n?”

most of them stay silent and he immediately jumps to the worst conclusion, but shoko doesn’t let him dwell on it for too long.

she lets out a sigh and it’s followed by a mutter, “follow me.”

she starts walking towards an abandoned building, probably a hospital, and satoru wordlessly walks after her. their footsteps echo throughout the deserted hallways, along with the sounds of water droplets hitting the ground every few seconds.

they finally arrive at a room and its door is noticeably cleaner than the rest. satoru speaks up, for the first time since they started walking, “is she here?”

shoko nods, and her face is solemn, “yeah, but…” she looks away from the moment, “she won’t make it. she will probably die in an hour or something.”

“can’t you do something? anything?”

“satoru, I tried, but whoever attacked her did irreversible damage,” she takes a deep breath, “the healing won’t even work so—I suggest you talk to her and get your moments. she has been asking for you ever she came out of that attack.”

with nothing else to add, shoko left, but not without patting satoru’s shoulder lightly.

he hums quietly then his hand reaches for the doorknob. he takes a deep breath and braces himself for what he will see. satoru is no stranger to death. in fact, he met it personally.

for some reason, though, he feels like yours will be the hardest to face and endure.

the door clicks and he pushes it lightly. his eyes fall on your resting figure, if resting could be used as a word with how in pain you look.

you’re breathing heavily and your hand is clutching your side. he closes the door behind him, a small grin on his face, “hey, pretty? missed me?”

your eyes peak open and you glance towards the door. a small smile appears on your face at the sight of your husband, “satoru…”

he chuckles and gets settled right beside you, “the one and only…how’re you feeling?”

a wheeze escapes your lips as you try to sit up, but satoru quickly—and gently—pulls you into his embrace.

now, you’re both on the ground with you cradled in his arms. you look up, “I feel like shit.”

“figured,” he smiles while caressing your cheek, “you look the part.”

after your small laugh, the both of you fall into silence. your hand is holding onto satoru’s. you take a moment to breathe then you mumble, “I don’t have much time left.”

his arms around you tighten just a bit, “don’t say that.”

“but it’s true.”

he bites on his lips to hold back his tears, “no, no, it’s not—you can’t do this to me,” a shaky breath escapes his lips, “we still have a future together, a daughter to raise.”

you weakly reach put for his face and make him look at you. even with his teary eyes, he manages to compose himself quickly. you sigh in content, “at least, she will have you, her strong papa.”

“why can’t she have her mom as well? why are you giving up so easily?”

“I tried a lot, but it wasn’t and will never be enough—everyone tried!”

the tears you’ve tried to suppress are falling freely, “but it hurts so much, ‘toru! I can’t go on living with this pain!”

satoru is stunned to his core before he swiftly recovers and pulls you closer, doing his best to comfort you, “shh, I am sorry,” he kisses your temple, “I didn’t mean it,” your cheeks, “I am sorry.”

your arms weakly wrap around his shoulder as you sob into his chest, “I don’t want to die! I want to be with you! I wa—want to wake up to you by my side!”you’re cut off by your sob, “I want to raise our daughter together! I want to hear her sweet giggles every day—satoru, I don’t want to go yet!”

“I know,” he buries his face in your hair, “I don’t want you to go either.”

his hand is rubbing your back while you cry and wail. he presses feather-like kisses to your head, before he speaks, “I—…I want to hear you scold me more. I want to see your messy hair every morning. I want to see you team up on me with our daughter. I want to feel your love and give you mine every—every single day.”

you pull away slightly and you lock eyes. he isn’t crying, but he can’t deny the lump in his throat nor the pit in his stomach. you peck his lips gently and rest your forehead on his, “promise me that you will take care of her.”

his thumbs wipe at your tears before he nods, “yeah,” then whispers, “I promise.”

his face is still so close to your own as your body relaxes slightly in his hold. with a small sigh, you murmur against his lips, “I love you.”

“I love you too—I love you so much,” he croaked.

“you better,” you smile before closing your eyes and leaning into his touch.

your body goes limp, and satoru immediately hugs you closer, tighter. your face is buried in his chest while he repeatedly and frantically kisses the top of your head, tears of his own dripping to the ground.

his body envelopes your own like he’s fearful of the fact that something will take you away, yet again.

he doesn’t hear the door open at first.

his blood-shot eyes eventually travel to the person who entered, shoko. her voice is shaky as she speaks her name before she sighs, “I need to take her—“

“no.”

his eyes focus on your face once again, “I didn’t get to mourn all who passed—and I will be damned if I don’t mourn for my own wife.”

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copyright © tender-rosiey

do not copy or plagiarize or you will be reported

[zaruba-needslove]

that spawned from the post you reblogged with the words Evil!Keiwa AU, didn't it?

Also I doubt it was specifically Keiwa's parents were sacrificed for her to form because the age gap between Keiwa and Neon is 4 years...

wait...

Akari was kidnapped @ 8 It can be assumed that the Sakurai Parents were "involved" in the DGP when Sara was 15-17 (but judging from Sara's uniform... she's 15) and the age gap between Keiwa and Sara is 3 years... if we assume the Sakurai Parents... got involved when Sara was 15, Keiwa was 12...

fudge! It's plausible!!

Izzu! Noooooooooooo!

😃

To be fair...

This post did not 'just' got spawned from the evil!Keiwa AU post from the other day... but yeah it was related. Not to mention, Full Metal Alchemist's Equivalent Exchange concept.

That's what happened when one kept rewatching the Saboten Knight round WAY too much. (I swear I end up making throwbacks to that round in like 65% of my fics) You kept noticing more and MORE stuffs that gonna ruin yer life.

This line of musing happened while I was plotting on Irreversible. Which originally was started from me wanting to counter the accusation about how Keiwa's desire for World Peace was just from a shallow belief of what Keiwa think 'world peace' really is. On how his wish for world peace started from the desire to make Sara happy. Why Keiwa want to be Sara's 'hero'.

Because a world where Sara would be happy is a world where everyone can be happy as well. While Keiwa's wish during his second DGP end up being reduced to wanting 'the victims of the DGP to be revived', the core of Keiwa's original wish of wanting 'Sara' smile/be happy remained the same. A great parallel to this would be Hino Eiji's 'greed' of wanting to save/protect people as well as his reasoning to fight as Kamen Rider OOO. Eiji's greed and Keiwa's true desire... their definition of 'world peace' was the same thing. So when people trivialized Keiwa's desire and motivation to fight to protect his wishes as some petty selfish desire, I just..! (Also yes, this was also a counter to the claim that Buffa's desire to 'protect other ppl's happiness' was a lot more 'selfless' compared to Keiwa's 'selfish' wish for 'world peace'.)

Aaanyway... back to the Neon-Sakurai lore/hc.

For a while, I've been theorizing that Sakurai couple's death and Akari's kidnapping had occured at the same time. And as much as I never made any mention of this theory in my past fics... the fact that the kidnapper got a Desire Driver during the Bujin arc, could imply that the kidnapper might've been a former DGP player too. And for a while, I had a theory that it might not really be a coincidence that Akari was kidnapped and Kousei was 'targeted' as a potential sponsor to help the DGP behind the scenes.

In series, it was implied that the 'fuel' that allowed Mitsume to grant a Desaity's wish was from the sparks from the other players' unfulfilled wishes/unfulfilled desires for them to wish for something, right? Yet, aside from granting a Desaity's wish, resetting the world after every DGP round would've also require some 'fuel' as well... right? Thus this leading up as to why the Sakurai couple weren't revived...

tl;dr... I ended up realizing the potential other meaning to 'sacrificing other people's happiness in order to achieve one's happiness'. Cos people really had been piling so much hate on Keiwa just because he wanted to get his family back regardless of the sacrifices during his Bujin arc, right?

So yeah.... the series kept making me dwell on how much Ace and Keiwa had been victimized by the DGP.

And wah... this post got so long 😃

[hankwritten]

Keep in a Cool Dry Place

Demoman/Soldier, 3k

A couple of old, past their prime mercs live out their days, but at least they’re slowly breaking down together.

Oftentimes, Jane would go out onto the deck to find Tavish fixed in place, chin tilted skywards, soaking up the stars for all they were worth. He could be like that, sometimes for hours, eye glossy against the Milky Way as he stood so still he could make a statue proud.

“You’re up awful late,” he said to Jane, unmoving. Probably had realized Jane had been watching for a while now.

“Could say the same to you,” Jane said, pulling himself into a deck chair with a great cascade of air from his smoker’s lungs, the grunt of an old man he always thought was an exaggerated affectation until it started happening to him.

“I don’t get up at five in the morning,” Tavish reminded him.

“You could. Good for the health, Tavish.”

“I don’t think anything’s good for the health these days. Just bad, and slightly worse.” He drummed his fingers on the deck’s railing. “C’mere, look at this.”

“I can see the damn stars just fine from here,” Jane sniffed.

Tavish broke from his surveying to shoot a grin Jane’s way, features cut sharp in the porch light. “Come on you old fart, get over here.”

Jane grumbled, pushing out of the chair with more effort than he would have liked to admit. He made his way to Tavish, joining him at the railing, their shoulders brushing just briefly until Tavish swung an arm around Jane’s waist.

His voice took on a fading quality all of the sudden, as though far away winds were dragging him skyward. “Nice night, isn’t it?”

Jane watched him. In the past few years his good eye had grown white in the center, a fuzzy film growing out from the pupil that would one day take the whole cornea. It was irreversible, Tavish had explained, years of buildup from stromnium or strotenium or something like that, Jane could never remember. Tavish wasn’t surprised, had told Jane that he was shocked he’d still had the thing this long, but that didn’t mean there was no mourning within the man. It was just different than how most people would have gone about it.

“Sure is,” Jane said. “Real beautiful.”

“Aye. And you ‘n me, we’re not seeing the half of it. Those telescopes, the ones the size of whole buildings, all they have is a bunch of different magnifying glasses and yet when they put ‘em all together you can see whole galaxies that weren’t there before. Same sky, just some folks can see it, some folks can’t.”

“You can still see it,” Jane reminded him, a gentle bump to the shoulder.

“For now,” Tavish agreed. He turned, smiling with just the corner of his mouth, a testament that was gone before Jane could fully appreciate how much he loved the small, sad ways he chose to be happy. A hand came up to brush the side of Jane’s cheek. “I just keep thinking about how one of these days will be the last day I see you.”

Their foreheads came together. Jane’s hand rose to cover the one across his cheek, thumb rubbing the small band of gold on Tavish’s finger. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe this; despite the decades, despite the promises made on cold desert nights, despite watching the grey hairs spring in Tavish’s beard and knowing the same was happening to him, it was still hard to fathom that someone had chosen to spend the rest of their life with him. Even though the years with Tavish came close to outnumbering the years without, that time in Jane’s life of infinite loneliness, of stubborn self sufficiency, made him question how he was ever lucky enough that someone had hung on their sense and decided he was worth it.

Jane pulled Tavish closer. “Yeah. Well. If you’re going to keep a last image of me in your head, I really wish it was back when I was still handsome.”

Tavish laughed, swaying them both slightly in the unusually still air. Normally winds rattled the badlands, stirring up loose sand and seething through plants too hardy to notice. It felt like, for once, the world had chosen to be kind this night, just for them.

“You get handsomer every day Jane,” Tavish said, and hidden behind the words were each day I love you more. “I just…miss.”

“Miss how things used to be?”

“More than that. I’ve got the ‘ole yearning, I suppose, the eater of men.” Tavish chewed his words, looking up at the sky again. “I miss places. I miss how everything used to feel, even if it wasn’t terribly good.”

“Not talking about going back to your home planet, are you?” Jane joked, jerking his thumb at the now witnessed stars.

“No,” Tavish snorted. “Not exactly. But I…” He trailed off.

Now it was Jane’s turn to bring his hands to the sides of Tavish’s face, his own ring warm from where he’d been cradling it inside his fist. “What is it, Tav? You can tell me.”

Tavish looked not at the stars nor the horizon, but the ground, kicking the wooden deck neither of them had ever gotten around to re-staining. “I feel…I feel the hills always calling out to me. Like there’s something in my bones that just wants to rest, to go back where it’s green, to where it isn’t so bloody dry. Every time we visit I think ‘is this the last time I’ll ever see it? The very last time? Am I going to be too old or too tired the next time around, and never feel like I’m home again?’”

Jane watched the worry lines in Tavish’s forehead. “You want to go back to Scotland.”

“I dunno. Just the more my eye goes the more I…I dunno.”

They hung in silence for a while longer, just breathing. Jane hadn’t felt the need to wear his helmet for a long time, not at home, not at this mansion that was their private oasis from the rest of the world. Were money made their problems—if not vanish—then kept far back beyond the fence where they never had to think about them unless they ventured beyond. Where, even with BLU’s protection no longer keeping the various chapters of local and federal law enforcement trying to wrangle some comeuppance out of the soldier for sins past, he still had a place of refuge.

“Let’s go,” Jane said.

Tavish looked away. “I don’t mean for a visit Jane, I mean…”

“I know,” Jane insisted. Tavish’s milky eye fixed him with disbelief. “You want to go home. I get it. We should go.”

Tavish stared at him, still uncomprehending. “Jane you know that would mean…”

“I know,” Jane repeated.

A warm, subtle smile filled Tavish’s face, and neither of them had to say any more. Tavish drew Jane in closer, and the two of them rocked in the wind that had just picked up again.

***

“Jane,” Tavish frowned as he examined the box Jane had dropped thunderously at the bottom of the stairs, “do you really need to bring all of these?”

“Hey, I’m not trying to make you get rid of your treasured possessions,” Jane pointed out, depositing a second box filled entirely with Guns & Haircuts net to the first.

“We’re not going to have space for these,” Tavish retorted. “It’s going to be a tiny little thing, remember? They don’t build mansions in Ullapool.”

Moving had left the New Mexico mansion barren and faded where pictures had hung on the wall since Tavish had first moved in. Now they were all gone, sold off as their attempts to downsize left only what was necessary and a few DeGroot family heirlooms.

It twisted something in Jane to see their home of three decades slowly dismantled into carpet scuffs and cardboard boxes. This had been his dwelling longer than any other, a turning point from when the Gravel Wars had folded in on themselves and left Jane with an odd freedom he had no idea if he was allowed to act on. Even before that, when Tavish’s mother had still been alive and the halls were filled with her vigor, this place was safe haven for Jane, where he’d come to meet with his forbidden friend and get wasted in his living room.

Now it was mostly empty. Ready for the last goodbyes.

“These are important,” Jane declared of the boxes.

“You haven’t read them in ages,” Tavish pointed out.

“So? They are valuable. Scout sold his whole Bonk! Boy collection for a fortune, and I’ve got twice as many as that little squirt does!” Jane cleared his throat suddenly. “Did.”

It was hard to remember sometimes. He thought his old teammates would want nothing to do with him after the end, but to his surprise they actually kept in contact better than when they’d actually worked together. Maybe owing to the fact he now had an actual address they could send letters to.

Neither Spy nor Sniper had ever actually retired, and over time the tepid, passably courteous correspondences with Sniper had stopped a few years after Spy disappeared entirely. Jane assumed something similar had happened to them both. Occupational hazard.

Engie had complications with his diabetes. The remaining team had shown up for the funeral, except for Pyro, who everyone politely wouldn’t mention, even when Jane asked.

The one person Jane hadn’t expected to outlive was Scout. Scout didn’t write, but he could talk anyone’s ear off, and when coming home from the second funeral in as many years it hit Jane hard that he’d never hear the kitchen phone ringing off its holder again, practically trembling as the other line was just dying to tell him about whatever exactly Scout was so wound up about today.

Tavish noticed Jane’s slipup, and kindly ignored it. Nearly ten years, and Jane still found himself forgetting. “That’s because they were comics,” Tavish explained. “They were collectors items. The only person collecting Guns & Haircuts is you.”

“And don’t I know it!”

Tavish sighed. “Are you even planning on selling them, or are you just going to do the same thing you’ve done with them here and leave them in a big box to gather dust?”

“Of course I’m going to leave them in a big box!” Jane huffed proudly. “What other purpose is there in life other than to gather material objects and then have them accumulate in piles in your living room? You do not see me complaining about the giant, wall mounted family crest, do you?”

Tavish rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighed as an old argument became even older. “Ach, fine. I suppose we’ll fine the space.” When he opened his eye, he saw the third giant box Jane was hauling out for the movers. “Jane! We don’t need to be taking that.”

“Yes we do, sonny!” Jane said, slapping a hand on the trumpet of the old record player he hadn’t been able to properly fit in the box. “I do not trust those cassette tapes! The snakes that live in them always try to come out and strangle me!”

“We’ve got some CDs now-” Tavish tried.

“Even worse!” Jane declared. “Australian mind control devices!”

Tavish could see he wasn’t winning, which was just fine by Jane. The magazines were one thing, but the record player he wasn’t leaving without.

“Well,” Tavish said, looking around their house, stripped bare. “I suppose that’s everything.”

Jane couldn’t find a reason to object. He glanced around, looking for one last missing detail, one more reason to stall, but found none. Gently, he took Tavish’s hand and squeezed. “Everything we need.”

***

Scotland was even wetter than the last time they’d visited.

Mud, the most distantly remembered and ancient of substances, clung to Jane’s pant leg all the way up to the knee as they made their way down hundred-year old paths someone really should’ve figured out how to weather-proof by now. But, where Jane was grumbling, Tavish looked about as happy as a clam in water. (Or, Jane supposed was more fitting, a pig in mud.)

“Aha! Look, there it is,” Tavish said, tugging on Jane’s arm and pointing at the glimpse of water creeping around the bend. “Still there.”

“I don’t think they would have up and moved a whole lake while you were gone,” Jane mumbled, but Tavish didn’t seem to hear as he moved with surprising speed down the hill. It was times like this Jane actually envied the cane.

When he finally caught up, Tavish was breathing in the thick air, his chest rising and then collapsing with a satisfied sigh. “Used to play down here as lad. Sometimes there’s a beach, far as the eye can see.”

“Thought you were done with sand,” Jane said, stomping up next to him on damp boots.

Tavish just breamed broadly at him, drinking in the sweep of the land and the crash of the lake. Jane could remember the stories, ones from Tavish’s childhood much better than his own, told and retold so many times that he could flip open the memories like a scrapbook and find exactly where every place in Ullapool fit. An old pub, a crumbling church. The house where the DeGroots used to live, the field where Merasmus’s castle had once briefly towered. So vivid were they, they superimposed themselves over Jane’s (admittedly more insubstantial) memories until he felt he had lived here himself.

“…Gettin’ dark, Tav,” Jane pointed out.

Tavish frowned, and squinted at the horizon. “Aye, I suppose it is.”

“Think the movers are done?” Jane didn’t approve of hiring other people to life heavy things when lifting heavy things had once been one of Jane’s favorite pastimes, but Tavish convinced him that if he threw out his back again, it’d be a lot harder to get him to a doctor.

“Probably,” Tavish nodded. “Let’s go see.”

“Do you think they dropped my magazines?”

“I’m sure they’re fine, love.”

They made the long, much more slippery journey back to their new home. It overlooked Ullapool and the coast, but was nevertheless removed enough that Jane could revel in the privacy he had grown used to. Privacy was not on Tavish’s mind when they’d walked through town that first time, however, as he’d greeted nearly everyone who came their way. It had shocked Jane how many people knew him, or at least recognized the DeGroot name, and greeted Tavish as familiarly as they would have had he been gone for only a few weeks rather than years.

It was good, to see Tavish like this. Even now, as they climbed slowly back up the hill, Jane watched him out the corner of his eye, smiling at the look of serenity that hadn’t been on his husband’s face so naturally in years.

“Isn’t this cozy,” Tavish said lovingly as they crossed the threshold of their new home.

That it was. Jane had worried he had grown soft living in luxury, that his years of being rich and retied would make him forgot that he’d once loved his little apartment, had cherished the security its simplicity had given him. But now that he was back inside four walls, surrounded by the items that had come to mean things beyond their purpose, a swell of pleasant familiarity welled up in him. The curtains blocked out the last of the fading light through soft yellow. There was a fireplace (modern and gas powered) but one ready to fill the house with a warm glow.

Tavish made the motions to begin unpacking, but Jane’s pretense of rooting though the boxes had a different goal in mind. Preoccupied, Tavish didn’t turn around until Jane finally slipped the record into place.

Perking, Tavish looked over his shoulder to see Jane offering his hand as the music bubbled slowly to life. “Been a long time since we danced,” Jane said.

Tavish’s smile fit well in this homey, quiet room. He took Jane’s hand, and let Jane pull him up off his knees until they were chest to chest, resting his chin on Jane’s shoulder.

“Too long,” he agreed.

They began sway rhythmlessly to music in the middle of the tiny living room, caring little where they put their feet as long as it wasn’t one top of one another. Jane loved the record player, needed it more these days, as it was one of the only things that made the horrid, incessant ringing in his ears quiet for just a short while. Leaving the fan on at night might help him get to sleep, but the was no denying the scratching notes out of the player were a world more enjoyable.

It was piano piece, one he’d heard Tavish play now and again. There was no space for a grand piano here in this little cottage on the hill, but maybe they could get a smaller one, and Tavish could try teaching him again. Like he’d promised so long ago.

So many promises that’d slipped through the cracks, both to each other and themselves. Things they simply couldn’t do anymore. Ever since the scare with Jane’s lung cancer, they had tried to do better, had realized what they had built meant something and they couldn’t go piddling away with their complacent recklessness. Jane had quit smoking, Tavish had quit drinking as part of the deal.

But still, there were other things, other mistakes that had compounded over the years. Jane always kept thinking he should have been over it by now, that for how many gentle touches Tavish had placed against him, he should forget the violence those same hands had once brought him. The times they’d shoved a sword into Jane’s gut. The bombs from nowhere. The individual atrocities. It was duller now, the years had been good enough to do that, but if Tavish’s memories were anything like Jane’s, he understood why the ex-demoman sometimes woke screaming in the middle of the night, needing to be reminded—soothed, assured, sometimes begged—that the Jane beside him wasn’t the monster from his dreams.

That was the real tragedy of the War. Officially, all they had been paid to do was kill each other—the horrors they chose to inflict on one another had been their own doing, their own wills brought to fruition. RED had never asked Tavish to shove Jane’s shovel down its owner's throat, laughing vengefully all the while. Jane was sure he’d done equally as cruel things to Tavish during those hell times, but had trouble recalling exactly what. It’s much easier to remember the sins committed against you, than those you have unleashed yourself.

Those hands, those bloodstained, gentle, perfect hands, rubbed circles and Jane’s back, and he sighed. He’d listened to this record enough to know it was getting to the end of this side, but he found he didn’t want to move. He wanted to keep standing here, swaying with the man he loved in their home in the mountains, remembering that they had earned this.

“I cherish these moments we spend together,” he said resolutely into Tavish’s chest.

“Every one of them,” Tavish agreed.

Eventually they would lay down, rest their old bones in their new bed, but for now they held each other in the slowly encroaching night, the sound of rain playing its first patter on the roof.

[prinxlyart]

I was just chilling in the morning and then I started to think about how Amity was mean to Willow when they were alone in the woods even though there was no one around to rat her out to her parents or something and now I can't stop thinking about how much it affected her to be forced to cut Willow off and how from the 3 Blight kids she's the one that seemed to crave her parents' approval the most despite their abuse that might not have been evident to her until meeting Luz and seeing that Eda was more caring and supportive of a kid she found in her stand than her parents of their kids.

Anyways, do you have any headcanons about how those 7 years were like for Amity?

This goes perfectly with the last one I answered so let’s dig in

(This is another Long One ™️)

Amity cried for like, a month after she was forced to cut ties with Willow. The only ones that knew this were her siblings though. She made them swear not to tell, although she didn’t really need to. They knew what their parents were like.

As time went on, Amity felt....Othered. She was different from her siblings (she wasn’t a twin nor was she naturally good at illusions). She was different from the girls she was told to be friends with (they were mean and Amity didn’t like being mean). She was different from all the other kids in her grade (she was a Blight).

This odd sort of unintentional distancing left her feeling almost numb. She didn’t know how to act around her new mean “friends”, but over time she picked up their behavior. She knew if she wanted to convince her parents that she was getting along with these girls, she’d have to act like she liked them and act like them too.

So she started imitating them. She’d watch how they made fun of anything and everything and learned to keep her own interests hidden for fear of being the next one they’d ridicule. They would even make fun of each other which was the most baffling to Amity. Were any of them actually friends?

She tried to keep her eyes off Willow. She couldn’t bear to see her, especially now that Amity’s new “friends” picked on her constantly. She couldn’t stand to see the tears in Willow’s eyes and the look of fear and shame her “friends” caused her to don.

As the years went on and her numbness settled in, she learned how to adopt her “friend’s” behaviors even when they weren’t around. Because even though they might not be around, everyone else around her still knows she’s a Blight. And Blight’s always make sure that their status as The Best is known to those around them. So she starts making comments on other people’s poor grades. Snide remarks about others’ lack of talent. Whispers with her “friends” about how so-and-so could barely be qualified as a witch. She had a whole persona to uphold after all; she made sure that no one would be able to call her out for not acting like a Blight.

The library was her safe haven. Her secret nook inside the library was even more so. Even the library was too public for her to be caught acting as anything other than a Blight. The only time she could remove the mask and just be herself was when she was either in her secret nook or, eventually, when she started volunteering to read to the little kids.

Amity cherishes her time spent reading to the little kids because she can indulge in all of her childish interests and fiction under the guise of extra credit. And the kids love when she gets so into her story-telling, so who does it hurt? Those little kids don’t know what her reputation is supposed to be and they have no expectations beyond telling them a fun story. Anyone that does know who she is will only think she’s going above and beyond in what she’s doing like she does with anything else.

She still missed Willow. Every time she saw her eating alone at lunch or hiding in her cowl hood to avoid the taunts and jeers thrown at her from their peers, it broke Amity’s heart. The only person she could be her real self with had become the school target and she was among the people that made her that target. It made her want to puke if she thought about it for too long. So she opted to try not to think about it at all. She would mindlessly listen to her friends drone on about whatever new thing had caught their attention and sit in her thoughts until her attention was drawn by the group.

There were times when she would find herself alone with Willow and she would flash back to her 7th birthday party. Her parent’s threats would echo in her ears and she would have to bite the inside of her cheek to remember to Act Like a Blight. So she kept up the facade, even if it was just the two of them. She had to do it then, of course she’d have to keep it up now.

At the point we see them in the show, Amity’s been pretending for so long that she’s starting to believe her own lies. She’s forced herself to think about only being top of her class and maintaining her family’s reputation (not like her siblings have helped on that front). She is better than Willow, at least when it comes to magic. She can barely do anything with her magic, it was visible proof. Amity had worked harder than anyone to master abominations to the degree she had. She was a Blight. Anyone that tried to say otherwise could suffer her wrath.

She gets along with her friends almost the same way she gets along with her siblings: be civil and relatively friendly in the presence of others and then complain about whatever nonsense they did in her diary. She wishes she had another actual person to talk to about all this, but her “friends” were as fake as the relationships she had with them and as far as she knew, none of them were being threatened by their parents to interact with one another. Maybe Skara? Potentially Boscha? But Boscha has been so into her role as Top Bully for as long as Amity’s known her and she hardly thinks her parents are coercing her into acting so horribly.

When she sees Willow start hanging out with the Illusion track kid (augustus, she finds out from her siblings; he transferred to their home room after being bumped up a couple grades), Amity’s heart drops entirely. She’s officially been replaced. Despite the years of distance and tormenting, Amity wanted to believe that somehow, Willow would find it in her to forgive her and they could be friends again. But Willow’s moved on and made a new best friend. She deserves to.

Somehow it hurts even more when Luz starts attending Hexside. Amity actually likes Luz. She hasn’t actually liked another person since, well, Willow. And now Luz attending Hexside and not being ashamed of being friends with Willow makes her heart ache in a way it hadn’t for a few years. Willow’s smiling. Laughing. Sure, that Augustus kid makes her smile too, but it’s much different with Luz around. With Luz by her side, Willow was coming out of the shell she’d built for herself to protect herself from all the mockery Amity’s friends encouraged the rest of the school to throw at her. It was an odd feeling of melancholy watching them be best friends in the halls of Hexside; Amity was happy that Willow was happy, that she finally found someone to help her out of that shell Amity was forced to make her build. But it stung just as much because it wasn’t her that was able to make Willow smile and laugh like that. Amity hadn’t been able to do that for Willow since they were small.

She truly didn’t mean to ruin Willow’s memories. But she also wasn’t trying to maintain her reputation when she burned the memory of her 7th birthday. No, Amity was sick to her stomach of the years of watching Willow suffer at Amity’s own hands. If she could just. Remove herself from that memory? Remove the fact that it was Amity that caused her so much pain? Amity would much rather Willow forget her entire existence than live with that pain. She half wished she could do the same to herself, but she didn’t have much chance to dwell on it before she realized she somehow had set all of Willow’s memories on fire.

When she was able to finally admit to Willow the whole truth of the reason she ruined their friendship when they were small in Willow’s memory? It felt like the weight of the Titan had been lifted off her shoulders. It didn’t excuse her actions, not by a long shot, but at least now Willow knew it wasn’t because Amity suddenly stopped liking her. Amity never stopped liking her. But to a 7-year-old, she didn’t feel as though she had any choice in the threat her parents posed and then grew up with that same fear looming over her shoulder. She didn’t know how to take it back.

Amity didn’t know what she did to deserve Luz popping into her life from a pot of Abomination goo. What she did know is that the decision she’d made when she was 7 felt irreversible her entire life up until Luz showed up. Luz, who didn’t judge her by her past actions or her fake identity, who liked Azura and was an even bigger nerd about it than Amity, who forgave Amity’s awful behavior when she tried to get her dissected and again at the Covention and then tried so desperately to become her friend; Amity didn’t understand how Luz could be so understanding and not hold Amity’s shitty behavior against her, but she’s so grateful that she didn’t because now she’s pivoted. Her whole life has made a sharp turn into making decisions for herself and not just for her family’s name.

And somehow, Luz managed to give Amity the second chance she never thought she’d get in her life: a second chance to be a better friend to Willow. And she’s so glad she took that chance.

Tl;dr: it’s fuckin ROUGH but like, dissociation, yknow? Works wonders.

[sasorikigai]

Aren’t you tired, Hanzo? Don’t you want to rest? It would be so easy. To let your guard down. All it takes is one second unaccounted for, one little slip to end the pain of living with what you’ve lost.

It’s Angst Hour! || anonymous || always accepting! 

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || Absence of humanness bleeds a whole within a burning, feverous heart with a yearning sin; what once would be entombed beneath the motionlessness irreversibility and finality of death would now become the anti-gravity that could swallow Grandmaster Hasashi in whole. As pulse leads into the dust, and the fire ablaze would take leave of the soul fire’s desire and aspirations. How did Hanzo Hasashi ever get here? His untimely, unjust death awakened him and had sung the most sincerest cacophony of defiant stubbornness and resolute willpower. The Nether’s fel energy; associated with demons, as Scorpion too, will emit such eerie, sickly green glow from the depths of his searing gaze, he still drowns in these tragic rivers grown, for they manifest as all that had been promised and never shown. 

Hanzo Hasashi’s life must be understood backwards; but one then forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forwards towards grace, redemption, and betterment. Principles in which the more he thinks it through, precisely leading to the conclusion that life in time can never be properly understood, just because no moment can help him acquire the complete stillness needed to orient himself backward. It is a such enticing proposition, although which he would never aspire to reach for complete immortality. For life as he had known always taught him that nothing is permanent; not of the world’s beauty, the Shirai Ryu’s grandeur halcyon peace, not even the fact that he too, even as Scorpion, dwelling in the humanity of Hanzo Hasashi nonetheless, will inevitably wilt, and perish. 

“My hopeful heart is more of a weapon than the acceptance of death I have conquered with all my resilience and might,” he is a trudging soldier, however deeply scarred and desperate he may become, who will continue to long for the whole of the world, joined tremendously together. Even through torments and tribulations, as the Shirai Ryu’s massacre still paints fresh sanguine squelch over the charred viscera and murky subconscious, this is where Hanzo Hasashi most longs to excel and tenaciously work himself down to the bones. For Hanzo Hasashi’s healing involves taking the herculean burden of responsibilities for ways in which he has let himself down as well. Not in a way of guilting himself for the times he didn’t love himself to forgive and forget, but in a way of acknowledging any parts of him that may still feel heavy and leaden. 

“I already have ripped apart the veil of happiness, mirth’s mirage in this loveless land filled with detritus and crude remains of the human lives that used to dwell here. The traumas of my past may have leaked out all of my favorite things of this place, its vitality, what made me me, I have let enough liquid sorrow creep in at the worst times, but they always become a propelling catalyst in letting go of my rage and vengeance, in order to seek better world in magnanimous radiance of my everburning flames.” 

Begone, demons of my mind, Hanzo Hasashi muses in the deepest reflection of his meditation. The fibrillating swirl of his hellfire engulfs and scorches, but his countenance does not crease in erupting surge of wrath, but of his aching heart; ache that he will continue to transmogrify to safeguard, rather than destroy, preserving the humanity which, even its sentimental weakness and vulnerability could draw upon its adamantine, steeled strength that will go beyond his human capabilities. ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || 

[startouched]

ff milk skin story translation.

translator. wanted to share this cute little flavor story for milk’s new skin, master of demons. a lot of it retells the events in milk and coffee’s backstories - what happened to their MA, how satan’s coffee house was founded, why it’s called that - but i found it a much-improved retelling, lol.

i usually translate for the ff wiki, but figured i’d post this one here too. if you have any questions or corrections, feel free to message me!

Today was spring cleaning for Satan's Coffee House.

Without my even realizing it, a long time had passed since Coffee and I first came to this forest. In the beginning, there was only him and I - but now, many new friends have joined in.

And as the number of people at Satan's Coffee House increased, so too did the amount of stuff we accrued. Since we had some spare time today, we decided to tidy up all the things from days gone by.

"...this is your dress?" Black Tea suddenly asked. I turned my head and saw that she had found a long black dress in a pile of my clothes.

"It might be." I thought it looked familiar, but it definitely wasn't my style.

Black Tea bent down again and pulled out a much heavier object from where she'd found that dress. "...and this one?"

She pointed at that massive black battleaxe, looking at me like she was seeing me in a new light - and I finally remembered.

That outfit was from a very, very long time ago - a time before Satan's Coffee House even existed.

Back then, Coffee and I lived in the township with our Master Attendant. Until one day, a great fire killed our Master Attendant and left our home in ruins.

To realize Master Attendant's lifelong dream, Coffee and I opened a coffee house in the township. With Tiramisu's help, business went well.

But not too long after, Tiramisu came to me secretly and told me the truth. This prosperous scene we saw was actually something Master Attendant had asked her to create. Humans had not actually accepted this new beverage called "coffee" - they only braved drinking it because Tiramisu was offering kickbacks.

Furthermore, Tiramisu revealed that Master Attendant's death was not an accident. It was in fact a murder by those who objected to food souls and humans being treated equally.

I asked Tiramisu why she told this to me, and only me.

She responded that after Master Attendant died, I seemed much calmer about it than Coffee did, so she felt that I would more quickly recover from the shock of knowing the truth.

She said, too, that she was very worried about Coffee. The truth had to come out eventually, but she saw how much love Coffee had put into this coffee house. After hesitating for a long time, she finally decided to tell me the truth and let me decide what to do.

"You should tell him. He will make his own decision." That is how I answered Tiramisu.

The next day, the store was as busy as it always was, and I did the things I needed to do as I always did.

Even though I knew the people in front of me might be forcibly suppressing their terror just to smile at us, that the coffees I so carefully packaged for them might just be sneakily thrown away after they left, I did not show any signs of unease.

We were merely buyer and seller. It did not matter why they came here, so long as they paid me and I provided the service we offered.

Then, Tiramisu arrived. Without causing a fuss, she asked to speak to Coffee alone.

That day, even when the coffee house closed for the night, Coffee did not return. I closed the store and cleaned up. Finally, I found him alone on the roof, staring blankly into the distance. Tiramisu had already quietly left some time ago.

Coffee seemed to know everything. He looked at me; I waited for his decision.

After a long moment of silence, he finally opened his mouth. "Let's leave this place. Let's go somewhere where people can't find us."

I had already prepared myself for whatever he might say, but when he said it for real, it took me a moment before I could respond to him calmly. "Okay," I said.

After that day, we spent a little time packing our belongings and closed down that short-lived coffee house. Coffee was in low spirits the entire time, but he said nothing to me. When we were together, he was always the one who led the conversation; now that he was silent, I did not know where to begin.

This continued until the day before we left. After I finished packing my own bags, I noticed Coffee sitting in the coffee house. In front of him were the empty tables and a single key.

That was the key to Master Attendant's house, and that was the home that Coffee and I once lived in. But in the great fire, our door had burnt away. This house key no longer had a purpose.

I rarely tried to guess at people's thoughts; that was too troublesome for me. But today, I was struck by a sudden desire to do something for Coffee. So I asked him, "Do you want to go home and look around?"

After the fire, we had not gone back. Coffee did not want to dwell on old memories, while I simply thought it did not matter what happened to the house if Master Attendant was not there. So I, too, never went back.

"Coffee, I don't like repeating myself."

"...no, I don't want to go. Tomorrow, we'll leave this place. I don't want to do something irreversible because I got upset."

"Then you should go back and rest. I'll go take a walk."

Coffee stood up. As he walked by me, he patted my head as if he were trying to comfort me - but right now, he seemed more in need of comfort than I did.

I considered the key that had been left on the coffee table, and then I walked over and picked it up.

The fire had turned Master Attendant's house into a wasteland.

I didn't know why Coffee still had lingering feelings towards a pile of broken shingles, but I had decided to come here in his stead. Perhaps this way, he would feel a little happier.

But as I walked through all the black ash, I couldn't find anything to even represent our Master Attendant. I wanted to bid a final farewell to him - but nothing was left.

I looked in every corner until finally, I found a milk crate that had fallen over near the door. This milk crate had been blackened entirely; it was nothing like how I remembered it. But when I recognized it for what it was, I suddenly felt a twinge of emotion.

Back then, one of the jobs Master Attendant had given me was getting milk from this milk crate every morning. It was a boring job, and I constantly rebelled against it, but in the end, I couldn't talk logic into him.

"It might seem like a repetitive task, but there's still something different about it every day. The milk you get each day is different, the temperature of each day is different, the flowers in the garden are different, and..."

He was too long-winded. I didn't care to listen, so I would simply turn and leave.

Later on, Coffee became a part of our lives. Once, he secretly told me that Master Attendant did all of this on purpose. Master Attendant thought my feelings towards life were too bland, and only when I was forced to do something repetitive would I seem a little more "lively."

In other words, it was just to make me angry. Truly a man of poor taste.

Back then, I often thought it would be better if I didn't have to do this kind of repetitive task. But after Master Attendant left us and my thoughts became reality, I didn't feel any happier.

Thinking about this, I decided to open that milk crate one last time. I intended to put the house key in it - perhaps that could be considered a fitting farewell.

But entirely outside of my expectations, the crate was not empty. In it was a letter.

Because the milk crate was far from the ignition point, the letter had escaped the all-consuming fire. Perhaps this was the only thing left in this world that belonged to Master Attendant. 

I opened it.

Even more unexpectedly, this letter had been left to Coffee and me by our Master Attendant. Before the incident, Master Attendant had had a premonition that something might happen, so they encouraged Coffee and me to leave. When he was alone, he hurriedly wrote this letter - and soon after that, he was attacked by those of the opposing faction and perished in the fire.

The letter was horribly long. It was just as long-winded as Master Attendant.

There were a few important points.

Master Attendant believed that food souls were heaven's gift to the world, so he had always fought to have the people around them accept the existence of food souls. But he had also understood that if he sacrificed himself for this cause, then Coffee and I would likely flee from humanity, never to return.

So he could only leave us this letter. He said - in this world, there are many places where humans need the help of food souls. He hoped that we would continue to help people, but that this was his own selfish wish. He could not order us to do so, so he left this letter in the milk crate.

"With the way you've always hated this crate, Milk - perhaps when I'm gone, you'll never open it again. So, I'll leave it up to fate to decide if you see this letter or not."

"Of course, on the slightest chance that you, Milk, will once again be willing to open this crate, see this letter, and even read to this point, I just want to say - see, even if you've done the same thing ten thousand times, sometimes there's still serendipitous results, right? So in the end, this argument is mine to win."

...what a truly persistent man.

I took the letter back to the coffee house and told all of this to Coffee. After he read it, he was silent for a long time.

Our bags were already packed; tomorrow's carriage was already booked. The coffee shop had already been sold to a new owner. But I knew none of this mattered. The important part was what he thought of it.

Should we help humanity? Or should we flee from them?

"Go to bed early. Tomorrow, our departure time is rather early."

In the end, that was his answer.

After Coffee and I left the township, in many parts of Gloriville, mysterious black mailboxes appeared overnight. People were surprised and terrified; after all, no one knew who set them up.

This was Coffee's idea. In the end, he still decided to give humans a chance.

To use Master Attendant's words - a mailbox like this might only have the slightest chance of someone writing or sending a letter in it. This was all he was willing to offer.

Since humans thought food souls were terrifying creatures, then we would use the equally terrifying Satan as our logo. Coffee wanted to see under what circumstances would humans surrender to their desires and, without regard to the consequences, make a deal with those they considered demons.

For a long time, the mailbox remained empty.

Until one day, the first letter showed up. But this letter's contents were far different from what we had expected.

The writer was a child. He used simple and childish words to explain that his village had been destroyed, and he was willing to trade his soul to the demons in exchange for his parents' lives.

Without hesitating, we decided to visit that address of this letter.

Surprisingly, in that village, we saw Tiramisu, who we had not seen for a long time. She was helping with the wounded in the village in arranging a recovery plan for after the disaster; she seemed quite practiced at the task.

When she saw us, her eyes lit up and she immediately recruited us to help out. We worked until nightfall, until everything was finally organized.

"Good thing you came! It was your hard work that made everything go so smoothly." Tiramisu had been busy all day, but her face still held a smile. The happiness and gratitude, too, that the villagers showed Coffee and me left us at a bit of a loss.

We quickly left that place.

On the way back, Coffee suddenly told me that he finally grasped a bit of what Master Attendant's letter had been about.

Humans did not naturally hate food souls - rather, they were too weak, so they felt fear at the sudden existence of a stronger force. They were weak; that was why they wanted to get rid of those who were not.

I expressed my agreement.

When we came back, Coffee and I wrote a response to that child's letter, using the names of his parents. We told him that his parents were doing well; they were living in a place called Satan's Coffee House, and even though they were not by his side, they would always protect him.

Afterwards, with Coffee's "encouragement," I bought a black dress and pretended to be a real demon to deliver that letter to the child's house.

When the child finished reading the letter, he held it to his chest like it was a precious jewel and fearfully stared at me. "Are you going to take my soul?"

I answered him, "Of course. But your soul is too little right now. We have decided to leave it with you for now, for at least a hundred years."

That was the story behind this outfit.

The story of Coffee and I, and the story of the entirety of Satan's Coffee House, began in that moment.

[evilblot]

Henlo yes I'me bacc from the not-living

Hey everyone, welcome back to the shit show, today I’m gonna give y’all a brief account of what I did during my disappearance but feel free to ignore it if you don’t wanna dwell into my life since I’m gonna make a quick summary before the cut.

TL;DR: I’m gonna quote good ole Schopenhauer here and just say that life really just is a pendulum swinging backward and forward between burnouts and boredom mental illness. BUt now I’m here so let’s just pretend everything is fine and nothing has never happened, so we can all resume our good ole routine :)

Also if you ever tagged me during these trying times, rest assured I’m gonna check it out and eventually reply to each and every single one of yous, and same goes for DMs. If I still don’t reply just tell me, change are tumblr ate it or I’m just preparing something special eheheh. And again, sorry for everything I didn’t mean to make y’all worry but sometimes it just be like dat…

⚠ I had to do the internship again exactly as I had expected.

So, without digging up the quarrel between me and my company tutor because it still boils my blood to think about it, basically my complaint for the treatment received caused me the entire internship, ergo I had to once again work my ass off to find another place to spend another two months of my life on.

Luckily, I eventually found a place where not only did I do what I like but where I found fantastic people who made my new experience wonderful, but what I had to undergo in the previous days was sincerely traumatic and I don’t wish no one ever to be in such a situation.

⚠ For reasons that go beyond the mere academic profile but which I don’t intend to deepen because I don’t feel like it, my mental health is hanging on a thread that is 👌 this much close from breaking.

In a nutshell, between the aggravation of my depression, the degeneration of my anhedonia, the immovable mental block and the appearance of panic attacks as never in life, I legit got the worst burnout I could ever brew in this wretched body of mine.

And to add salt to the wound, I’ve also fallen waaay behind my exam schedule so my plan to graduate in June went to shit. For now at least, since lately I still managed to work and submit a couple projects so the damage is still bad but not irreversible.

⚠ Also I haven’t been drawing since October and I’m dying inside because I can’t even find the strength to do the things I like :)

And it’s not like I have no ideas, for heaven’s sake. In fact I have too many, the problem is that I can’t put them into practice even if my life depended on it.

And it’s the same for everything else.

I know I have to or want to do something, but I just can’t. And it’s frustrating and it hurts and I spend the nights in bed gnawing at my liver knowing that I’m throwing away time but I can’t help it. I’m stuck in limbo and I don’t see the exit.

⚠ Reason why I forced myself to go to therapy.

I started the sessions the second week of January and am continuing them regularly every Thursday.

My therapist is an exquisite person who is genuinely concerned about my situation and is trying to help me as much as possible despite the fact that at each meeting I manage to further disturb her by adding more and more problematic pieces of my person lol

I ain’t saying that we’re making progress, since it’s too early to see any of it, but it’s certainly a beginning and if everything goes in the right direction, eventually I’ll be able to start again and perhaps, someday, even heal… But for now this is enough for me.

Also because if I continued on my own I doubt I could go on like this for much longer :)

⚠ I have a dog and it’s the only good new in this shit list

His name’s Kratos, he’s a 3 y/o Amstaff I adopted from the dog shelter and I’ve only had him for three months now but if anything happened to him I’d kill everyone in this room and then myself.

⚠ Also I got new glasses and they’re fabulous.

I felt the need for change in my life and therefore the smartest thing that came to my mind was to change my iconic glasses. Old black rectangular is out and gold octagonal is in. Now I’m the same as the reference of my self-insert for Pippo Reporter and the hilarious thing is that I didn’t realize it until it caught my eye while I was searching for another file in my Drive lol

○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦ ○◦━◦○◦ ○◦━◦○◦○

Aaaand that’s it, now I’m better and I’m slowly getting back to being a functional adult, so just forgive my ramblings but y’all’d be used to it by now lmao

[tes-trash-blog]

Mycosis, Or A Slightly More Scientific Take On How The Falmer Came To Be

(Alt title: I’m Never Eating Mushrooms Again)

Yep. This is happening.

Preface: This essay/rant/overanalysis is focusing only on the theoretical physical and biological aspects Falmer devolution. Expect a shorter rant on the spiritual aspect on a later date, thanks to oyarsas.

Part 1. Just Who Were The Falmer Anyway? A Brief Primer

According to the one surviving Snow Elf in Skyrim, the ancient Falmer were a wealthy and advanced race of Elves that occupied a portion of Skyrim during the Merethic Era. A few shenanigans, some unspeakable war crimes, and a genocide later, the remnants of this race fled underground into the waiting arms of the Dwemer. They laid it down in simple terms:

“Many of your people had perished under the roaring, snow-throated kings of Mora, and your wills were broken, and we heard you, and sent our machines against your enemies, to thereby take you under. Only by the grace of the Dwemer did your culture survive, and only by the fifteen-and-one tones did your new lives begin.”

(Fun fact: If you translate the Stone using Ayleid words, it’s actually a lot more sinister!)

This wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts, as the Dwarves were, in objective terms, dicks. While they didn’t want tearful songs of gratitude or boot-licking, they weren’t about to let a bunch of homeless and traumatized Elves, y’know, recover. No, they wanted something.

“We only request you partake of the symbol of our bond, the fruit of the stones around us. And as your vision clouds, as the darkness sets in, fear not.”

That something was their sight, and their obedience. Given what very little we know about Snow Elven culture, this looked to have been a bit of a big deal. After all, all the Prelates at Auri-El’s wayshrines implement light and sight in their blessings, much of the surviving iconography depicts the sun and its radiance, and what few surviving accounts remain mention the “dread of night” and “blessed sun”.

This wasn’t a decision made lightly, is what I’m getting at. The fact they agreed at all surely meant the Dwarves could do what they wished. Seeing some of the more elaborate torture chambers and traps, we can safely assume they did.

The Blinding happened in the Late Merethic Era, some hundreds of years before the Dragon War and the beginning of the First Era. Now comes the fun part.

And by fun part, I mean gross part.

Part 2. Can’t We Just Wrap This Up And Blame The Dwarves?

It wouldn’t be an overanalysis if I did, now would it?

There are theories abound as to how the Dwarves corrupted them, or they were part of a failed experiment (Underkiing, Lord_Hoot). This essay is going to ignore these theories, and focus on the more biological aspects of the Falmer transformation. Starting with a quote from the last surviving Snow Elf:

“The blinding of my race was supposedly accomplished with a toxin. Certainly not enough to devolve them into the sad and twisted beings they've become.”

This is further supported with the poem The Betrayed:

“Thrown into the pitch black dread of night.

Living in fear as their minds become lost.

As their eyes began dimming the light.”

This lost book also points to the slow creeping of insanity among the Snow Elves, no doubt from the unspeakable horrors seen above ground and the fancy word that made me write this whole damn essay in the first place: Mycotoxin!

Mycotoxins are a broad name for the various types of poisons produced by the Fungi kingdom, specifically those that affect animals, humans, and in this case, Elves. From NCBI’s extensive article on Mycotoxins:

“The majority of mycotoxicoses, on the other hand, result from eating contaminated foods. Skin contact with mold-infested substrates and inhalation of spore-borne toxins are also important sources of exposure. Except for supportive therapy (e.g., diet, hydration), there are almost no treatments for mycotoxin exposure”

“[...] Acute toxicity generally has a rapid onset and an obvious toxic response, while chronic toxicity is characterized by low-dose exposure over a long time period, resulting in cancers and other generally irreversible effects.”

That sounds… bad.

So, there are few if any treatments for mycotoxin exposure, and the Dwarves were not ones to use magic, so the only feasible treatment for the mass-poisoning would have been a good diet and hydration, but something tells me the Dwarves were not keen on giving their slaves either of those. From the Diary of Faire Agarwen, we can reasonably deduce that conditions were cramped, dark, and damp even among those who had political clout:

“Seventh Marking, Tenth Kulniir

[...] Often the surroundings make it impossible to dwell on any happiness. We have been locked together in such close quarters for so long.”

Keep in mind here that a kulniir was a notched basin that functioned as a simple time keeper, using drops of water. The diary also mentions there’s no real natural light, so we see the combination of dark, damp, and cramped. This was from a woman who held some social capital. We can assume that conditions for your average Joe and Sally were much worse.

Even among the best of conditions, the Snow Elves were kept in were prime real estate for molds and fungi to thrive. There is (thankfully) no evidence to support my next claim, but it’s also not exactly a stretch of the imagination.

The Falmer: A Study makes clear that the blinding was a multi-generational effort. Within perhaps two or three generations, the Snow Elves were eternally blind. Adding to the permanent blindness, there very well could have been the more unpleasant, unwanted, and unplanned changes.

I’m talking about mutagens.

To pull a real life example, Fumonisin B1 can cause neural tube defects in utero, which means that the toxin affects the development of the brain and spinal cord, as well as the central nervous system. In extreme, chronic cases of fumonisin poisoning, it can keep the brain from forming into a viable state, causing stillbirths. In a universe where dragons fly around and singing plants can make poisons, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that there is something equally terrifying growing in Blackreach. Already blinded, chronically ill, and hopeless, the next generation of Snow Elves were doomed to an ever lower standard of living without even the knowledge that things could be better. Combine that with whatever mold infected whatever flora that grew underground, similar to how say, fumonisin blights grains and how black mold is generally Really Bad For You.. Well, we can assume that there was a more subtle force that guided them to their ferality than whatever the Dwarves did to them.

In the same way the lead pipes of Rome contributed to developmental problems among their populace, I can imagine the toxic spores creating more violent, more feral Falmer, until finally their very sentience was taken from them. Seeing as all of this culminated into a war that spanned decades, something tells me the Dwarves didn’t see that coming.

Part 3: So… CAN They Be Cured?

The short answer is no. From the words of the Knight Paladin himself:

“I'm afraid that they're well beyond a cure at this point. The twisted forms you've seen didn't occur overnight. It isn't a plague or a disease that ravaged our species. The dwarves may have stolen their sight, but it took many generations for them to become what they are today.”

And as found earlier, there are no effective cures for mycotoxin exposure, and I imagine even less for chronic, multi-generational poisonings like what happened to the Snow Elves of old. I’m assuming, but I really don’t want to ever see that tested in the field.

But not all is lost. Gelebor also notes that the modern Falmer have started to re-develop their intellect. This grabbed me, as the Forgotten Vale is vastly different than the caves and ruins you normally find Falmer in. There’s fresh air and cool breezes, and open spaces for those sad little gremlins to lurk about. In short, they’re away from the poisonous influences of those dark caves and toxic spores.

It’s entirely possible that the Falmer of the Vale are developing, and it’s in part because they’re no longer confined to the dark and damp that was their prison. It’s entirely possible that with enough time, and enough patience, the Falmer could slowly undo the effects of their chronic poisoning. Not enough to become the Snow Elves of legend, those days are long since past, but perhaps enough to break their chains, and finally put a voice to thousands of years of suffering.

Sources, inspirations, and tangentially related articles:

Mycotoxins, from the National Center for Biotechnology Information. A recommended primer on the nature of mycotoxins and their effects on more complex organisms.

Toxic effects of mycotoxins in humans, from the World Health Organization, another excellent starting point if you like reading about poisonous fungi.

Repeating Mistakes of the Past: Another Mycoherbicide Research Bill, a condemnation of using mycotoxins in of all things, drug control. This article also calls the use of mycotoxins against humans for what it is: Biowarfare. An interesting, insightful, and very depressing read.

A review of the toxic effects and mechanisms of action of fumonisin B1, from the journal Human and Experimental Toxicology. Behind a paywall, but the abstract sums it all up quite nicely.

A Wikipedia article on the Mexican Tetra, because I think they’re cute.

UESP, without which I would be even more of a babbling trash gremlin.

[ralfstrashcan]

3x20 Reaction / Commentary

I wonder why, considering it wasn't hard at all. They barely had a plan and even had time to include some personal drama in their fight. Wtf. The only thing I can imagine why no one ever managed to kidnap her before is because no one wanted to have a hostage as irritating as the seelie queen.

Hahahahahaha hilarious. Also, lol, no I'm choosing not to think of the implications because they are TOO DISTURBING, YOU HEAR ME @intezaarlily XD XD XD

HAHAHA I CAN'T THE WAY SHE PETULANTLY SHAKES HER HEAD

I mean, compelling argument. And very fitting since we learned from that Lilith Debacle that the Shadowhunters' go to solution for everything and anything is torture. But what I find way more interesting is that we finally get a good look at the side of the seelie queen's crown.

's pretty.

There's so much to unpack in this scene. Which I'm gonna do, in excruciating detail. In a relationship analysis post thingy, not here, because time and space reasons. Just know that this scene is absolutely amazing, their facial expressions and gestures, and of course the pretzel. Dammit, so amazing. Can't wait to fawn over it all.

I'm with Meliorn on this one. Just because Lanaia committed a violation of the Accords (yes, on behalf of the seelie queen but the shadowhunters have no way of knowing that and I guess Meliorn wasn't stupid enough to tell them that) doesn't mean Clary can violate the Accords back and go unpunished. That's not how a legal system works. It's clear that with this whole operation the shadowhunters valued Clary's life over that of however may seelie guards' it would have taken to keep Jace's cover and get Clary back. I bet you Alec is aware of that and that's why he has that pinched look on his face the whole time. And while he argues pro shadowhunter side with that injection about Lanaia and he tries to placate Meliorn, he noticable doesn't try to justify Jace's actions at all, and whenever Jace does, Alec closes his eyes as if he's thinking “Dude don't you realize that's not an argument.”

And then he just wants to leave???? Hahaha creep

HAHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD COMEDIC GOLD. The way he delivers that line I can't!!! The way he says “naturrrrrr” hahaha delicious.

Uh if that's the smartest move? Who knows what kind of kinky shit Meliorn will demand in return?? I mean, just look at his smirk. Also, in case this doesn't get addressed again this is such a ficlet waiting to be written lol.

The way Alec immediately starts almost-crying when someone mentions Magnus pulls on my heartstrings. Fragile darling boy.

I mean, I'm pretty sure Alec carrying the ring around in his pocket was for meta reasons so he could give it to Maryse in their only scene together, but dammmnnn the in universe implications. Ouch.

I'm really going to miss this XD

“My” door??? My ass.

“Alec and I are no longer.”

lsjfkasdjflksdjfsdjflskdjf I CAN'T HAHAHHAAH HIS FACE

Hahahahha please Lorenzo stop, I feel like I shouldn't be laughing so much XD Isn't this episode supposed to be Super Dramatic? I'm actually having the time of my life so far XD

XD XD XD XD XD

Okay and now I'm back to rage because wtf!!!! So Magnus is aware that Lorenzo's jurisdiction is limited and tiny, why didn't he remember that literally anytime before this, for example in 3x10?? Just imagine it, if Magnus had done that fancy ritual thingy he wouldn't have even needed to trade his magic away. Oh right, problem identified. There wouldn't have been some Prime Drama if he'd behaved like a sensible person. Ugh.

The way Lorenzo's face falls upon hearing Asmodeus is priceless. But, uh, important question, how the hell does he know Asmodeus's face? Or does he identify him by his powers? Then again he failed identifying Asmodeus's power signature before already (3x02) so uuhhhh I need answers.

Magnus Bane, finally enjoying the Draco Malfoy Way Of Life. I mean, that's not really rebutting Lorenzo's claim. The opposite, in fact. Also wtf does Lorenzo have for nerves to say that to Asmodeus's face???

So this is not common warlock practice. Thanks for clarifying. Also, look at Asmodeus's smug face when Magnus references Edom hahaha #ProudDad

THE SASS HAHAHA (btw for a moment I was worried he'd turnd him into a plastic lizard until it moved haha)

Also this means, the person Magnus trashes later in the loft with the whips, as seen in the promo, is Asmodeus?? Because he learns of his deal with Alec?? Or tbh, I've been entertaining the thought that it's Alec ahahaha

Also, Asmodues saying “When they hear about what?” has the same energy as Loki saying “I'm listening” in Avengers 1.

Yeah I still have questions about that. But sure, whatever. Then again, if Jordan is so long-fingered he could start a career as pickpocket. Sounds like a stable income job to me.

See, the problem here is that this isn't fixing any of Maia's problems. Apart from the fact that currently she has no problems to fix as far as I'm concerned (the dead pack won't be miraculously resurrected if she becomes human) her issues with her family aren't due to her being a werewolf. She's adjusted to her life as a werewolf and if you ask me, she's grown to love it and she doesn't want to go back. Hell, she wanted to become alpha. She's working on building her own pack now. Someone who hates being a werewolf wouldn't do that. Very obviously, his line of reasoning makes sense for Jordan because he can't forgive himself for turning and abandoning Maia, which he views as ruining her life. So by reversing it he could finally start to atone for what he did. Perfectly ic, but very frustrating because as I pointed out, this won't benefit Maia in any way, it'll just create drama between the two of them. (And frankly, while I moderately care about both of them, I'd rather have Malec on my screen. Sue me.)

Uh-huh, so some werewolf praetor spy with binoculars saw that Jordan stole the vial from the Institute but Izzy and Simon, who were literally in the same room didn't. No questions, your honor. Also ngl, since I knew this scene from the sneak peek already and couldn't care less about Luke's stupid Praetor plotline I skipped this scene XD #sorry not sorry

I know a lot of people were relieved Clary didn't make out with Jonathan and I'm honestly so surprised why people would assume in the first place there was any risk for that. Despite the Evil Rune taking hold she's still aware of her feelings, for example her love for Jace etc. So why would she suddenly be into incest?

Hehehehe the likelyhood of Asmodeus getting trashed in that loft is growing XD (Also please appreciate how I'm keeping my salt about Maryse's “I love you” under wraps, I'm amazed at my self restraint.)

I mean, I was really surprised by a character actually taking action, trying their hand at communication like this. I am impressed. The thing that I slightly dislike is that it's Maryse. She didn't have all the info about the deal Alec made with Asmodeus and a) Izzy had and I really, really expected her to do something about that instead of just letting Alec wreck his life and, to a good part, Magnus's as well, and b) if even Maryse, without even knowing for sure that Magnus's magic returned after Alec broke up with him, could put two and two together, why the hell didn't Magnus??

I can half buy that with his issues and insecurites striking harder than ever, amplyfied by the severe grief of his magic loss, he'd fall for Alec's lies because to him Alec loving him the way he did was too good to be true anyway, and their relationship wasn't long enough for Magnus to really get used to the idea that he gets to keep this. It's obvious in the way he always keeps his eyes closed after they kiss, this moment of disbelieve that this is actually real. So Alec breaking up with him wouldn't be an unreastic thing, it would be reality finally catching up with them, it'd be the universe rightening itself.

But, I only half buy it. Because even if Magnus had doubts about himself and his worth, how the hell could he revisit all those memories in 3x19 where Alec was dropping wedding vows left and right, and not realize that something about Alec was off there. Anyway, dwelling on this is pointless because what's done is done, but it's a very weak explanation and very convenient, story telling wise.

Hahahha love me some common sense. Maia has tons of it. Makes her so likable.

Listen, I like Jordan, but I can't even feel any sympathy in the face of all this stupidity. Just take the frakkin vial yourself, idiot. Humans don't die from silver poisoning. And it's clear that you're struggling with your werewolf-dom to hell and back. This would literally solve all of their problems wtf. But God forbid anyone ever act reasonable on this show. Goddammit.

Hahahha so rude. *Loki Voice* WHO PUT HIM THERE??? Another missing scene ficlet dying to be written XD Also, does Lorenzo still have his consciousness or was his mind reduced to that of a lizard? Will it be restored when he's transformed back? Is that even possible or was that transformation irreversible? Will he remember his time as a lizard? Or is Lorenzo as we know and love to hate him gone forever? So many questions.

Bitch you didn't, you had to be TOLD

I find it amazing that Asmodues tries to argue with Magnus even though his evil plan was uncovered. He really doesn't get it, does he? That Magnus likes his life and doesn't want to be in Edom?

I am reeling. What a frikkin powermove, disposing of him like that, and with his own invention no less. Talk about a dead ass capable character who could trash everyone in his way. Honestly I'm still processing. This is so radical wtf. So I'm never gonna get another scene with Asmodeus?? Please I wanted more of them!! I am so helplessly in love with their dynamic. 5 bucks say he was supposed to come back in S4 I WAS SO DEPRIVED OH GOD!!!!!

Edit: Yeah, this was actually supposed to be a setup for a Dark!Magnus plotline, with Asmodeus playing a big role in S4. They changed that and cut this short, here's the article I got this from. We were so robbed. I can't.

“Hurry, away from this Shadowhunter Nonsense. Honestly, that they can never solve their shit issues in their own fugly ass Institute but have to do it on our beautifully groomed frontyard. The disrespect.”

WOW IZZY'S WEARING FLAT SHOES FOR THE OCCASION CAN YOU BELIEVE IT

Also that fighting is awesome and all (Alec as a tactical advantage, Jace “betraying” his position as a ploy, color me impressed) but doesn't Clary have to stab Jonathan for it to work?? Or is it enough if one of the bondmates is stabbed with the sword?? And since Fake Glorious is super instable etc. and will likely be destroyed in the process they shouldn't take any chances and make sure it really works the first time around.

I get that this is supposed to be dramatic but sorry, I don't buy for one second that 3 Months Shadowhunter Newby Clary manages to get one over Izzy who's been literally trained since birth (yeah that was a quote from Arthur because I'm total Merlin Trash) and she's their best fighter ever and could beat Jace and Alec at the same time with the flick of a wrist while blindfolded. Please. Oh my god. Maybe because she always fights with her whip she's not too used to a sword. Then again she also uses a staff and she still was trained since birth so no, I'm still not buying it.

Hahahahah nice one, Simon.

“That's my plan, you can bet on it, bet on it, bet on it....”

why I mean, this was a conscious choice on producers' part, right. So I'm demanding an explanation. What's the point of this weirdly edited grunt?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA SAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Hm, they don't fold too nicely. But all in all, pretty solid wing work.

?????? This makes no sense since, prior to this half season, he wasn't tethered to Clary. Wtf. For all intents and purposes, Jonathan should be dropping dead to the ground since he was using Clary's life force to be alive, remember, he was literally killed to death before. Only their bond was keeping him alive. This makes no sense whatsoever. But anyway, that was a pretty impressive departure.

Yeah, how about you get the f outta there now, Simon.

H-e-a-l-i-n-g  r-u-n-e. Honestly. Wtf.

Also, Izzy pushing Simon to the ground was a little stupid, he could have vampire-run out of the explosion's perimeter easily. If he had a few brain cells. Okay, problem identified, I take everything back, Izzy made the right call.

And I guess Alec's just chilling over there on the forrest ground. He deserves that break, man.

Just force it down Jordan's throat omg. If he still dies, whatever, good for him, he got what he wanted. If not then he can maybe start facing his Maia-shaped issues in a constructive way.

Maia giving it to Luke makes no sense. How the f does he want to “get rid of it” wtf. If I were Maia I'd just pour it in the river or idk, burry it somewhere. Lock it in a safe, throw away the key. Or better yet, keep an eye on it. But sure, Luke who just learned the Praetor are full of shit is gonna give it to them?? I mean, the thought must have crossed his mind that maybe they didn't heal Jordan as a punishment for failing that Heidi mission? Since apparently it's common werewolf knowledge that the Praetor is able to cure a silver poisoning? Jordan wouldn't have said that if they didn't have a cure for it, right? If Luke honestly gives them that vial, he'll be dead to me. I fully expect him to try and blackmail the Praetor with it or something, but if he doesn't istg.

You're on thin effing ice, man.

Aahhhhh yeah how very convenient. Also rude, they stole Jonathan's home :C Also technically she shouldn't be able to do that because it's demon travel and she no longer has a connection to demon blood.

Yeah and they also steamrolled whatever room was there before they parked that big ass apartment there. Congrats.

“You barely got your licence to drive a car, much less whatever that was.”

hahahaha

ALEC'S FACE HAHAHAHAHA I LOVE ONE 100% DONE MAN

Hell yeah logic!! But lol I genuinely don't think Jace or Simon thought of that when they were unhelpfully patting her back.

.........? How is Simon there then? This isn't even sarcasm, I genuinely don't get it.

This was cute and all, but she didn't actually activate her iratze wtf. Or wash off her blood.

Dude wtf Maia

I mean come on, this is so obvious to top off their drama.

Yep, I called it. Seriously, you don't leave a person on the brink of death alone for literally this reason. And before you tell me she was just getting some food to lighten the mood from her way back from the bridge, there was still tons of daylight then and this is at least several hours later. I am sorry, but I feel zero sympathy.

1) Where do those surviving werewolves besides Bat come from? 2) What does mundane police have to say about this public cremation? 3) I remember this shot of Maia walking away from the fire from the 3B Trailer. So rude.

ALSO I'M MORE THAN READY FOR SOME MALEC CONTENT WTF MAN

NO. NO I DO NOT BUY. EITHER THE WINGS ARE STILL THERE OR HIS JACKET IS RIPPED TO PIECES BUT YOU DON'T GET TO PRETEND THEY MAGICALLY APPEAR ON TOP OF HIS CLOTHES WTF He's not Miley Cyrus from that one music video. (Can't be Tamed, if you're wondering.)

0 bucks say he caught them making out, honestly this was so obvious.

This rang deep. Really great moment. I can't really put it into words, but this had such an impact. A real warrior feel to it. Amazing.

“No obviously we don't but c'mon, work with me here.”

I can't possibly put into words the love I'm feeling for one (1) extra warlock.

He finally got it. My poor murderous incest baby. Too bad this means Clary lost her only bargaining chip.

NOOOO IT'S NOT, YOU WERE RAISED BY VAL IN A HUT AND THEN LIVED AT THE NY INSTITUE, THE ONLY TIME YOU VISITED ALICANTE WAS OWL'ED OUT OF YOUR MIND TO KILL IMOGEN WHAT THE HELL HAHAHA

I love how he delivers this line. It's his goodbye because there's no making it out of there alive, and the last thing of importance he has to say is a love confession to Clary. Very nice delivery.

ahahahahah okay this was a nice echoing of Jace's other love confession, but all I could focus on was how frakkin red Clary's hand is hahaha

I love everything about this, okay. I love how Alec just gives in because he couldn't stand to be apart from Magnus for one more second. I love how this is reminiscent of their first kiss at Alec's fail wedding. (Btw can you believe we're gonna start and end Malec with a kiss at a wedding and a wedding kiss? The poetry.) I love the backdrop, the absolute destruction. Love Izzy in her rightful place in the first row since she's the Captain of the MS Malec.

I really appreciate that they bothered with an explanation why Magnus needs to go to Edom at all, but, uh, if memory serves right he closed a rift to Edom in 2x19 and it was no big deal. I'd buy that this rift is larger or more powerful because it was created by the Morgenstern Sword but just because I can find an explanation that this task is harder than one Magnus already accomplished onscreen with relative ease doesn't mean it's not the Show’s duty to deliver an explanation of its own accord instead of letting fans pick through their worldbuilding and figuring out something that makes sense. A simple “You closed rifts before, from Earth.” - “This rift is too large” would have been enough. Is that too much to ask.

GOD MAGNUS WHY THAT WORDING I HAD TO THINK OF LORENZO WTF MAN WHY YOU MAKE ME THINK OF LORENZO WHHHYYYYYYYY

When he lifted his hand in that slow deliberate move I was SO SURE HE'D BE WEARING THE LIGHWOOD RING HAHAHA

HAHAHA THAT WAS CLEARLY NOT THE FUGLY LIGHTWOOD FAMILY RING (since that has a square shape on top, come on) YES I STAN A FASHION ICON

Btw there's a description in those rings, I can't really tell, but the one on the right looks like a loopy A upside down so I'm guessing one has “Alexander” and the other “Magnus” on the inside????

Edit: Both rings say “Aku cinta kamu” and I am DEAD

Hahahaha Alec wanted to win the proposal but this round goes to Magnus. But tbh he totally cheated XD XD XD

Ngl, the ring catching on Magnus's knuckle for a moment reminded me of the wedding of Kate and William ahahahaa I'm trash XD

Can you believe Malec got cheated out of their first engaged kiss by some rude ass explosion? Unfair.

I find myself genuinely confused by this. Why does Alec even entertain the thought of not going with Magnus? It seems so illogical that they'd seperate now. Later reason kicked in, and yeah, Edom probably isn't the best place for a shadowhunter but this is exactly it: Alec's instinct should have been to go with Magnus and I wish they'd taken the time to address this in any way, to give Alec the chance to express his wish to go with Magnus.

WTF WHY DOES MAGNUS SHAKE HIS HEAD THIS IS NOT OKAY WTF

But then he jokes about runaway grooms anyway because he thinks he’ll never see Alec again and he wants Alec to remember him joking & smiling & happy *cries* I’M SAD. why did I bring that up.

Thanks, @intezaarlily for making tHIS EVEN WORSE WTF

OH MY GOD I CAN'T I'M LAUGHING SO HARD THIS IS SO RIDICULOUS HAHAHAHA Magnus REALLY should have pulled the portal down on himself and not flown into it like a flying fish jumping out of the water wtf hahaha. Then again this is proof he can totally do the superman flight and it is CANON that he did that at some point. He had a whole annoying phase where he'd just fly around like a super hero. Cat was so done with it. Ragnor refused to be around him at all. Good times.

Anyway, another thing I need an explanation for is why it'll be so hard for Magnus to return to Earth. In 3x10 that posed No Problem, meaning one of two things. Either a) Asmodeus sent him back or b) he could easily travel back because he used that pentagram thingy. Honestly, the fact that Jonathan just as easily returns to Earth after his failed attempt on Lilith's life lets me favor b), which begs the question why Magnus used a regular portal instead of the pentagram thingy now. But even if a) is the case then that means Greater Demons apparently have no problem removing people from Edom and then I wonder if Magnus will have to beg Azazel or something to return him home lol, like a little kiddie asking for a lift. Or maybe, since he channelled his epic Edom!Power, maybe he can send himself back?? In any case I want some solid explanation on that.

Alec just collapsing made so much sense okay. I could feel the emptiness in my own chest, having gained and lost everything in a few short minutes, I can't even imagine how crushed Alec must be feeling.

Magnus's magic closing the rift is so epic in an incredibly emotional and intimate sense. Seeing his magic, part of him, when he's so far beyond all of their reach. It's incredible, it's touching and powerful and so so fragile. I'm amazed.

I can't believe they did this. I can't believe they put the literally last shot of this in the 3B Trailer. The audacity.

Okay but really important question, who's gonna feed Lorenzo now??? (God only one week left I am dead.)

[justanotherwannabeclassic]

Finding Neverland (13/?)

Summary: When Juliet Jones and Gideon Gold fall through a time portal and find themselves in Neverland, finding a way back home is the least of their worries. One wrong step can irreversibly change the course of history, placing both of their existences in jeopardy. As Juliet attempts to ensure her parents are on course to falling in love, Gideon struggles with the realization that he’s about to meet his deceased brother for the very first time. Will they succeed in preserving the timeline, and what happens when these star-crossed lovers realize their respective families’ goals are at odds? Relationships: Gideon Gold x OC Swan-Jones kiddo, Captain Swan, references to Rumbelle and slight Swanfire

Read now on AO3.

Previous Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Chapter 13

Her plan needs an operation name.

Plans with operation names tend to be more successful -- at least, that’s what the storybooks have told her. Operation: Cobra. Operation: Mongoose. Operation: Light Swan. Operation: Whatever Random Animal Comes to Mind. Operation names had always been Henry’s forte, but since Juliet had long ago made it her own form of rebellion to be the opposite of Henry in a number of ways, she finds herself lacking in the whole “naming operations” department.

Most pressing, however, is that Juliet’s plan needs to actually exist outside of the vague conceptualization of “let’s hook -- pun only kinda intended -- my parents up.” That’s the end goal, right alongside “don’t die” and “get back to the correct point in time.” Though, Juliet reasons, if she fails at part one -- the aforementioned hooking up of her parents -- then she’ll just fade from existence, technically not dying.

After all, she can’t really die if she never existed in the first place.

How comforting.

All of this weighs heavily on her mind, but instead she focuses on naming the whole damn sort-of plan because that feels the least daunting. She needs a win right now, and naming her operation will be it. Only what will it be? She doesn’t know. Henry is the poetic one in the family, stronger with metaphors and fun naming conventions. Juliet’s creativity comes in the form of art and photos. She’s visual, and unfortunately, operation names are not that. 

“Operation: Anything having to do with a Swan” feels a little too on the nose.

“Operation: Kittens” sounds a bit too cute for a  life or non-existence scenario, no matter how much she likes kittens.

She’s still mulling over a name when she notices her father approaching her, coconut in hand. Operation: Coconut, it is. The operation name might not be an animal, but she doesn’t totally have to follow in Henry’s footsteps, pleasing her inner rebellious teen. And despite hating coconut water -- a fact this version of her father apparently doesn’t know -- seeing him with something in hand clearly for her makes her smile, and that’s enough.

“Hi there.”

“Morning.” He holds out the coconut, which she takes gratefully. She can power through pretending to drink coconut water if it means spending more time with him. She misses him -- the version of him she knows and loves -- terribly. “I know that Emma mentioned you weren’t fond of coconuts, but you need sustenance for what’s coming.”

She stares up at him, blinking in confusion, until she realizes that he’s referencing their plan to steal Pan’s shadow. Everything from the previous night is somewhat fuzzy. Try as she might to stay awake, Juliet had found herself dozing when the others had begun discussing the next steps toward successfully saving Henry. She thinks the plan they concocted involved something to do with using her and Emma’s magic, and she resolves to better inquire about the plan some more. At the moment, however, she’s more interesting in the first half of her father’s statement. Emma mentioned that Juliet didn’t like coconuts. That means that they had talked about her, a fact that ignites a small bit of hope. “You guys talk about me?”

“When it’s relevant, yes.”

“What makes it relevant?”

“When you get kidnapped by Pan.”

“Oh, that.” It makes sense. Dimly, she wonders what it was like when she disappeared. She knows that Gideon hadn’t reacted well -- that much she could tell from the way he had refused to let go of hand as they trekked back to camp. But the others? She isn’t sure. Up until now, her father’s past self had acted indifferent since he had found her and Neal outside of Echo Cave. Did he care when she had gone missing? Juliet isn’t sure she wants to know the answer.

“Aye, that.” He glances over the part of camp where Gideon is speaking in a low voice to Neal. She wonders what they’re saying. Her father turns back to her, and scratches behind his ear. It’s an action she’s seen plenty over the course of her life, one that indicates that he’s particularly nervous about whatever he plans to say next. “Listen, love, Pan is a monster. He enjoys both sowing discord and hurting people.”

“I kind of figured that part out when he had his crew kidnap me. And when he attempted to proposition my boyfriend into killing everyone -- which he wasn’t going to do, by the way.” Juliet makes a point of stressing that Gideon wasn’t going to hurt them. Recalling his hesitance outside of Echo Cave, she isn’t positive that her father truly believes her, but it’s worth a shot. She knows that Hook doesn’t actually have a reason to trust Gideon at this juncture, but she still finds her father’s attitude unfair and feels the desire to defend the man she loves. “Pan probably knew you were lurking in the bushes, anyway. He wanted you to think that...that Romeo was was the bad guy, making you not trust him. Sort of like how everyone here doesn’t trust you, even though you’re one of the good guys.

“I’m no hero,” he says with a false sort of laugh. He rights himself quickly enough, and once again runs his fingers through his hair. “At any rate, his stunt at Echo Cave was one such example of that.”

“Neal and I got ourselves out of it.” By revealing way too much information, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Aye, but not without a few bruises, it seems.” He casts another significant glance over his shoulder toward Gideon. For a moment, Juliet struggles to recall just what he’s referencing. Then she remembers Neal’s cover.

As grateful as she is for Neal’s quick thinking, she’s not fond with his particular choice of lie. It had been clever and believable, especially since she’s pretending to be someone that ran away from her family for a man, but she doesn’t like that Gideon is now forced to feign anger and hurt in regards to their relationship.

Her father looks like he’s about to say something else, but he’s cut off by Neal announcing, “Hey, Romeo and I are going to get some water. When we get back, we can leave to get the shadow.”

Juliet doesn’t pay attention to Regina’s argument in response, but instead focuses on Gideon and his resolute expression. He takes a deep breath before following behind Neal and disappearing into the jungle. She’s curious about how the conversation will play out, halfway worried about the effect that it might have on Gideon, but mostly glad he gets the chance to spend time with Neal.

“He loves you.”

Hook’s voice pulls her attention. She wonders now what he would say to her if she actually did come to him with her non-existent worries about whether she and Gideon were moving too fast. Romantic relationship advice had always been more of her mother’s forte. It wasn’t that her father was bad at it, but Juliet had always felt more comfortable turning to her mother -- probably the gender thing. Regardless of who she went to first for advice, her father had always provided a shoulder to cry on when needed. Of course, now that she actually needs his shoulder to cry on, he’s not the same man. 

“Did you really come over here to discuss my love life?”

“No, I didn’t. I came over to ensure your safety.” He continues to stand over her, a large, looming figure covered in black. “However, I did spend an extended period around him. He was driven mad with worry after he realized you disappeared.”

“He’s that kind of guy.” She sits the coconut down and pokes at the ground. She doesn’t want dwell on the effects that her kidnapping had on her boyfriend. She might have been the primary victim in the situation, but her loved one had also been unfairly hurt in the process. As angry as she already had been with Pan, she feels it double in her chest. She’s come to realize exactly why her father had always referred to Peter Pan as a demon.

“Aye, he is.” Her father fixes her with an intense stare. “He seems like the sort of man who would understand if you had reservations regarding your relationship.”

Had this conversation taken place thirty years in his future, Juliet might find his concern to be sweet. Instead, she feels a bubble of guilt forming in her gut at the slight worry in his eyes. She loathes the protracted lies she and Gideon have needed to weave to maintain their covers. She’s uncomfortable lying to her parents in this manner. Though she’s told her fair share of lies to them in the past -- what kid hasn’t lied to their parents every now and then? -- her actions now feel more insidious...and there’s nothing she can do about it except lie some more.

She looks away from her father, the loss of eye contact making her deceptions easier.  “We’ll figure it out. We always have.” She picks up the coconut. “Thanks for this, and checking on me, and discussing my love life even if that wasn’t your full intention.”

“Right.” Juliet thinks he might turn to leave, but he continues to stare at her carefully. “What? Is there something on my face?”

“I should have asked Swan to do this,” he murmured, casting his eyes skyward. He sighs deeply. “Love, did Pan or any of his crew touch you in any way…?”

“Touch me…?” It takes a moment for her to process. “Oh my God.”

Suddenly, she’s fifteen again, drunk off wine coolers and rum stolen from her parents’ liquor cabinet. Juliet remembers the night -- the “unofficial” cast party celebrating the closing of  the school’s production of Legally Blonde: The Musical. (She had been Elle, thank you very much.) Juliet had been reckless then, believing herself unbreakable and immortal in only the way teenagers can. Instead of crashing for the night in Susan Sparrow’s basement, she’d decided to walk home -- she only lived a mile away -- and sneak in through her bedroom window.

“My dad’s the best pirate, so that means I’ve inherited the best sneaking skills. It’s a fact!”

How she would sneak through her second-story bedroom window that night, Juliet didn’t have the opportunity to find out. Her father, by chance thanks to a night patrol, had found her emptying the contents of her stomach into Grumpy’s azaleas.  

Juliet remembers how he had ushered her into the back of the patrol car and driven her home.  She remembers his tight, but loving embrace when he carried back into their house, and tucked her into bed. And, she remembers the lecture she’d received the next day, just the two of them on the back porch swing.

“I loathe that we live in a world that forces me to tell you these things, and I recognize what I’m saying places a burden on you that shouldn’t be yours, but sweetheart, you have to stay safe. I’m not saying don’t imbibe ever. I’d be a hypocrite if I tried. But the world -- and yes, even Storybrooke -- is not a kind place, and it is full of people who enjoy preying on the vulnerable, and inebriation makes us more vulnerable.”

“Dad--”

“When I was just a pirate, I saw terrible men do awful things, and overheard the most sordid of tales. While laying with a consenting woman was always policy on my ship, it was not like that for everyone. And last night, when I found you sick and alone, I was reminded of those men.”

“But nothing happened!”

“And I want nothing to ever happen. The prospect of it, even thinking that -- Juliet, promise me that if you are ever in a situation like that again, you will call someone. Your mother or I, Henry, your grandparents, or even Neal. It doesn’t even have to be family. It can be a trusted and sober friend. Don’t get behind the wheel yourself, or try to wonder home disoriented. We will find you.”

He’d been so concerned then. As much as it embarrasses her now, Juliet had written off his concern as parental paranoia. He’d always had an overprotective streak, the result of his own past trauma. It hadn’t been until she’d grown older and lived a life outside of the protective watch of her parents that she truly began to understand her father’s warnings.

But the man standing before her now isn’t her father -- not yet, anyway. His concern for her isn’t paternal, but it’s still there. As starved as she had been for his attention the previous night, she’s grateful for whatever care he can muster -- even if the delivery lacks his normal affection. At least this way she can pretend that the man before her is the Killian Jones she knows and loves.

She’s happy when she finally doesn’t have to lie. “Nothing happened. I promise.”

He smiles, the relief evident. “Good.”

 -/-

 “So...what do you think of Neverland?”

Small talk has always been an enigma for Gideon. While working with patients, it comes naturally to him. He thinks it’s because he can hide behind the mask of the white coat, and that small talk helps his patients -- especially the kids -- relax. In social situations, however, he finds himself at a loss for words, stumbling over the dumbest of questions.

Like asking his brother what he thinks of the hell hole that is Neverland.

But he has his reasons. Kind of. When Gideon had been younger, he’d asked his father about Neverland and Peter Pan. The concept of an island where no one ever ages had been appealing to him as a child. Truly, it sounded like an awfully big adventure. That had been the moment Gideon first learned that his grandfather was Peter Pan. His parents -- because his father, understandably, felt this was a story best told with his mother present -- had given him the sanitized version of the truth behind Neverland and Peter Pan. Henry and, later, Juliet’s father had given him the unsanitized version. Over the years, he had wondered what his brother’s adventures entailed, and now that Neal is here, Gideon has the opportunity to ask….even if it feels like a stupid question.

It probably is a stupid question, but it feels safe. The novelty of actually getting to know his brother hasn’t fully sunken in, not in the way that matters. Part of him feels as if he’s wasting the moment. Another part of him still wants to run away back to camp. The part of him that recognizes his running back empty-handed would be suspicious keeps him in place.

“I think I wasted way too much of my life here. So, it sucks.” Neal looks over his shoulder. “Please tell me you didn’t ask me to go get water with you so we could discuss Neverland.”

“Um, not really, no.” Gideon looks down at the ground, cheeks flushing red. He takes note of the vines and roots, making certain to not also trip. “J thought it would be good for us to have the chance to talk. You know, without others.”

“So your girlfriend made you drag me out here.”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Realizing how terrible that sounds, he continues, “It’s not that I didn’t want to without her pushing things along, it’s just a lot. It’s weird.”

“Because I’m dead in the future.”  He can’t see Neal’s face. His brother is continuing to push forward toward some pond -- they do have to come back with water, after all. But, Gideon can see the tenseness in his shoulders and hear the heaviness in Neal’s voice. It reminds him of his patients, the ones who had been given the worst medical news. And, in a way, Juliet had handed Neal his own death sentence.

“Something like that.” Gideon takes a deep breath. “I mean, have you ever spent your whole life wondering about someone, having all of these questions, and knowing you might never get answers? And now, suddenly, you an get answers and it feels...daunting.”

There’s a long pause before Neal answers. “Yeah, I get that. Guess it’d be like that if I met my mom again.”

Gideon winces at Neal’s response. “So you meant what you said back at camp? About your secret at Echo Cave?”

“Something like that,” Neal parrots. He stops then, and turns to Gideon. Looking him in the eye, he says, “Just so you know, I was making that stuff up about what I said about your girlfriend. She never said anything about moving too fast.”

“Uh, yeah, I know.”

“You didn’t act like it.”

“I thought it would blow our cover if I was too blase about it.” He shrugs, even though Neal doesn’t appear entirely convinced. “But thanks for your quick thinking. That was helpful.”

“I couldn’t exactly say your girlfriend said you were both from the future,” Neal replies. His expression then turns curious. “Speaking of covers, please tell me your name isn’t actually Romeo. I know Belle loves books, but --”

“It’s not. Just the first thing that came to mind.” Gideon refrains from mentioning that he’s half-convinced that he and Juliet are some incarnation of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers. Henry had mentioned once that Shakespeare had been an Author. “My name is actually Gideon.”

“Gideon Gold, huh?”

“Not all of us can be named Baelfire.” Neal barks out a laugh, and for a moment, Gideon feels a surge of pride. He’s able to make his brother laugh. “Mom’s the one who named me -- after a character from a book -- so you got that part right.”

“And about Belle, apparently.” There’s a twinkle in Neal’s eyes, and Gideon’s stomach immediately drops. He’s struck by how easy Neal had been able to weasel information about the future out of him. Sensing his panic, Neal raises his hands in supplication. “Hey, that part I had figured out since your girlfriend said you were my brother. The way my -- our -- father is with Belle, it wasn’t hard to put two-and-two together. Besides, you look a bit like her.”

Gideon breathes a sigh of relief. “Father says that’s a good thing.”

“Better to inherit her looks than the crocodile skin,” Neal says with a small laugh. “Look, we still need to get water. How about on the way, we talk about normal sibling things -- things that aren’t full of spoilers about the immediate future, so you can stop having a panic attack every time something comes up.”

Gideon cracks a smile.  ��Sounds like a plan.”

As they make their way toward the pond, Gideon and Neal trade questions. They start with small questions -- favorite colors, foods, and books -- but quickly the questions grow a bit deeper. Neal listens intently as Gideon shares horror stories from his medical residency and explains his motivations for choosing the medical profession. Neal, in turns, opens about about starting over in the Land Without Magic. By the time they reach the pond, they’re trading stories about living in New York.

“I don’t know if it comforts me to know that the subway system is still a mess that far in the future,” Neal says, dismay evident from his tone to his face after Gideon recounts nearly missing his test in undergrad because he had been trapped in a stalled train.

“Look at it this way, the more things the change, the more they also stay the same. You can count on it like death and taxes.” Gideon immediately regrets his choice of words. I am an idiot.

“Some of us can count on death more easily than others.”

“I’m sorry you had to find out about that. I can’t imagine it’s easy knowing.”  Gideon fills his skein with water. “Juliet wouldn’t have told you if she didn’t have to. I’m pretty sure she feels bad about that.”

Neal scoffs. “Pretty sure?”

“We didn’t exactly have much time to discuss her specific feelings on the matter.” There’s something in Neal’s tone that sets Gideon on edge, but he doesn’t let it show.

“From where I was sitting, she didn’t seem to like me too much.”

“She hardly knows you. Besides, she told me that she didn’t think you were the worst. She even called you charming,” Gideon answers. He feels the need to defend Juliet, even though Neal hasn’t said anything completely off-base.

“She completely blew her gasket when I kissed Emma,” Neal says, and this time Gideon recognizes that his older brother is now hedging for clues about the future.

“I think that’s an extreme read of the situation,” Gideon sighs deeply. He had known this area of conversation was unavoidable, insofar that Juliet had requested that he do whatever possible to discourage Neal from pursuing Emma. Gideon knows he needs to do this, but he hesitates. His conversation with his brother had been going so well, and now he’s going to ruin it all.

“You know, for a brief moment, I thought she was my kid. Once I found out she was from the future, I thought that might be the reason she seemed so mad at me in the cave. I died and left her, and there was some lingering  resentment, and I hoped...” Neal rubs the back of his neck, and looks skyward. “Anyway, then she said you were my brother, and that killed that dream.”

“We’re not the Lannisters.” Their respective family trees might be convoluted, but they’re not blood related. Gideon shudders at the thought. Still...he can’t quite blame Neal from going down that mental path. Knowing his feelings for Emma, it only makes sense.

“Yeah, I hoped not,” Neal says with a broken sort of laugh. “But she’s related to Emma, right? She said her family was here, and she looks a lot like Emma.”

“I think we’re getting into spoiler territory.”

“You know that’s basically confirming my suspicions, right?” Neal kicks a rock into the water. He doesn’t look at Gideon, and for that Gideon is grateful. “So what is she, like her sister? It seems pretty obvious Snow and Charming might want another kid. They don’t strike me as a one-and-done kind of pair.”

They’re not, Gideon thinks. They have another son. They named him after you. He’s a police officer, and lives in Storybrooke with his husband, and they’re in the process of adopting twins. Of course, he can’t tell Neal any of that.

“Listen, Neal…” Gideon comes up short with what to say. He settles on, “You already know a lot about the future.”

“I’m honestly a little surprised the others haven’t noticed the resemblance.”

“They’re not looking for one. People see what they want to see.” Like how you think she’s Emma’s sister. He’d been worried about it, at first, believing that someone might note the similarities in appearance. No one has, and if they’ve thought about it, they’ve held their tongues. They don’t see them as Gideon Gold and Juliet Jones, but rather Romeo and Juliet from far off Verona. Juliet is just another pretty blonde in a sea of pretty blondes, just like how he’s another guy. They’re not looking for family resemblances in the way that Neal is.

“Why’d she not want me kissing Emma anyway?”

“Because you and her didn’t happen back then, er, now. And we’ve changed enough already. We don’t want to wreck the timeline even more than we already have,” Gideon explains slowly. He wonders if this is what Neal had really be trying to get at when he started asking about Juliet. “So you can’t do that anymore. Kiss Emma, I mean.”

Goal: accomplished.

“How can you even know that?”

Or not.

“You know how Henry has his fairytale book with everyone’s stories? There’s another book in the future where that includes this whole adventure, and a ton of stories that happened since Emma first arrive in Storybrooke,” Gideon huffs out. His frustration is growing. Why can’t Neal understand? He feels like a villain, crushing the heart of his victim. “And you and Emma? You’re not in it, at least not as lovers, not since first left her way back when.”

“You love you girlfriend?”

“What?” This is not the direction Gideon had expected the conversation to go. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s a yes or no question. Do you love her?” Neal is once again facing him. Gideon takes in the hard set of his brother’s shoulders, the way his arms are crossed, and his knitted brows. Neal will not back down from this train of thought.

“Of course I love her.”

“How much?

“Really?”

“Humor me.”

Gideon casts his eyes skyward. This is not how he expected to be discussing his love life with his deceased brother. “I have a ring. Back home. I’m planning to propose soon. Going by that, I love her quite a bit.” He pauses, thinking of an earlier conversation. “She’s all my heart.”

Neal’s expression momentarily softens. “Wow, congrats. I hope she says yes.”

“Unsurprisingly, so do I.” He’s fairly certain that she will say ‘yes’. Their friends seem convinced of that fact. Her family, too. The aforementioned Neal Nolan, who acts more like Juliet’s closest friend and confidant than uncle, has even made Gideon promise to run by any proposal plans. “She’s going to agree to it no matter what, but you want the whole thing to be something she’ll remember, right?”

“Okay, so you have this girl--”

“--woman--”

“--woman, fine, you get the point. You have this woman that you love. Now imagine finding out you’re going to die, that you’re going to lose absolutely everything, and you don’t know when or how, but it’s definitely going to happen -- and soon, by the sound of things. You can’t tell me that you won’t do everything possible to hold onto the person you love,” Neal pleads with him. And, in a way, he’s right. If the world ended tomorrow, he’d want nothing more than to spend it with Juliet in his arms. But--

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Gideon doesn’t even try to hide the defeat in his voice. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation. What he wants is for Neal to not even pursue Emma, for them to just act like brothers-- whatever that means. What he wants for the weight of the future to be lifted from both their shoulders. What he wants it to not be the bad guy. He can’t always get what he wants. “Neal, I understand the future is terrifying, and I know you’re probably thinking about every single thing you regret--”

“You know? I don’t think you have any idea how I feel! I’m going to die, and you have a future with your girlfriend to run back to!”

“A future that might not even exist,” Gideon argues, his voice rising. He runs his fingers through his hair and takes a step back. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it. We didn’t even want to be here. We fell through a goddamn portal. J and I, we didn’t even try to, and we fucked things up. Things are bad right now, universe ending bad. So, while I might be sympathetic to your plight -- it fucking sucks -- it’s not high on my priority list.”

Neal blinks, clearly taken aback by Gideon’s outburst. “What are you even talking about?”

“Things that were supposed to happen didn’t end up happening, which set off a domino effect of preventing other things from happening, and we don’t know how to fix it.” His answer comes out in a half-sob, the weight of everything at stake finally taking over.

“Could what you did hurt Henry? Emma?”

“Definitely.”

“Then tell me how I can help.” Neal walks over and places his hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “If Emma and Henry’s future is really in danger, tell me what you two messed up, and I will help fix it.”

Gideon shakes his head. “We can’t. We already told you too much.”

“Look, I already know too much, and I’m a dead guy walking. And by the sound of things, you two are completely in over your head. You need help,” Neal insists. “You know I’m right.”

Gideon considers Neal’s offer. They need help. Desperately. But, “You’re not going to like what we have to do.”

“I kind of already figured that part out.”

Gideon suddenly wishes desperately for Hook’s flask of rum. Juliet is going to kill him. But, if they pull this off, she’ll still exist. That will be something worth celebrating, assuming Neal doesn’t kill him because of the words that come out of his mouth next.

“We need to get Emma and Hook to kiss.” Neal recoils as if Gideon had just burned him. “What.” It’s not a question.

“We need to find a way for Hook and Emma to kiss. They had their first kiss in Neverland, you see, and I know for a fact that the events that led to that kiss didn’t happen, which means that they likely didn’t kiss.” His explanation feels silly, because a kiss feel simple, not monumental. But it’s the first kiss in a series of many more kisses, that will ultimately lead to a fuller and happier life.

“I don’t get it. You’re worked up over them kissing? Wait--first kiss? How many times do they kiss?”

“It’s never crossed my mind to keep count.” Now, that’s a train of thought I don’t need to follow.  Gideon shakes his head, he needs to focus. As expected, Neal isn’t handling the information well. “As for the ‘getting worked up over them kissing’ part, that kiss kind of sets up a chain of very important events. It’s a domino effect.”

“He ran away with my mom, and now he’s kissing the mother of my son. That’s a little messed up, don’t you think?”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like what we had to do.”

“I can’t...I don’t understand how that kiss helps keep Emma and Henry safe.” Neal looks utterly defeated. Gideon wonders how he would feel if someone said that Juliet absolutely needed to be kissing someone else. He decides not to dwell on the thought.

“Like I said, it’s a domino effect. I can’t fully quantify it, but trust me when I say that their futures as I know it depend on this kiss. My future own depends on this kiss.”

“Your future? How--” He stops, eyes widening in realization. He shakes his head. “No, no, no, no.”

Gideon doesn’t know what to say, so he keeps his mouth shut. He’s at a loss for what to do. His mother would know what to say -- she’s the most empathetic person he knows. He’d inherited Belle’s love of books, but not this. For as long as he’s known her, she’s always found a way to bond and sympathize with strangers. Blood relations or not, Neal is still a stranger to Gideon, making it all the harder.

“God, and I thought she was mine and Emma’s kid. Guess I was half right, huh?” Neal turns away from Gideon, and kicks angrily at a ground. “Seriously? Her and him?”

“If it makes you feel better, they’re very happy together.”

“It doesn’t.”

Gideon bites his lip. Unsure of what else to say on the topic of the Swan-Jones relationship, he attempts a different tactic. “He would talk about you to me. Hook, I mean, in the future. Even before Juliet and I were together, we’d talk about you and he’d tell me stories.”

“To ease his guilty conscience,” Neal snorts.

“Maybe, but not in the way you think,” Gideon tells him. It’s strange to defend Juliet’s father to his brother. He recognizes the reasons why Neal resents them, but the Killian Jones Gideon knows is so far removed from one Neal knows, knew. “He told me once that one of his biggest regrets in life was what happened between you and him and Pan. I’m pretty sure he and our father have talked about you, but I’m pretty sure they’d both deny it if anyone asked.”

“Gideon, I’m glad you like your girlfriend’s father,” Neal begins, and Gideon realizes this is the first time he has said his realization aloud, “but Killian Jones is the last person I want in this scenario. He destroyed my family, and you’re asking me to help make sure he raises my son with the woman I love while I...while I’m dead.”

“Then don’t do it for him. Do it for me, your brother. Do it for Juliet, who has no control over who her parents are.” Gideon grabs Neal’s arm, forcing Neal to finally look him in the eyes. “You’re hurt and you’re angry, and that’s a perfectly understandable way to feel. But don’t let your feelings result in either me or Juliet getting harmed. I spent my entire life wondering who you were, don’t let it be this.That’s not fair. Hook, Henry, Emma -- they all told me that you were a hero. So prove it. Be a hero.”

“Just--can you give me a moment, please?” Neal asks, his anger giving way to something that sounds a lot like defeat. “Let me think. You owe me that.”

Gideon opens his mouth to argue that he doesn’t owe Neal anything right now, but he finds himself saying, “Yeah, we can wait.”

Neal moves away, sitting at the edge of the pond. Gideon hesitates before joining him. Silently, they sit and stare at the water. Moonlight cuts through the dense foliage of the jungle, creating slivers of light on the water. It’s beautiful, Gideon thinks. Years earlier, he and Juliet had rented a cabin upstate. The cabin was by the lake, and he remembers the two of them sitting laying on the bank, looking up the stars. They’d discussed their hopes and dreams, and began to tentatively make plans for the future they might have together. Sitting beside his brother, Gideon wonders if that future might ever come to pass.

[sanderssidesprompts]

Restless ( Sanders Sides Fic )

Virgil sigh to himself as he leaned his back against the kitchen counter as he clutched a cup of juice between his hands. He carefully tucked the glass between his lips before taking a sip before lowering it down once again. He wasn't really thirsty to be honest, he just needed a reason to come downstairs so early in the morning. 

Virgil had woken up once again to an empty, cold spot on the bed right next to him where Roman's warm body was supposed to lay. At this point it had become almost routine. Wake up around 2 Am and 4 Am only to find your fiance gone. Sometimes he would even go to sleep alone. Although as stated earlier it had become almost routine at this point, but that didn't change the fact that with every moment Roman wasn't laying next to him, he became more restless. He had trouble sleeping and tended to try and hug the pillows, or place a line of pillows behind him to give him the illusion of Roman being there, next to him.

It wasn't all bad though, because even with all this it just meant he never took Roman's presence to granted, and once Roman got back he could always feel his chest well up with joy, especially on the longer trips that Roman would take sometimes that could last up to 2 weeks. 

He specifically remembers this one time Roman had come back from a month long trip. He had been in the living room lounging on the couch with Disney music playing in the back-round, because it reminded him of Roman and he connected Roman to Happiness. So if he could't ravish in Roman's presence he could at-least dwell on the things Roman likes. It was at that moment he was tackled unexpectedly, making him shriek in absolute surprise, although some-how he knew that it was Roman, at the back of his mind.

When he had looked up to look at Roman, he was greeted with the most pure expression it made him fall in love all over again. Roman had tears welling up in his eyes and the most dorky grin ever known to man kind gracing his face, a slight flush on his cheeks as he looked down at Virgil with an adoring, loving expression on his face.

But every-night, even with the cold bed or lack of a body next to him, it wasn't what kept him up in a cold sweat all night or woke him up. He was worried about Roman, constantly. It wasn't uncommon for Roman to come back home with some bruises and scratches and Virgil worried that one day Roman will come home and an irreversible injury, or worst yet, someone to come and tell him of his fiance's passing...

That is what truly kept him up every night, only to open the door one day and find a dead Roman on his porch, or blood lining the floors on their house as he goes to find his lover with a missing limb, or even the messenger coming to inform Virgil or his death...

Virgil suddenly heard the front door open and close softly, making him perk up slightly. He placed his glass of apple juice down on the counter and pushed himself off of the counter before standing on his own two feet. Before he could walk over to the entrance to greet his loved one at 3:45 Am in the morning, his lover walked inside the kitchen, and it wasn't what Virgil was expecting in the least.

Roman was absolutely covered in blood and there was a clear, long gash running along the right side of his abdomen with a number of other cuts and bruises lining the rest of his body, and god know's what else under his princely suit. The horror before him could almost compare to the expression on Roman's face. His back as hunched over as his hand clutched his side tightly in a futile attempt to dim the pain or stop the bleeding and his eyes were drained of their usually energy, joy and wonder. Now they just held despair, pain and bags under them, further proving he was absolutely exhausted.

Virgil could't help the gasp the swept through his lips as he took in his lover before rushing over towards him, instantly starting to fret over him as he felt anxiety well up in his chest and into his throat as he rushed through his words.

" Oh my god, Ro, What happened? Did you WALK here?! Oh god you need to sit down your bleeding so much come on, come on " Virgil said, his words seeming to trip over the others as he carefully guided his fiance towards a kitchen chair to sit on. His lover, who would usually insist that he was fine was uncharacteristically obedient in this situation as he seated himself down without another word, his gaze  pointed towards his pants.

Virgil, even in his rush saw this and carefully tilted Ro's head up, forcing him to look into his eyes before. Roman seemed to take notice of the anxiety swimming in his lovers eyes before sending him a weak smile before finally speaking up.

" I'm fine darling, can you just go get the med-kit? " Ro asked, his voice sweet and soothing, clearly trying to hide the pain simply to calm his lover down and not make him panic. Virgil swiftly nodded and rushed off towards the bathroom to gather up the med-kit that he sometimes checked over and over again just to soothe his anxiety of not having the right supplies or enough of it the inevitable day Roman came back home half-way to death's door. 

Virgil sped out of the room and back into the kitchen and placed the med-kit down on the dining table with his shaking hands, since he had so much adrenaline rushing through his body he really could't held it, they were sweaty as well but he didn't bother to notice. 

Virgil glanced over at Roman who had already stripped his shirt off, knowing what was to happen next and probably saving time to get this wound tended to. He looked at Roman and picked up the rubbing alcohol and some cotton swabs only to have his hands cupped in slightly larger, tanner ones. He starred down at their hands. Wait, was he shaking? He hadn't cared to notice his whole body was shaking until this moment to pause-

" Babe, I need you to breath okay? This isn't gonna do either of us any good if your shaking, okay? Now take in a deep breath through your nose and then let it out a couple times, okay love? " Roman gently coaxed his lover as he held his cold,  shaking and sweaty hands. Virgil gave a jerky nod and did as he was told to do. He did this a couple times and finally calmed down enough to take in normal breaths and his hands to stop shaking to much. His lover carefully let go of his hands and smiled at him lovingly, although clearly exhausted.

Virgil returned the smile weakly and got to work on the larger, more prominent wound on his side. He cleaned it up with allot of rubbing alcohol, because he didn't want to risk an infection, and allot of pained hisses and growls from Roman. After awhile it was finally bandaged up and cleaned.

Virgil finally gave himself a moment to relax after the whole event and just slumped on the floor, his shoulders un-tensing as he let out a shaky sigh, lulling his head towards and closing his eyes for a moment, although the slight moment of peace was broken by Roman who gently nudged Virgil with his foot. Virgil glanced up at him and looked into his Ro's eye's only to find them slightly hardened with a clear shadow of worry over them as his lover spoke up.

" Virgil, I'm grateful for the fact you were awake when I came in but... What were you doing being up so early? " Roman asked him and carefully held onto Virgil's shoulders as he leaned forward a bit and Virgil felt a shiver run down his spin. Roman never called him by his name, it was always pet-names or joke-insults that they used to banter in the past, and still do from time to time. This meant that Virgil could't just dodge the question or force Roman to go to sleep like he wanted to do so badly, and he had a feeling Roman wanted it to.

Virgil tensed up his shoulders once more, before finally letting out a sigh of defeat and relaxing them once again before looking down at the tilled floor below him, and it suddenly became the most interesting thing in the world as he spoke to his fiance.

" I was... worried about you. You always go out on these adventures that take you to far away places that no one else knows about, but it's also so dangerous! I feel like one day I'll wake up and I'll have someone knocking on my door saying my Fiance is dead! Or don't want that to happen. I already lost my brother and your all I have left... I don't want someone to come knocking on my door again telling me the person Iv'e sworn to devote my love and life to is gone and snatched away from me! I just... I can't have that again... " Virgil said and let out a heart wrenching sob as his shoulders shook as he cried into his palms.

He felt warm, strong arms wrap around his shaking form as comforting words reaching his ears as his lovers hands gently rubbed his back and whispered to him that it would't happen again and that Roman would never leave Virgil no matter what.

It took awhile for Virgil to finally calm down again after that and when the waterfall of tears finally seemed to calm down he felt all the exhaustion hit him once again with full force. He let out a sigh as he glanced up at his lover who looked down at him with a reassuring gave " I promise I'll never leave you Virgil... You should have brought this up sooner, I would't go out so often if I knew how much it made you this distraught- You come before everything else " Roman said and pecked his fiance's lips before standing up slowly with the help of the chair, being mindful of his injury. Virgil followed along and stood up as well, clutching at Roman's hand like a life-line still, as if making sure he was real and THERE. 

Roman glanced down at him and kissed his temple lightly " We can talk about it more later... How about we both go to sleep now? We both need it " Roman said and Virgil nodded slightly before following his lover to their bedroom for some well deserved, and needed rest.

They had allot to sort out and talk about, but it could all wait for later. Right now Virgil just got his lover back and he wasn't letting go any time soon.

He sent a fleeting glance at the portrait that laid on the hallway wall of his brother and him, running around in a field of flowers. 

(AUTHORS NOTE: My first ever Sanders Sides fic! And Complete one-shot for that matter. Not the proudest thing Iv’e written but whatever, I did my best. ALSO, the brother can be whoever you want it to be! Patton, Logan or Thomas. I had Patton in my head while writing this but pick your poison! =D This was suggested my @omegatomato and Request are Open! ^w^ What do you think? Feedback is appreciated! )

2002 Words!

[authorlaneblevins]

The Conjurer

*This is a short story I wrote a very long time ago. Warning: some bad language and sexuality throughout. Enjoy!

“I, of the savage kingdom, will guide you to glory!”  The sound of a Big Easy traffic jam punctures the steady scream of her words, a few of the syllables slipping out into the never-was.  “ ‘Court not death by your erring way of life, nor draw to yourselves destruction by the works of your hands!  Because into a soul that plots evil, wisdom enters not, nor dwells she in a body under debt of sin!’”

The hint of Russian singsong gives her away.  I know her voice better than I know my own.  They say that, no matter how early one is separated from one’s mother, the mind is imprinted with the sound of her voice and conditioned to hear it again; and while decades might pass without hearing it, the lost child could still detect the mother’s voice out of a tapestry of hundreds.  Because it was the first sound, the first pitch and tone and coo to ever have existed.  It was the sound on which all other sounds were based.

I’m sitting on the bench across the street, watching her, the only one watching her.  Ilyena Tracy, still the magician; the way she moves her hands, pushing the air away with them, drawing people inward while keeping me confounded on this frayed bench, wondering how this could’ve happened.

Some small moments are nothing, they don’t snowball into the rest of your life.  But some of them, they’re gods, they own you.

I imagine that, at one point, she lured crowds on the corner with her flailing Fascist body movements, jerks of her arms and a twist of her neck that mimicked cerebral palsy or spiritual ecstasy.  Whenever she bellows the word “sinners,” her face sinks downward toward her neck, and small bubbles collect at the corners of her mouth.

I can’t stomach the battery-acid taste of the coffee anymore, and I hold the cup close to my face as if I’ve paused mid-sip, just to feel the steam siphoning through the lid.  I tear confetti-sized pieces from the letter that Rita slipped into my pocket the last time I saw her.  I’m waiting for my shift in telemarketing purgatory to start, in which I try to ignore the chorus of ringing, chatter, staplers, scribbling, and gnashing of teeth, and push our patented stain erasing formula.

This is my ritual: sit on the bench, mesmerized, my heart a rabid dog begging for the bullet.  At work, I empty the letter-confetti from my pocket and forsake the names on the list, instead calling Rita, wanting to tell her, wanting for her to tell me what to do.  For the past week I’ve only gotten her machine and her husband.  I hang up, playing with the idea of asking her husband what he would do: he seems like the type that would know, with his voice calm and British asking me who’s there, who is this; talking quietly as if he’s in a glass room and he doesn’t want the walls to crash down on him.  At this point, I’m usually lectured by my telepathic boss, always privy to when I’m not being productive.

Yes, I know I have a job to do, sir.  Yes, I know that I’m not doing it.  

Then, I study my reflection in the computer screen, trying to find a feature my mother would be sure to recognize, though so many have changed.  A narrow nose broken in one of several foster homes.  Glasses are no longer there to hide greenish eyes that bear the constant squint of non-trust, having been replaced by contacts.  

The dimpled chin is the only thing that’s stayed the same.  Is that enough to remember a son?  Should I buy a pair of glasses?

I start writing a letter to my mother that I plan to slip in her Bible when she’s distracted by the Rapture.  I mull over trivialities, whether or not my signature will exhibit my shaking hand.  After work, I stand beside the bench, pinching my thigh in hopes of triggering a muscle spasm that might force me into my first step to her.  I pay the cab fare in sweat-dampened singles, always pausing, everyday choosing inertia.  On the ride home, I make the resolution that I’ll approach her tomorrow.  I’ll get it over with tomorrow.

I sleep, impervious to the fact that I am a liar.

˟˟˟˟˟

I should’ve had her figured when I was six years old and realized, seemingly for the first time, that she had really, truly, actually named me Balthazar.  After kindergarten giggles and with no middle name to fall back on, I told everyone to call me by my last name, Tracy—a fragmented version of the original Tratzinsky, cleaved in half somewhere on the Atlantic.  For ten years we lived like gypsies.  We stayed with her friends, friends of her friends, occasionally having to squat in an abandoned warehouse.  I knew better than to complain.  I had no voice.  I was her baggage, her immigrant suitcase.

She preached differently, back then, gracefully performing tricks of prestidigitation, making things disappear—wallets, mostly.  Every incredulous question of “How?” was answered with “Magic!”  A firm believer that the world might end in twenty-five years, she called America a “savage kingdom,” place with too many machines and too many brands of detergent, place where people too easily loosened their grip on time.

She talked to me sometimes about Omsk, her home, about how she was the statue of fear to all the other women.  In her youth, she was a breathy scandal of a girl, running around with nomads, traveling sideshow acts, literary fugitives and Trotskyites who had escaped the purges and lived in paranoid old age.  Her very footsteps caused neighborhood elders to gasp and cross themselves: her tracks, they swore, were hooved.

She had a laugh that unsettled concrete, a devil-may-care that made onlookers think that if the devil did care about anything on this lonely dull planet, it was her.  His Persephone.  His awful queen.

I craved her stories, her Omsk, her random switches between English, Yiddish, Russian, as if she had three tongues housed by one mouth.  I felt that the stories I heard at school were lackluster in comparison, always about little brothers or missing puppies.  Never in those skinny illustrated books were there stories of black markets, or missile crises, or gypsy circuses where the Conjurer carried the Lone Torso on his back.

When I couldn’t sleep she’d wave me over to her.  “Bad dream, boytchik?  Here, take mine.  I’ve dreamt this one before,” she’d say, putting her hand on my forehead and describing her bargained reverie to me so well that I saw it all for myself, could’ve dreamed of nothing else.  And when I had horrible fevers, she used to remove my dingy glasses and place her hands against my eyes, applying the slightest pressure, invoking cold with her tiny palms.  She would whisper to me, her breath in a flustered hurry, a mother’s hysteria, her words leading me to Siberia.

She had bad spells, too.  Anxious days when she’d look at me as if wishing I might disappear.  She would watch me intently as I ate her pungent food.  And then she’d abruptly stop me from eating and scrub the food off of my plate like dead skin.

For ten years this is how we lived.  On the fourth night of that year, she ushered me to sleep, her palms over my eyes as she kissed my forehead.  I woke the next morning alone, a note on my pillow.  “I’m sorry.  I’ve stopped paying for this mistake of mine.  I have to set you down, Balthazar, I can carry you no longer on my back.”

I cannot claim uniqueness in abandonment: the history of the act stretches back to the Alpha, to the foundation.  Think of the Jews sold out by former friends, sniffed out of their hiding places and ritualistically unpersoned.  Think of leftovers, discarded ideals, uncompleted revolutions, the Rosenberg’s, Charles Foster Kane.  Think of Abraham’s son, Isaac, who feigned dignity under the knife when all he wanted was for his father to say “You are more to me than God.  Run from here and live forever.”

Or a man quietly in love with a sadist, wanting to tell her that he didn’t mind how she wounded him, just as long as she would stay.

Think of a ten year-old boy in a warehouse left suddenly, irreversibly alone; a boy discovered two days later, hungry and dirty, by one of his mother’s Bohemian cab-driver friends, who dropped him off at the nearest police station without a “goodbye” or a “good luck.”  A boy who will never know why.

After that day came too many homes, and never enough time in them to get comfortable.  Fourteen placements in eight years, the same life lesson from all the pseudo-fathers: go to school, get a job, get a wife, get a house.  Obtain more possessions than those smudgy glasses and the clothes on your back.  Possessions are reality.  Possessions are identity.  I was whittled to fit this new consumer’s world, where living in a warehouse is generally frowned upon, sleight-of-hand is only a profession in Caesar’s Palace, and dreams are non-transferable.

Before the day she left, we had been each other’s world, a cult of two.  It sutures, that kind of companionship.  Without it, you have a hard time figuring out where the wound starts and where it ends.

˟˟˟˟˟

I’m fifteen minutes late for work.  The boss told me yesterday that if I continue to be late and unproductive, I’m out.  Still, I can’t stand up from this bench, opting instead to stare at her.  “…For touch is the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight, which is the most magical.”  I tell myself that this explains everything that I am incapable of.    

She slaps her hand against her ragged leather-bound Bible to emphasize a point, closing her eyes and chanting western prayers.  I try to fathom a holy man skillful enough to have converted her from unstated paganism, a believer so pure and apotheosized that wherever he walked the blind cried “Messiah” and corpses sprung from their graves, coughing up dirt.

But preachers of this faith, they’re a realm away from the things my mother used to believe in.  A woman like her would’ve been impenetrable to brainwashing.  My best theories on her radical change involve lobotomies and Doppelgangers, or the rootless guilt she’d passed on to me.

I want her to know about my nightmare where in a room, exquisite red, we face each other, and she laughs at me, the sound bouncing from wall to wall.  “In the old days, you know what they did to spineless boys like you when they were babies?  The villagers saw one weakness, one defect and you were fed to the pigs.”  She places her hands over my face, and when she pulls them away my eyes are viscous spider-eggs.

When I was young, I’d never had a bad dream.  I’d pretended just so that I could steal hers.  So she would tell me her sole parable one more time.

“I tell you story, boytchik, just this last time; the short version because I’m too tired for more.  In village not too far from Omsk, the gypsy circus came once a year bringing always the sound of drums, and people would stop from their working so they could go to see it.  It was a wonderful spectacle, a lady with two heads, a man with a face that has grown on his stomach with real eyes that blinked, a man with red fists that sprout from his shoulder-blades.  And of course magicians and dare-devils and cannibals and fire-breathers and people with tremendous talents.  One woman, she could fit herself in a shoebox.  It’s true.

“The Conjurer was called this because he could beckon the dead and make them visible to all, he could make those that have vanished reappear, but he could never go to cemeteries because with all the dead begging from him his attention, he would never leave.  He was quiet man, pale and thin and dressed always in black cloak and black felt-hat like peasants used to wear.  And the Lone Torso, he was named because he was born without legs, but this was not an appropriate name since he still had arms that he could walk around on.  He was a very gentle person, and the two became comrades.

“During all the travels, the Lone Torso was harnessed on the back of the Conjurer so that they could talk all the way, and so that the Lone Torso didn’t hurt his hands.  They walked this way so often that they became fused together by their backs, from the cold.  They wanted to fix it, but the medicine man said that their spines were no longer their own, and to become separate one would have to do without.  This was just not possible, so they got used to the idea, and remained comrades, walking everywhere together.

“But then one day they were stranded from the group, and the Conjurer died.  The Lone Torso had to haul both of their bodies with his arms.  Nobody imagined he could make it, they underestimated his strength.  His hands grew blistered from the road but still he pushed onward.  Doing for his friend what his friend had done for him for so long…”

At this point in the story, I usually fell asleep; she so expanded on details unexplored in the previous telling that I never got to know what happened, how it ended.  That was just like her.  So I made up my own endings.  Back then, I liked to believe that the Lone Torso absorbed the Conjurer into his body, assuaged the pain without ever losing his comrade.  As a teenager, I hoped that the Torso found a carpenter who sawed the cadaver from his back, and he was then able to move without the crippling weight of his abandoner.

Now I imagine the most realistic of endings: the Lone Torso, arms shaking, giving in and falling to embrace the windswept earth for the final time, breathing the dust until his lungs were crushed and it was done.

˟˟˟˟˟

A pack of teenagers gathers near her corner, laughing and elbowing each other.  The kids are dressed all in big black clothes, fishnet gloves, spiked collars.  Goth kids, convinced that they took the class on suffering, have befriended the beast in their sixteen years of existence.  I was like that when I was their age.

A fat kid with blisters of acne along his jaw is the one to move toward her.  I lean forward, a vigilant watchdog, one hand still pulling at the shredded corners of Rita’s letter.  I swallow cigarette smoke, watching my mother crossing him with her unbendable arm.

Would she do the same if I walked up to her, baptize me, bless me?

The kid’s shirt says “I’m not prejudiced, I hate everybody!” and I picture the forty other kids wearing the same shirt all over the city, thinking that absent words alone can generate your own statement, your middle finger to a world that is indifferent to middle fingers.  He’s smirking at her, getting too close.  He glances back at his friends for encouragement, their black-lined eyes glittering with laughter.  His breath, it must stink of pot and sugar.  Gripping the edge of the bench-seat, my chewed fingernails aching, I whisper “Please” in my head over and over, but I have no idea what it is I’m asking for.

“Hail Satan!” the kid says, raising his fist in the air.

She spouts psalms about the heretics and the nonbelievers.  He laughs an obscenely girlish laugh, and slaps the Bible out of her hand.  I stand, a reflex, my thumb twitching.  I have that post-invasive-surgery feeling that I’ve read about, the mysterious and besetting ache of the violated body.

I imagine the Goth kid shoving her, her head cracking against the curb, the garnet trickle on the pavement; all the pain I’d let her go through just to be her savior, so that I could pick her up from the ground like Simon.  I would quietly tell her in a flood of syllables that I can help her, she needs help, I’m sorry and I forgive, goodbye and goodbye, that I can carry her no longer on my back, that still, I push onward.

I picture her shaking off my help, pointing her finger at me and screaming wildly, seeing past my skin straight to the muddy heart.  

But the kid backs away, laughing with his friends.  “Go back to Germany, you old cunt!” he shouts.

Still standing, I seem to be having trouble producing saliva.  This kid, this nothing, had the guts to approach her.  Having no idea who she is, that’s how he managed it: because he didn’t know that this is a woman who had somehow broken out of an inescapable country.  A woman who could paint a beautiful world for you, and trick you into becoming Atlas.

˟˟˟˟˟

This is important.  This is the catalyst.  This is the prologue spewed by her God, who has stopped concerning Himself with linearity.

I was with Rita the night my car pulled its disappearing act.  She’d called me at work, set up the usual time and place.  Her name wasn’t really Rita, I just called her that because she was a meter-maid.  I’d seen the grin on her face when she scribbled the violation and the cost in her little leather booklet, bearing down so hard on her pen that the indentation left sort-of words on five carbon copies.  She was a parking ticket sadist.

Rita often voiced how she wished our year-long arrangement was legitimate, so she could tell the story of how we met to strangers.  It was a hot August day, a brownout.  Due to the jadedness I’d gained in telemarketing purgatory, I visited the Woodward, Wight, and Co. warehouse that used to be home to me.  But it looked the same, the glass and concrete and slats of light.  There was no magic to be found, only half-empty cans of beer and heroin spoons.  I smoked a cigarette, singeing the edges of the letter my mother left on my pillow with the lighter, naively thinking this was my moment of release.

When I left the warehouse I saw Rita leaning against my car, gripping her ticket book and staring at the meter.  Waiting for the time to run up.  She watched so tensely, hunched forward, like one of those students in art school scrutinizing a nude model.

I saw her right then: a woman who served the great god of Time, she would never let a moment circle the drain.  Her every word meaningful when so many of mine, vague and unheard, were milled under the slightest wind.  Life, to her, was too short for a job you hated, regrets, procrastination, one lover.  Sleep was an unnecessary diversion.  The world might end in five years.

Underneath her glacial civil servant surface lay a closet-genius; a concert pianist by fifteen, enrolled at Lafayette by sixteen, where she studied everything indiscriminately.  She knew two other languages, spoke them fluently.  And then she suddenly dropped it all for this mediocrity, renouncing all her frightening potential.  She never told me why.

Rita had been married to some insurance salesman for two years; I had the slightest feeling this career she gave him was a calumny or a metaphor of some sort, she said it like it was a private joke.  She liked to fuck with her wedding ring on.  She constantly smelled of lemony wood polish, her hands forever smudged with ink.  She looked like Grace Kelly’s evil twin, only brunette and with dark gray eyes.  Her favorite phrase was “As I do to you, so do I to me.”  Her status as proud atheist was challenged nightly when she called out to Jesus during sex; I’d never heard his name sound so sweet, so full, than the way it sounded in her voice.

She became docile before sleep, self-exposing, expressing thoughts so eloquently I couldn’t tell the difference between her words and the memorized quotes of long-dead lyricists.  I told her about the Conjurer, the story without an ending.  She confided in me her dreams of escaping the human zoo, becoming a recluse or a migrant or both, shedding her skin, her marriage, her vices.

Yet another prone to flight.  My life filled with Houdini’s.

Rita picked the worst places on Old Gentilly to meet, places with neon signs boasting color-TVs that never worked; places with heart-shaped beds in which we were the tender arrows digging ever deep, pushing toward an exit-wound.  She said that, statistically speaking, men who cheat on their wives go all out in lavish hotels, expensive restaurants, maxing out credit cards on lingerie for their mistresses.  Women, on the other hand, tend to do the opposite.  Slumming it.  Loving the fuck even more for its taste of dirt.

Afterwards, I lay on top of her, doling out puffs of cigarette, holding it just far enough so that she had to strain her neck to take a drag.  Maraschino light came in from the window, it pulled all her thorns out.  She strove for the cigarette, breathed it in, held it between her dry lips.

I knew that what she felt for me was amusement, at most.  Our connection could best be described as a volute, an exchange of power that coiled downward until we were both left without.  It was a shocking thing to discover: that she was what I’d been looking for, the romanticized destroyer.

I put my hands over her eyes, feeling the moth-like flutter of her eyelashes.

“You should leave him.  Leave the city with me.”  I took my hands away from her eyes, feeling the burn of her incredulous stare.

She paused, then slowly, intentionally blew smoke in my face.  She so expertly recovered all her thorns, I had to smile.

“Let’s not get poetic or anything.”  A typical rejection, it meant she was far from sleep.  “You say it, but you’d never leave.”

“You don’t think I could leave?  Why not?”

“Unfinished business, maybe; or a talent for misery.  Something you’re attached to.  All the same, it’s a dreadful city, Tracy.  It suits you.”

“Why haven’t you left?”

“It suits me, too.  Besides, Phillip’s going places with his life.”

“I’m going places.”

“Phillip’s going good places.”

I stared at her for a second, waiting for the sting to dull before I got up to leave.  I couldn’t stand the stink of the room, like Pinesol and gunpowder, the grimy red neon turning everything into doomsday.  And the sounds of our temporary neighbors.  All the pilgrims in other rooms screaming for that brusque high, that scavenging cock, all the pilgrims curled up in bed dreaming up Mecca.

The dusty spider legs in dresser drawers clinging to Gideon’s Bible.  Motels, motels, never any home.

She talked while I got dressed, gripping the complimentary motel pen tight in her fist as she smiled.  “Come on, Tracy, come lay back down, don’t throw a hissy.”

“I’m not.  I’ve just gotta go,” I said, pulling on one boot, then the other.  She lit a cigarette and waved the match until it curled up, bent its head, a gray shamed child.

I opened the motel room door.  Lo and behold.  All the energy spilled out of my body at once.  A man with a black coat and a satchel on his back was strolling through the white lines of the parking-space where my car once waited.

And the new concrete world established its strictest law to me: don’t get attached to anything, son, if you gained it you’ll lose it someday.  Just you wait.

“What are you standing there for?  Is this a pivotal moment where you make some life-changing decision?” Rita asked with a nasty little laugh.

“No.  My car’s gone.”  I looked back at her, numb.  She furrowed her brows and waited for the “Just kidding,” but it didn’t come.

“Well.  Huh.”

˟˟˟˟˟

The next day I took the streetcar to work for the first time ever, the taste of Rita a film on the roof of my mouth.  Across from me a woman bounced her lemur-eyed baby on her knee.  The old man beside me waved at the baby, made silly faces.

After reaching my stop in Downtown, I walked along the pavement on a stretch of O’Keefe I’d never walked before, brushing past workers and businessmen who seldom looked up.  Someone was whistling.  Everyone chatted on their cell phones.  And somewhere in that latticework, a familiar voice.  A phrase I’d only heard her use.  “America, the savage kingdom…”

Realization fell down my spine, like a body crashing through water, the slow sink once the surface was breached.  My brain a knot of electricity, I told myself to run, but it seemed to take whole minutes for my legs to receive the message.  Then, once I was moving, there was no clarity of thought, just jumbled noise in my head, sounds without source or meaning.  Animal sounds, industrial drones, the chant of “Please.”  Hope and hell and motion.  I drafted new endings for the parable: the Conjurer suddenly waking from a skein of beautiful dreams, the Lone Torso relieved of his bleak loneliness.  Carried, defined, once more.  The weight fading in the descending night.

My limbs were pushing through the crowd without any real instruction, pushing me against the current.  And then the sea parted and I saw her, in a black frock, surrounded by candles, a great nuclear fallout come down on this city.  Every incredulous question of “How?” now answered with “Jesus!”

She was across the street, on her knees, her hands pressed together in shouted prayer.  She looked so old, nothing like how I remembered her.  She had the face of a shrinking rose, dry and curled around the edges.  Slender, bird-like shoulders.  Eyes like a jack-o-lantern’s, scooped out and empty.  Her silvery hair butchered.  This was not her, this woman with her eyes blinking at the sun.  My mother knelt for no one.

How little I knew her, how much of myself that had been lost in the transition, new weight that I couldn’t take.  The Lone Torso, lugging the Conjurer and a cross on top of that.

Drained.  My breath a ragged joke, my throat like stretched leather.  Wanting nothing more than to fucking scream, I sat on a bench.  I haven’t gone farther than that.

˟˟˟˟˟

I’m an hour late for work.  I smoke a cigarette on the bench, not caring what time I show up.  The new world has collapsed.  I can’t sit through that purgatory anymore, selling a product that erases stains, all the while wishing I could take long harsh swigs of it to cleanse or to kill, if there is any difference.

I feel the corners of Rita’s note in my pocket rubbing against my leg.  I pull it out of my pocket, resisting the urge to tear a piece away, and unfold the surviving paper.  After my week of picking at it like a scab, all that’s left are the last few lines: “Goodbye is for funerals, yet I have thought it every time I saw you.  What you fail to realize is that there is not one of us without a corpse on our backs, and only the weakest of us need some third party to remove it.  The strong can be their own carpenters, they are the ones who push unremittingly and let it decompose and turn to dust, as all things do.  For your sake, I hope that it does.  P.S. Sorry about your car.”

Because the god of Time can be vengeful.  Because I’m tired, my own weight is enough.  Because the world is in a constant state of ending, I flick my cigarette out toward the street and stand on quietly shivering knees.  I suck in a deep, lightheaded breath, relaxing my clenched jaw like an animal letting go.  I brush past strangers.  Her voice grows closer.  My head feels staticky, like I’m dreaming a dream I stole from her.

My feet are warmed by the vicinity of her candles of all the futile saints.  She shouts after discreet prostitutes a corner away.  “‘Depart from her, my people, so as not to take part in her sins and receive a share in her plagues’—”

She glances at me for a second, her eyes squinting until they’re beady and hawkish.  I half expect her to single me out as supreme Blasphemer, Beelzebub, Judas.  But her eyes, the master copy of my own, stare with the faint recognition usually reserved for strangers who frequent the same grocery store, who offer that pleasant, noncommittal smile and don’t say a word, and keep pushing their carts down the aisle.

She turns away from me, shouting her verses.  “‘Depart from her…For her sins are piled up to the sky and God remembers her crimes.’”      

There is only one ending: the Torso does not stop crawling.  He pushes onward, alone, toward some unknowable dot at the belt of the horizon.  As he crawls, the Conjurer is slowly erased, picked up by the wind, disseminated like seeds.  The corpse breaks down, back to the elements, to the dirt of it all, and a stain of gray atoms that will trail the Torso wherever he goes marks the long passage to Omega.  This is how she would have told it.  This is what she would have wanted me to know.

She pauses in the middle of a verse, some further slander against Babylon.  I can see the twitch in the back of her neck as she finally realizes, as the weight settles.  She is silent and stiffened.  Her fingers tighten around the Bible’s throat, as she grabs at a deep and stuttered inhale with her mouth open.  I see her slowly start to turn her head.

She will not turn around before I do.  She will not follow as I walk away.

[almosthumanophelia]

Defective

Invader Zim Fic

Words: 2060

((WARNING! Very angsty. Heavy discussion of Zim’s defective status.

Found this little thing I wrote a while ago just sitting around and it still hurts my heart so I’m sharing the hurt.

@zimisnotdefective I believe this is what you wanted to see...))

~

"So not to worry, my Tallest. My next plan to defeat the humans will definitely destroy them once and for all."

Zim hated reporting these failed plans to his leaders. It wounded his self pride. Any self-respecting Irken Invader with the technical and strategic knowledge he possessed should have obliterated Earth ages ago. He knew it, and the Tallest knew it. Hell, all of Irk and half of the rest of the galaxy probably knew it too.

Yet somehow they never seemed surprised to hear of his failures. Nor were they ever particularly interested to hear from him. This time was no exception.

"Yes, Zim, I'm sure it will," Tallest Red told him in a patronizing tone as he monitored some unseen screens. He seemed far more preoccupied with whatever he was looking at than Zim's words.

Zim caught the barely audible voice of Purple saying, "Speak for yourself."

He could feel his fist automatically forming behind his back. They thought he never heard what they said behind his back, and occasionally to his face. But he always did.

It's not as if he could say anything to them. The Invader code of conduct demanded absolute respect for the Tallest at all times. No matter what they did to you. He had to accept any verbal abuse dealt to him, or face the consequences. The best he could hope for now was to end the call quickly.

"Will there be anything else, my Tallest?"

"No, no, you just get back to HEY DONUTS!" Red quickly got sidetracked as he and Purple expressed their enthusiasm for the newly arrived snacks. They left Zim's view, and after a few seconds of waiting, he assumed he was dismissed and hung up the call.

Left in the silence of his base to think, he focused his eyes on the controls for the screen, his magenta eyes narrowing slightly. Had they been anyone other than the Tallest, he would have called them back and started screaming, demanding their respect. He was an Invader, after all. Ask any race in the galaxy, and they would tell you that they knew better than to joke at an Irken Invader's expense.

But that was just it, wasn't it? He was a joke to them. He always had been. As much as he pretended he wasn't, and he put on a front convincing everyone of his high levels of self-esteem, that was all it was. A front, a facade, a masquerade. When derogatory whispers followed you wherever you went, it was difficult to have any self-esteem whatsoever. And the whispers, the ones that had dogged him since his smeethood, called him all sorts of things. Defective was chief among them.

Zim knew what it meant to be considered a defective Irken. Your PAK was faulty, the encoded data was corrupted, and you were either a waste of matter or a danger to your race, or both. It had never been proven in his case, of course. And he vehemently denied such accusations every time they arose. Doing anything else would be suicide. Defective Irken were almost uniformly condemned to full erasure from the collective, complete with deactivated PAKs, functionally leaving them to die. His sense of self-preservation was far too strong to ever allow himself to entertain such thoughts when he knew where they would lead.

But always, in the back of his mind, he wondered. Could they be right? His difficulties in conquering planets, in finishing his projects, even in staying focused and free of emotion - they all were common indicators. Even he didn't always feel in control of his own actions. The rampage of destruction that had gotten him banished in the first place had felt so surreal, as if someone else were making him do all those things. Looking back, he had never meant to go that far. And there were so many other incidents like that scattered throughout his life. Maybe those were glitches in his programming. Or maybe those were glitches causing him to dwell on the matter at all.

The logic chain made his head hurt. He gritted his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut for a minute as his hands went to the sides of his head. No, he couldn't think that way. If he for one moment truly believed he was defective, then he was defective. And to accept that meant accepting he was as worthless as the others said he was.

Chores. He needed to do chores. Anything to busy his mind. His PAK needed some basic circuitry tune-ups. That was simple enough to do.

Making his way over to the nearest laboratory table, Zim had a few cables connect to his PAK and remove it, setting it on the table in front of him. At the same time, additional cables, used as a temporary life support while he worked on his PAK, connected to his spine where the metal hemisphere once was. Perfect. Now he could work indefinitely.

A few tools was all it took for him to get started. Zim found the repetitive motions of his circuit work easy to follow. Disconnect, check the wires, replace, reconnect, repeat. Focusing on this small feat of engineering was already helping to clear his mind. This, at least, was something he was good at. He had always prided himself on his ability to manipulate technology.

The minutes ticked by, and Zim soon had his upgrades complete. He nodded in satisfaction. Now the PAK would process data just the tiniest bit quicker.

Unbidden, a few wayward thoughts began to creep into his mind. Why stop there? Why couldn't he just rip out the circuits altogether and replace them with faster, better ones? And while he was at it, why couldn't he probe deeper into the PAK's inner workings? Maybe he could discover the malfunctions that caused him so much trouble.

Or maybe he could even fix whatever it was that made him seem defective.

He stared at the PAK. His tools were still in his hands, and he hasn't closed it up yet. It would be so easy to just reach inside and tweak a few things. But one wrong move, one misstep, and he could die. The PAK was a combined brain and life support. If Zim so much as touched the wrong wires, he could render himself a drooling vegetable, or suffocate because his lungs stopped functioning, or something even worse.

His hand shook slightly, and soon his entire body was shaking with it. For once in his life, he was really afraid. Just thinking about all the horrific ways in which damaging his PAK could destroy him was making him uneasy.

And yet, his hand hovered over the open panel, moving ever closer. He had to try, didn't he? Anything was better than living his life as a joke, an outcast thrown aside like last week's garbage. He was so tired of living this way. He didn't care how he changed, he just needed to change.

The spanner he had been holding clinked slightly against the metal shell of the PAK, and he blinked. It had snapped him out of a reverie, and he looked down at his gloved hand. The tool was causing a slight metallic echo as his hand trembled.

All at once, Zim felt a wave of nausea and horror hit him as it dawned on him what he was about to do. He immediately pulled his hand, and the spanner, back from the panel. Just as quickly, he threw the spanner across the room, not caring that it hit his consoles and equipment with a few loud clangs. He frantically pressed a few buttons to reinstall his PAK, then doubled over, arms curled around his midsection. He hardly noticed it reconnect, and it hardly mattered anyway.

Had he really been so ready to risk his life? Without thorough schematics of a PAK that he was sure he didn't have, he had no hope of making successful adjustments to his personality or complex thought processes. He knew that. And yet he had almost tried it anyway.

He crumpled further, curling up on the floor and pressing his hands to his head, ignoring the discomfort he caused himself by pressing on his antennae too hard. Whimpers began to force themselves from his throat, and his tiny body only shook more.

Thoughts were flooding his brain. If he even attempted such a thing, surely he had to be defective. There was no other explanation. All his failures, all his shortcomings, they all added up now. It all made sense. He had never amounted to anything because he never could amount to anything. It didn't matter how hard he tried or how much he wished he was different. He was wrong, he was fundamentally, irreversibly wrong. He shouldn't even have been allowed to live in the first place. The very fact that he existed at all was disgusting. He didn't deserve it. He deserved to be wiped.

The whimpers grew louder and tears burned in his eyes. His fingers dug into the skin over his skull and he started to rock back and forth on the cold metal floor. Why was he like this? Why did these things always come back to plague him? Every time he overheard the Tallest comment on his failures, and every time he could sense one of his kin laughing at him, this was inevitably where he ended up. The injustice of it all made him want to scream. He never asked to be made this way.

Soon he was screaming. But the screaming was mixed with choked crying as tears poured from his eyes and the convulsive sobs wracked his body. All the while, one word kept ringing through his head.

Defective. Defective. Defective defective defective defective defective.

It hurt, it hurt. Everything hurt. His antennae, his spooch, his eyes, his mind. It all physically hurt. Everything he was feeling was just too much. He found himself almost wishing he had shorted out his PAK after all, just to spare himself feeling all of this. But no, he wasn't brave enough to even try. What use was he?

His brain was screaming at him, and he screamed back. There were no words, only shrill noises born of pain. There was no greater pain than this, than knowing what he really was. He was a broken, useless thing. A defective, a monstrosity, a waste of skin and organs. Every inch of him was wrong, and that had to be why it hurt so much. The pain was unbearable now, and all he could think was make it stop, please, anyone or anything, just find him and make it stop.

But nobody did.

Zim didn't emerge from his base for two days after that episode. When he did, his steps were more cautious, more slow. He told the Skool he had been sick, and why wouldn't they believe him? They had no reason to care any more beyond that.

Even Dib had noticed his attitude shift. Zim's unwillingness to respond quite as well to his taunts had left the boy confused.

"Zim, what's wrong with you?" Dib said it in a mostly puzzled tone, tinged with contempt. But there was a slight concern underlying it.

What was wrong? Where should he start?

It didn't matter. Even if he were to tell Dib what was wrong, the child would never understand, not really.

Zim flashed his trademark smirk and assumed an air of superiority for his reply. "Nothing at all, pitiful Earth monkey. I am clearly amazing to my core. Not that I could say the same for you. You might want to have that big head of yours checked out."

"My head is not big!" Dib was exasperated and annoyed now, and stalked off, clearly satisfied with Zim's answer.

Zim fidgeted his gloved hands slightly as Dib left. For just a moment, he regretted being so harsh. But it was better if nobody got too close to him, given his unsurpassed abilities to cause collateral damage. Until he could get himself in proper functioning order, he couldn't afford to care. He couldn't afford to present himself as anything less than completely superior. So he would keep parroting how brilliant he was, how fantastic and so much better than everyone else he was.

Maybe if he kept saying those things, he would one day believe them.

[negritasenorita]

I am doing my best to heal myself for myself. Not for anyone else or for any other reason besides the fact that this is my life, my body, and my choices. I experienced such a horrible trauma when I was younger. For a year, from age 6 to 7, I was hurt and used by a trusted adult almost every day. I was made to feel special and adored and loved at a time in life where those emotions were all I desired. I feel shame and guilt because looking back, I did feel those emotions very positively. I know I did not enjoy my trauma but I know that my heart enjoyed making someone happy—and what I interpreted—proud of me. At 20, I still severely struggle with hyper sexuality, unhealthy eating habits, sexual shame, night terrors, feeling like an imposter, extreme anxiety, suicidal thoughts, lack of interest in life, manic tendencies, reckless behavior, and so forth. I know there are umbrella terms for these symptoms. I know I have PTSD, I know I have depression, I know I have anxiety. But, unlike the terms, I do not feel these emotions singularly. Everything I listed, I feel each one in its fullest complexity. I sometimes feel there are multiple voices in my head, or multiple me’s, and I feel each one so intensely that there are times I doubt the “others” and think that they’re—me—are lying. I am not a priority in my own life. Instead, I think daily of my place in the life of those around me, and I get anxious over thoughts that they do not care for me, that I am not as important to them, that they don’t think positively of me, that I am not someone they need. See, I need that validation constantly because at 6, that is what I understood as love. I was loved for being me and I was reminded of that daily. Relationships I have held dearest to me have broken because I do not know how to communicate anger, or more notably, I cannot communicate when I am hurt. Vulnerability makes me cringe, makes me scared, and makes me want to cry because I want to feel it so badly.

I am not writing this for sympathy. I just hope that whoever takes the time to read this, that sexual assault and abuse is life-altering and quite literally changes the very person you are. There are many days where I find myself wondering who I would be if I was given the chance to grow organically into myself. I try not to dwell on that because I know that I will never know. Sexual assault and abuse should never, ever be taken lightly. I beg, that if you find yourself in a position where someone confines in you of their assault, that you listen without a doubt in your heart. Because there is no gain in being a survivor besides the fact that you can say you survived. But the questioning, the judgement, the shame, the hurt, the guilt—that is all there. I remember the day I confessed because not only did I feel like I had shared a part of myself with the world for the first time, but because of the sheer amount of panic I felt at what life would be like from that point on. Sexual assault and abuse is real and creates irreversible wounds.

[sssolaine]

Tit for Tat

Rating: M (for suggestive sexual themes)

Prompt: “I won’t give you roses,  Granger, cliché isn’t my thing.”

Synopsis: His life as a Ministry head was all fine and dandy until a sexy wrench called Granger was thrown in the mix. What’s a hot blooded wizard to do?

A/N: I’d like to thank stellagammadraconis and DayDreamer1123 for beta-ing this and I apologize for such a short notice (a girl loves to cram)! The premise was provided by Di and I just toyed with it. Hope y'all enjoy what we came up with!

Draco must’ve been dreaming. That’s it. It had been five years since he’d last seen Granger, and to say she’d changed a lot would be an understatement. Last he’d heard, she’d moved to Australia to be with her parents. He never did find out why they left Britain, but he assumed it had a lot to do with their daughter’s involvement in the war.

From where he was seated, Draco had a good view of the Muggle-born. He could tell she’d grown taller, her hair was now tamer, and the tight black blouse she wore was pretty distracting, especially since it emphasized the curve of her bosom. He’d surveyed her with a keen eye when she’d entered, her hips swaying as she walked. If someone used a legilimens spell on him right now, they’d be in for a pleasant surprise. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine having a raging hard-on because of Hermione Granger.

The sound of Shacklebolt’s baritone wrenched Draco out of his lustful thoughts and back into the department head meeting.

“As you are all aware, with Mulberry’s retirement, the Magical Law Enforcement Department is currently without a head. Ms. Granger here has worked in the same capacity at the Australian Ministry. She comes to us highly recommended by the Australian Minister himself. I trust that there will be no problems as she transitions into her new role.”

Granger smiled, exchanged pleasantries with her soon-to-be staff and headed out for a meeting with the Minister without even acknowledging Draco’s presence. She looked delightful and he’d be damned if he’d let her escape his grasp before he sampled that fine arse. No one could resist a Malfoy’s charm if he put his mind to it. Draco smirked to himself. Yeah, they would certainly have a great “working relationship.”

oOo

Or so he thought. The minx was difficult to get a hold of. When she wasn’t attending meetings, she was busy shirking his advances. Draco started to make a move on her in the ministry cafeteria’s secluded area three days after she assumed the position. He’d subtly complimented her hot ensemble coupled with fuck-me heels that day, he just couldn’t help himself. Hermione stared at him for a whole minute, obviously dumbfounded, before her face scrunched up as if her coffee tasted awful. Murmuring a quick “Excuse me” she left in haste as if Snatchers were hot on her heels. Their succeeding encounters were all similar, always ending with her fleeing the scene from his constant stares and “accidental” touches. Draco was going easy on her, convinced subtlety was the key, but it was all for naught. If witches weren’t throwing sultry glances his way, he would have doubted his Malfoy charisma by now. It was downright insulting, to say the least, but he wasn’t a quitter. Draco would win her soon, he was sure of it. But perhaps a change of strategy was in order.

oOo

Hermione Granger, department head of MLE, sighed and leaned back in her comfortable chair. Being back in Britain was helping to slowly mend the gap that had formed between her and her friends while she’d lived in Australia for a few years following the defeat of Voldemort. The kiss she and Ron had shared in the Chamber should have given way to a budding romance, but her heart couldn’t take the separation from her parents, so she’d made up her mind and took a step back. After the battle, Hermione had decided to lift the obliviate spell she’d placed on them before it became irreversible. She hadn’t bothered asking Ron to come with her because she knew he was still grieving the loss of his brother, and his family needed him. It had been painful, though, that he hadn’t offered to accompany her, or just to see her off - even Ginny, who had been in the same boat as him, had the time to spare. Hermione knew dwelling on it was childish, so she’d moved on after some time.

But that wasn’t what had really hurt their friendship. No, what caused the rift was the fact that he carried on with his life as the Keeper of the Chudley Cannons. That, and being a member of the Golden Trio, had catapulted him to stardom. And with fame came parties, social events…and women. She shouldn’t be affected by all of this — they’d never really talked about where they stood, but it hurt her nonetheless.

Her return sparked a change in Ron. It was as if a memory charm had been reversed, and he started thinking about picking up where they’d left of. No longer was he seen out with various witches, as he only pursued her since the day she got back. He sent her roses every day, as if he’d forgotten that she was allergic to them, and chocolates, for which she’d never had a liking. She sighed. After all these years, it was as if he didn’t know her.

And then there was Malfoy, head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation.

Malfoy, who was constantly on the lookout for her like a wolf to his prey, giving her compliments out of nowhere, watching her like he’d devour her. Those eyes, oh those eyes! They made her quiver with want, left her hot and bothered. It was a feeling Hermione was no longer familiar with, having less time for love and the physical needs of her body.

She was unnerved.

This was the same man who, five years ago, had called her a vicious slur she ought not to mention even in her mind. He’d sneered at her, hexed her and thought her way beneath the dirt on his dragon-hide boots. What made him interested, all of a sudden? She wondered. It wasn’t as if he was out of witches. She had seen a couple of them eyeing him like he was sex on legs. The fact that he’d gone from a pointy-faced git to a heartthrob in a span of a few years made her suspicious he had an ulterior motive behind his actions. Oh, she won’t think of him. Not anymore! She had Ron to think about. She wouldn’t picture Draco’s strong arms..arms that could easily hoist her up and fu—

“Ugh! No! Stop it!” She banged her head on her table, hissing at the pain that made her forget her momentary lapse of sanity. She didn’t even hear her door open.

“Hermione? What’s wrong?” Ron entered hesitantly and sauntered close to her.

“N-nothing!”she stuttered, caught in the act having lurid thoughts about Malfoy. “I’ve got a headache, nothing serious.”

“Reckon what you’re doing doesn’t help. Are we still on for later?”  Ron gave Hermione the boyish smile that used to make her heart flutter. Gone was his lanky frame, replaced by muscles from his line of work. He looked handsomer than before. There was no spark, though. It was like the years apart had snuffed the attraction from her.

“Yeah, it doesn’t. I have a potion for it, so I should be okay later.”

He seemed satisfied with her answer and slowly leaned down to kiss her lips. Alarmed and unsure of how she should respond, she moved her face just in time, and his lips landed on her cheek instead. She leaned back, and an awkward silence filled the room.

“Uhm, I’ll see you later then?”

“Yeah, later.” Ron tucked his hands in his robe’s pockets and walked to the door, but he suddenly stopped before leaving her office.

“What the hell are you doing here Malfoy?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Weasley, I work here,” Malfoy snapped back, his voice laced with venom. “Also, if you can kindly move your arse out of the way, I have confidential things to discuss with Granger. You’re wasting my time.”

Ron’s hands tightened to fists, seemingly ready to wipe the sneer off Malfoy’s face.

“Ron, I’ll see you later. Please,” she pleaded. “I have a case I need to run through with Malfoy.”

Ron faced her, gave a curt nod and left in a huff.

Malfoy closed the door behind him and prowled toward her. Hermione was taken aback by the anger she saw in his eyes and carefully backed away into the corner.

“What is it, Malfoy?” She heard her voice falter.

“You’ve been avoiding me, Granger, and I don’t like it. Why?” he snarled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.” He placed his hands on the wall, effectively locking her in.

She tried to pry his arms off, but he won’t budge. “Get away, Malfoy! What do you want?”

He turned his grey eyes on her and, in that husky drawl of his, uttered the words that shattered her resolve. “You. I want you, Granger.”  

She gasped. Seeing his chance to silence her, Malfoy leaned in and closed the gap between them. His tongue plundered her mouth. Teasing. Caressing. A startled cry escaped her lips and, knees weak from the onslaught of his advances, her hands braced his shoulders out of instinct to keep from falling. Shock turned to arousal, shutting down her sense of right and wrong, and she returned his fervent kisses with the same intensity.

Hermione mewled against Malfoy’s mouth when his hips ground against hers. He did it repeatedly and roughly, seeming completely consumed with need and fueled by the noises she made.

Groaning into her mouth, Draco quickly reached down and lifted her hips to his, hiking her skirt up in the process.

His mouth found her neck and opened hotly to suck at her delicate skin. He tasted her while his hands caressed her arse, still grinding his hips, letting her feel his hard length on her wet heat. This was all unplanned, but he wasn’t about to complain. When he’d seen Weasley try to kiss her, he’d been consumed by a feeling foreign to him. There’s no way he was letting that oaf have his little minx after this. He’d make sure she’d be his. Her lips were plump and red from their passionate snogging, and her eyes were shut tight, lost in the throes of passion.

“Granger, look at me.” She slowly opened her honeyed orbs and couldn’t seem to focus because of his ministrations. “Don’t go with him. This, whatever this is that we have between us, you can’t deny it. Not anymore.”

As if to prove his point, Draco pressed featherlight kisses on her mouth again. She readily parted for him, savoring his taste. Carrying her to a chair, he leaned back and tipped up her chin.

“I won’t give you roses, Granger, cliché isn’t my thing, but I sure as hell won’t leave you hesitating when I give you my attention.” He gazed into her eyes, hoping he’d be able to convey his thoughts. “Let’s give this thing a chance. I saw how you evaded Weasley’s kiss. Say yes.”

In a moment of clarity, she tried to move, but Draco held her hips firmly.

“Let me up, Malfoy. How can we talk properly when you’re holding me hostage?” She pouted those sumptuous lips.

“I think you’re right where you’re supposed to be.” He gave her a cheeky grin. “So? What do you think?”

“Let me up, and I’ll tell you.”

He sighed and gave in, allowing her to stand.

Granger looked away and closed her eyes. “I’m dating Ron. I can’t just up and cancel on him. He’s my friend.” She let out an exasperated sigh. She knew she should feel guilty, but his lips on hers felt so right.

Standing up and feeling incensed by her answer—something he should have expected from this stubborn witch—he marched to the door. Before he grasped the knob, he turned to her.

“We’re not done here, Granger. Think about it. Will you settle for a man you no longer feel like giving a proper snog? I saw you. And I felt how you responded to me.” He scanned her brazenly from head to foot. “You can tell me you don’t want me, but your body sings a different tune. You know where to find me when you change your mind.” He slammed the door on his way out, rattling its frame.

Hermione dropped into her chair when he left.  Now there was no faking it, she could really feel a headache coming.

oOo

Fidgeting, Hermione arranged her skirt under the table. She didn’t know how she’d be able to break it to Ron while he was yammering on about the latest Quidditch scores and the proper feints.

“Mione?”

Startled out of her reverie, she sipped her wine before she said, “Yes?”

“Did you even hear what I said?” Ron frowned, irked that she wasn’t paying attention.

“I’m sorry, Ron, it’s been a long day and I’m tired.”

“'Are you sure that’s the only reason?” He eyed her pensively.

This was it, she thought. That was the opening she was looking for. She hesitated a little too long and, when she faced him, he was looking at her intently.

“I’m sorry.” She took another sip of her merlot for liquid courage and placed her glass on the table. “I don’t think this is working, Ron. We tried. I know we did, but…I think it’s too late for us. I…I no longer feel the same way before I left for Australia.”

Silence.

All she could hear were the sounds of the neighboring table’s cutlery. Confused by the lack of his legendary outbursts, she looked up. Ron was blinking and swiped an arm over his eyes.

“'Ron? Are you—”

“I know.” He breathed heavily, regret marring his voice. “I just thought, if we tried, we could go back to what we were before this. I should not have allowed you to go alone. I should have been there for you, too. If I was, then maybe, just maybe, we’d be together and happily married like Harry and Ginny.”

Stunned by his admission, she stood up and moved in front of her best friend. This was the man she’d thought she’d spend her life with. Grasping his hand, she pulled him up and hugged him fiercely. People were probably staring, but she didn’t care. Her sobs were muffled by his shirt. She cried for the love they’d lost, for the chance they would no longer get back.

When she was able to get her bearings, she peered at him, eyes puffy from crying. “I love you, you know? You’ll always have a piece of my heart Ron. I know you’ll find someone who will be worthy of your affection someday. I’m sure of it.”

He patted her back and murmured his acquiescence. They returned to their places and continued eating, foregoing any personal conversation and settling on safer topics like their work and their friends. After settling their bill, he took her home and dropped a chaste kiss on her forehead.

Hermione looked around and when she didn’t see anyone, she whispered a few spells to drop her wards. Letting herself in, she did her nightly rituals and prepared for bed. When her head hit the pillow, her mind traitorously reviewed everything that had transpired during her dinner with Ron, and she felt a stray tear escape her eye. She rubbed her cheek to remove the liquid. There was no use thinking about it. They’d made peace with each other.

She only had Malfoy to deal with now.

Malfoy.

The git was still as arrogant as ever. When he’d started flirting with her, she’d decided to investigate what the rotten ferret was up to. What she found out was astonishing. He donated a hefty sum each year to war reparations, funded a muggle-born orphanage for those who’d lost their parents in the second wizarding war and other charity work. It seemed he had also left his prejudiced beliefs behind from what she observed in the office. He was chummy with muggle-born wizards and witches, even trusted by Kingsley. And if those sexy intense looks were a promise of what’s to come, hell, she would be coming alright.

Oh well, it seemed a dreamless sleep potion was in order.

oOo

He sought her out every chance he got, even though he said she should be the one to approach him when she’s ready. The witch in question was always nowhere in sight. She should have been sorted into Slytherin with all the tactics she employed to avoid his presence. When he was finally able to see her, in her office nonetheless, she disappeared before he even got the chance to talk to her, leaving via portkey for an international magical conference. He was at his wit’s end.

oOo

1 week later

February 12

Draco was shuffling papers at his desk, pretending to be busy despite finishing all of his tasks before lunch time. According to his sources, the conference had been extended from a three day event to a week. He was frustrated, irate and terribly missing the wily witch. He thought about giving up, but changed his mind at the last minute. A Malfoy always gets what they want. He huffed. Fat chance that would come true this time. The witch seemed to have forgotten everything they shared for a few minutes in her office.

A knock on his door pulled him out of his brooding. “Come in,” he called out without looking up. His new secretary had been quite outrageous with her propositions recently and if it was her, he had to appear busy or else she’d try to molest him again. Not that the lady wasn’t pretty, quite the contrary, but ever since that encounter with Granger he couldn’t seem to get it up for anyone else.

“What is it, Ms. Hollingsworth?”

“Last I’ve heard it’s Ms. Granger,” a female said with a teasing lilt in her voice.

Malfoy’s head snapped up immediately when he heard her. It couldn’t be. He almost believed he was hallucinating from his constant thoughts about her, but this seemed to be real. There she was, wearing that tight skirt and shirt he fancied so much. Keep your cool, Malfoy. You don’t want her thinking you’re too excited to see her. To cover his shock, he dropped his gaze and perused the documents in front of him.

“How can I help you, Granger?” he uttered nonchalantly.

She sashayed unhurriedly toward him, and he saw her dainty hands grip the edge of his desk.

“Well, you did say I could come here when I changed my mind. You can stop acting like you don’t care Malfoy.” He looked up the saw those plump lips he’d been dreaming about curl into a smile. “Caught how your eyes almost fell out of their sockets when you saw me.”

The cheeky minx. He was about to stand up and face her when she dropped a piece of folded parchment on his table.

“See you on the fourteenth, Malfoy. It’s a date. Don’t be late.” Granger winked, turned on her heel, and left a gaping Malfoy behind.

Hermione walked briskly to her office, trying to calm her beating heart. She knew it was a bold move, what she’d done. But her mind was made up. The entire week in Paris and the weeks she’d constantly pulled a disappearing act on him had given her ample time to think everything through. Although still a bit unsure, there was no denying the physical attraction she felt for him. The magnetic pull was inevitable, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she caved. Hermione preferred to do it on her own terms rather than his. Feeling confident she’d done the right thing, she slowed her pace and grinned. Oh, Malfoy, you’ll absolutely get it, just you wait.

oOo

The parchment held an old brass key and instructions to touch it by 8:00 PM on Valentine’s Day, no less. Figured Granger was a romantic. This was the first time he had no idea what to look forward to, no clue what to even wear on this momentous occasion. Not wanting to come unprepared, he wore a three piece suit, just to be sure. She had said it was a date. Satisfied with his appearance in the mirror, he checked the grandfather clock in his room and when the bell tolled, he gripped the key and felt the tugging sensation always accompanied by portkey travel.

He was whisked to an unfamiliar place, and when he turned, he saw a quaint house with a beautiful lawn. It was filled with orchids of various colors and sizes, the grass leading to the house’s entrance was trimmed short and obviously well kept. Not bad. He trudged toward the door and tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. Remembering the key, he fished it out of his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole. The door slowly opened to reveal a modern looking household filled with muggle contraptions. Did Granger just invited him into her home? Curious.

He called out for her, but when no one answered, he slowly let himself in, hoping against all hope that there were no hexes in place for intruders. He stood in shock when he got to the dining area. There was a table for two, a bottle of wine chilling not too far from it, and a sweet melody playing in the background.

”Like it? Have a seat, Malfoy.”

He saw her, then, coming out of what seemed to be the kitchen. His eyes traveled from her gorgeous face, sporting a pretty smirk that rivaled his signature one, down to her body encased in a little black dress that hugged her curves and flared at the bottom, to the creamy expanse of her legs that went on forever. On her feet were open toed pumps. Draco almost broke a sweat. It seemed he had a foot fetish with the way his breath caught upon seeing her in those.

He coughed to hide his minute ogling, and took a seat.

“This is unexpected, Granger, but definitely welcome. So you and Weasley?”

“What about Ron?”

“You know what, Granger, don’t play games with me.” He narrowed his eyes at her, jealousy flaring up his mood.

She openly laughed, walked toward him and, to his surprise, sat her firm arse on his lap, her arms encircling his neck.

“No need to get all fired up, Malfoy. Ron and I have settled on being friends. Things weren’t looking up on the dating front, and it’s better this way than to ruin years of friendship. Plus, I don’t think we’d be here if I was still into him.” Mischief filled her hazel eyes.

Unable to keep the happiness out of his face, he flashed her an endearing smile, baring that perfect set of pearly whites. The git really was handsome. “So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, what we’re doing right now…we’re sort of dating, right?”

“Believe you me, Granger, if I had my way, that’s not the only thing we’d be doing tonight.” He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully and proceeded to snog her senseless.

Only their moans could be heard in the room, dinner all but forgotten.

Fin.