#i feel like i need to add that his repressed anger is like. ever present but NOT the motivator for killing.

[spring-lxcked]

Takes your face in my hands. I need you to understand before reading this that, while I discuss William's personality being, in some ways, a reflection of how he was raised, this is not in reference to the horrific murders. Even if he had had a near perfect childhood, he always would have turned out a serial killer. Any discussions of his parents' effects on him are about personality and how he raises his kids. That's it. Also boohoo none of this excuses any of his behavior lmao.

Overall, William's childhood wasn't abnormal for the time. He grew up in a household that had been middle class, but struggled during and after the war. He lived in a relatively small town—not quite rural, but lacking in the bustle of city life. A mid-sized home built in the 30's. A mother and a father who were very much products of both the times and their own childhoods. A sister one year older to whom he was very close. It had all the makings of a standard childhood.

William's relationship with his parents was complicated—something his sister could relate to as well. Their parents were Ethel and Sidney, a pair who fit right into the norms of the time. Ethel was a housewife, albeit not opposed to Jayne's desire to work, and Sidney was an office worker turned automotive technician. While they swore that they loved their children, their relationship with them was simultaneously strict and distant. Once they were old enough to be away from their parents, they were sent outdoors to play with only the expectation of being back in time for meals. The notion of actually playing with their children was beyond them—they were far too "busy" to engage in that kind of thing.

Their father was an infrequent presence in their life, often either working or spending his time off relaxing rather than with the kids. He did, however, teach William how to work on cars. These moments are some of the few genuinely fond memories he has of his father. Their mother, although much more present, was emotionally distant and not particularly skilled at expressing her love. The mother who would hold William when he was young and pet his hair when he cried faded as he aged. The household could be best described as cold outside of William and Jayne's relationship.

Emotions were a touchy subject and "sensitivity" was not tolerated beyond a certain age. While crying or showing strong emotions was shamed in general in the household, the society of the time only reinforced this to William as a boy. Meanwhile Jayne was forced to withstand the assumption of maturity far before William. Despite their close ages, she was expected to be more in control of herself than William as a girl. The negative feelings around showing emotion are something that affected both of them. Neither are good at opening up except, to some degree, to one another.

The relationship with William's parents became more strained with age as he began acting out. Repressed anger—a kind he couldn't put a name to nor explain—led to him lashing out at those around him. (This, and a genuine enjoyment of scaring and even, at times, harming others.) William took the concept of a "bully" to a new level—the older he got, the more his fellow teenagers began to question if he was actually dangerous. Friends were hard to come by, and William had never had a good grasp on making friends as it were. Despite his actions, Jayne stuck by him, hoping to talk him down from his escalating behavior. If he had a best friend at this time, or a friend at all, it was her. His parents, on the other hand, inevitably gave up on him—something they told him outright. No amount of punishment seemed to help, and they knew nothing else. Even when he began to pull himself together at 17/18, they no longer had any use for him.

Cutting off his parents when he moved to America had been easy enough. Outside of a call here or there, he ceased any interaction with them. When his mother became sick, he didn't go home. When either died, he didn't attend the funeral. Although she would never admit it, Jayne never quite forgives him for that—for leaving her to handle it all by herself.

William's childhood has major impacts on how he parents his own children. On one hand, he strives to be better than his parents were. On the other, he is still his parents' child. Where his parents were unwilling (when able) to provide their kids with the things they wanted (rather than just needed), he spoils his kids materially. Where his parents were not active in a lot of his life, he regularly tries to involve or be involved with his kids. Where his parents were overly strict, he can be almost too lax (at least early on). But, much like his own father, he loses himself in work, excusing his absence (or having to haul the kids with him post-divorce) on "providing for his family." Like his mother, he's entirely emotionally unavailable and incapable of showing anything beyond the most basic comfort.

[vivalas-vega]

easier / jake ‘hangman’ seresin x reader

this idea came to me very suddenly last night and I just knew I had to write it!!! pls lmk what you think - also lmk if you want a part two, i might have some more ideas for this one 

easier / jake ‘hangman’ seresin x reader 

add yourself to my taglist

word count: 4k

warnings: language, mentions of death, definite flying inaccuracies

The ride home on the carrier passed by in a blur, a mix of voices and sounds that didn’t quite reach your ears as you responded on autopilot. Your body taking over and saying what you thought people wanted to hear as your mind was somewhere else entirely, still replaying the mission over and over, focusing in on every little detail you were certain you weren’t ever going to forget. It was all the same, excited congratulations on a job well done, comments on the skills you’d exhibited, and praise for your first mission as a team leader going successfully. You were acutely aware of the fact that you needed to hold yourself together, getting picked as team leader was an incredible feat and you weren’t about to let anyone think you weren’t cut out for leadership long term by breaking down now, but that didn’t mean your mind was present. You weren’t even aware you’d docked back in San Diego until Bob was softly tugging on your arm and letting you know it was time to go, weren’t even sure how you’d gotten home until the sound of Rooster’s keys hitting the entryway table in your shared home somehow jolted you back into your body and you dropped your bag as you looked around. Home. You felt like sinking to your knees, kissing that damn creaky floor and never stepping foot outside again. 

“You haven’t said a word since we docked,” he commented, trying not to prod.

“Yeah, uh- tired. We prepped so hard for this mission and then uh… guess it’s finally catching up,” you muttered, slipping your boots off and pulling the pins from your hair. “Mind if I grab the first shower?” you asked and he just shook his head, watching you carefully as you made your way down the hall. The second the warm water hit your skin you gasped, suddenly feeling the weight crash against you and you braced yourself against the tile as you felt each emotion you’d been so carefully repressing for the past twenty-four hours. Shock, anger, shame, fear… they all cascaded over you and you almost willed them to mix with the water and wash down the drain but things don’t work that way. You forced yourself to go through your routine, trying to block out the sounds of bullets hitting your jet and your teammates panic in your ears. 

“Tally two, three o’clock!” Payback said and you cursed to yourself as things began to fall apart around you.

“Fuck, it’s a dogfight. Keep your eyes up, watch your teammates.” you yelled.

“Smoke in the air!” Rooster shouted in your ear and everything devolved into chaos, everyone trying to keep their line of sight straight as they bobbed and weaved around each other, the SAM’s, and the terrain around them.

“Stay low when you can!” you yelled, deploying flares and bailing Phoenix out seconds before Payback had to do the same for you. Enemy fire was raining over your jet and you couldn’t take much more, “cover me, we need to take them out.”

“I’m on you, Siren, go,” Phoenix affirmed as you veered off course and set your sights directly on one of the bandits, fighting back every survival instinct telling you to bail. “Backup, backup, on my six, we’re pinned.” she shouted and your blood ran cold. 

“Talk to me, what the hell is going on?” You were struggling to get tone on this guy, whizzing through the air as he seemingly played cat and mouse with you.

“Rooster and Payback are getting hammered,” Bob answered.

“Shit, shit, shit.” you muttered to yourself, trying to take a deep breath but it felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of your lungs.

“Come on, kid, what would I do?” You suddenly heard Maverick in your ear, and somewhere in the back of your mind you wondered if he’d physically subdued Cyclone to get to the mic. “You can do this in your sleep, Siren, you just gotta do it.” you nodded, you knew what to do. Increasing speed you suddenly took a sharp right, disappearing behind a ridge and dropping below the radar.

“Comanche, talk to me.” 

“You’re parallel, they can’t see you.” 

“You know what to do.” Mav said and you swallowed all of your fear, it was now or never. Flipping over the ridge you cut them off, knowing you were putting yourself wide in the open but hoping the element of surprise would give you the two seconds you desperately needed to lock tone, and it did. You watched as your hit ripped through the canopy of their jet, pulling up on your throttle to avoid the inevitable explosion as it crashed into the rocks below and you didn’t even have time to process it as you whipped around. 

“Dagger One, confirmed bandit kill. Dagger Squad, proceed to carrier.” 

“What? Siren-” Rooster began to protest in your ear as you deployed counterstrikes against missiles that were headed directly for him. 

“Go, now. None of you can take anymore fire,” you ordered as you lifted yourself back onto the radar, giving your enemy a clear sight at where you were. You waited until they changed courses, abandoning Phoenix to take on the bigger threat: you. You waited until the last second before taking off in the opposite direction. 

“Is she-” Bob started to ask before you cut him off,

“I mean it, that is an order.” You whizzed through the canyon, taking each turn in stride as you dropped low enough to confuse your opponents radar. You knew this terrain. You studied it, made sure you knew it better than your old childhood neighborhood… you just needed to keep him locked in, distracted enough to lure him right where you wanted him. You lifted up, just briefly to keep him on edge, practically taunting him before dipping back down and hurtling directly towards the rocky hillside. Your calculations told you that you had about ten seconds to bail out before you became one with that hillside and Mavericks words in your ears kept you on track. “Three… two… one.” you whispered before roughly pulling up on the throttle, gasping at the sudden force of the incline, leveling out just as soon as you could to be sure your plan had worked, sighing at the smoking wreckage beneath you. 

You stepped out of the shower with shaky hands as you dried off before making the quick dash towards your bedroom where you changed into your comfiest sweats and sweatshirt, the sound of the tone still ringing in your ears. By the time you reemerged, Rooster was already in the bathroom and you made your way through the silent house to check the fridge, which was a wasted effort on your part as the two of you never kept it stocked, especially not before a deployment. You raked through the take-out menus from the junk drawer, narrowing down to pizza or Chinese and leaving it to Rooster to be the tie-breaker. You cracked open a beer, the one thing that was always stocked, and leaned against the island as you took measured breaths, mind slipping further and further away from the present until Rooster’s tap against the pizza menu startled you back.

“Get extra breadsticks,” he said, grabbing his own beer and you nodded as you grabbed your phone, exchanging pleasantries and your order quickly before setting it back down with a sigh. “You okay?” he asked and you lifted your gaze to meet his with a nod.

“Yeah, just ready for food and my own bed,” you said and it wasn’t entirely a lie. Rooster decided to accept this, for now, knowing it was best not to pry until you had some food in you. 

“Okay, Maddie texted. Said we had some packages delivered, I’m gonna go grab them, probably from your dad.” he said as he slipped his shoes on and you chuckled.

“Mmhm, is that all you’re going to do?” you asked, raising your eyebrows at him and he just stared back.

“She’s our neighbor, Siren.” 

“Our super hot, super single neighbor that you’ve had a crush on since we moved in… but if it’s not about anything else I can go grab them, since they’re probably for me anyways,” you teased as you stood and he all but pushed you back down. 

“My shoes are already on, I’ll be right back.”

“I’m not saving you any breadsticks if you aren’t.” You watched as the door shut behind him and exhaled forcefully, finally alone for probably the first time in weeks and you tried to decide what to do, settling on making your way through the house to take stock of any damage to your houseplants. None seemed too far gone, and you began gathering the ones that needed some extra love by the sink when a knock on your door startled you. Grabbing your wallet you went to meet the delivery driver but were only startled further when you swung open the door.

“Hangman? What are you doing here?” you asked, narrowing your eyes at the pizza boxes in his hand.

“Ran into the driver when I got here,” he said, pushing into your house and you stepped aside confused.

“By all means, come on in,” you sighed, watching as he set them in the kitchen. “What are you doing here?” you asked again.

“Mind if I?” he gestured to the box, grabbing plates down from the cabinet and making himself right at home as he grabbed the red pepper and ranch from their respective spots. 

“Clearly I can’t stop you,” you threw your hands up in exasperation before grabbing your own plate, eyeing him suspiciously and not waiting for him to explain himself. The second the smell hit your nose you realized it had been far too long since you’d eaten anything that didn’t come from a Naval carrier cafeteria, and all of that likely came out of a freezer. You ate in silence, and it wasn’t until you finished your second slice that you were reminded of his presence. “So, is there a reason why you’re here or is it just to steal my food?” 

“Well, I paid the driver so technically it’s you stealing my food,” he replied before taking another bite.

“That you intercepted. Seriously, Hangman, I am not in the mood for whatever is going on,  I just want to be alone and go to sleep, so if this is about the mission or another long-winded rant about me making you Dagger Spare can it please wait?”

“That right there is why I’m here.” 

“What is?”

“Being alone, not sure that’s such a good idea,” he grabbed both of your plates and set them in the sink before fixing you with a look that you couldn’t quite decipher and you felt your patience wearing thin.

“What does that mean?” you sighed. You were currently utilizing all of your energy at putting up a front and you weren’t sure how much you had left, and Hangman was just about the last person you wanted to crack in front of. 

“That mission was kind of a lot, and I know Rooster’s not coming home anytime soon, so…”

“So, you just decided to show up out of the blue? The mission was fine, Hangman, same as it always is,” you replied but it wasn’t convincing and you knew that… you just prayed that Hangman would accept it anyways and leave.

“Except, it wasn’t the same, was it? Some pretty big differences in this one over any of our other ones,” he said, popping the pizza boxes in the fridge and you just stared at him bewildered.

“What is going on right now? Why are you suddenly so interested in my well-being after a mission?” 

“Is it surprising that I consider you a friend, Siren?” he shot back. 

“Actually, yes it is.” He contemplated this for a moment but shrugged it off before walking into your living room and sinking into the couch and you tentatively followed. 

“Regardless, I know that any minute now you’re going to lose the thread that’s keeping you together and I just don’t think you should be alone when that happens.” he said and you just furrowed your brows.

“Again, what does that mean?” 

He sighed, “Siren, you have clearly been stuck in your head since the moment your jet landed on the carrier.”

“Hangman, I’m fine.” You felt it, the first clench of your chest as you lied through your teeth and you took a deep breath to steady your nerves. You hadn’t been able to shake the sound of that god awful tone ringing in your ears, the panic in Bob’s voice as he called out SAM’s in the air, the way Phoenix tried to keep it together to cover you only to be pinned with no way out. The image of a man, too far away and too distorted through the canopy to actually make out, but a man nonetheless before your shot ripped apart his jet and sent him plummeting to the ground. The sound of the explosion beneath you as you fought gravity after your hail mary. It was all there, at the forefront of your mind replaying so loudly and so clearly that if you closed your eyes you could be certain you were still there in the thick of it. And Hangman saw all of this, the internal struggle to keep it all buried. He heard it in the dismissive responses on the carrier, and he felt it in the faraway look in your eyes.

“You’re not fine,” he said softly and you just shook your head, suddenly feeling the oxygen in the room thin out, each breath beginning to feel more and more like a chore.

“I- I am fine, you don’t need to be here.” you whispered and he moved closer on the couch, carefully watching as your chest began to heave and your eyes fluttered shut. Flashes of SAM’s exploding in the air, white smoke, and that barely-there figure clouding your mind and that small crack gave way under the unbearable weight, allowing room for everything you’d been trying to keep at arm’s length. White hot tears fell down your cheeks but you hadn’t even noticed over the sights and sounds so sharp in your mind, not until you felt your hand being raised and pressed against something warm and firm.

“Open your eyes, Siren.” You heard it but it didn’t quite register, not until you felt another hand on your cheek wiping your tears, “open your eyes.” He repeated and this time you heard it, slowly allowing them to open as you hiccupped and noticed his other hand was pressing yours to his chest. He pulled away from your face, grabbing your free hand to press to your own chest and took a deep breath, nodding for you to do the same. The rise and fall of your chest was rapid and erratic in contrast to his, so measured and calm and you felt like you were fighting your lungs trying to get them to fall into the rhythm he’d set but eventually they relented and you began to feel calmer as the tears continued to stream silently down your face. He let your hands fall but kept one firmly wrapped in his grasp, offering you a physical tether, a reminder that you were here. “Do you want to try telling me what’s going on in your head?” he asked gently.

“I-” you started but shook your head, clearing your throat and trying to regain some composure. “It all happened so fast. We completed the mission and should have been home free, then the bandits came out of nowhere… I don’t- I don’t know what we missed, what we did wrong… we were below the radars level of detection. We let our guards down and then they were on us and we had to fly where we could trigger the SAM’s and it was just chaos I-I mean it was hard to tell up from down at one point,” you felt the emotion begin to build back up and Hangman just sat silently, rubbing the back of your hand with his thumb and giving you space to continue. “I was waiting for a command, waiting for someone to tell me what to do and I realized it was my call. Everyone was shouting, calling out their moves, trying to figure out what was going on… it was my responsibility to make sure everyone made it back. I knew what I had to do, hearing Maverick just confirmed it and I… I just went for it, followed the instinct and before I could even register what I’d done I had to get the other one off Phoenix… I had to get them home but I-” you choked on your words, “two people, Hangman, I-” you couldn’t finish around the sob that left your lips and he nodded knowingly before pulling your legs across his lap wrapping you in a hug. His arms held your shaking frame close to his as you sobbed, tears soaking through his shirt as he just rubbed your back and told you that you were okay. You weren’t sure how long you stayed like this, but when your cries quieted and your breathing evened out he pulled back just enough to cradle your head in his palms.

“I need you to hear me when I say this, Siren. What you did was brave, and you did exactly what you had to do. It was them or you, or Rooster, or Phoenix and Bob, or Payback and Fanboy. It was them or your team, and you did what any leader would have done. If you hadn’t someone wouldn’t have come home, and it was your skill and quick decisions that ensured everyone did. It’s because of you Rooster is with that hot neighbor right now, because of you Bob is on the phone with his Ma, Payback is with his kids, Phoenix is with her girlfriend, Fanboy is… I don’t know what Fanboy’s doing but the point is you pulled through, you protected your team.” 

“But, those people, I… I mean, fuck they’re just doing the same thing we were, right? For their own country? What about… their kids, their family-” another wave of tears pulled you under and he shook his head, forcing you to keep eye contact.

“They were doing the same thing we were. They knew what they were doing, knew the risks, same as we do. You did what you had to do to survive. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why does it feel like this?” you asked and Jake just smiled softly.

“Well sweetheart, if it didn’t feel wrong then we’d have a whole different set of issues right now,” he said and it managed to coax a laugh from you. Small and fleeting, but it was there. “It’s not supposed to be easy, and no one tells you about this part, mainly because so few people in our position have actually experienced it. They only focus on the victory and the glory, breeze right on over this part… and this part is shitty, I’m not here to tell you it’s anything but. I just need you to know you did what you had to.” 

“But you have… experienced it,” you stated and he nodded.

“Ever notice how I’m never the one to bring it up? It’s a lot easier to boast and move past it than to get into the nitty gritty of just how much it sucks. And believe me, it does.” 

“How did you- how do you move on from this?” you asked softly and he dropped his hands to rest on your thighs. 

“You just do, you keep telling yourself you did what you had to and eventually it gets a little easier. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it though, this will always be with you, it just gets a little easier to bear with time. And you have me, everyone’s going to want you to try and talk to them about it eventually and you should talk about it, but if you ever need someone that gets it… I’m here.” 

You nodded, “thank you.”

“Everyone always talks about what an accomplishment it is to have a confirmed air-to-air kill, they never talk about the burden that comes along with it. What people don’t know is that it looks good on the resume but it’s not a club you want to join, and I’m so sorry you did.” He squeezed your leg reassuringly, “but you’re strong, and you’re good… like, better than me, though I’ll deny it if you ever repeat it, you’re going to get through this, I know you are.”

You smiled softly, “I’m telling Phoenix you said that.” He squeezed your leg a little harder, intentionally hitting a pressure point causing you to squeal and giggle.

“I can’t believe you would do that, after all of that,” he said and his shocked expression only spurred your giggles further.

“I would never, I’ll take that high praise to the grave,” you promised, crossing your heart. 

“What is going on here?” Rooster asked tentatively from the doorway, taking in your position half draped over Hangman and you just narrowed your eyes at him, grabbing Hangman’s wrist to check his watch.

“An hour and a half to get some packages from next door and yet… I see no packages, do you, Hangman?” you asked, looking at him puzzled and he just smirked.

“I reckon there was a different package delivery that took place, wouldn’t you agree?”

“It seems so, Rooster, what do you have to say to that?” He just looked between the two of you, halfway between caught and confused before shaking his head.

“Whatever is going on here I don’t like it, and you better have saved me some breadsticks.” he muttered, walking into the kitchen. 

Hangman turned his attention back to you, his gaze softening, “you should get some rest, I know you didn’t sleep at all last night on the carrier.”

You nodded, “I know I just… every time I close my eyes-” you started but shook your head, not wanting to get worked up again. 

“I can stay, if you want me to,” he offered and your eyes widened though he mistook it for offense, “not that I- I mean-”

“Would you?” you cut him off and he nodded, and when you disappeared into the bathroom to get ready for bed you couldn’t help but chuckle as you heard him talking with Rooster in the kitchen.

“Spending the night?” You heard Rooster ask suspiciously, “should I make up the couch?”

“No, uh- gonna be in Siren’s room.” he replied.

“Seems a little… precarious, don’t you think? What are your intentions here?” 

“Listen you big dumb flightless bird, I’ve been where she’s at. Things are going to get really intense before they get better and I just… I don’t know, I don’t want her going through that alone. My intentions are to just be there for her.” You smiled to yourself, heart warming at the notion of Hangman, someone you’d once believed to be a bit of a pompous ass, being so selfless and helpful. 

When he entered your room you’d already climbed into bed, limbs aching and heavy and he noticed the change of clothes you’d set on the end of your bed. “I don’t know what you like to sleep in, I stole those from Rooster so you have options.” He smiled softly before leaving, quickly returning in a tee shirt and gym shorts before sliding in next to you and you almost sighed in relief at the prospect of finally getting some sleep.

“Get some rest, honey. I’m here and you’re safe,” he said as you laid your head down, “just close your eyes.” And when you did the images were there, the sounds and smells but so was Hangman… just as he’d promised he was there to anchor you to the Earth and keep the nightmares at bay the best he could and in that moment you knew. Things weren’t going to be easy again, not for a long time, but he would be there every step of the way and that alone made it just a little easier to bear.

[randomthefox]

I’ve been thinking a lot about how angry Tails gets in Sonic Lost World lately.

I think Tails is the type of person who loves to do everything he can to help people constantly, especially the people he’s closest to, because he desperately wants his feelings to be reciprocated. But Tails doesn’t want to directly ask for what he wants because he thinks that would be selfish. He always tries to present a kind and nurturing persona to the rest of the world so that people will feel like they can depend on him, and if they do, they’ll never leave him. This is also why he doesn’t know how to say no to people. The only way that he feels he can make sure he doesn’t accidentally drive away the people he cares about is by being as useful as possible. He clearly thinks that his worth is only measured by how useful he by how he asks Sonic in Frontiers whether he’s being a burden on Sonic for not doing enough to help him save the world.

I think that’s why Tails’ anger in Sonic Lost World seems to come out of nowhere. He’s felt like he’s been underappreciated for a while now, and Sonic wanting to team up with Eggman was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you pay attention, Tails’ rant is foreshadowed by him being more prideful than usual. As a way of him trying to communicate to Sonic that “you should be grateful for everything I do for you” before Tails has a full meltdown, because Tails doesn’t want to sound selfish by directly saying it.

Tails doesn’t get emotional very often because he’s always repressing his feelings to not be a bother. Tails still doesn’t say no. He never says that he refuses to work with Eggman, he just complains about it. He also still doesn’t properly convey what he wants. He just says that he’s angry about working with Eggman, but that’s clearly not the entire truth because he brings up how he thinks that Sonic doesn’t think he’s good enough. Another way of him indirectly saying “you should be grateful for everything I do for you”, except more aggressively. He still doesn’t want to come off as selfish so that people won’t abandon him. So instead he expresses his repressed anger by complaining about everything all of the time while never addressing the source of exactly what’s making him so volatile because he still doesn’t want to seem like a bother by sounding selfish, even though he’s being a bother anyways by being a passive aggressive jerk because he won’t just say what’s wrong. Tails is so fixated on not being a bother by not being selfish that he doesn’t consider how he could be being a bother in other ways. Such is the contradictory nature of an unhealthy coping mechanism. It fits with Tails’ habit of fixating so hard on the complicated stuff that he misses the simple things. Like how he built the Tornado 2 to do something as amazing as transform but forgot to add in something as simple as landing gear in the second form. 

Tails’ arc in Frontiers seems to be the beginning of him learning how to properly advocate for himself and how to become a more self sufficient person.

What do you think of this analysis of Tails’ psyche? Do you think this sounds about right? Or have I completely gone off the fucking deep end? Also, thank you for reading my 700 word essay on Miles ‘Tails’ Prower lol.

I think you're spot on. Like, no notes.

Tails might have self actualized in SA 1 and 2 but the problems of his self esteem issues didn't just go away. That shit is sticking around forever. It's like being an addict. You don't ever stop being an addict. Even after twenty years of being sober, you'll still be an addict. Deep rooted psychological dependence doesn't ever go away, you just get better at managing it. Pain doesn't go away, you just make room for it

Tails primary character flaw has always been his self esteem. His theme song was called "Believe in Myself" because that's what he needed to learn how to do. And the lyrics of the song include "Many friends help me out In return I help them Certain things I can do, and there's things that only I can do No one's alone."

Which, yeah, speaks to me of a pretty cut and dry case of "Tails doesn't think he's good unless he's useful." So Sonic thinking they "needed" Eggman instead of deferring to Tails would absolutely trigger that sensitive reaction from him. And like I mentioned when I was playing through the game - Sonic accepts Eggmans suggestion for them to team up unilaterally. He doesn't even ask Tails if he'd be okay with it, let alone consider that Tails could reprogram the machine himself. Sonic did cede to Eggman's suggestion so easily because of the baggage he was dealing with himself in that game, but it absolutely just resulted in Tails feeling slighted and developing some resentment which quickly boiled over into their argument. Which I've already analyzed myself.

Tails definitely strikes me as the kind of person who wouldn't understand that It Isn't About The Nail

Or the Parks and Rec way portraying it

aka as you described "so fixated on not being a bother by not being selfish that he doesn’t consider how he could be being a bother in other ways." The story he had in Frontiers definitely seemed oriented around confronting that element of his character and trying to take corrective steps towards it.

I agree 100% with all of it.

[blackbutler-readerinsertsandjunk]

May I please request sight, nose, mouth, heart and hands for Peter and Dagger? If you want to add another circus member of your choice, go ham, mon ami.

brb one sec, I gotta get emotional over these boys <3

SENSES HEADCANON PROMPT

SIGHT : How is your muse’s sleeping schedule? Do they have a regular sleeping pattern, or if not, do they even want to have one? Does your muse sleep easily, or prefer to be awake for as long as they possibly can?

Well, his sleep schedule… could be worse? Could be better, though. Like most of the first-stringers, he doesn’t go to sleep when the rest of the circus does. It’s after midnight by the time he finally lies down, every night; he never gets to sleep before then. Honestly, if it were up to him, he’d want to straighten that out, because he knows it isn’t really healthy by the way he feels exhausted when he wakes up. Once he’s able to lie down, he’s asleep pretty easily thanks to all the energy the day took out of him. He doesn’t really have the luxury of putting off sleeping.

NOSE : What does your muse smell like? Do they have a signature scent, something that others associate them with?

He sort of just… smells like the circus. There’s the aroma of dirt after a rain, and the smell of hay mixed in. It’s also entirely possible that there will be a faint iron-like scent that clings to him (especially his hands) thanks to the metalwork of his knives and his frequent handling of them. And, of course, ever-present is the fragrance of the mild, cheap soap that the circus as a whole uses to wash clothes and bedding. That one is maybe most prominent. None of it is very strong, and there’s really nothing too distinct anyone could pinpoint as ‘his’ smell.

HEART : Which one does your muse value the most within themselves respectively in others, emotions or rationality? Why?

Emotion, full stop, for both himself and others. He’s of the opinion that people were created to be emotional creatures, and that trying to hold that back too much is just… missing the point of existing as a human being. People were meant to laugh and cry and be angry and be in love. The problems come, he thinks, when people let themselves be controlled by emotion and let it lead them to bad choices. (He can’t judge too harshly. He’s guilty of it, too.) He knows balance needs to exist, but, he prefers to see hearts on one’s sleeve rather than hidden away.

HANDS : Is your muse good at controlling their emotions, do they repress them, or act before they have a time to think? Has your muse ever done something bad because they failed at controlling their emotions, and in that case how does your muse feel about it now? 

It’s… complicated. He tries to not let himself run away with his feelings. Whether or not it works is a toss-up, and it’s very context-heavy as to which feelings he allows to carry him. Happiness? He doesn’t keep a tight leash on that one. If he’s happy, he lets himself smile and laugh and hug and kiss and whatever else he feels like doing when he’s happy. Everything else, his anger and sadness and envy and everything he thinks is ugly and could ruin his life or someone else’s, he tries to think before he makes a decision while he’s feeling one of those strongly. It also very much depends on why he’s feeling that emotion. If he’s angry because someone’s simply annoyed him, he takes a breath and does his best to not overreact. If he’s angry because someone’s hurting another person he cares about… he doesn’t even spare it a second thought, he just reacts. However, his jealousy in romantic pursuits has wrecked one or two relationships in the past, when he got a little too mad about someone else being with his partner. He feels a lot of regret about that, because his going too far hurt people he cared about, so… he tries very hard not to let history repeat itself.

SIGHT : How is your muse’s sleeping schedule? Do they have a regular sleeping pattern, or if not, do they even want to have one? Does your muse sleep easily, or prefer to be awake for as long as they possibly can?

His schedule is not the healthiest one. Because of the same things that apply to Dagger, Peter also rarely gets to lie down in bed before midnight. More often it’s thirty or forty-five minutes past, and there have been nights his head hits the pillow at one in the morning. He’s been known to grumble (to anyone who knows the reasons) that he wishes it’d be easier to get some damn sleep, but there aren’t many changes he can make at the moment. If it were his choice, he’d probably go to bed much earlier and rise just a little later. He’s one who struggles to fall asleep right away; it’s that horrible problem of too tired to sleep. While he doesn’t necessarily put it off, there have been nights he doesn’t sleep at all because it just won’t come when he closes his eyes.

NOSE : What does your muse smell like? Do they have a signature scent, something that others associate them with?

Well, one certainly wouldn’t expect Peter to smell the way he does. The performances he and his sister do are very physical, so that means he does work up a sweat and so there’s a bit of that. However, it’s usually overpowered by a gentle, fresh scent. That’s probably what he smells like more than anything. It’s a mixture he and Wendy both use for their routines — a combination of talc and chalk powder, that he applies liberally to his hands before practicing or performing. That’s an effort to keep his hands dry so they don’t slip off the trapeze bars, and to soothe the calluses he has from working with them all the time. That fragrance takes over pretty much anything else he might smell like, and that particular scent is one most will recognize as what he and his sister smell like.

HEART : Which one does your muse value the most within themselves respectively in others, emotions or rationality? Why?

For himself, he prefers when he can be rational and logical; perhaps because he knows he usually tends to the emotional side of things. He likes when he’s able to shut that off or freeze it for a moment and just think. As far as for other people, it’s a mixed bag. People acting like unfeeling machines without any kind of emotion is something he can’t stand… and yet, he knows that too much emotion is very much a double-edged sword. He doesn’t have any strong preference when it comes to others, except that he values a person who doesn’t tend toward extremes of rationality or emotion.

Despite trying to keep a lid on his emotions, it’s always been difficult for him to do. He tries very hard to control them, simply because he knows he’s prone to outbursts and he knows he could say or do things which hurt people. He’s not perfect, so his anger spills out a lot before he thinks too much about it. Typically, though, when he acts on it without thinking, it’s because he’s already had his buttons pushed three or four times. He’s already held things back. That final time he snaps, it’s rarely an out-of-nowhere snap — it’s the result of him losing his temper after having had it tested several times, even if those several times were small. In the past (and, hell, even nowadays), he’s gotten into some brutal fights because he failed to control his emotions. In at least one instance he had to be pulled off someone because he was hitting a bit too hard while lost in anger, and in another instance he got beaten half to death because he was so angry at the other person he wouldn’t give up and run. He hates that he’s the kind of person who gets involved in crap like that, so he makes genuine, if not always effective, efforts to stop his feelings from controlling him.

[dustbunny105]

Title: Use Both to Grow Fandom: Star Trek: TOS Ship: Amanda Grayson/Sarek Word Count: 7011 Rating: PG Summary: Amanda dreams of being burned from the inside out and wakes choking on Vulcan's heat. Warning for miscarriage. A/N: Written ages ago for a fandom auction. I set it aside to think of a title and promptly forgot about it, lol.

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Amanda dreams of being burned from the inside out and wakes choking on Vulcan's heat. Pain lights her body aflame and her throat feels as chafed as if she'd attempted to drink the desert down. She thrashes once then curls in around the source of the pain, embracing herself as if she can keep it contained.

There is a grip strong on her shoulder and a caress at the edge of her consciousness and she feels herself relax, just a little, when she realizes she isn’t alone.

“What is it?” Sarek asks, bent close over her. He manages to reach one of her hands and squeezes. “Close your eyes, Amanda-- breathe. Tell me what's happening to you.”

She takes a deep breath; it isn't enough, not in Vulcan's thin atmosphere. The heat she normally finds soothing instead prickles at the end of her every nerve. She realizes she’s crying, tears mingling with sweat, and turns her face into her pillow.

There’s a hand on her face then, fingers pressed to her temple. Sarek urges her to look at him and whispers a long shhh that she feels cross her mind like a summer breeze. She gasps in her relief and tries to see him through her tears. His face looks pale in the dark.

“My lower abdomen--” she begins, then cuts herself off with a hiss, closing her eyes again against the nausea. “It hurts. I feel sick-- I don’t know--”

She shifts then and her eyes snap open when she recognizes the wetness between her legs. Without another word from her, Sarek pulls the sheet away from her body. The two of them stare at the blood soaking lazily through her nightgown and she feels Sarek’s hand tense in hers. She almost laughs but the relief is washed away by another wave of pain and it comes out instead as a sob.

“This isn’t right,” she manages to say. “Sarek--”

“Peace, Amanda,” he says and shifts beside her. The hand on her hand disappears but the other hand continues to press comfort directly into her mind as he grabs at a communicator and calls for help.

//

“He’s very polite,” her father said but the disapproval was plain to hear. He stopped there and Amanda could see him staring at her from the corner of her eye.

Amanda focused the tray she was loading with desserts. She resisted the urge to tell her father to use his words. “Impeccably so,” she agreed instead. She glanced over at her father’s tray, still only half set. “Have you got that? I don’t want to leave him between Mom and Doris for too long-- those two can test anyone’s manners.”

“He’s awfully cold, don’t you think?” her father asked without acknowledging the question. He used that whip crack tone that meant he wanted you to know he was holding his temper by a thread. “I noticed he didn’t have much to do with you.”

She’d noticed her parents exchanging looks throughout dinner, every time Sarek could have taken Amanda’s hand but didn’t. Every time he nodded instead of laughing or smiling at a joke. Every time he refused to rise to bait.

“He can seem cold when you don’t know him,” Amanda said, turning at last to look her father in the eye. In spite of herself, the genuine concern she saw there softened her and she let a smile touch her lips. “Vulcans are very reserved in company.”

“I hear they don’t have emotions,” her father said, staring hard at her. His voice still hadn’t raised but his face was turning red. It went a shade darker for every moment she continued to look at him with flat serenity. "Looking at this gentleman, I'm inclined to believe it."

“They have emotions,” she told him, a cold snap of dignity in her own tone. “They just don’t allow themselves to be ruled by them.”

She didn’t wait any longer to cart her tray out into the dining room, though she tried to project calm by the time she got there. Her father was slow to follow, his face still red. Amanda's family had only ever wanted her to use her words until she said something they didn't like, after all.

//

“I’m afraid our only specialists in human medical treatment are unavailable at present,” says the nurse who greeted Sarek by the family name that Amanda is still learning to wrap her tongue around. He barely glances at Amanda and she can’t decide whether she prefers that to the way other Vulcans, staff and patients alike, had stared at her as they passed. Humans are still a novelty on Vulcan and especially in the capital and of course they all know who she is. “We will, of course, treat the Lady Amanda to the best of our ability.”

Sarek shifts at Amanda’s bedside, the hand he’d allowed himself to put on her shoulder twitching.

Before he can answer, Amanda speaks up, “I have every confidence that you will,” even though the pain makes her voice quaver. “Sarek has assured me that you’re the finest medical center in Shi'Kahr.”

The nurse blinks and she can see clearly enough beneath his placid expression that her pronunciation has impressed him.

“I must stress,” he says, addressing her for the first time, “that our care in your case may be lacking, as compared to what we could offer a Vulcan in your position.”

Amanda holds back the reflexive urge to laugh as a reassurance, a habit she’s still unlearning, strangling it beneath a repressed grunt of pain. She inclines her head in acknowledgement of a point, noting but ignoring the implication that it may carry. “Of course,” she says through gritted teeth. She makes herself hold eye contact. “I came to Vulcan with both eyes open.”

The nurse tips his head, uncertainty stirring his features.

“A Terran turn of phrase,” Sarek explains before he can ask. “What my wife means is that she knew when she made the decision to move to Vulcan what potential there was for danger.”

“I can’t reasonably hold my own educated choice against anyone who does their best for me,” Amanda adds. She still doesn’t break eye contact, never mind how her eyelids flutter.

“Your understanding is… appreciated,” the nurse says. He’s studying Amanda with a look she’s growing refreshingly accustomed to. It’s the look of someone who sees something other than what they expected. He nods at them both and steps out of the room, assuring them about getting an update from the doctor they’ve called for her.

“If a specialist is indeed needed,” Sarek says once the nurse is gone, his hand going from Amanda’s shoulder to her face, “one will be obtained for you.”

Amanda’s lips twitch up at the corners, a subtle enough movement that she doesn’t concern herself with trying to repress it here. She leans into the contact and sighs when she feels Sarek’s soothing touch to her mind. “I have every confidence,” she murmurs again. “Just as I have every confidence that I’m in good hands now.”

“One would hope,” Sarek says, just as quiet and not without a glance at the door.

Her lips twitch again and then she relaxes as well she can against the bed and waits.

//

From the covered shelter of the porch, the shouts of a dozen people in a makeshift game, one with no name and little in the way of rule structure, weren’t so overwhelming. Amanda rocked lightly in her chair and inhaled the fragrance of her tea, still too hot to drink. Her cousins and aunts and uncles all argued some point or another, a cry going up for the third time in a half hour about who was on what team. The crowd roiled with laughter and anger in turn and Amanda was content to watch them, not bothering to dizzy herself with trying to keep track of what they were arguing about when she was sure even they didn’t know.

“So, this is where you were hiding,” said Doris, laughing as she invaded Amanda's little bubble of almost quiet. She huffed as she lowered herself into the other rocking chair, one hand on her swollen belly. There were no teeth in her smile but it had a jagged edge all the same when she added, “One little engagement to a bigshot ambassador and you’re too good for the rest of us, is that it?”

It was always one thing or another that had Doris suggesting that Amanda thought herself above the rest of them. That she wasn't excitable, that she had a position at the Vulcan Embassy on Earth. Amanda suspected that Doris’s game was just to toss out one possibility after another until she could content herself that she’d hit upon the truth. She watched Amanda like a fox watching a hen house, waiting for a bird that was stupid and slow enough to be a meal.

Amanda cupped her tea in her lap and looked back at Doris with the same calm she’d been practicing around Sarek. She held her silence just long enough for Doris to start turning their father’s familiar red-- not long at all-- and then smiled and tipped her head at the ruckus out in the yard. She said, “You know that this sort of thing has never been to my tastes.”

Doris laughed again, like a chill wind, and said, “Right, right, what am I thinking-- you always thought you were better than the rest of us.”

“You know that isn’t true either,” said Amanda, voice and gaze held steady though her hands tightened on her cup. She tried to take comfort that Doris had sought her out at all; their father made a point of never being alone in her company anymore.

“Do you really think they’ll accept you there?” Doris blurted through a grimace. “Sarek is one man you’ve managed to charm. And the other Vulcans at the Embassy are used to humans, you know-- you ought to know, you’ve taught them to be. But they come here expecting to have to put up with humans, even wanting to. You think on their own planet they’ll all be happy to have a human walking their streets-- in their capital, isn’t that what you said?”

“I won’t be the only human to live on Vulcan--”

“You’ll be the only human married to a Vulcan,” Doris interrupted. She strained to lean forward, feet pressed so hard to the wooden floor that it creaked and one hand tight on the arm of her chair. Something like real fear sparked in the cold flash of her eyes. “Do you really think they’re free of pride and prejudice there?”

“Not free of it, no,” Amanda admitted. She wanted to set her tea aside but was worried her hands would shake. “No more than they’re free of any other emotion. But they’re more aware of it and that lets them control it instead of being controlled by it.” She breathed deep, twice. “I don’t have any expectations of being accepted immediately. They guard themselves too closely for that. But they’ll come around when they see there’s no logical reason to reject me.”

The sisters spent a long time just staring at each other. Amanda counted her heartbeats, calmer with each steady thump, teeth rough on her tongue. Doris’s breathing was ragged at the edges but she finally breathed deep and let it bluster out and take most of her hositlity with it.

“I just don’t understand,” she said at last, shaking her head. She looked tired, even more so than she had for the last month as her pregnancy wore her down. In a vulnerable moment between breaths, she looked almost hurt. “You’ve always been so reserved-- really reserved, not repressed like that fiance of yours. But here you are jumping the planet for-- what, for some romantic dream?”

“I’ll be leaving to live with my husband,” Amanda said, falling into the soothing cadance she used with her students. “That’s fair, isn’t it? And I’ll have opportunities to advance my career that I don’t here, and to enrich my life. You know how long I’ve been interested in Vulcan culture, Doris.”

“You won’t be able to stay there-- not for him, with that wall he keeps around himself,” Doris said over her. They were always talking over her, past her, always addressing what they thought she must feel instead of what she expressed. She could never express it well enough for them. Doris struggled to her feet, waving off Amanda when she tried to offer her help. She looked down at Amanda with deep sympathy and intoned, “I hope you know we’ll be happy to accept you back, when you can’t take it anymore.”

There was no point in arguing, not then and like that. Amanda made herself smile at Doris, tried to make it genuine, and said, “I’ll keep it in mind.”

//

No words are wasted once the doctor, T’Paj, has assured herself of the diagnosis. She looks Amanda in the eye as she delivers it, as she has throughout the exam. Her manner betrays none of the discomfort that Amanda has come to expect of Vulcan medical personnel but she cannot entirely hide her disquiet with the results of her tests.

Amanda hardly notices. She gasps deep, intensifying the burn in her belly. The doctor's words catch in her teeth like the grit of the desert and she grinds them between her molars to keep from spitting them back out. She swallows them with another gasp of pain and reaches without looking for Sarek, her hand tight on his wrist.

"You didn't know that you were pregnant?" T'Paj asks, something sharp beneath the professional bluntness of the words.

"I didn't know that I could be," Amanda says, hardly more than a whisper. The admission felt sharp in its own right in her chest but is dulled by her shock by the time it passes her lips.

“We both were under the impression that we couldn’t conceive,” Sarek says; Amanda wonders if T’Paj can hear his defensiveness, his protectiveness, as well as she can.

“It is an unexpected case,” T’Paj says without looking away from Amanda. “And you’re sure that it is the case?”

Sarek tenses but doesn’t answer. Amanda, still reeling, realizes that the question has been directed at her alone. Of course-- Sarek, logically, cannot be the one to insist.

“There’s been no one but Sarek,” Amanda says, trying not to bristle herself. It isn’t an accusation, she knows-- or if it is, it’s a logical one to make. It’s a possibility they’d be foolish not to rule out and there's something comforting in recognizing that. “In any case, I don’t have much opportunity for contact with other humans.”

She may not be the only human on Vulcan but she is the only one in the city, aside from Dr. Corrigan, who she’s only met once so far in passing when she’d gone for her first appointment on Vulcan. It’s lonelier than she’d expected, though she doesn’t dwell on it. She didn’t come to Vulcan to make human friends, after all, and she’s made a fun hobby of charming her Vulcan neighbors and acquanitences.

T’Paj looks at her a moment longer, darts a glance at Sarek, then nods. She says, “It is, as I said, an interesting case. Once you’ve recovered, I’d like to put you in touch with some of our researchers.” She pauses, darting another look between them, and now a little of that familiar discomfort does show through. If she were human, she'd look sheepish. “That, of course, is your own choice to make.”

“Indeed,” Sarek says. He’s stiff beside Amanda and his tone is blander than what she’s gotten used to, nearly droning. “What steps do we need to take in the meantime?”

“We will prescribe medication for the pain,” T’Paj says, doing Amanda the courtesy of addressing her instead of Sarek. “You should consider an appointment soon with someone better versed in matters of human biology but it would seem that your body is already doing the work on our behalf.”

T’Paj goes on to explain what Amanda should expect over the next few days, what’s normal and what isn’t as far as her understanding lets her say, and Amanda can only hope that Sarek is paying better attention than she is herself. Those words buzz in her ears, prickle at her mind so that even Sarek’s soothing influence is drowned out.

//

“I thought you loved children?” her mother blurted without so much as a greeting, appearing at Amanda’s shoulder like a specter. It was a wonder, really, that she’d held it in for as long as she had, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. She never was one to start a confrontation if she could get someone else to do it for her. She was wringing her hands in her apron and getting garden dirt under her fingernails as she watched her grandnieces and nephews run off to play, inspired by the story they’d been told. Her eyes were wide and wet when she turned to look at Amanda as she rose. “You’ve always loved children, haven't you?”

Standing, Amanda smoothed out her long sweater and tucked her book under her arm. She smiled after the little ones and agreed, “I have.” Looking back at her mother, she reminded, “I’ve never needed them to be mine to love them.”

“You always love them better when they’re yours,” her mother murmured, loud enough to hear but low enough to mean that she didn’t want a discussion on the topic. She’d declared more than once that she hadn’t felt like she’d had a family until she had her daughters playing at her feet, no matter how many little ones were constantly under those same feet as family near and far enjoyed her hospitality.

“I'm happy to love them all as well as I can,” Amanda said, loud and clear and just as unabiding of argument. She watched the wrinkles between her mother’s brow; they’d always been the biggest tell for a crying fit.

Her mother wiped her face in the crook of her elbow, more reflex than anything. She said, “I just don’t understand how you can give something like that up for him." One of the children shrieked and they both looked over to assure themselves it was with laughter before turning back. Her mother looked wistful as she continued to watch the children in spite of facing Amanda. “I just want to see you happy, my love." She did look at Amanda then, imploring. "You know that, don't you?”

Amanda did know that, of course. She held that fact tight to her bosom despite the frustration of knowing that the happiness her mother wanted for her was the same happiness she would have wanted for herself rather than what Amanda wanted.

“I’m happy with the choice that I’ve made,” Amanda said. She took her mother’s hands in her own, trying to press her sincerity and her certainty into her palms. “I know you don’t understand and I’m not asking you to. I’m only asking that you trust me to understand myself.”

Her mother stared at her for a long moment. Then she took her hands back, scrubbed her face in her elbow and turned to walk back into the house.

//

The trip back home is quiet. Amanda slumps against the door of their little hovercar with both hands pressed over her belly. It feels warm and whole under her touch, a far cry from what she feels inside, and she worries she’ll lose herself if she lets up. She tries to put it out of her mind and watches the scenery pass. Vulcans go about their business along the street, sedate and steady, and she tries to make herself feel the serenity she sees on their faces. When they slow to take a turn, she sees a Vulcan father guide his daughter out of the path of an oncoming group of pedestrians with a hand on her shoulder. The girl blinks around at the group, then up at her father; her face is bright, emotions not yet under the strict control expected of adults. Amanda watches as the girl scrutinizes her father’s face and then does her best to match it, drawing up as tall as she can with a confident little strut in her step.

Amanda's fingers curl, nails digging past the fine weave of her clothes to press into her flesh. She closes her eyes and keeps them closed for the rest of the ride, not even realizing they’ve arrived until Sarek rouses her with a hand on her shoulder.

They exchange no words as they get out, Amanda swaying only a little. The medicine causes no drowsiness but the lack of pain leaves her aware of how drained she is by the ordeal. Sarek’s hand is soon on her shoulder again, urging her with a gentleness he’d surely deny towards their front entrance.

“Is everything well?” asks their nearest neighbor, T’Laas, as she passes. It’s late in the morning now; she must be on her way to work. She sweeps a gaze over Amanda and turns a querying look on Sarek.

“Everything will be,” Amanda says, sharper than she meant to; she bites her tongue when T’Laas draws herself up, however subtly, in affront. Amanda inclines her head in both apology for the outburst and acknowledgement of the concern. In a gentler tone, she says, “I only need to rest.”

T’Laas relaxes and nods in return, the indiscretion already dismissed. She murmurs her wishes for their good health and continues on her way. She and Amanda have shared tea before and are on good enough terms that Amanda trusts T'Laas not to hold this one incident against her. A knot of tension Amanda hadn’t noticed loosens at the base of her spine and she allows Sarek to guide her inside as T'Laas goes on her way, understanding that her presence now would be more hinderance than help.

Being home isn’t the relief Amanda had hoped for. The house feels bigger than it did; more empty. One hand stays on her belly and she trails the other along the walls as they walk to try and get her bearings. For the first time since she arrived on Vulcan, Amanda doesn’t feel as if she’s home at all.

She balks when they reach the entrance to the bedroom, standing firm against Sarek’s guidance, and nausea comes over her in spite of the medication. Bile tickles her throat and she finds she can’t look at the bed, even though she knows it will have been cleaned up in their absence.

“Amanda,” Sarek says, chiding. “You must rest, give yourself time to recover.”

“I will,” she says, swallowing. She rolls her shoulders to shake his touch and turns with purpose down the hall towards her study. “But not in there.” After a deep breath, she expands, “Not right now.”

Sarek trails her down the hall, silent as a shadow. He touches her shoulder again when she reaches her study, a passing contact that’s gone by the time she turns to look at him.

“I have correspondence to see to,” he tells her, tipping his head towards his own study a little further down the hall. “Nothing urgent. You can find me there if you have need of me.” He hesitates halfway through turning and looks back to pin her with a stare. His gaze roams her face and his mouth is pinched at the corners. He is agitated, more so than he’s letting on. Just before the silence would have been too much, he asks, “Amanda-- did you want the child?”

Amanda doesn’t flinch but it’s a near thing. Some absurd part of her wants to laugh. It’s a topic they’d danced around during their short courtship and beyond, no matter how he’d deny it if put in those terms.

Her tongue runs rough against the backs of her teeth. She looks away from him, hands tight against her belly. Finally, she confesses, “I don’t know. I never really thought about it before.”

No one has ever really asked her before.

//

Amanda’s family sprawled across several small, tightly packed towns and beyond. Having children wasn’t a question; it was an expectation.

It was both a burden and a relief throughout her life. Every assumptive comment, every knowing look, had chafed and chipped at her. But at the same time, no one pressed. Why would they? They all watched as she tended to her young cousins and occasionally their neighborhood friends and knew beyond doubt that she would have her own someday. Amanda could enjoy the company of her young relatives without having to worry too much about “her own someday” as long as she paid her share of polite smiles when they were mentioned as a forgone conclusion. Sometimes she’d catch the eye of a cousin who the family whispered about with pity or exasperation or both and they would share a secret smile and a roll of the eyes. These were the few, precious moments she felt a bond of understanding with members of her family.

So it was easy enough to bear the smug edge of Doris’s smile when she bounced little Lester on her lap and cooed about giving him a sibling someday soon. Amanda even had patience to spare for the condescending lecture about how to hold him and feed him and speak to him, as though she hadn’t grown up being taught.

Doris was a new mother, she reminded herself, and her labor had been difficult. Whatever other motive she had, it was natural that she would be protective of her firstborn.

“He’s still learning that nighttime is for sleeping,” Doris said on a breezy little laugh. It trailed as she looked at her son sat babbling on Amanda’s lap. She reached out to brush wispy hair off of his forehead and forgot entirely to look smug. “I’m up all night some nights, just holding him and humming whatever lullaby I’m not too tired to remember. James offers to help out, of course, but I’m not ready to share that much just yet…”

Lester drooled and rubbed his little fist into the mess, burbling like he was proud of himself. It seemed to break the spell and Doris gave that little laugh again as she took him from Amanda and dabbed at his face with a soft cloth.

“You’d almost think you had the better idea of things, looking at him like this,” she said. When his face was clean, she lifted him in quick bounces and grinned past him at Amanda. “No sleepless nights for you, eh?”

Amanda chose to ignore the secondary implication in the statement, not that it would change her response. She gave Doris the little slip of a smile that had become her norm and rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “I had the best idea for myself, at least. I can’t imagine the same thing working out for you.”

Doris’s face went funny-- not red, not yet, but funny-- and she settled Lester on her knee to bounce so she could look at Amanda unimpeded. Her lips pressed into a tight line and Amanda could see her jaw work.

“You really do think you'll be happy there, don’t you?” she asked, not sounding altogether sure of what she thought of the idea. “Surrounded by all those repressed Vulcans-- living with one, even. Loving him and having to believe he loves you even when he never says it.”

“Sarek tells me that he loves me,” Amanda corrected, feeling some satisfaction in the surprise it brought to Doris’s face. She didn’t bother to explain herself; she felt no need and it would be pointless besides. “He tells me every day, just like I tell him. You’ve just never seen it.”

No, Doris would have to hear it and wouldn’t believe it otherwise. She didn’t understand Vulcans. She certainly didn’t understand Sarek and likely wouldn’t even if she were willing to make the effort to do so. He was too much like Amanda for that.

“Just as well, maybe,” Doris muttered, digging for a win as was her wont. Her brow wrinkled and she couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted to look at Amanda or not. “One less thing to worry about there. You’ll have a hard enough time of it yourself. Any child of yours might be more Vulcan than you but they’d never be as Vulcan as him.”

There was no logic to arguing, so Amanda didn’t. She let Doris turn red and huff and then finally turn her attention back down to Lester, who had begun to wiggle and whine for want of stimulation. She grabbed a little plush of uncertain design, Lester’s favorite, and used it to boop his nose. The happy little noises he made in response melted her face into a smile and she seemed to forget for the moment that Amanda was there.

Amanda leaned back in her chair, smiling softly at the two of them. She could see the appeal, certainly, even when Lester pushed his fingers into his mouth and then endeavored to touch everything around him with the glob of drool he’d gathered in the two seconds it took Doris to pull them back out. She looked forward to one day reading Lester her favorite stories; to seeing him grow up as she’d seen her little cousins do. But if no child of her own was in her cards, it was no loss at all compared to what she stood to gain from her life going forward.

She didn’t bother to think of it again.

//

Any hope Amanda might have had that she would feel more at ease in her study is dashed within the first slow circuit she makes around it. She looks at the familiar room, decorated with a mix of Vulcan and Terran aesthetic influence, and feels as if she doesn’t know it.

She paces, touching everything. Her fingers flit over the spines of her collection of hardbound books, though she leaves them all on the shelves. She looks at the painting in progress on the easel in the corner with a critical eye, comparing it against the view out of her window. She touches the lute hanging on her wall, more decoration than instrument until she learns to play, and her touch coaxes a sour note of grief from it.

Her circuit finishes at her desk and she reaches reflexively to turn on the terminal. She has work to do, she recalls distantly, work she’d intended to do when she woke. Her students will be due their latest scores soon. But Amanda isn’t thinking of working; she probably shouldn’t anyway, with her head stuck up above the clouds in the thinnest layer of Vulcan’s atmosphere. One hand drifts to rest over the comm suite; the other is back on her belly.

The lump in her throat almost chokes her before she can think to swallow it down. Her head feels altogether too heavy and she bows until her forehead presses against the top of the terminal. She swallows again and again, eyes shut tight against tears.

Amanda doesn’t want to call her mother but she wishes she could. Or her father, her sister-- all of them, even. She doesn’t even know if she would but it hurts down deep that she can’t.

They would welcome her call, of course. Of this, she has no doubt. But it would be illogical to call when she knows it will only end in greater frustration.

Whatever their response to the news, they would center it in her narrative. What she thought and felt would be an afterthought to what they did. They would decide all that on her behalf, as they always did, this time before she could decide for herself.

It’s too easy to imagine how they’d react. The color rising in their faces, the tears. She can imagine her mother’s scream, a high little bleat before she slapped her hands over her mouth to keep the rest in. She can imagine their sympathy, their sorrow. She can taste their grief coating the roof of her mouth. And underneath it all would be the relief, the realization that she could have children and the renewed expectation that she would.

Bitterness overcomes her and she shoves herself away from the terminal. She paces the room three times before she finally stops at the window, staring out into the city. Pointedly, she grips either side of the window and inhales deeply of Vulcan’s midday heat, letting it fill in the hollow pit that opened up when T’Paj gave her the diagnosis.

What would she have done, she lets herself wonder, if she’d known? She dismisses the question of whether she’d have been able to do anything. She closes her eyes, turns her face up to the light and breathes through the meditation exercises she’s learned. What, she asks herself in spite of logic, would her ideal scenario have looked like?

Amanda has always loved children, after all, but they’ve always been other people’s children. They’ve never been her responsibility at the end of the day, hers to care for and nurture. She’s never dwelled on the idea. It’s tangled too tightly in the expectations thrust upon her by her family for her comfort, though she’d never gone so far as to resent the possibility. She had reasoned that it would happen one day or it wouldn't and left it there. Then she met Sarek and loved him even more deeply than she desired the opportunity for a fresh beginning that his interest represented and it didn’t seem logical to worry about the matter of children after that. She’d made her choice long before he asked the question.

Epiphany sings through Amanda and she stutters over a breath. Tension leaves her body in a long exhale, though she wouldn’t yet call herself relaxed. Of course, she’d known the question was illogical when she’d asked herself. Not only because it was a matter already past-- but because it was the wrong question to ask. Why was she dwelling on what she would have wanted when she should be asking herself what she wants?

Well, she can hardly be expected to come to a decision without facts to base it upon, can she? Not on Vulcan, certainly. With a shake of her head, she turns from the window and crosses her study in long strides. She makes her way without hesitation down the hall, determination standing her up tall. Dozens of questions have organized themselves in her mind by the time she finds herself in her doorway, each one bearing a value to be weighed and added up. Something like excitement tingles in her chest, contained with great effort between her ribs.

Sarek reaches out a hand to greet her before he's even looked up from his work. She doesn't suppose she could walk softly enough to sneak up on him, not that she's inclined to try. He finally faces her as she slides her palm across his, his gaze flicking over her.

"Your condition has improved?" he asks, less certain than he normally is with her.

"It has," she agrees. She can see his confidence rise in the face of her calm. "My mind is more at ease now that I've had time to process."

Sarek casts another inquisitive look over her and says, “Yet I can see that there’s more to the matter than what you’ve processed.”

“There is,” she agrees just as readily. Letting his hand slide out of hers, she helps herself to the seat across from him and rests her elbows on his desk, fingers steepled. “If your work can wait, Sarek-- there are things that I would like us to discuss.”

--

Amanda didn’t fidget but it was a near thing-- not so near a thing, though, as her face being pressed against the window of their little shuttle as they descended. Most of the trip had been spent imagining this moment and the anticipation took a turn towards anxiety now that it had arrived.

“If you’re concerned what my family might think of you tripping over your gown as you boarded the shuttle,” Sarek spoke up from beside her, his attention on a scientific journal in his lap, “you can rest assured that I won’t be bringing it up to them.”

Lips pressed against her smile-- he was a cheat, was what he was, always prodding to win an emotional reaction from her-- she turned to him with what she thought was a passable impression of his own quirked eyebrow. She was forced to rethink when he looked up to give her an eyeful of the original.

“Jokes, Ambassador?” she asked with great dignity. “And what would your esteemed family think of that?”

He shook his head and looked back at his journal. “How very human of you, to threaten to betray me as I’ve promised not to betray you.”

“You hear threats where you expect to hear them,” she scoffed. Since he wasn’t looking, she did allow the briefest hint of a smile. "And you expect them everywhere."

“Of course,” he agreed readily enough. “How else do you think I’ve lived this long, in my position?”

“And here I thought it was your gift of diplomacy,” she said with a note of false disappointment. She dropped the game a moment later, settling back in her seat and looking with only a little longing at the sky passing beyond the window. Idly, she wondered if the ship that had carried them was still orbiting or if it had already moved on.

There was a comfortable pause, then a brief tension before Sarek asked, “Are you… feeling better?” He had grown accustomed to such considerations in their time together but they seemed harder for him to express the closer they got to Vulcan. It was fortunate for them both that she could read him as well as she could.

“I’ve had a chance to make peace,” she said, careful over the words. The moments she’d spent bidding her family goodbye at the wedding party had been filled with tears shed and voices raised. Her mother had hugged her tight just before they’d separated and insisted through sobs that Amanda let them know immediately when she had arrived safely on Vulcan and that she was to stay in touch. “I know they mean well. I know that they want the best for me. What they need to realize is that what’s best for me isn’t theirs to define.”

Sarek shook his head, setting his journal aside. “I must confess,” he said, “I’m baffled by this dynamic. If they’re so opposed to the life you’ve chosen to live, why don’t they cut off contact entirely?”

“Because they don’t want to lose me,” she said gently. The question gave her a bit of a chill. It wasn't representative of one of her favorite tidbits of Vulcan culture. “They want me to be happy-- and they want to be able to see it for themselves. Never mind that they’re too stubborn to recognize it when they do see it.”

“They raise conflict after conflict with their refusal to accept your decisions,” Sarek said, the shadow of a frown touching his lips. “They continue to press their expectations upon you, trying to break you into something they can rebuild in their own image. There’s no logic that I can find in this kind of love.”

When he put it that way, Amanda could admit that it was easier to see his point.

Amanda brushed her fingers over the back of Sarek’s hand; he turned it over at the touch and she rested her palm against his. She worked her jaw around a question that was becoming increasingly stark the closer they got.

Before she could even ask, Sarek answered, “I would hope that we know each other well enough that I would never have to choose between your-- contentment and ours.” His fingers caressed her, an almost unconscious motion. “Attempted reconciliation is the first step, always, and I have confidence in our capacity for reconciliation. Certainly, I’ve always felt that I know you better, somehow, than your own family does.”

“You took the time to know me,” Amanda murmured. He would never have thought to bring her here if he hadn't. Her attention strayed back to the window but only for a moment. “They never did. Someday, maybe.”

Amanada could tell that Sarek was unconvinced-- which was fair, she granted, since she was too-- but he was gracious enough to let the subject rest. He didn’t pick up his journal again. They sat, hand in hand, peaceful in each other’s company. Amanda didn’t realize how much time had passed until the autopilot whistled to alert them that they were docking at the shuttle station and she jumped, a jolt of anxiety going through her bones.

“Peace,” Sarek murmured. He pulled his hand easily from the iron grip she’d fastened around it and wrapped his arm across her shoulders. He pressed gently when she didn’t stir and again he bid her, “Peace.”

But it was he who hesitated at the threshold, stopping short of pressing the button that would lower the door for them. He looked at her with an uncertainty that she was sure only she could see.

“You understand--”

“I know better than to expect Vulcan to be like Earth,” she assured him. She smoothed her gown and folded her hands in front of her, the picture of reserve. “And I know how I’m-- we’re-- expected to behave.”

He hesitated a moment longer, searching her face. His lips parted but he sealed them again without speaking. Facing the door, he stood straight and hit the button.

Amanda walked into the light of her new home with both eyes wide open.

[idgaf-what-you-call-me]

This is the first time, outside of therapy, that I am opening up fully my past, I ask that you remain respectful.

Trigger warnings: Suicide, torture, neglect, alcoholism, … a lot listen you’ve got to be well resourced before you read this. 

I know Dean, because I was Dean. I was raised to be “perfect”, I am so much like my dad, I didn’t have a childhood, I was tortured, I have lost time (dissociation not possession by an arc angel), I am fairly closeted, and I’m finally starting to get better. 

Ever since a very young child, I was raised to be perfect. To look at a 99 and learn what I got wrong before I brought the grade home, otherwise, I was sent to study. I was raised to not be heard and taught to stay in my room. I was raised to not show emotion because anything more than stoic meant that I was an inconvenience. I had “fend for yourself nights” where I had to sort out what I would eat for dinner, and at inexcusably young ages, 5-6 years old. I learned to shoot at 8, and was taken fishing anytime my dad went. I was brought to the construction sites, learned how to use power tools, and eventually had my own set at home. While I wasn’t trained to hunt demons or other things that go bump in the night, I was molded to be just like my dad. My mom wasn’t around much when I was a kid, so I idolized my father. He was like a god to me. As I got older (legal), I even would drink things that my dad approved of like scotch and I smoked cigars. Often praised, “that’s my girl! Look guys, my daughter drinking scotch and smoking a cigar! Where are your kids?” The validation was like a high to me. I was desperate for his approval. Just like Dean. Talked like his dad, walked like his dad, drank like his dad, I get it. 

I was blatantly ignored including being told that I was invisible by siblings. They would hold up a remote to me and say, “you’re invisible” and ignore me. I could leave the house and they would not come look for me. With my mom and dad often gone (usually working or partying we were quite poor), I didn’t have anyone looking after me since I was 4 so when my dad was around, much like Dean, all I wanted to do was make him happy and proud of me.

I was a closeted bisexual, who made so many gay jokes towards my cishet brother that I feel quite a bit of shame as an adult. I repressed every facet of desire I had for the opposite gender because being bisexual really meant that I must be gay. At least that is what Will and Grace told me, and I did not want to be gay. Things were bad enough, I didn’t need to add to my shit pile. By the time I was 12, I had no idea how to feel emotions and I had no idea how to love myself. Most days, now at 29, I still don’t know how to love myself. I am not out to everyone in my family. I don’t feel safe with everyone. All the gay jokes between the brothers, all the Dean is bi subtext, I lived a lot of it.

Torture can take the shape of many different forms but they fall under two umbrellas: physical and psychological. I was subjected to sound torture and sleep deprivation forms of physical torture that have lasting psychological effects. When you live through something like that, you don’t “rebound” in the traditional sense, and I would dissociate. My consciousness would retreat back into itself until it was safe enough to come back.

I dreaded Thursday nights as that is when it would begin. My father would bring home several cases of Michelob Ultra, from the store, and then he would start drinking. My dad didn’t measure his consumption in beers, instead he measured by the case. A form of extreme binge drinking that to this day I still don’t completely understand. While he would drink, his music would get progressively louder and louder until the whole house vibrated with noise. 

There are some songs and artists that I cannot listen to anymore. They’re not songs by Metallica or Black Sabbath, instead they’re by Credence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and the like. Songs that people dance to at their weddings, sing at funerals, and enjoy on a road trip with the entire family. They are generally described as lively yet not heavy, yet this music was the conduit of 5 years of actual torture for me. I used to say that these were my favorite songs, but it was a way to cope with hearing them at home, and then hearing them play in the car on the way to school the next morning. In my house, the music was played so loudly that walls and floors shook and overwhelmed my senses and ability to sleep, think, do anything but have a heartbeat and breathe. It would last all night. I never learned to “fall asleep” I would pass out. To this day, I can be desperately tired, and able to drive for several hours without being a dangerous driver. Like my body learned to ignore fatigue. “I just need like 4 hours every couple of days,” yeah Deano, I’ve been there.

I would freeze mentally. Almost like a zone out but on steroids. Then I’d look around and things wouldn’t feel real to me. I would look in the mirror and see a stranger. Now I understand that I had developed dpdr as a way to cope. I don’t wish it on anyone.

My mother? She would leave the house and go clubbing. My siblings were 8 years older than me and lived on their own a great distance from where I lived. Besides, I had school to go to on Fridays. So I cooked, I monitored myself, I had to become an adult. I didn’t get to be a kid. My catharsis was angsty and fluffy Harry Potter fan fiction. You can find it on FF.net, RandHrFan I no longer post with that handle. Dean’s were movies, movies that my dad, and I’d wager his dad watched. I also love westerns just like my dad and my grandfather, there is something about them.

When Dean cries and opens up to Sam about his hell experiences, I get it. I’m so proud of him for telling Sam. To some it seems like he’s closed off but he’s not. He’s opening up as much as he mentally can. And Sam listens. Just like my sister eventually did. When Dean gets mad and yells at John and Mary, I’m proud of him, because he is fighting for himself. He knew he deserved better and he didn’t let it go. Just like I have done in my not so distant past.

All the while my parent’s marriage was fracturing and I was mentally declining. My mom began sleeping in my room and in my bed, and I was basically left to sleep on the couch. On days when my dad would drink, and my mom would go out, I could get to be in my room again. I could be on the computer (laptops weren’t a thing yet) which lived in my room. I could connect with the two other friends on AIM, but the reality of my situation I couldn’t escape. I was isolated, didn’t trust my family and I didn’t know how to ask for help.

One day I attempted to take my life. I saw no value in it. What was I doing with my life. I was a broken human who didn’t deserve love, who didn’t deserve safety, who didn’t deserve well anything. So I downed a bottle of pills. I had an iron clad stomach, I wasn’t too worried about not being successful. Except, I sent a goodbye message to a friend, and that friend saved my life. He got a hold of my sister who got to me in enough time to make me throw up. (She was a champ at that, having suffered from bulimia and taught to throw up from no other than my dad.)

I didn’t receive help afterwards. I signed a paper saying that I wouldn’t attempt again and was taken home. (I hope this isn’t how hospitals roll anymore.) I left my house, I went to school out of state and found stability, created stability for myself. But my past still haunted me whenever I went home. So when Dean has a death wish, and gets discharged from hospitals before he’s stable, I get it.

My parents eventually divorced, and I came home to a place where I couldn’t live anymore for a solid couple of months, I couch surfed, and again my mental health took a nosedive, but nevertheless, I persisted. I got my head back in the game, and finished my degree. Chemistry. I couldn’t go back home, because if I did I’d be working for my dad. I couldn’t do that, it was too painful. So I went to grad school. I got my Ph.D. I began to chart my own path. But there was a rage in me that I couldn’t escape. I lashed out at anyone and everyone to hide the pain that I felt all the time. People were afraid of me. I was great at what I did but I couldn’t make lasting connections with others.

When I was 27 suicidal ideations became dangerous, and I got about as dark. I tried to harm myself, and wanted my world to burn. It didn’t matter that I was married, with pets, and owned a home. Nothing mattered. I finally had to decide between life and death, I couldn’t continue in that state. I can say confidently that I would be dead if I didn’t get help that day. I wish Dean had this chance. He gets close to this in moments with Cas when he is honest about his feelings and experiences, he cries, he gets angry, lashes out, but Cas is there for him. From someone like Dean, I’ll tell you Cas being present holds more weight than gold for Dean.

I have been in intense therapy for a year. By intense I do mean more than once a week, regular check ins with her, and the occasional group session. She sends me articles to read, homework, and we do EMDR work, emotional integration therapy, mindfulness, etc. 

It was then that I began to learn that all the rage that I had built inside me was hiding intense fear, loss, and disappointment. The rage gave way to tears, and the tears gave way to a new anger that I could make peace with. That anger comes from the person I am today. The person who fights for herself. Who doesn’t take shit from anyone. The person who says, humans don’t break, vases break, and I am a human. I see a lot of that in late season Dean. He is a fighter. 

But I am still the person who receives a compliment and shuts down, there is still a side of me that doesn’t believe that I deserve nice things, good things to happen to me, but that person is getting smaller. My therapist likes to hit me with compliments when I am vulnerable as I am more likely to believe them. I still react like a dead fish when she says them, and then after the session sob for hours over it. One day my head and my heart will believe the same things about myself. I would have reacted the same way as Dean to that confession. 

When the cards fall, I still know that I can depend on myself before anyone else because I had to. My life as an impoverished, unstable, depressed, neglected, and abused kid says I should be dead or amounting to nothing, but hear I am. I’ve now closely mentored about 20 undergraduate students, a handful of graduate students, and have helped them find their paths in life. I have taught nearly 1000 students. I made a difference with the life that I tried to throw away. 

I have come to a place where I can love my dad. He is sober again, and yes, my love for him does depend on his sobriety. When he is drinking he is not the same person. I wouldn’t call him an A+ dad by a long shot, and hell I am so much like him that at times it makes me sick, but I do love him. I have been able to forgive him. Forgive in the sense that I can make peace with what happened. It doesn’t change what happened or how much it affected me, and I certainly don’t forget, but that isn’t what forgiveness is. I don’t hold the rage anymore. The fact that Dean is able to is personal for Dean, as it is for me, and it isn’t some “family that is what you do” type reason.

I do experience flashbacks when there are fireworks, I can’t go to a movie theatre because of the volume, when people play really loud music in their cars I typically have to peel off into a parking lot and meditate for 20 minutes to be able to drive again. There are some stores that I don’t shop at because their music triggers me. So when Dean experiences those flashbacks, I get it.

There is a belief in the psychology that monster shows help us become comfortable with our dark sides. My dark side saved me over and over again. My dark side told me to be better than them. My dark side told me to fight for me, to adopt a survivor mindset. (If you can’t tell I am a green veined Slytherin and have never been sorted into any other house even by random house generators.) The things I delight in are a bit off color. I cultivate a poison garden, consume way too much true crime, to gore I say give me s’more and so on. Dean gets to experience his dark side, and he has to make peace with it. He makes inappropriate jokes, laughs at it, but he also does talk about it. 

This is the hard part: Just like Dean, I am also light. I love people (vomit), seriously though, they are more precious to me than any earthly possession. Plants bring me serenity. Animals are a comfort and companion in the worst of times. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to protect living things. My motivations come from a place of love and a need to protect others from what I have been through. I know I can survive, but I don’t know if that is true for everyone else.

I know Dean. I was Dean. I see that every episode. Moments when he yells and screams for himself, I cheer him on. Moments where he tries to waste his life away, I understand, and am crying right with him. The purgatory apology guts me, I’ve had to make that apology more than once. The dead fish reaction, hell that is me at the end of a therapy session. I am here to say: Dean is not broken. Dean is strong. Dean is resilient. Dean doesn’t just fight for himself, he fights for the whole of creation. Dean is not a vase. He is a human. 

Oh and John’s taste in beer, much like my fathers, is crap. Don’t drink shitty beer. Also, I don’t drink scotch anymore. I'm a gin girl and I drink *okay* beer. 

I’m the same blogger who does drunk blogging regarding Supernatural on Saturdays. It is a lovely bit of comfort and joy for me and I won’t be stopping any time soon. We will get back to the lovely and light “Dean is Bi he he” commentary this weekend. 

[linkspooky]

Atsushi’s Greatest Weakness

Atsushi is one of the strongest written protagonists encountered in manga. Which means that for as many strengths as he has, he has an equal amount of weaknesses. His biggest weakness is highlighted all the more in his relationship with Akutagawa, and the friction between the two as they bring out the best in each other while also simultaneously seeing the worst in one another. For a deeper analysis of Atsushi and his struggles using his connection to Akutagawa to guide us, read underneath the cut.

Before I start I just wanted to mention [this post] which covers the same kind of topics. Since we’re covering similiar areas I thought it’d be nice to mention them. 

One more thing heavy discussion of child abuse below, because we’re analyzing Atsushi’s background. 

1. Atsushi as a Victim of Abuse

Atsushi grew up in an environment where basically everything about his life was controlled and dictated by the headmaster. He had absolutely no agency, to the point where he is symbolically chained up several times. His living situation was also unstable. The headmaster could stop feeding him at any moment, and even if he told the truth and obeyed he was punished. 

In his formative years Atsushi’s life is defined by him trying to survive the instability. Him trying to remain good and avoid punishment in a situation where the goalposts keep changing. Nothing Atsushi could have done would have stopped the headmaster from arbitrarily punishing him. 

Of course a child is not going to comprehend this. All Atsushi knew was he was punished over and over again. As if his very existence was a punishable offense. As if he needed to apologize just for being born. We know Atsushi’s response to this constant punishment was to just over, and over again, strive to avoid it by being good and never getting on the headmaster’s bad side. 

If I become a good person I won’t be punished. That is the idea that Atsushi internalized. While abilities are just supernatural powers with no clear explanation of their origin it can be read as a metaphor as for Atsushi’s response to the orphanage. 

Atsushi repressed, all his anger, all his resentment, his fear, all negative emotions that might make him a bad child who would be punished in order to try to appear good. However, whether he repressed them or not in the first place was meaningless because the headmaster was going to punish him regardless. So, not only is Atsushi repressing, but he’s repressing in response to a broken system that is going to keep punishing him no matter what he does. 

However, the sad fact about abuse is that it does not turn you more noble, and more kind. There is no good way to react to abuse. Atsushi buried all of his emotions in order to try to survive, but that does not meant they ever way. All of those negative emotions just escaped in some other way. The anger he had for being punished, his resentment for being singled out, it all was expressed by the tiger who rampaged in the orphanage. 

Which adds to another pattern to the environment Atsushi grew up in. He repressed everything to try to appear good, but repeatedly he would lash out with everything he repressed at once. Which meant Atsushi basically had no healthy outlet for his emotions. 

Not only that, but Atsushi was also personally targeted and groomed by the headmaster of the orphanage. I use the term groomed, because the headmaster went out of his way to shape and mould Atsushi’s personality with an unhealthy mindset. The headmaster tried to force his own ideas into Atsushi’s head and make him see the world in the same way. 

Atsushi is told over and over again by this person who has absolute control over him, and his reality that if he does not learn to endure pain that he will die. That he was abandoned due to some personal defect inside of him that needs to be corrected. 

These are all the circumstances which can cause a clear Abandonment Complex to develop. 

Healthy human development requires needs for physical and emotional care to be met. Unmet needs can result in feelings of abandonment. Experiencing abandonment can become a traumatic life event. The death of a parent can be a traumatic event for a child. Feeling unsafe due to a threatening situation like abuse or poverty can also cause trauma.

Some degree of abandonment fear can be normal. But when fear of abandonment is severe and frequent, it can cause trouble. It may impact how a person’s relationships develop. When this is the case, the support of a therapist or counselor may help.

Both Atsushi’s physical and emotional needs were never met. We know he was starved often, and constantly alone without a single other person who he could talk to in this situation. Which meant the orphanage manager had absolute control over his reality and basically no one to disagree with the way he dictated things to Atsushi. Of course Atsushi would come to accept the Director’s warped view as truth. 

Not only that, but he was already traumatized by having no memory of who his parents were or why he was abandoned, but he was re-traumatized over and over again with the headmaster blaming him personally for his own abandonment. He was abandoned because he was a bad child. He was constantly unsafe due to constant threats of harm. 

Even the action he took with supposedly “”””good”””” intentions was an incredibly damaging one. The headmaster once again forced his black and white viewpoints of the world onto an unwilling child. The final lesson the headmaster gives Atsushi is that the world is full of evil people, that he will be abandoned, and if not abandoned he’ll be killed if he’s not good enough. 

Not only is the orphanage an unstable place of constant risk of harm, but Atsushi comes to see the outside world that way as well. Not only that, but there are countless faceless people who will hurt him far worse than his previous abuser. 

His last action is to completely abandon Atsushi, one day with no warning or explanation. Something which Atsushi was so poorly prepared for he literally was on the brink of starving to death. 

Not only did Atsushi nearly die from this alone, but this also quite literally confirms what Atsushi was told to fear over and over again all these years. That one day he is going to be abandoned unless he gives other people a reason to keep him around. That he has no value of his own and can be easily thrown away at any moment without warning. Not only did none of the headmaster’s actions prepare him for the outside world at all, but they also taught him to constantly fear others, and be insecure of his place around them because of how easily a worthless child like him could be abandoned all over again. 

2. Atsushi and the After Effects of Abuse 

His upbringing has had several severe effects on Atsushi’s mindset that he cannot shake off easily. Arguably, I would say that Atsushi in the end accepted the headmaster’s values as his own. He started to see the world in the same way as the headmaster did, but that’s not because Atsushi is a bad person like the headmaster but rather the headmaster had absolute control of him and his environment with a king and tried to mould him in a certain way with no other people around Atsushi to validate Atsushi’s own viewpoint of the world. 

Eventually, in a way Atsushi came to accept what the headmaster said as truth. Which is a paradox, as Atsushi knows that the Headmaster was a bad person who tortured him and one he loathes more than anything, and yet he lets the headmaster’s words guide all of his actions. 

This is shown in the manga by the frequent flashbacks to the headmaster during times of stress. While flashbacks can also be symptoms of PTSD (ie, in an environment that Atsushi had to adapt to to survive, he is unadjusted to normal life and therefore keeps believing himself to be in that environment), it’s also a visual metaphor for showing that even having escaped the Headmaster, the Headmaster’s words still are primarily what guide Atsushi’s sense of morality. 

Insecure Attachment is a way to describe Atsushi’s attachment to everyone around him. Developing as a person and being able to maintain healthy relationships requires growing up in a healthy environment. Atsushi had no formative attachments when he was going up. Not only that, but he was constantly blamed for that fact, that he was the reason that he was alone. 

When a child develops a secure attachment, it presents as a healthy bond. In other words, they learn to expect the best from the other person and believe that they have a good heart. In people with insecure attachment, however, the expectation is the complete opposite. They expect the other person to abandon them or harm them in some way.

Even if Atsushi is outside of the orphanage and in a much healthier environment of the detective agency, he still shows insecure attachment in almost all of his relationships. It does not matter how close he becomes to the people around him, the experiences from his childhood still define all his relationships. 

Atsushi constantly expects the others around him to abandon him. No matter how many lives he saves, he still carries this expectation around with him. While his desire to save people is a good one, it comes from an extremely unhealthy place. 

Atsushi intentionally puts himself in reckless and dangerous situations, not only because he believes it to be the right thing to do. I would say Atsushi has a very loose definition of right and wrong because he still is much like a child that does not know much about the world and its nuances. The standards by which Atsushi judges everything is “Will I get abandoned or not?” If he’s not alone at the sum end of all of his actions then it’s a good thing. 

However, this is fundamentally unhealthy behavior. Atsushi is seeking external validation that he’s basically never going to get. Not only that but his way of seeking it, is a form of indirect self harm. This system presents itself in a complex way, so a brief diversion. One of the traumatic events we are shown in flashback is Atsushi being told to punish himself, and then when he lacks the ability to punish himself the headmaster punishes him anyway. 

Atsushi was raised to believe his existence is wrong and he should be punished for it, but he cannot bring himself to directly self harm so he always seeks it out in indirect way. It’s not a coincidence that Atsushi’s ability besides turning into a tiger is also healing.

Atushi immediately flashes back to his headmaster telling him that he is not allowed to express his own pain in any way. Therefore, he is not worthy of feeling pain. 

Then Atsushi conveniently regenerates his entire leg. Atsushi who has been raised in constant harms, now has a method where he can be hurt over and over again, and constantly heal himself. Atsushi shrugs off grievious injuries like they are nothing, and his way of fighting has always been to push himself to his absolute limit and abuse his healing factor. 

In other words because Atsushi believes he is not allowed to cry, or feel pain, and therefore his emotions are less worthy than those in danger, we see a pattern of behavior where he seeks out danger. He intentionally puts himself in harm’s way in an effort to prove himself. While this is also him genuinely wanting to help others, it also comes from a place of low self esteem, and no regard for himself. People who are raised in healthy environments do not immediately leap at any chance to put themselves in danger like this, or tank horrible injuries without much thought. 

Atsushi is a genuinely selfless person who wants to grow into a good person who protects the weak, but he is also so self depreciating that it manifests in self harming behavior. Both of these things can be true at once, they are what give him complexity as a character. 

3. Atsushi and Akutagawa’s Weakness 

Atsushi has an incredibly complicated relationship with how he perceives violence. As a survivor of constant physical punishment, who was told he was being punished by a bad person who uses their strength to hurt the weak part of Atsushi loathes violence. Not just loathing, but he feels an internal disgust. His worst fear possible, is growing into the kind of person that hurts others. 

Not only does Atsushi believe that he’s worthless, he also believes he’s a fundamentally harmful person. That if he does not fight to protect, and control his violence that he will bring harm to everyone around him. Therefore he will be the kind of bad person that the Head Master was. The kind he was conditioned to hate and told the world was full of. 

This is why both the tiger manifests, and also Atsushi loathes the tiger. As I said above, the tiger represents what Atsushi represses about himself. That he hated the people who hurt him, that he wanted to defend himself, that he wanted to survive even if it meant getting violent. He represses all of this to appear as a wholly good person who would never harm another and only fight to protect others. When the tiger rampages, that which Atsushi represses comes out. 

Atsushi uses violence too. He is someone who is fundamentally fighting to survive. However, he does not want to see himself as a violent person. Even though he needs to use that strength inside of him to protect others. It’s a paradox that Atsushi ignores and represses. A shadow that he ignores. 

This is something that causes Atsushi’s view of the world to become fundamentally black and white (like a tiger’s stripes), and also like the man who raised him. There is “Acceptable, good violence” that he does not have to feel guilt over and then there is “Unacceptable, bad violence” which he loathes himself for and proves that he’s a fundamentally dangerous person like the orphanage told him he was. 

So Atsushi is not so much striving to be a non-violent person, so much as only being violent in ways that he personally sees as acceptable. Which is why Atsushi who seems too terrified of offending everyone, too nice for his own good, like a walking doormat that others walk over and too nervous to ever speak up for his own sake, becomes far more confrontational and aggressive when fighting against an enemy. It’s natural to become defensive, aggressive in the environment that he was raised in. However, Atsushi does not want to acknowledge these aspects because they do not fit his black and white view of what a good person is. 

To define what is acceptable violence, Atsushi must first define what unacceptable violence is. This is where his relationship with Akutagawa comes to play. 

The first thing Akutagawa does upon meeting Atsushi is trigger his memories of the past, by confirming the world view he’s been instilled with that he brings harm to everyone around him. Every time Atsushi messes up and hurts someone, he also flashes back to Akutagawa’s accusation.

Atsushi sees Aktugawa as “someone bad” like the headmaster. Someone who exists to punish the weak with his strength. However, that viewpoint does not come from Atsushi understanding Akutagawa, so much as a projection inside his own head. Atsushi projects all the fears that he fears having onto Akutagawa. This is to externally prove that Atsushi is not a violent person, and therefore a good person. 

Atsushi may be stuck in a situation of trying to permanently earn the approval of everyone around him, but as long as he does not end up as someone like Akutagawa that’s all fine. Akutagawa is someone worse than him, and by seeing him that way Atsushi can uplift himself. 

The reason that Akutagawa is Atsushi’s greatest weakness, is because Akutagawa disproves the flaws in the narrative that Atsushi tells himself. That if he works continuously to save others he will be a good boy. Akutagawa confronts Atsushi with the unavoidable relaity of his situation, that causes Atsushi’s perceptions to crumble. 

Atsushi believes he’s prospering, but the way that he is continually working himself to the bone for the sake of others, he’s actually just treading water. Akutagawa introduces complexity to a world that Atsushi does not want to face yet. That things are not quite as black and white as Atsushi seems them as. 

While Akutagawa is in fact a murderer, and violent, the fact does not change that he is also someone struggling to survive just like Atsushi is. Atsushi does not want to acknowledge that struggle because it means facing his own struggle, which is overwhelming for him. While Atsushi has every right to morally object to Akutagawa killing people, it also comes from a personal grudge and very biased viewpoints. Akutagawa kills because he believes he’ll be thrown out and deemed worthless otherwise (whoa just like Atsushi). Dazai killed because he wanted to find meaning in life. Kyouka killed as revenge against the world that killed her parents in a traumatizing event robbing her of the will to live. 

All of these are so called “bad” reasons to kill other people, but Atsushi does not really care all that much that Kyouka and Dazai are both former murderers with high bodycounts. He only sees the good in them while ignoring the bad. 

Atsushi also has every right to hate Akutagawa for his treatment of Kyouka. Yet, at the same time Atsushi ignores any moral complexity in Dazai’s character. He basically does not acknowledge the way Dazai treated Akutagawa, or abandoned him, even though being abandoned is what Atsushi fears the most. 

Akutagawa and Atsushi are both victims of violent abuse, and then being abandoned by their abuser after they did everything they could think of to please him. They’re both trying to measure up to what are shifting goal posts and changing standards. Akutagawa even makes this comparison himself. 

Atsushi’s primary response is always to repress however, therefore he ignores the connections to Akutagawa and himself. He does not want to acknowledge Akutagawa as a human being, because that would also require Atsushi acknowledging himself as a human being, and to Atsushi that is impossible as of right now. He still sees himself as a stray dog, as a man tiger. Atsushi has not reached the point of self actualization where he realizes he is no longer the orphan suffering from the threat of constant abandonment and has moved onto a safer situation. 

Atsushi sees Akutagawa as a strong person just bullying others, because of his lacking self awareness. He fails to realize that Akutagawa is someone as insecure about his own existence as he is. He is also someone constantly fighting to survive in a violent and indifferent world. 

Akutagawa is an orphan too. Just like Atsushi, just like Kyouka, but Atsushi does not want to acknowledge it. (Once again Akutagawa does plenty to provoke Atsushi too, and tries to tear Atsushi down because he’s envious of his fortune and stability in life but once again this is a meta about Atsushi). It’s because Akutagawa is a bad orphan, and Atsushi was taught that bad orphans should be punished.

The end result is, due to the fact that Atsushi represses whereas Akutagawa wears his violence and emotions on his sleeve (like... some kind of black jacket) Akutagawa at least is far more perceptive of nuance that Atsushi is. While they both notice these things about each other, by the time of cannibalism it’s Akutagawa who notices these underlying behaviors in Atsushi. Almost as if he is trying to understand him. (This is also coupled with Akutagawa lashing out violently, which means he has not shaken that bad habit yet, while Atsushi has not shaken repression and avoidance). 

Whereas we also see signs of Atsushi refusing to cooperate with Akutagawa. They both provoke each other, but the fact is that Atsushi is willing to go down to Akutagawa’s level pretty fast, and that comes from seeing Akutagawa as an acceptable target of violence. 

Telling him that he deserved to get abandoned because he’s not good enough, is exactly what the headmaster told him over and over again. It’s Atsushi’s greatest fear, being a bad person, and being abandoned. It’s not just bickering, it’s targeted lashing out on someone who Atsushi thinks is okay to lash out in this manner. 

Not only that but, even after noticing that Akutagawa has been triggered by something that Atsushi knows is related to his own sense of trauma, we see Atsushi deliberately trigger him again a second time. 

That’s not to say Atsushi is a bad person, he’s a person reacting to abuse. The point of the comparison to Atsushi and Akutagawa is that there’s no good way to react to abuse, and hanging onto the notion that there is is something that ultimately hurts Atsushi and causes conflict with him in the end. 

The fact that he’s still trying to save others in order to prove himself, shows that Atsushi’s greatest weakness is that he’s not willing to let go of an unhealthy mindset. As long as he cannot accept Akutagawa, he also cannot accept himself. What Atsushi needs is to see himself as a human being, not a hero who exists only to save others. Atsushi associates Akutagawa with the headmaster, but that’s an incorrect association. 

Akutagawa is just as human as he is. Nothing good will come from one orphan beating up another orphan. They need to realize that they are both suffering and reach out a hand to save each other, not try to destroy each other. That’s as good as self destruction. 

[saltys-writings]

Hi, could a request an ateez reaction plz? Could you possibly do ateez reacting to their cute and cuddly s/o who is usually really adorable, affectionate and soft being really smart and well spoken, opinionated and one day someone says something about the members/maybe their work and they become very serious and speak out regarding it and it's such a huge difference from what they member(s) are used to seeing from their s/o. I hope this makes sense. Thanks for your hard work xx

It made perfect sense, don’t worry^^ Thanks for the request!!

~~~

[Ateez] Reaction to you being unexpectedly serious and speaking up for them

Hongjoong:

Secretly he always knew that there’s got to be more to you than just your cute fluffy side. That glimpse of something more hiding beneath the surface is what drew him in to you in the first place. Still, when one of his instructors scolds him for not practicing enough these days and you step in to very seriously explain how he’s spending most of his time in front of the computer trying to make songs that are good enough to live up to the expectations of the company, he just stands there in awe. He knows you must be repressing a lot of anger right now, still you manage to talk so well. Usually he would’ve stopped you to speak for himself, but something about the way you suddenly seem so mature makes him unable to say or do anything. What’s for sure is that this specific instructor will understand better by the time you’re done talking, and he won’t bother Hongjoong again so soon.

“You’re really something,” he tells you after the instructor left. “I didn’t know you were that selfless… thank you.” Not knowing exactly what to do, he smiles at you awkwardly and reaches out for your hands, but you shake your head and explain that you can’t stand seeing people being done injustice. However, that statement just amazes him more, and the poor bab now knows even less how to react.

Seonghwa:

It’s been a while since certain people on the internet started badmouthing Seonghwa for supposedly only relying on his looks, and not really having any performance or singing skills to present. As much as you know that’s just hateful comments without any reflection of the truth, you also know how much these comments get to Seonghwa. So from time to time you try to cheer him up and get him back into a positive mindset, so he can focus on the important parts in life and of his work. However, one day the guys are in a shared waiting room with another group for a big show, and you visit them to bring them all food. That’s when you notice some members of the other group glancing over at Seonghwa frequently, and finally one of them brings up the rumors. You see the hurt in Seonghwa’s eyes immediately, and decide to speak up for him, explaining how he works just as hard as every other idol and that while his handsome face may be the thing a lot of people think about first when talking about him, his skills are no less amazing than his looks. Nodding goes through the room, and soon the other group chimes in, praising how cool he is on stage and how well he dances and sings. Seonghwa isn’t sure how to react, but goes with it.

Later on, when you’re finally alone for a while, the first thing he does is kiss you. “Thank you,” he whispers, “for being on my side.”

Yunho:

Yunho loves you for being as cute, affectionate and bright as you are, and he makes sure to tell you that frequently - sometimes with words and sometimes with actions. And he isn’t any less affectionate and bright around you. However, lately he seems a little down whenever you have a chance to meet him. You did ask immediately what was wrong, but he just brushed it off, telling you he would rather spend some happy time with you than talk about it. You accepted it that time, but when he’s still the same a week later, you decide to confront him. The only thing you manage to get out of him though is that he had a fight with his members and now he’s kind of the only one unsatisfied with the results. You scold him how he’s being too considerate of others, which he didn’t expect to ever hear from you, but he takes it. 

But when he doesn’t manage to change anything about the situation, you offer your help in bringing it up to the other members. At first he refuses because he doesn’t want to look that desperate, but you explain to him why it would be good to have another talk with them, so eventually he agrees and you help him get the conversation rolling. 

As expected, the other members are understanding of him and everything ends with a huge relief and a group hug of the guys. Yunho shoots you a look over his shoulder during that, and mouths a “Thank you.” To this you mouth back that it’s alright, since his well-being is one of the most important things to you, and you don’t want to see him suffer in silence.

Yeosang:

“You need to sing better.” - “You need to dance better.” - “You need to be more confident.” - “You need to look more perfect.” - “You need to be better.” 

Yeosang’s heard those phrases over and over again during his time as a trainee, and even now people still tell him those things from time to time. Though it’s gotten to a point where the one who says them to him the most has become he himself. And you know, because sometimes you catch him looking at himself in the mirror in disappointment, or holding his head in his hands and agonizing about not being good enough. And you hate it. You hate seeing him like this, but everytime you try to cheer him up being bubbly and bright, he seems to just brush you off, telling you not to worry about him.

That’s until one day you confront him about his negative thinking in a serious manner. At first he’s surprised, even a little intimidated because he doesn’t know how to react to this side of you. But as he listens to you telling him not to look down on himself so much and why he’s just fine the way he is, he begins to understand that maybe you have a point or two. So after finishing your speech, he wordlessly takes you into his arms and hugs you tightly for what feels like an eternity.

“Thank you, Y/N. I really needed to hear that.”

San:

Your relationship with San isn’t something you really decided on or talked about much. It kind of just happened that from one day to the other you were friends, and then yet another day you were more than that. But you never explicitly defined your relationship. Honestly neither of you really saw a need, you were just content to spend time together and to laugh together and have fun. But you also knew that one of your distant friends had the biggest crush on San, and was jealous whenever you two were around. 

And then one day when it was just the three of you, she started yelling how you two aren’t even properly dating and he doesn’t deserve someone like you, who obviously doesn’t take their relationship seriously. She pretty much storms off after that, leaving you two dumbfounded. However, you can’t stop yourself from asking if it really bothers him that much, that you never had the official boyfriend-girlfriend talk. He admits that sometimes he does wonder what your relationship is even supposed to mean, so you offer to sort it out with him, and you spend several hours talking about what kind of relationship you have and what kind you would like to have, until in the end you can agree that you both want to date each other seriously.

“But,” San adds at the end of it all, “I never thought I’d have such a serious conversation with you. And you’re so thoughtful and mature too…” You can see that he thinks oppositely of himself, so you give him a heads up, “You too. I feel like I can really talk to you well”

Mingi:

Much like you, he’s an adorable ball of fluff usually, showering you with hugs and kisses whenever there’s time for the two of you to meet up in between his tight schedule, but when needed he can be serious too. And you’re not sure how, but apparently he didn’t fully realize that you have such a side too until that one day when he comes back absolutely exhausted and in a bad mood late at night. You receive a call from him at a ridiculous time, but you pick up since you weren’t sleeping yet either. You ask what’s up, to which you don’t get an answer. Just when you’re about to get really worried he finally starts talking. Tripping over his words a lot, he finally manages to tell you how he isn’t feeling very well and why. At the end of his rant he awkwardly thanks you for listening and when he’s about to hang up you stop him. You start giving him a pep talk, encouraging him seriously. At the other end of the line, he’s completely caught by surprise and doesn’t know what he should say or how he should react. But he listens to you intently and remembers each of your words. When you finally hang up, his mood is a lot better and he feels at ease, still thinking about what you told him a lot in the future when he’s having a hard time again.

Wooyoung:

You’re out for dinner together with some of your friends, enjoying yourself as per usual. It’s getting pretty late and the older of your friends are getting a bit tipsy. Conversation gets more loose, and somehow the topic shifts to Ateez and their success. Wooyoung listens to the praise, trying to hide his embarrassment, but the blush on his cheeks is apparent. That’s until someone says something along the lines of how Wooyoung would be even more famous now if he had stayed with his old company. Silence sets in right away. “But… my teammates…” is the only thing Wooyoung murmurs, visibly holding in a lot of emotions. So you get up and address the person responsible for causing this awkward silence directly. You defend Wooyoung and his choices and mention how he’s happy to have debuted with Ateez and nobody else. He watches you in surprise and gains courage from you speaking up, so he explains how he feels openly too. Everything’s pretty much settled quickly, his friend apologizes for his insensitive comment, and the mood returns back to normal. 

When you leave late at night to get home, Wooyoung calls out to you before getting on your bus and he thanks you.

“What would I do without you?” he says, trying to seem playful, but you can feel that he really means it.

Jongho:

It isn’t really something said directly about Jongho, but about idols in general. You both are at a convenience store, buying some snacks for your movie date later in the evening and you’re resisting the urge of clinging to his arm or holding his hand, just in case anyone’s around who knows him. But apparently the cashier doesn’t recognize him, as he keeps chatting with his colleague. And usually you wouldn’t interfere in a stranger’s conversation, but he’s very much badmouthing idols, and how they’re all just doing their job for the money and the fame and how it’s not “real work” to stand on stage every now and then but laze around at home on most days. You can see that the comment really bothers Jongho, but he’s holding it in. However, you politely join in on the conversation and try to explain how idols do work hard, how they even cut into their sleep to debut and how even after debut things don’t get a lot easier for them. The cashier dismisses you with an annoyed “Oh, is that so?” and you finally leave the shop, where you complain about how insensitive that guy was.

“It doesn’t matter, there will always be people who think like that. Just leave them be,” Jongho tries to calm you down. “But, this is the first time I’m seeing you that serious.” You raise an eyebrow, unsure what he’s trying to tell you, so he elaborates, “I think that’s admirable.” You, going straight back to cutie pie mode, blush heavily. “O-oh, you think so? Th-thanks…” you stutter, and he puts his arm around you to squeeze you tightly for a moment. 

“Yes,” he answers, “I think so.”

[nomimits7]

Undecided Chapter 9 (Final)

Title: Undecided Pt 9 Final

Genre: Investigation, murder, masked behavior.

Warnings: murder, psychotic behavior, might be triggering. This chapter touches on the subject of having more than one personality. I do not know anything about this subject, so I interpreted it as I saw fit for the story. DON’T COME AT ME YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Also, I kind off maybe describe a murder so there’s that. I think that’s it… I might need help, mentally.

Members: detective OT7 x Forensic scientist Reader

Note: Phrases are just add-ins to help with the storyline… If they confuse you, feel free to ask!

Summary: Moving overseas for a once in a lifetime job offer was one of the scariest things Y/N ever did. That was until she got stuck in a twisted investigation of random murders, all with one link but no leads. Closing in on the culprit(s) Y/N doesn’t realize the danger she’s getting into. With no family or friends, can Y/N dare to trust those seven closest to her with her life?

Chapter 8

•♡•

Undecided: Not settled or resolved

•♡•

They were seven. Lucky for them, bad for you.

You hesitantly retold your livid dream. You tried to read their expression but ended up looking at the floor and nervously playing with the blanket as you finished your story.

“- and then I was in the elevator, Namjoon somehow calmed me and in the end, Seokjin gave me something to help me calm down more and I fell asleep. Now we’re here.” This was it. This was where the guys all would realize how fucked up you truly are.

The silence that followed your little story was unbearable. You couldn’t quite decide what was worse… them responding and sending you to the looney bin or them not responding at all. This uncertainty only grew with the silence. Causing you to fold into yourself more. You really started liking these seven men. You felt a connection with them and hoped they would be different from the previous people in your life.

You knew you were a bad person, but that’s something you tried to hide from them. It’s already bad enough that you had to tell them your ridiculous dream. You don’t even want to know what they’ll think of you when they learn the truth. That you, in fact, are a-

“Y/N. hey sweetheart. Look at me” It was Namjoon who interrupted your spiraling thoughts. Hesitantly you lifted your head. You kind of expected to see anger or hurt, maybe even betrayal in his soft brown eyes. Yet, that’s not what you saw. Namjoon’s gaze was filled with something close to admiration, maybe even a dash of sincerity.

This wasn’t out of character for him. Actually, those same emotions were visible in all seven of their eyes from time to time. What confused you now though, was the fact that those emotions were still present even after what you have told them. You didn’t deserve their admiration or sincerity. You were a monster compared to these lovely men. These men that always only protected you, cared for you like you weren’t just another stranger passing through.

They showed you more love than you ever received from anyone in your past. And a past you indeed had.

“Don’t zone out on us baby. We’re here for you. All seven of us.” Yoongi said as his arms snaked around your waist, successfully securing you in place. Being touched like this was nothing new to you. You had your fair share of boyfriends and boy friends. Only now, this was one of seven men you considered more in the latter category than the first. That little space being the friend zone secured a few lines that could not be crossed. So, with this knowledge, you stiffened.

Noticing your shift, Hoseok also snaked his arms around you for two reasons. One, he just wanted to hold on to you to make you feel safe. And two, what they were about to tell you required a few precautions. One of these entailed you being held in place, be it by choice or force was up to your reactions.

Feeling another pair of arms make their home around your waist had you beyond confused. Didn’t they know the unspoken rules of friends? Cuddles is as far as you would dare go if there was a secure blanket wall in place. But never in your time here, did they ever do something like this. Okay, to be honest, you kind-of expected Jimin or Jungkook to be the ones to risk something like this. They were the ones that lived for attention. But Yoongi was, well how can you put this nicely? The most un-affectional human you know. He showed he cared through small stuff like placing water randomly on your desk or making sure you had an extra helping of your favorite dessert. He never did something like this with any of the others. Hoseok, on the other hand, was just always so hyper you actually believed if he ever had to sit still for more than one hour he would die.

“Y/N, you asked us to be honest with you if you relayed your dream to us, right? Well, can you promise us to listen without interrupting until we’re done?” Seokjin asked, pulling you from your spiraling thoughts.

A simple nod from you was all the boys needed to start their very own story.

“Well, our story started 4 years ago. I befriended Yoongi at one of the local police stations. He was one of their tech guys and I was a young police officer starting out a new career. Okay, maybe I wasn’t that young, but that’s beside the point. Soon after I met Yoongi-hyung we met Hoseok-ah and Jin-hyung at one of the bars cops were known to hang out. We became friends rather quickly. The 4 of us started talking about going private, I mean we had all the skills needed to maintain a small private firm. So, 3 years ago we founded Z-investigators.

I believe it was in that very same bar where Taehyung-sie got into some trouble. I believe he picked a fight with a local? Or was it the other way around? Anyway, naturally Yoongi-hyung was the one to stop the fight and it was Hoseok who successfully made both men shut up with a simple stare. We soon learned that Tae was a newly promoted detective and that’s how he somehow joined our firm. But we also soon learned that wherever Tae went, his two best friends would follow so naturally Jungkook and Jimin became part of the Z-family.” Namjoon began. A soft and longing look in his eyes as he recalled the memories that started all of this.

But his face fell as the memories kept replying in his head. Something made him frown, you did not like that. You had to repress the urge to say something, you did promise to not interrupt. So, you just sat in Yoongi and Hoseok’s embrace and waited for someone to continue.

“Things went well in the beginning. We got a few cases here and there and slowly started building a good reputation. But then after our 10th murder, we started wondering. We started wondering what these people that take lives felt while their victims held onto the last bit of life. We also started wondering what methods would work best to stay unsolved.” Hoseok continued behind you, slightly tightening his arms around your waist.

Flashbacks to a 16-year-old you played in your head. Her eyes were all you would see as you tightened the rope around her throat. The color draining from her face as the oxygen failed to reach her face. Her life slipping out of her eyes until only empty orbs were left staring back at you. You also remembered the satisfaction that filled you as you got up and stared down and her lifeless body.

She was a bad person. She was the woman that seduced your father and threatened to tear your family apart. You’ve always been a snoop and found this secret by accident. Your years of watching and learning from unsolved murder cases helped you erase yourself from that allay way. You were smart for a 16-year-old girl, to this day her murder remains unsolved and your family is none the wiser.

You also got curious about how you could improve in such a way so you can start taking risks. You have awakened a lust for blood that day and you would do anything to satisfy it.

“We did tons of research. And soon we all began planning on how we would test our theories without getting caught. At first, we wanted to do this to better the system. You know? We wanted to make the life of an investigator easier.” Taehyung continued. None of the boys dared make any eye contact with you, yet you held no judgment towards them. You understood where they were coming from.

“We soon realized that the system was more corrupted than any killer’s mind. We were disgusted when we found out how many people out there were roaming free because some fucker tampered with the evidence to save his buddies ass.” Jimin said in a dark tone. His face even took on a darker shade as he kept his gaze fixed in the ground.

“Daniel was our first attempt at bypassing the system on fair terms. Weeks of planning went into killing him. You see Daniel was a very well-known drug-lords pet out there. he was responsible for almost everything. From people that stayed loyal to his boss to the ones that dared cross him. He even led some of the missions to ‘take care of’ these unfaithful people himself. To say we didn’t feel bad killing him would be a crime in itself.” Jungkook explained as he finally dared meet your eyes. You saw the sincerity in his eyes and that alone told you that these boys weren’t lying to you. Your eyes softened at this, making a faint smile find its way to his lips.

“Ultimately we decided that I would be the one to end his life. We all played a part but I had the final blow, or push so to speak. I was the one who forced the golfball down his throat. But we all stood there and witnessed as his life slipped from his eyes. The fear, the realization that it was truly the end for him. None of those things affected us in a negative sense, on the contrary, there was a sense of relief that settled between us.” Yoongi added. His form small and bordering fragile. He was scared, of what you do not know.

“After our first kill, we became braver. We did less planning and more doing. The only planning we really did was the names and the ones who got to kill them. We even made a catalog that wasn’t part of the investigations to keep track of what we actually did and how much we could prove. It's strange, we didn’t see the victims as our killings. We saw them as victims. Just another case we had to do. You can even double-check us, we did no tampering what so ever. Everything we logged and collected is true. But still, we aren’t even close to finding the real killer, even if we are the real killers.” Seokjin explained even further.

At this point, your head was running its very own race. They were investigating their own deeds, but they were still fair in doing so. Once again your mind drifted back to when you were well into the killing business as well. One of your biggest secrets on how to get away with murder was to evolve. You never used the same methods twice in one year. You kept changing up your style. There wasn’t a single -method out there which you haven’t done or mastered.

The only difference at this points between you and the men sitting in front of you was that you killed for the bloodlust you got. They killed for the sake of bettering the system. It’s this exact thought that made you use your voice for the first time since they started talking.

“You guys killed for the sake of bettering the system. I killed for the sake of fulfilling the bloodlust I had. You aren’t monsters. I’m the monster here. How can you guys stomach being in the same room as me?” you broke into a sobbing mess as your hands reached for your face.

“Even serial killers get bored Y/N. We got bored of trying to better the system. So, we ended up killing for the trill. We couldn’t understand why but killing felt like a deed we did for our country. And after Tae discovered you… we felt less alone. We finally knew someone else out there knew what we felt, what we craved” Yoongi explained as he tried to make you understand that you weren’t a monster.

You had no idea what any of their words meant so you decided to stay silent. You had some thinking to do.

•♡•

The boys soon allowed you to retreat to your room. They didn’t put any pressure on you to answer them after their confession. They simply allowed you to go. You needed time to process everything.

Closing your door, you could finally let out the breath you were holding. Head facing down, you leaned against the door. Your carefully constructed face falling. The face you worked so hard on when you were 16 years old. The face you had to create after that faithful day you first tasted blood.

If anyone could see you now, they would probably say that you seemed like two different people. One is the sweet and innocent Y/N that got her honors in Forensic Science to make the world a better place. The one that wouldn’t hurt a fly. The emotional, scared, helpless foreign girl that wanted to escape her controlled life back home.

The other girl would be the one most only saw in their final moments. The determined, bloodthirsty girl that wouldn’t blink when she pulled a trigger. The fearless girl that would stare death in the face a thousand times without thinking twice about it. The heartless murderer that would smile while watching the life drain from her victims' eyes.

Those same emotionless eyes now snapped up as your thoughts began swirling. How did they find out about your past? They had to have known, right? How else would they know so much about you? You weren’t even close to being a person of interest in any of the investigations. Well, there was the exception of Norman’s case, but that was a minor hiccup you had to deal with.

Hang on. They compared themselves with you. They fucking compared their killings with yours, those narrow-minded idiots. They dare compare their amateur crimes to yours. What a fucking joke. You have years of experience and they only started about 5 months ago, with planning no less. Did they really think that you would just understand and accept them?

Okay, maybe you do understand and you kind of like the idea of not being so alone. Sure, killing was fulfilling but it was a very lonely road.

You frantically started pacing back and forth as your mind kept running the possibilities and questions in your mind. One of these questions kept playing on repeat.

What’s going to happen now.

Yes, they’re still new to the whole murder scene, but they outnumbered you seven to one. If they were just two, no problem! But they were seven. Seven really well-built men that wouldn’t think twice about pulling you over their laps and giving you a good spanking. Wait, what?

Startled by your own thoughts you stopped dead in your tracks. Where the hell did that come from? Taking a seat on your bed, you forced yourself to take a deep breath.

Think Y/N, you have to think! You needed a plan if things turned sour, just in case.

•♡•

The boys all stayed in the living area as you retreated to your room. You needed time and they understood that, but that didn’t keep the tension at bay. They were scared of what you would do, although they had a backup plan they didn’t plan on using it.

The silence stretched out for another minute or two until Hoseok abruptly stood and moved down the hallway. None of the other boys cared to see where he was going as each was to busy sorting through their own questions. The atmosphere grew heavier as the minutes stretched. The only sounds were heavy sighs from time to time. Well, that is until Hoseok returns somewhat ten minutes later with a visible spring in his step.

“So, I kind of stood outside her door and listened to her vocally have an inner conflict with herself”

At his words, the rest of the boys visibly perked up. You were usually a quiet girl. You never voiced any inner feelings towards anyone, given if they didn’t force you to engage in such a manner. Hearing you have a vocal conversation with yourself must have been a whole new experience.

“She sounded so different. Much more mature, and so confident. Well, she did call us amateurs and idiots for comparing our track record to hers, but it was like there were two different people speaking. The one would belittle our work while the other would kind of be on our side and voice how nice it would be to have friends in the field” Hoseok continued while retaking his seat next to Yoongi.

“What else did she say? What will she do with this new information?” Seokjin hesitantly asked. They liked you. They would hate for you to end up as one of their cases.

“She’s scared. She knows we outnumber her by far. I also think she might have some sexual troubles but that one we can discuss later. She didn’t say anything else other than she needs a backup plan” Somehow this news made the guys excited.

Jungkook was visibly vibrating in his seat, Taehyung actually had emotion on his face, even Yoongi looked more awake.

“I can’t wait to meet the real Y/N”  

•♡•

45 minutes

That’s how long you were left alone in your room. You were just about to drift off to sleep again when the knock came. The knock that sealed your undecided fate. The dreaded thump thump against the door that stole away your precious sleep and left you on high alert.

You were beyond annoyed at this point. How dare they deny you your sleep. With an intentionally loud groan, you reluctantly got up and made your way to the door. Only to find the hallway empty, no living soul in sight. You probably stood there for a good minute or two before you heard the hushed whispers from the living room. Curiosity got the best of you as you crept closer.

The universe must have had it in for you because the moment you came within earshot of the whispers… they stopped.

“Come take a seat Y/N. We’ve been waiting for you” you heard Taehyung call. Momentarily forgetting the intensity of the whole situation, you slowly made your way into the room.

“This isn’t just another dream or something, right?” at your voice, all seven men locked their eyes onto your form. Yes, you might be a very dangerous serial killer, but that didn’t mean you didn’t get intimidated. Seven gorgeous men were watching you, S-E-V-E-N.

Taking the seat furthers from them, you crossed your legs as you took on the role of the shy foreign girl again. All seven of the men silently observed you. Something was different about them. Mere moments ago, they told you some of their darkest secrets AND revealed some of yours. Yet, here they were. No indication of fear, shyness or guilt.

“So, as you can see, we outnumber you seven to one. But you out-rank us by far and we’d kill to have you as one of us. Almost like a mentor of sorts. We like you Y/N and we really want to become your friends, but you need to want this too” Namjoon spoke up. His eyes never leaving yours as he took in your shy exterior.

“W-why would you thi-“you began, only to be cut off by Jimin’s stern voice.

“Oh, lose the mask Y/N. If you wanted to bolt, you would have done so already. Someone like you always has a way out. We want to get to know the real Y/N. So, stop this shy, vulnerable crap and show us who you really are”

Taken aback by the sudden harshness of his tone, it didn’t take much to lose the weight of pretend. Looking down, you readjusted your position. Uncrossing your legs, you threw your hair over your shoulder as a slow smile formed on your face. It felt so good to not pretend you even let out a sigh of relief.

The boys watched on in amazement as you visibly changed into someone else right in front of them. They expected to see the difference, but never in their lives did they ever think they could witness something like this. It was like you were a young caterpillar going through metamorphism to turn into the biggest and brightest butterfly known to mankind.

“Holy shit that was probably the hottest thing I have ever witnessed” Taehyung groaned out as Jungkook, Seokjin and Yoongi all hummed in agreement.

“Hi boys, it’s nice to finally meet you. So, when do we start your training?” you said with a smirk and a suspicious glint in your eyes. It’s been a while since you had the satisfaction of taking another’s life and to say you were beyond excited, was a crime in itself.

None of you knew if you made the right choice by trusting the other, yet your future seemed a little less undecided than it was this morning.

Victim catalog 

•♡•

A/N: Congratulations! You’ve managed to make it to the end of the series!!!   Thank you so much for reading! I really hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it! Please don’t hesitate to ask if you would like to know more or just want to tell me it’s trash! Any ask is welcome!

Also, tell me what you would change in the story. Or maybe even tell me what you would like to read next. I’m always open to ideas. Mits you lots <3

Taglist: @loonyginger @hani-bun @sugashaye @alomarce @loisje123 @chim-possible @imfor-everdrivinginpuddles @exprimidordefresas @speakyourselfloveyourself @autumnboo126 @3amthoughtsvented @thetrxshbx @michiluvddr @purecelestialpower @ur-honey-child @dulce-whirlpool @moonlightnightingalesworld @loudfriendtacocookie @mysteriousanna @diorluvs @misseoulite @mina9235​ @crajishie​ @undergroundqueens @hannahpostema @skay @mixerbeauty @adultingtomato @hauntedstatesmanmoneyknight @slutkoo​ @freeformdn @flowersinmypockets @kelwaters​ @cool-strawberry @vi-hoshi​ @xxqueenwxtchxx​ @kyliewonder @technicolor-blues​ @emmayan123 @sofiaelola123 @addictedtohockey​  @kpop20182019​ @regularcow @toanimeornot​ @xxgothickxx​

[slytherin-puffskein]

200 sounds excellent for barnalau if you want to? 💚

200. “He loves you, you know? He’s just afraid of admitting it.”

- - -

No matter how much they talked, no matter how much they hung out together, Barnaby has never been able to paint an accurate portrait of Murphy McNully in his mind. Whenever he was persuaded he had pinned him down, he would come up with a whole new personality trait that he had to add to his canvas. From talkative, he became calculative, and then clever, and so on, to the point that Barnaby was at loss and was just close to give up his attempts to understand the Quidditch Commentator extraordinaire. Maybe he was one of those rare people who couldn’t be described, for the words to accurately decipher them were nonexistent.

At least, he was certain for one thing when it came to Murphy McNully: he was an amazing Wizard’s Chess teacher, and Barnaby just couldn’t stop getting better and better, which made him feel sort of better about himself. After hearing degrading claims from his parents, it was nice to finally be good at something, even if it was as trivial as chess. Right, he had struggled greatly during the first class, but that has been when Murphy’s amazing teaching stepped into place. He couldn’t defeat him, and will probably never do so, but he could admit with some sort of confidence that he was decent enough to beat an amateur.

Murphy McNully. The mysterious Quidditch Commentator, and one of Laurent King’s closest friends. Friends of my friends are my friends, has been Barnaby’s logic, but a mocking thought wouldn’t stop snaking into his mind and cackle at him: Laurent prefers Murphy over you. Who wouldn’t? He’s smart, kind, and quite good-looking. Just what are you, compared to him?

The sickest thing was, that voice in his mind sounded just like his father’s.

Despite his best attempts to ignore them, he couldn’t help but fear the words held truth, but said fears were soon about to come to an end as, in the middle of a heated Wizard’s Chess match, Laurent suddenly showed up, sitting right next to Barnaby and craning his neck to check out the board. Obviously, Murphy was winning, but it was a miracle that Barnaby had managed to survive for that long.

A whistle came from Laurent’s lips, an impressed one that made Barnaby’s heart flutter. “Damn, that looks like a good game!”

Murphy furrowed his eyebrows, a smile decorating his face anyway. “How do you know so? You never want to play with me.”

“Every Wizard’s Chess game is good when it’s with you, Murph. It’s a fact.”

“I told you countless times, Lau. My friends call me McNully!” But his voice held no anger, which led Barnaby to assume that scenario had happened quite often.

Laurent smiled brightly. “And I’m not a friend. I’m a super friend! So I get the right to call you something else~” And a wink came.

Just like that, the voice came back again. He likes him more, he likes him more, he LIKES HIM MORE. Barnaby felt disgusted at himself. Who was he, to be jealous? Who was he, to not like what was unfolding in front of him? Suck it up, big boy. It’s Laurent’s life, you have no say in it! You’re not some sort of asshole!

But the pain was present anyway, nipping at him and threatening to rip him bare. Suddenly Laurent’s attention was on him, the boy resting his chin into his palm. “So! Have you thought of my proposition, Barn?”

His worries vanished, and his smile came. “Hmmm? What proposition?” he teased.

“Oooh, stop and tell me already!” Laurent whined. “You’d be an amazing addition to the Quidditch team, I feel it! I can already see it- Barnaby Lee, Beater of the Slytherin Quidditch team! Wouldn’t that just be grand? Right? Right?” And he threw a look at Murphy, one that demanded his approval, but he was only met with a thumbs up. Murphy had the feeling that Laurent might not leave him the opportunity to talk anyway.

And he was right, because Laurent immediately went back to his little speech, all focused on just how great Barnaby would be at the pitch, and then, unexpectedly, how great he was in general. Just like that, the compliments now focused on him, and Laurent was so absorbed in his claims he wasn’t even noticing it. Barnaby had to admit, all of this praise was threatening to make him blush, and he would most certainly have had Laurent not suddenly stood up, shock painting itself on his face. “Oh, merde!” That happened a lot, sudden french under strong emotions. “I gotta go study with Badeea, I promised her!”

Just like that, Laurent King was gone. He had vanished as fast as he had showed up, and Barnaby couldn’t help but feel a hint of sadness sneak into his being. If only he had stayed a few minutes more… and talked of him like that more. It had felt so good, it was as if… as if he loved him just as much as Barnaby did. Before he could delve into his thoughts for any longer, he noticed Murphy’s gaze which was pressing on him, as if he was trying to decode him.

“W-What’s wrong?” He asked at last.

A sigh slipped from Murphy’s lips, and he folded his arms across his chest. “You like him a lot, do you? I see it in the way you look at him. It’s quite interesting, really, it’s just like when I look at my Kneazle, but… with something more. Maybe because Lau’s a human, and not–”

“McNully!” Barnaby could feel the blush flaring up his cheeks, and he mentally cursed himself for that. Merlin, now he’ll know he’s right! “L-Let’s just focus on this game–”

When Murphy had something to talk about, however, he was unstoppable. “I promised myself to not tell you anything. I wanted Laurent to figure it out for himself and tell you, because it’s what is supposed to happen… but seeing him gush over your Quidditch talents and then you, only you was just my cue to speak up, I suppose. It’s all too clear! How is he so blind!” The most astonished look adorned his face.

What?

“W-What is clear?” An answer floated in Barnaby’s mind, one all too perfect, but he did his best to repress it. No way it’s what I’m thinking of. No way, at all. It’s like Father says: there’s a whole lot of other people much better than me. It’s–

Murphy smiled. “He loves you. He’s just afraid of admitting it.”

Just like that Barnaby’s face was even redder. His fingers were trembling, his palms were sweating… and his heart was clamoring with the purest, rawest joy he had ever experienced. He opened his mouth, but Murphy was speaking again:

“He’s afraid of what you’ll think of him. He has no idea of how you will feel about this, because everyone is so unpredictable, and it scares him a lot. He’s also afraid of what his dad will think of him. You know about his dad, I suppose. He’s not really into this whole… this whole guys-loving-guys things. I think he still wants to please him in a way, and accepting who he is will ruin every chance he has to do so. So he’s holding back. And hoping the feelings aren’t real. But they are, and he’s terrified.”

He quickly noticed the astonishment on Barnaby’s face, and smiled. “Don’t think I read people that well, I had a lot of time to figure it out.”

It all made too much sense. Barnaby had heard a whole lot about Laurent’s father, and he couldn’t blame him over what he was doing. He couldn’t blame him at all. If he had the slimmest opportunity to make his father proud, he would jump right on it.

But not now. Now, the urge to love Laurent was greater than anything else. A determined look settled on his face as he ordered a chess piece to move. ��I’ll help him. I… I’ll show him it’s alright, to be himself.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m madly in love with his true self, and he needs to find out just how lovely he is.”

[nozomijoestar]

Transcribed and formatted for readability the master thesis between me and @wlwclem​ on the nuances to NaraTrish together and as individuals being why we love it and respect it not being CompHet- we spent way too much Big Brain Energy on it to not share 

tw: brief mention of F-Slur when giving an example on toxic masculinity being bullshit, sexuality is briefly discussed in a non sexualizing way and in no graphic detail

*insert IM TRISH KIN BUCCIARATI joke here*

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:45 PM

JDDBSJDBD YES bc ofc she gotta be Reassuring but at the same time his Himboism Knows No Bounds One of the lines in EoH u can give her is “Go get me an Italian Vogue magazine too while you’re at it” and I’m like. Queen

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:46 PM

JDHDHDF BDE Narancia whipped Narancia stands no chance

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:46 PM

OH FOR REAL one of HIS victory lines is something about getting all the stuff for her lmao And this is like even if she isn’t in the battle, Always Thinking Of His Queen

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:50 PM

Trish decides to test the limits of this and his ability to recognize them by asking for impossible or nonexistent items/feats and when he continues to try for her without question she realizes she has too much power and must restrain it fjdjjdjfjf Can't turn into Dad

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:51 PM

JDBDBSJS The color palette changes while she has an inner monologue while she watches him try to make her happy

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:53 PM

"Oh my god Bucciarati was right...he's too loyal for his own good I need to stop even if it's a little fun"   Meanwhile Narancia: growing more and more frustrated with himself for perceived failure to someone he loves

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:55 PM

She stops for the most part but does it every so often bc it’s cute

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:56 PM

Lucky to have a freak like dat I feel like the only thing that can counter this self defeatism Narancia can get (bc his younger childhood...ofc he's fucked up and anxious and paranoid abt not being enough or abandoned) is Trish having to open her own repressed self up and love the shit out of himLike those reassuring lines she has in EoH and her moments in the anime/manga Bruno fucking does it as his father figure and Narancia admits it gives him strength

December 19, 2019

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:04 AM

Yes, he feels like he has to prove his worth and like he’s worth having around otherwise he’s useless, i def feel like he would not like talking about the stuff that happened in the past with everyone bc he would feel ashamed and stupid or st, he needs to be told You Are Enough and her to open up too so they can lean on each other

nozomijoestarToday at 12:12 AM

Honestly no jokes for a second I feel like this is also abt breaking toxic masculinity bc it's fucking Italy in the early 00s just out of the 90s...it was RIFE rifer than even now with that shit like in much of the world then too, the idea that a boy becoming a man and men in general need to strictly follow dumbass self harming rules

 especially abt not opening up and only having real priorities for earning money, honoring family, and procreating as much as possible whether it's marriage making a family or "having sexual conquests" in promiscuity, anything outside of this bullshit image can't be tolerated and you might as well be a woman or "a fag" if you don't assert some fictional narrative of trying extremely hard to have power in everything bc that's all that matters is the ridiculous idea of Alpha Males applied to humans 

Narancia being a 80s- 90s kid with the childhood he had did not give him much fighting chance at all in this context and time period  esp just bc he happened to be born with a dick and thus saddled with these harmful expectations society made that could've only further repressed his recognition of not beating himself up and his own emotional needs on top of EVERYONE ever betraying him Where was he supposed to go? He can't go anywhere unless he meets Bruno

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:18 AM

yes i agree..... like, males being looked down upon for opening up, being societally forced to shoulder the burdens and “man up” and just deal with it and fix everything. And then already having a toxic support system with his “friend” betraying him and his dad Sucking Major Ass, all he’s been taught is deal with it but hasn’t been given the tools to know how, and if Bruno didn’t meet him he honestly would be so stuck, what person (esp in that time period) is going to go out of their way to help an uneducated young male?

nozomijoestarToday at 12:20 AM

Even if it tragically ends with his death in canon I feel like the time he spent with Bruno's bois, Giorno, and Trish was huge in making some of that crack little by littleBc he has moments where you see how sweet he actually is, his "real" personality if you will underneath all the unresolved anger when he's with ppl he sees love him and give him hope When Giorno said No One Is Going To Hurt You Anymore that just made me cry harder

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:23 AM

Yes! Like, ofc he gets angry, has unrepressed rage and reactions to things, he hasn’t had any type of emotional support in SO long and it’s not like it’s 100% fantastic in that regard with buccigang (which don’t get me wrong they are family but they are still in an aggressive gang and go off and give each other lots of shit)-YEAH AND THE FUCKIGN PLANT GROWING TOO IM

nozomijoestarToday at 12:25 AM

Trish is legit I think the one person aside from Giorno who would treat him without even the gang's aggressiveness Narancia is my fav in VA even if Bruno is the best written VA character bc he's me, this kind of shit in my life is why I developed PTSD undiagnosed since my childhood that only kept getting worse until only this year have I gotten any true help I know exactly how he feels 

Esp when you think your whole life exists to serve others never yourself NaraGio shippers I see y'all argument even if I don't follow it tbh, Gio was again the only one besides Trish to consistently care for Nara in day to day and when he was in danger and esp during the Clash and Talking Heads fight Gio was the one dude present like No Narancia It's Ok Please Tell Me What's Wrong You're Clearly Stressed

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:31 AM

yeah although i haven’t experienced it i can still empathize and try to understand, i think there’s so many layers of protection and walls that most people never truly look past it to see the root cause or true self YES that fight was so frustrating bc they were all like Narancia stop being an idiot when something was clearly wrong and he was obviously in distress!!

nozomijoestarToday at 12:32 AM

Also Gio was the only one who first asserted that No, Narancia did the right thing in fighting Formaggio

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:33 AM

Yes and with that whole interaction the gang often uses Narancia as the scapegoat essentially and just give him shit for every little thing without trying to understand his POV

nozomijoestarToday at 12:33 AM

The Clash fight tbh I feel was an ass pull set up to give Narancia his big bad ass loyalty proving moment even if it's a great fight that beginning part is...only the Trish and Gio interactions rly make sense fjdjdjI wish him and Giorno hung out more or I guess more like talked more bc you can't rly hang out when you're getting assassinated every day hfgdg

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:36 AM

Yeah hdkdb, even with Fugo, even tho he found him and brought him to Bruno, he still calls him a dumbass, stabs him with a fork and shit, and then with Mista even tho I feel like they are Like Bros, he destroys Narancia’s radio for no fucking reason and also has a pattern of taking shit Narancia paid for without paying him backI def agree with that, I feel like Giorno interactions were lacking in that there really weren’t many one on one meaningful things so it’s hard for me to grasp his personal headspace and relationships a lot of the time

nozomijoestarToday at 12:37 AM

However to be a little more fair to the Bucci gang the manga version has Narancia trying a lot lot more to get their attention in logical ways that unfortunately Talking Heads completely ruins, he tried writing to let them know what was happening and TH warped the text into him saying vulgar things bragging abt his dick being a powerful Stand

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:38 AM

Yeah I was gonna add I wasn’t sure if the manga had other stuff, tbf

nozomijoestarToday at 12:38 AM

I think this is also Shounen Tropes of the 90s at play too the "child" character was often written as the comic relief dumbass Narancia suffers it so it does add a layer of Not Good to his relationships The trope still exists tbh Anime cut out him writing I assume bc it's too sexual It's already pushing it having him whip it out and piss in front of everyone jfhdhd

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:41 AM

Yeah you right, it’s like the i want it to be that deep meme, like Araki obvi doesn’t have him only as comic relief but if he delved into his character more there would’ve been so much more that could’ve been done and shown YEAH DJDBDJDJF I WAS SURPRISED THT WAS ANIMATED

------------------------[ CUT INTERMISSION ]-----------------------------

nozomijoestarToday at 12:51 AM

Ok but to get back on track with where I was trying to go even opening this all up is how it's critical to NaraTrish in a mutually beneficial way

nozomijoestarToday at 1:01 AM

Nara is no incel he's a King obvs but he is also at heart a confused scared kid uncertain of anything in the world beyond what's closest in his grasp and without someone actively believing in and validating him he can't fully achieve awareness of healthy dynamics and even the problems within the ones he already has with his gang and Bruno- Trish doesn't have to babysit him and be the stereotypical The Woman Only Supports And Gives Up Her Body bc thats never her and couldn't be her and Narancia wouldn't make her that way bc even when he kinda touches on that (giving in a bit to the idea that men are the main protectors of women) when he gets too fixated on wanting what he thinks is for her wellbeing he does snap out and acknowledge he's wrong bc 

Trish by her independent nature and tremendous Will proves those stereotypes are bullshit, not even factoring in their first meeting as already making a huge impression on his beliefs of what girls can do- Trish knowing how to challenge him by staying true to herself yet having the compassion to help someone suffering and with fewer chances from birth than she had would not only win him over but give him something even Bruno can't, self sustaining confidence, bc Trish isn't part of a chain of command, she's just a girl in love with a boy who wants him to be happy and that concept while foreign to him for so long once it kicks in he could actually learn to build himself For himself and For someone who wouldn't use him for some greater schemes or dirty work, 

I love Bruno ok he's one of the best characters in anything ever but his flaw in his ability to help motivate ppl is tied to that fact that he's bringing them into a dangerous strict order of command to Serve not entirely in a place/way that lets them just be themselves and realize organic loving relationships with anyone and themselves SO

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:05 AM

they’re healing...... being shown love without a position of authority or any obligations is so powerful for his growth

nozomijoestarToday at 1:25 AM

That all being said, Everything Trish does he's paying attention to, she keeps him alive during the Grateful Dead fight not because she needs him to serve for a cause ( a cause might I add even Bruno the near saint he is was ready to let Nara go right then and there for bc death is in the job description) but because she doesn't know him well yet and shit he even swung a knife at her when they first met over who was in the bathroom, but he's a person suffering and in pain and to let him die even if it's Expected Of The Mission is garbage to her even if she respects Bruno down the line as a father compared to fucking evil Diavolo,

 Trish constantly goes out her way to do these things for Nara bc Trish instinctively knows he's the most vulnerable mentally and her sense of compassion and justice (likely something Donatella made sure to instill in her before her death by cherishing Trish and spoiling her even as a single mother) will not stand to not help someone when she could've- and he reciprocates it even if in disbelief bc he can tell This Person Is Safety, This Person Is Like Me Yet Not, A Better Me I Want To Be, by the time he's about to die someone with his fragile mind was actually gaining conviction about taking control for himself on his own terms and he would risk even those chances to defend the person who actually helped him arrive there (along with Gio) in the first place, 

I think by the end of his life he rly did love her or start to, it being romantic or not is up to individual interpretation to which you know I'm in the romance camp, point is he found someone who truly taught him strength without him fully realizing it and did so without belittling him, if anything instead treating him only with love and kindness and patience (not being a door mat for him, but like, not treating him like ass like everyone else has their moments of either), I think anything Trish asks of him, this is all why he's so willing to do it on top of feeling deep  empathy, I've written in my character notes as well that like this goes even further to sex being one of the most intimate things there is, like I kno we jest and jape abt Teens Doing Dumb Shit bc we're clowns 

but the sheer vulnerability you have to have esp in a first love situation to be willing to go through with that for the first time ever takes a lot of trust and courage, aspects I think Trish was able to give him and would solidify in asking something seen as so important for many people from him, the headstrong Trish wants to be vulnerable for him and the slowly confidence boosted Narancia wants to accept that faith and trust and love and exchange it with his own of the same for her, it's not horny teens 100% it's two hurt but hopeful kids on the verge of having to be adults wanting to find another piece of identity in how they are with someone else, obvs it will forever be offscreen bc pedos deserve to be skinned alive 

I just feel that the components that would fuel them to do something teens try to do to feel more adult and bc hormones are a lot more based in growing maturity than pure lust, I think this is what I fully mean by Writing About Teens Exploring Love And Sexuality; Not Fetishizing And Reveling In Showing The Act Itself Especially For Disgusting Titillation, I think this and not explicitly writing the sex are the difference between child porn and creating realistic characters

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:36 AM

Yeah, it is going to sound like a dumb take but the topic of sex and sexuality itself is not inherently sexual, by which I meant it isn’t the focus — there’s SO much more to it and in this case especially it can be like the ultimate sign of love, trust, intimacy, compassion, trying to make your way as a teen through a harsh world, like I can go on. Nasties Dont Interact but the shying away from the mere mention of it in a non-sexualized context is unrealistic. 

 Yes The Grateful Dead fight i 1000% agree is so important in both his personal growth and the development of their relationship, I think it’s an important parallel that he is dumbfounded about her going to such lengths to keep him alive without the sense of duty/obligation versus Trish’s feelings and outbursts of confusion on why Bucciarati and his gang even cared about her, protecting her to the point of death being on the line.(edited)

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:44 AM

all these elements of complication and similarities between their characters is why ive gotten so passionate about both them and their relationship (whether romantic or platonic it’s really fucking strong and good), the story of two kids making it through adversity, learning to unshoulder their burdens and lean on others, the Found Family™️, and learning and growing together is just so much more fucking deep and complex than the mainstream bs that exists. 

now im not any type of elitist hipster but esp in male and female relationships portrayed in what feels like basically fucking everything are just like CompHet Bullshit and they’re together bc They Are Just Supposed To Be (not to mention the toxic masculinity culture within that where the women barely have character arcs and are just seen as objects anyways) But what I’m trying to say is that in this the relationship is real and it feels earned in a way that just isn’t there in so much other media out there(edited)

nozomijoestarToday at 1:48 AM

Honestly if we tweak this just a lil more this is basically Guts and Casca One of the greatest and saddest romances ever written

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:48 AM

i still have berserk bookmarked just haven’t gotten around to reading yet

nozomijoestarToday at 1:48 AM

If VA was a Seinen it's p much Berserk In Italy Also big brain...galaxy brain...everything you said was a fact signed sealed and delivered(edited)

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:51 AM

Wow we’re actually in sync and using the brain cell to its fullest extent tonight

nozomijoestarToday at 1:51 AM

When I say she's his world and he's hers this is what I mean, not comphet hdhdhfhYEAH HFHDG

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:52 AM

(also my phone autocorrected “and” to “ANF” bc of twdg..... it also sometimes changes it to “AMD” bc I work in technology. My Phone Knows My Interests Are More Important To Me Than One Of The Main Parts Of Speech. Iconic)YESSSS they’re just SO GOOD there’s so much to articulate!

nozomijoestarToday at 1:55 AM

She was his Queen, and god help anyone who disrespected his Queen

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:55 AM

JDBDHE SHIT THE FUCK IP DKDBEBDJFBBD

nozomijoestarToday at 1:56 AM

Buy my silence $8000 a month

[hamlets-ghost-zaddy]

queen of peace

Part 8/10 Shifty Powers x Reader

You regret the words before the syllables form, before they’re from your mouth, but then they’re spiraling through the air and you can’t cram them back in.

Ricocheting around your brain, dunking your anger into a frigid swell of shame, the echoes of your callousness send thoughts spinning until you’re motion-sick; until they don’t sound like words at all—more like liberal strokes of cruel unfeelingness—and you will later marvel at your mechanical ability to escape: leaving a penny on the table, leaving Shifty sitting there, shame-faced and red. It was cowardice, how you fled from your own vitriol: ‘I don’t have much left, Shifty, but at least leave me my dignity.’

The next morning, you rest your head against the worktable surface, piled with Aigle fabric bolts, the words repeating again. You went to bed hearing them, woke hearing them, and no matter how you plugged your ears or shut your eyes, you couldn’t hide. They haunt you, plummeting through and dragging you low. But its deserved, you know; Shifty was trying to help, trying to be a good friend. You snapped at him, and though the words cripple you with guilt, it’s preferable, you assure yourself, to the alternative: to seeing flashes of Shifty’s expression, seared forever in your memory, when your words hit.

His nighttime eyes shone with injured earnestness, with undiagnosable hurt, his cheeks hollowing and graying and—stop, you think, resolutely taking up your needle. Dwelling wouldn’t do you any good, not when you needed to finish the meager order stack as quickly as possible. And anyway, you think, he probably thinks I’m a horrid, wretched little girl now.

And rightfully so, too.

Pass the needle in-and-out, in-and-out of the fabric. Pull the thread, tighten the stitch, finish the commission, receive the payment, and pray the bankers deign to bestow a small mercy on you (it’s unlikely, considering this would be the second year in a row you’ve requested an extension on the loan payment, but you can’t afford to be realistic. Threadbare optimism is all you have to cling to).

You’re fulfilling your last order—letting out a favorite nightgown for a very pregnant Mrs. Morrison—when Mother peers into the workshop. She knocks softly on the doorjamb, wavering and unsure if she’s welcome to enter, and you’re careful not to look at her: the rush of guilt would only increase, rendering you paralyzed. She’s crept around the house since you laid out the truth of financial ruin—and how it directly resulted from her carelessness—and its precisely what you had carefully avoided. She’s sinking once more into the shadowy depths she had been lost to after your father’s death, succumbing further every day to her grief. Time had been the cure but, with how life currently slams every opportunity closed on you and your Mother, you wonder—if Mother does manage to pull herself out of her grief this time around—if there’d be anything to live for when she resurfaced.

You tried so hard to protect her from this, too: to protect her from herself, terrified of seeing her look at you but not really see you. She would perch in the sitting room, staring out at the front garden, and blink at you blankly when you asked if she wanted tea, or if she wanted to take a stroll around the neighborhood, or how she was doing. Now, just as it had then, life has emptied from her eyes, guilt opening up a drain she’s unable to plug, but your acknowledging it would mean acknowledging losing another person: your mother, Shifty. Both repelled and isolated because of your hardheartedness.

Biting your lip, you wait for Mother to speak.

“Darling,” she begins, softly. “There’s some Americans here to see you. Margaret is with them.”

“Americans?” you repeat, perking up despite yourself.

Startled to find you looking at her, Mother shifts under your stare. You lower your eyes back to your needle, shame heaving your shoulders. “Well, yes,” she offers, “They say they’re here to place orders.”

“Oh,” you breath, gathering yourself from the stool and following Mother through the sitting room and into the entryway. The front door hangs open, Margaret leaning against the doorjamb with Allen Vest at her side and a herd of olive-uniformed boys at her back. You recognize Skip Muck’s cackling laugh, spy the bright grin of Don Malarkey, catch the flash of Alex Penkala rolling his eyes among other faces you recognize from Margaret’s Christmas Eve party.

Margaret straightens at your appearance, hand fluttering up to fluff her curls as a roguish grin curls her lips. “Hey there, pretty lady. Just who we were wanting: we need a miracle-worker.”

“A miracle-worker?” you repeat, arching an eyebrow, not helping yourself from sweeping all them into a quick glance. “What do you need? Water to wine? Curing the blind?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” pipes George Luz, his head popping in between the much-taller shoulders of Muck and Penkala. “Heya, sweet thing, how’s it rolling?” he adds with a wink.

Don Malarkey nudges George. “He’s not serious; we’ve been given orders that we’re shipping out soon and we’re all in desperate need of uniform repairs.”

“Our new CO isn’t as much of a—” Skip hesitates, obviously trying to settle on an appropriate vocabulary choice for the present, mixed company, “Stickler for uniform regulations, but we also don’t want to look shabby when we’re going to meet up with a lot of other Airborne companies.”

“We’re the Screaming Eagles not the Scruffy Eagles,” offers George, earning him another nudge to the ribcage.

“Ah,” you reply. There were nearly ten men haunting your doorstep—a day’s worth of hard work, from the state of the fraying thread on their citation patches, the snagged fabric puckering at the sleeve-cuffs—but your fingers itch for the challenge, for the distraction of a series of goals to strive toward, pushing through a feverish night of work and into the small hours of the morning. “If you boys are wanting mends, I can get everyone done by this tomorrow.”

“Don’t make any promises,” Margaret interjects with a wink. “This is the first wave of orders; there’s more to come.”

Interpreting your raised eyebrows, Malarkey supplies, “Word is you’re the gal to go to, ma’am, and that word has spread like a wildfire through Easy, Fox, and Dog.”

“Company names,” Penkala interjects, helpfully.

You nod vaguely, mind caught and stuck on wondering how the ‘word’ got out, and why it spread with such ferocity—wondering who ignited the spark. Your brain conjures Shifty’s face—smiling and bright, a twinkle in those nighttime eyes, and so different from when you last saw him—but you hastily push it aside, asking, “Um, how many orders am I facing down then?”

Margaret, impossibly, smiles wider. “Oh, well over four-hundred.”

And maybe you are a miracle-worker: after all, it is a miracle you don’t faint.

…

George Luz lingers, waiting to be the last client to put in his order of the ‘first wave,’ and once you’re done calling notes for his uniform jacket to Margaret, acting as your assistant and secretary—organizing the order receipts—he hops down from the tailor’s block, immediately nosing through the parcels of brown-papered, orders completed and needing to be delivered. “What are you up to?” you ask, eyeing him over your shoulder as you hang his jacket up alongside the others. You’re relieved all of the men’s clothes already have their last names patched on them; it saved paper, twine, and safety pins.

“Oh, just looking,” George replies, far too innocently. “Are these the things you’re done with?”

“Yeah, I need to drop them by this afternoon and collect the commission money,” you reply, sticking a needle between your lips and sniping a length of olive thread—one of the only spools left in the workshop that’s well-stocked—as you take down Penkala’s jacket. Around the needle, you call to Margaret: “What’s needed for Penkala?”

Hunching over her notes, Margaret replies, “‘Refasten buttons, all are loose; redo Eagle patch, and patch holes on left bicep.’”

Nodding, you mumble ‘thanks,’ taking it to the worktable and poking a gentle pinky-finger through the bicep holes. Your question to Shifty, asked only four months before but feeling a memory from a different lifetime—maybe someone else’s life—drift back to you: did the boys really take cheese-graters to their uniforms? Why and how could they acquire so much wear and tear so quickly?

George follows you to the worktable, the stack of parcels migrating with him. You raise an eyebrow at it, and then at wide grin worming across his mouth—as if he tried mightily to repress it, but then, when has George ever known how to hide his every emotion? The kid’s face reads like an open book. “What are you up to, Georgie?”

“Well, hear me out,” he begins, talking in a great gush of words as if he’s sure you’d shoot down his idea before it’s even from his mouth—not that he’s wrong, you think, tying off the olive-green thread and beginning to mend Penkala’s sleeve-holes. “Why don’t I make all the deliveries for you? That’ll save you some time and you can completely focus on finishing up the orders. I mean, how much time do you waste making deliveries when you could be here, putting in elbow grease and making money?”

You frown down at the jacket. “I don’t know; it’s just…I’m really sorry, but I can’t afford to pay you.”

You can almost feel George shaking his head, his persistent rebuff palpable when he replies, “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to pay me. I’ll do all the deliveries for free.”

Now, you frown up at him, a protest forming on your tongue: you don’t want hand-outs. You want to be respectable, earn your keep and be independent on your own merit, but if you denied George’s offer, should you—from the same logic—return all of the men’s jackets? Your eyes slither from George’s open and hopeful expression, as if he thinks making deliveries will be the most fun he’ll have this side of the Atlantic, and to the neat row of American Airborne uniforms. You glance at Margaret, madly scribbled up totals and making notes that none of the men have prepaid.

George offered a kindness; Margaret offered a kindness; and every single man who left his jacket in your care—entrusted you to do a service—did, too. It’s too coincidental after yesterday, and you know Shifty plays some part in the plot. The fury, the heated and sharp anger, you felt in the teashop perks up in your stomach, wanting to rise and push hot words from your mouth all over again, but then Shifty’s expression flashes behind your eyelids. With these jackets, a favor had given, you realize, but not a favor to me. Shifty, perhaps in league with Margaret, had convinced the men to bring their orders to you as a favor to them, but you would earn the money through hard-work and timely delivery: no prepaying, no hand-outs.

When your eyes return to George—sheepishly, you wonder how long your silence has dragged, considering the concern darkening his eyes—he asks: “C’mon, why not? Friends help out friends, no strings attached. Putting up with my dumb jokes is payment enough, right?”

And that single innocuous question suckers the air from your lungs, grand-slams every thought from your brain, leaving a dull ache behind your eyes. ‘Friends help out friends, no strings attached,’ you turn over mentally; it’s what Shifty proposed, granted on a much more drastic magnitude. Friends don’t deal in repayments, they deal in affection and trust; they operate above the reaches of dignity because, you think as you observe George’s keenness to help you, my success is their success; my dignity is their dignity.

It takes a great feat of restraint, but you want until after you send George on his way with the deliveries under arm, until you’ve completed repairs on five of the jackets, until Margaret suggests stopping for tea and toast before you allow yourself to slump, forehead pressed to the worktable. Groaning, you wonder how you’ll ever earn Shifty’s forgiveness.

(Yet, the respite doesn’t last long: more groups of Americans soon show up on your doorstep).

. . .

With every day that passes, you expect Shifty to drift in on the heels of one of the ‘waves’ of Airborne men shuffling in and out of your workshop, yet, his abashed grin never winks into existence to warm you. You expect Shifty to accompany George Luz in on one of his many thither-hither jaunts to deliver finished orders or follow Margaret in to help sort through the stacks of orders and receipts, logging the payments, but he remains a specter of your imagination, always lingering on the periphery of your thoughts and imagination.

After keeping at a mad pace for eight days—filling orders as quickly as the American boys, enlisted and officers alike, tottered out of your workshop—George informs you the Airborne is to ship out at the end of the week. You don’t allow yourself to nibble at your lip or worry your fingers together, speculating if you ought to send a note with George for Shifty, begging him for forgiveness. You trust George would see it delivered safely—he’s been nothing but reliable with the other two-hundred-seventy-plus orders, though you suspect he’d snoop and read it before handing it over—but you do hold onto the girlish hope Shifty might want to see you one last time, if only as a final homage to the friendship you once had (the friendship I brutally axed to death, you remind yourself savagely).

You haven’t the time to worry, not with your skin cracking from sewing so much; not with her muscles cramping and the orders piling up. You put on sewing gloves—they slow you, but at least you can keep going—you don’t fuss when Mother throws herself into the work at your side, silent and dogged despite her arthritis, or when Margaret completely bans you from so much as glancing at the account ledger.

“Completing the orders and earning the money ought to be your only concern,” Margaret tuts, slapping your hand away from her spidery lines of arithmetic. You shake her head, tucking your chin to hide an affectionate grin, all the while thinking of the drafted letter begging for a loan extension tucked into your sewing apron. If the payments from the American orders fell short—don’t think about it, don’t even consider it, you internally coach yourself—you’d have to send the letter out on Saturday, the day after the American Airborne left Aldbourne.

(Don’t think about that either, you mentally tack on.)

On Thursday, in the quiet hours of the afternoon, George appears on your front stoop for his usual afternoon deliveries, payment collected that morning jingling cheerily in his pocket. “You know,” he says, accepting your offer of the tea and toast you, Margaret, and Mother had just made. “It’s been a good time doing all these deliveries, getting to chew the fat with the people I drop things off for and stretch my legs while I’m doing it. I think I might like to do that after all this is over.”

You shrug, not helping a grin from George taking an overenthusiastic bite of his toast and a loud slurp of tea. His table manners are hopeless, honestly. “Why not? You can do whatever you’d like. I mean, with your charm and can-do attitude, George Luz, you could dethrone Cary Grant as king of Hollywood, if you wanted.”

“Aw, gee, you think I’m charming?” he crows, perching his teacup and plate of toast on the desk next to Margaret’s ledger to sling an arm around your shoulders. “You’re too sweet to me, I swear! What did I do to deserve you, huh? You’re like an angel!”

“Alright, alright; get off me, please.” Feigning surliness, you shrug him off but your efforts are subverted by a snort bubbling up from your diaphragm and popping from your nose, a round of giggles following closely. George looks as though he’s won the lottery and, some small part of you thinks, it almost feels as if you have, too.

You haven’t laughed in weeks, not since the Aigle fabrics appeared in the post office.

. . .

Thursday inches along, taking George on another delivery run, and dusk descends on your back garden. Every time you think to glance up, sunlight has leeched more from the world. By the time it’s fully dark, the BBC’s news bulletin concluded and allowing for a radio play to alleviate the daily gloom of wartime, you shoo Margaret and Mother: Mother to bed and Margaret to a date with Tommy Beale (she even gushed at a poor private named Hoobler, one of the stranglers who’d yet to collect his order, regaling him with the details of Tommy having positively dragged feet about asking her on a proper date for years. Though you agree Tommy has been an absolute horror, you also can’t help thinking of poor Allen Vest, who’s obviously smitten with her).

And isn’t that a nice change? You wonder, refastening a loose button onto Toye, Joseph’s dress uniform jacket. Being able to giggle over the possibilities of a date, of having multiple suitors? You sigh, longing for the days of mooning over handsome boys—allowing yourself to be a girl—and not mooning over a tin of freshly baked scones in the bakery shop window, hunger grumbling in your stomach.

A faint knock on the front door echoes to you. Checking your watch, a quarter past eleven, you wonder why George is out, cavorting, so late the night before loading out to wherever the Airborne is bound for next. Knowing your mother could (and has) slept through German bombings, you feel no qualms with shouting, “It’s open! Come on through, George!”

The front door whines open, the floorboards complaining under the weight of a person, and you’ve tightened the button with three more stiches, tying it off and nipping the thread, before a gentle voice says, “It’s not George.”

Startled, jumping from your stool and upsetting it in your haste, you twist over your shoulder to find Shifty—cap worrying between his fingers, just like when I first saw him, steals through your thoughts, just like at the teashop—shadows from the weak electric light hollowing out his cheeks, defining his nose. He looks like a man, like someone you don’t know, standing there with something—something you’re too scared to name for fear of being wrong—darkening his eyes.

“Shifty,” escapes on a breath without conscious decision. Silence; you track the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows; you pretend you can see the thoughts and words forming, and quickly tossed aside, darting across his expression. Reaching a hand behind you, clutching the worktable, you attempt to steady your weak legs and hide the tremors turning your fingers jittery.

The movement startles Shifty, prompting him to move in careful steps—as if tiptoing around a skittish forest creature—and he sets a parcel on the worktable before bending to righted your stool. When he straightens again, his face is close to yours. Involuntarily gulping, you step back only to bump into the worktable. You bury your fingers into Toye, Joseph’s jacket, pressing the newly hastened button into your palms. “Um,” you begin. “I, um, owe you an apology, Shifty; I shouldn’t have reacted to your offer the way I did; you were being a good friend—”

“No, stop,” he interrupts, voice soft and it’s just not fair for him to look at you like that, especially after he hadn’t looked at you like that when you kissed him. “Please, stop.” Pain tucks the corners of his mouth, a marginal movement you’re privy to from proximity. “It was a crazy offer and I didn’t consider your feelings when I decided to ask you. I just made up my mind that that was the answer to all your problems after Maggie told me; that I’d sweep in and fix everything, and…and…” He nibbles his lower lip.

You can’t stand him looking like that, can’t stand knowing it’s because of you, so you offer: “No, Shifty, none of it was your fault. It was a solution, granted not one I was willing to consider—”

“And rightfully so,” he interjects, fiercer than you thought him capable of, his hands capturing yours and pressing hard, a physical askance for you to listen to him, to believe him. His eyes catch yours, and you’re trapped (except, ‘trapped’ implies it’s unwilling) under those eyes. A constellation burns there, threatening to swallow you whole. “It wasn’t a solution because I was lying to you; I lied to you from the very beginning because…”

“Because…?” you echo when his hesitation stretches.

Biting his lip again, he sucks in a deep breath. His eyes never leave yours. “Because I said you’re my friend and that I wanted to help. But the truth is, y/n, you’re not my friend; you never have been. I kept up this façade for so long because…because of that day, that very first sewing lesson.” His eyes leave yours, sweeping to encapsulate the sewing workshop, a wry smile quirking his lips. He mumbles, “I guess it’s fitting that I tell you here, huh?” His eyes drift back to yours. “We kissed, but then you looked so horrified afterwards, you apologized so quickly, and I knew you only saw me as a friend. After that, I was…I am so scared of losing you as my friend that I never tried to act on…I decided having you as a friend was better than not having you at all.”

“What?” manages to cobble itself together in your brain, coming out on a choked wheeze. Swallowing once, twice, you rally your thoughts but the one conclusion logic offers you is too ludicrous—too illogical—for it to be real. You try speaking again, “What do you mean?”

A blush creeps into Shifty’s cheeks. “I mean…well, I mean that I’ve…” He hesitates, his hands dropping yours to gently cradle your jaw, tilting your head up, and then your nose are bumping, his lips ghosting over yours in indecision and hesitation. Stretching up on your toes, you catch his lips in your own, fingers skittering up to clutch the lapels of his jacket, and your mouth slots with his. Every inch of you presses into him. Shifty’s height forces your spine to arch, stretching your arms as your hands migrate to his hair, threading and rethreading the silky hair around your fingers, trying to drown every sense with him: Shifty Powers. You try to exist in the same space, try to live in the same breath, and you know it’s foolish—against the laws of physics, nature, and biology—but you keep trying; you want to keep kissing just to try.

When he pulls away, gulping down air, he concludes, “I’ve been in love with you for a long fucking time.”

. . .

Shifty props you onto the worktable after some half-hour’s worth of kissing, gently smoothing your hair as he explains, “As much as I’d like to go on kissing you, I’ve got two things for you. It’s, uh, why I came. That, and to apologize.” He crooks a grin at you, placing a kiss on the corner of your lips that makes you chase his mouth a few inches as he moves back. “Didn’t expect to kiss you, I promise. I didn’t want to take advantage.”

Blushing, you thread your fingers with his, and quip back, emboldened by his kisses, “Well, maybe, Shifty Powers, I was wanting to take advantage of you.”

That crooked grin stretches into a proper grin now. “Well, after you open this for me, I don’t see why you can’t do just that.” He places the forgotten parcel in your lap.

Arching your eyebrows, wanting to ask if his confession wasn’t gift enough for one day, you grab a pair of sewing shears and snip the twine off the package. The paper flops open to reveal a carefully folded length of blue fabric and a little wooden carving nestled at its center. Cradling the carving in your palm, cool against your skin, you realize it’s a doe, legs delicate and thin, but head tilted in curiosity and—you fleetingly allow yourself to think in wild imagination—defiance.

“I carved her for you in December. I wanted to give it to you during the Christmas Eve party, but then…” he hesitates, his fingers tapping out a nonsense rhythm on your knuckles. “I went to that dark mental place, you know. Then, I was going to give it to you after, but I began to wonder if you really are a doe.”

“I’m not?” you ask, glancing up at him through your eyelashes. “What would you say I am, then? Have you figured it out?”

Shifty shrugs. “No, not really; nothing I can say definitively, at least. Though,” he tilts his head, considering, “maybe a lioness?”

You hum, your turn to kiss the corner of his lips. He’s agile, turning to catch your mouth, and he works at your bottom lip, gentle and considerate and eager. He draws back with a long inhale of breath, leaving you blinking and dazed—suddenly wakened from a drunken stupor. Clearing your throat, you say, “Well, I think the doe is lovely; she has a spirit and fire to her, even though she looks fragile. Thank you.” Carefully, you set the doe aside, already planning to transport her to your bedside table, so she might greet you every morning and bid you a restive sleep every night. You return to the blue fabric, shaking it out to find—“My dress!” Your eyes swing to Shifty. “You went and bought it back?”

Shifty shrugs, abashed anew. “I didn’t believe that you had been meaning to sell it. It’s what made me go ask Margaret about if you were having money trouble. In her defense, she wouldn’t tell me anything at first, but after she did, I went and got the dress.”

You shake your head, voice quiet. “She didn’t know. No one did.” Hugging the dress to your chest—a dress you convinced yourself was gone—you offer, “You have to understand, Shifty. I didn’t keep my problems from only you; I didn’t tell Margaret, or even my mother. Some part of me wanted…wants…to be like my Mother used to be; to be like how I remember my father. They took chances, but they made their way on their own merit. I just couldn’t…I know my pride is silly and prickly but…”

Now, Shifty shakes his head. “Please never apologize. I understand; my folks didn’t have much money, and I was always determined to make my own way in the world. I get it, y/n, and it’s one of the reasons I’m a goner for you.”

Your hands slacken, arms and dress falling into your lap, and you’re transfixed by the pooling blue fabric—as sleek and brilliant as a springtime creek swollen with melted mountain snow; as flooded with promise as the waving green shoots along the creek-bed. Returning your face to his, you kiss him chastely, adding a whispered, “Thank you.”

(And, until that evening, you had thought of the War as olive-green khaki. But, as Shifty peeled off his jacket and shirt, leaving him in his white undershirt; as he lays atop the quilt on your bed, refusing to ‘compromise’ you by joining you under the covers and instead contented to press kisses to your temple, your nose, your mouth, holding you close against him; as you listen to his breathes even into sleep, you think of the War as chiffon: easy to tear and irrevocably ruin, but soft and precious and, if handled mindfully enough, capable of heart-rendering beauty.)

(When the morning comes, the War of khaki will follow, hurrying Shifty back to his barracks and toward the inevitable invasion of Europe. He leaves with kisses, your postal address in his pocket, and a promise you dare to hope will remain unbroken: ‘I’ll be back for you.’)

tag list: @gottapenny, @maiden-of-gondor, @wexhappyxfew, @medievalfangirl, @higgles123. @mayhem24-7forever

[ordersreality]

Crossroads

Ekúi, still sore from the swim and weary from the medication, decided to stay at home, that night. After all, he hadn’t been invited and his big brother can always fill him in, later.

The first thing Second Class Petty Officer Kirk Samuel Hicks, the Coast Guard Instructor, said when Cull got there was, “Go ahead and tie the dog outside. We won’t have room for him.”

Azif reluctantly agreed to play along.

Just in time to hear his name taken in the role call. “Azif i-Sabba? Sounds Iranian, you a terrorist son?”

“Yezidi, Sir, and a terror only to my vitals, Sir.”

“Yezidi? Never heard of them!”

“Must be because you do not listen, can we get on with the class, Sir?”

He called on “Colin Ironwode? What kind of fool name is that?” Then with a little more volume, “Ironwode!?”

The teen opened the door, “Does that mean the ‘dog’ can join the class now?”

“Wait, ‘you’ are Trainee Colin Ironwode?”

“Intern, Son, and yes. And that is ‘iron wood, not iron wad; it’s a weed, not a spit ball, Khurg.”

About that time Captain Madoc stepped to the door, and not realizing the mess that was just made, “Ironwode, what the hell are you blocking the door for?”

“Sorry Captain, I’m tied up for the moment. Still waiting on the Little Officer to let me play with his toys.”

His crew mates thought that was just a little too much, but contained the giggling rather well.

Madoc was still not amused. He opened the door he swept his hand to wave xer in.

Cull grabbed a blue plastic, butt-slider chair at the back, turned it around, and climbed in as best xe could.

Meanwhile, Hicks just had to ask, “Why didn’t you tell me you were signed up for this class?”

“Why did you ass-u-me I wasn’t? You did not even ask, just commanded I be tied up. A fetish of yours, Mate?”

“But, your not hu-,” the man gestured at the body in that blue chair, trying to make sense of what was going on, sputtering, badly.

While Cull patiently waited for the ignition, Hicks went onto the next name on the list, with better courtesy, now that the good Captain was present.

This was followed by what even Madoc thought was a boring rendering of Coast Guard History, skipping over the less popular events like turning the fleet into engines of war during every major military event. Cull had taken to writing one of those Drheigr nursery rhymes when Hicks passed down the isles handing out a booklet.

Cull just couldn’t figure if the man was afraid he wouldn’t have enough, or if someone would get more than their share. The Petty Officer grabbed the doodle and demanded, “What the hell is this?” Without waiting for an answer, “Not in my class!” While the dragon-skinned teen was repressing a growl, “Put that away, you won’t need it here.”

“Um, put what away?”

Tapping the Input Recorder, “That cell-phone, you won’t need it.”

“Khurg, that ‘thing’ is anchored to my skull. It isn’t going anywhere I am not.”

The instructor moved to take it when Madoc barked, “Leave it, Petty Officer!”

“But, Sir,” the Petty Officer whined, “the class, what if it rings!?”

Cull simply grunted, and offered, “It is not a cell-phone. If it rings, I’m the only one who would hear it. Can we focus on the class, Khurg, or can I go home and get some …?”

“… Ironwode!” Madoc barked. “Hicks, either teach the class or get out of my way so I can do it!”

Much subdued and clearly chastised, the Coast Guard Petty Officer continued to distribute his booklet to the rhythm of pages being turned. Though angered by the act without permission, he held his tongue.

When he returned to the front, Hicks asked, “What are the three most important components to an investigation, anyone?”

The seconds ticked on, again to the sounds of pages being turned, without a single volunteer. Feeling somewhat responsible for the silence, Cull raised a winged hand.

Reluctantly, owing mostly to the lack of participation from the thirty-two students before him, he pointed.

“First, blood, sweat, and tears, ninety-percent: then educated and talented deductive reasoning, eight-percent: finally, Anomalous Thought Entities, three-percent.”

“That does not add up, um, Son.” When no explanation was forthcoming, “So, what are ‘Anomalous Thought Entities’?”

“Ideas, hunches, connections, sudden bursts of inspiration, wild-ass chains of reasoning, knowing something without knowing how you come to know it, that sort of thing.”

“And you think it’s that important?”

Shrugging, “It helps.”

“I have never heard of someone relying on ‘hunches’ as a major part of the investigation.”

“Um, my 101% might be a bit fuzzy, but how is ‘three-percent’ a ‘majority’?”

“Tell me, ‘Cull’, how much field experience do you actually have?”

“You mean with the Authority? I don’t know, counting …, wait, is this paid time?”

“Just answer the question!”

“Thirty-two-and-a-half hours, give or take. That would not be counting the times I spent on paleontological digs with my uncle.”

“Thirty-two-and-a-half hours, give or take? Well, I have you know, after eighteen years in the First Fleet I have never entertained a single hunch. Pure science young, um, is it man or woman?”

“Imán, Khurg.” The look of confusion, though entertaining, dispelled any further explanation. “Choose one that entertains you the most, and go with it. I do.”

Then plowing into the ensuing silence, “Petty Officer, after eighteen years you should know that pure science includes both a recognition of ourselves as part of the subject of observations, as well as the knowledge of how very little we really know. I’ve seen people digging in the dirt for hours only to get dirty. And someone accidentally digs where they weren’t supposed to because they thought they saw something, and ‘Dingo!’ a prize in minutes. I’ve also seen someone ignore those hunches and get very hurt. Now, if you don’t mind, I will trust my nearly seventeen years of life experience over your mindless service to our country, any day.”

“Captain, do I have to tolerate this insolence? If he were in the Coast Guard….”

“…I think you would be in chains, Sir. You came to this class with insolence on your tongue. Azif has done nothing to you and yet you call him a terrorist? In a world where that could get him in a lot of hot water? Extraordinary rendition mean anything to you? Pinochet maybe? I don’t even care that you call me a dog, make fun of my name, but he’s my crew mate. I wonder if you even have any friends, Khurg!”

“Captain!?” When Madoc didn’t say anything, “Tell me this, have you ever had a single ‘hunch’ pay off?”

“Just this last Saturday,” Azif replied. “Xe saved a child’s life with it, Sir.”

“What? I don’t get that, how could she have saved a child’s life with a stupid hunch?”

“Story, Petty Officer,” Cull went forward, “the parts that are up for public consumption, that is. I’m floating up there, getting a workout because the ceiling winds are pretty disorganized at the time. I drop down a bit to get some rest and I smell petrol burning. Knowing what I do about the winds I try to follow the smell with my mind as best I can, leading to the discovery of low lying, whitish smoke accented with a taste of black. I fly over there to investigate and notice the boat had already sunk, and a man swimming for Mazatla Peninsula. I’m in contact with my skipper and alert him to my findings. But, I find I am entirely too interested in the sinking boat, and decide to learn why—the singular Anomalous Thought Entity in my equation. The schooner is sinking slowly, nose up, natural I guess if there is still air caught in it. So I open a locked hatch, swim up inside, and there is this little, maybe seven-year-old boy, frightened, feeling very unloved. He says his daddy’s angry with him, I ask where his daddy is, get him to come with me, and learn his dad is now arrested. So, I suppose that ‘one’ hunch saved a boy’s life and lead to a criminal investigation.”

Madoc added, “Not to mention, there were barbiturates in the boy’s stomach. His inhaler was fighting them off. Cull thought enough to grab a baggy and collect the evidence before the fish did.”

“That was just an act of due diligence, Sir, not a hunch.”

“And where were you when you heard the explosion?”

“I don’t know that there was one. I was 33 fathoms over Elephant Island.”

“There wasn’t, just fire,” Madoc added.

“So, how did you learn of it?”

“Okay, let me replay what I said so I know I said it; yes, yes-yes, okay, yes, right after the upper atmosphere turbulence, I told you I smelled the petroleum burning.”

“You must have some pretty special talents to have been made part of the service. Where do you hail from, son?”

Somewhere in the distance a phone rang.

“My mother. Tell me, Second Class PO, eighteen years, and only an E5?”

“Um, nothing to worry about.”

“Good, can we get on with the class? I have some personal training in a few hours and would like some rest before then? We are supposed to be discussing ‘Coast Guard Forensic Procedures,’ not airing your personal issues out.”

The Captain’s personal phone rang, quietly.

The Petty Officer barked, “See, that phone rang!”

Ignoring the charge, “Cull, there is a problem we could use your help with.”

“What and where?”

“Lincoln Street Bridge, the top of the south pillar, a man looks like he might jump. They want us there to collect if he does.”

“Let them know I’m on my way. What frequency?”

“Em-4. What are you waiting for?”

“Sir, only one of us is passing through that door; right, thanks.”

Out, down, and up, Cull found the warm night air a bit thin, but usable.

Madoc simply added, “Class dismissed, Petty Officer, you are on report.”

“What?”

“You spent three quarters of your valuable class time—which is supposed to contributed to these people’s certification—on anything but the subject you were sent to teach. Azif, did he insult you? There, the very reason you are still only a Petty Officer.”

“Well, he kept calling me Khurg, it’s Kirk.”

Greg, who was carrying a heavy load toward the dry-dock, followed by am orc carrying a heavier load, “That would be orchish, mister, means ‘dog’. Did he say it kindly or cruelly?”

· • º • ·

[okaywhateverokayyes]

To Always Forgive Me

Prompt: Isobel asks Alex to stop Michael from doing something rash, because of course he is. (Post 1x04); includes flashbacks in Alex’s POV

Alex rubs behind Toby’s ears, an easy smile settles on his face as the dog kneels bemusedly beside him, laying against his thigh as he ran his hand down his back. He leans over to press his lips against the paw resting on the sole of his shoe, gentle as he sets his foot down.

A jeep pulls into his driveway, a familiar army surplus. Isobel is swift as she slams the door, striding in his direction, offering a smile as an afterthought rather than out of convention.

“You need to stop Michael.”

Alex blinks.

Alex stands up hastily, his knee buckling from under him as a result of his swiftness. He winces as he shoves his crane into the soot, gawkily kneeling on one foot whilst he rests his elbow on the other.

Isobel was at his side, gripping him as she bolsters his weight as he moves to the timber porch post and rests against them. He was haggard as he caught his breath.

“Thanks.” He says, responsively.

She flicks her wrist, off-handedly. Isobel fixates on him, naturally, yet it does nothing but make Alex answer her glance with an apologetic smile.

“Is he leaving town?” He inquires.

Isobel shakes her head, pursing her lips as if what he had said was preferable to what Michael was about to do. “Something stupider. Unnecessary. Dangerous.” She adds, drawing her brows inward. “So, stop him.”

Alex’s apologetic smile fades into a slightly uncertain one.

“What do you think I can-?”

Isobel adopts a slightly altered pose, crossing her arms briskly across her chest. “Alex.” She says, impatiently, “We don’t have time to go back and forth.”

“Isobel, you and I both know that when he sets his mind onto something, he’s going to go through with it.” He snaps, wanting to add ‘Whether we like it or not’ but settles against it.

Isobel considers this. “You and I both know that’s not true,” she says with a familiarity that precluded Alex, “Please, do me this favor.”

If he was being honest, he didn’t need to be impelled. The thought of Michael having done something out of sheer indignation was emblematic of Guerin.

Alex accedes deferentially.

He ends up at Crashdown café, Isobel paying for his roast beef sandwich as consolation- as if he needed any; just to consume time, as needed, she ordered a fudge-blast off, orbit rings and a shower malt. When the order came in, Isobel had taken a bite of each, a cursory sip and dunked the ring into hot fudge.

Alex begrudgingly takes a bite of his sandwich. It tasted insipid. Or, maybe the flavor was unable to be savored by his parched mouth and numb tongue. His thoughts wavered nervously, fingers trembling as he pressed them in between his legs. His chest throbbed.

Shit. The idea that Guerin was about to do something shortsighted, inflamed him. Because, shit. Why did he decide it upon himself to be crucified and vilified?

No, he decides, Guerin probably thought it over a thousand-and-one timesbefore considering doing anything that put himself, Isobel or Max at risk. He was just that thorough with his decisions. When the past itches to resurface, Alex clears his throat.

Isobel scrunches up her nose, batting away at the waitress-Madeline- who appears by their table to refill their water. Alex offers an apologetic smile in return as she stilts on her heel to turn, rattled.

The thudof a glass slamming against the table has Alex whisk his head in that direction. “Are you-“

“There’s not enough acetone in this god forsaken world for my headache,” she rubs at her temple. “Never enough.” She’s gruff as she scoops a spoon of the malt, only to pause momentarily when her eyes catch onto something-not her particular choice of word which has Alex drawing his brows inwards-but someone.

Isobel waves her hand distinctly, flicking her wrist as to get their attention.

“You shouldn’t have. An exodus bash, for me?” Guerin’s voice cuts through the unspoken uneasiness stretching between the table separating the two. Isobel hisses condemningly, eyes wavering from Michael to where Alex crouched, urgent.

Michael stills, abruptly. Alex doesn’t have to look up to see the grin falling off of his face. Two clenched fists are jabbed to his sides as he adjusts his tone, his attention elsewhere. “What did you do, Izzy?” It’s sharp, furious, on the verge of sounding irritated.

He feels secluded, unwelcome.

Alex bristles where he sat.

“I’ll leave you to it.” There’s a warning intonation. Isobel mouths ‘thank you’ in Alex’s direction, gripping Michael’s shoulder as she makes a beeline towards the crowded entrance.

Michael doesn’t move. There’s tenseness that settles in his posture. “Whatever she said to make you come here, forget it. She won’t hold it against you.” He says, his voice low and rough with restlessness.

Alex thumbs at the ham sticking out, biting his lip. His mouth begins to prickle with microscopic thorns that has him reaching for the glass of water. He takes a quiet sip, gulping, only to have the thistles penetrate outwards, his nerves ignited to the point where he jabs his curled hand into his thigh.

Cool hands are pressed against his. Alex flickers his eyes open, which he hadn’t noticed he had shut close. He watches as Michael sits across him. His gaze moves to their bridged hands near the empty glass. Ostensibly, he feels the air leave out the room yet he lets out a freeing exhale he doesn’t realize he’s holding in, until Michael pulls back.

“Sorry.” He whispers, face clipped as he settles into the booth, leans against the side towards the wall, a habit by now.

They hold each other’s gaze. Alex struggles to think of how to initiate, opens his mouth but clamps it back down. It’s almost unsettling how even after all this time, the thought of dissuading Guerin seemed not only impossible, but unwarranted. Unwelcoming.

The uncertainty of where Alex stood in their friendshiphad him reminiscing of his second tour. When he woke up, both panicked and dopey with painkillers, a terrible combination that lead to him flailing sideways off the hospital bed, unable to speak with his numb, heavy tongue. It took a solid ten minutes for the medics to convince him that he wasn’t dead, that he was on bay, that he was alive.

Just his leg, they heed to mention. The loss of his limb had him at first, dazed becausesurely, this must be a dream. When he first reached to ram his bruised fingers into the sheet of where his shin would have been, only to press into the mattress, he bit down on his tongue to repress the sob clamped in his throat.

Dead, he surely must be dead.

Everything afterwards was a blur. Sensibly present, inherently absent. Removed. Uninhabited. Gone. Two tours later, he wasn’t convinced that the torture he had slighted in the abyss of his mind had ever left.  

He was sure he was a word away from disintegrating.

“Don’t go.” Alex blurts forcefully, takes a deep breath and says, a little shakily, “Just, don’t go anywhere.” His lower lip trembles. He quickly bites it harshly.

Utter confusion met his comment. “What?”

“Idon’t want you to go,” he repeats, emphasizing the distinctive ‘I’ to make it evident that this was him, out of his own volition, saying it.

Michael reacts as if he is slapped. Because, ten years ago, he was the one to say that to Alex. It occurs to Alex that the tables have turned, the words are incendiary and suggestive of the manner in which they had fallen on deaf ears, his ears, back then.

“That’s not fair.” He grunts, drawing a sharp breath in. “Fuck you.”

Cold fear seizes Alex. He knows he’s being hypocritical. He knows that he has lost his agency, his right to ask Michael of something. It dawns upon him that it’s the only way he knows how to make him reconsider.

He bites the proverbial bullet as he recounts what needs to be said, “I felt too much pride back then to listen to you,” he answers a question that’s not asked but heavily weighing on the both of them, “I didn’t know-didn’t think that I could do what I wanted back then.”

Guerin is rigid, immobile, eyes glazed as he glares right into him. He says nothing, in return. It dawns upon Alex that the memories were all-too-clear and the numerous questions, all-left-unanswered.

“I didn’t tell you what happened that night because I didn’t want to hurt you anymore than I already had.”

Prom. He shows up empty-handed because he cancels last minute. Can’t go through with it. Hates how self-righteous his father feels as he takes a picture, that Alex was doing the right thing, by bringing someone, a girl,to the dance. He spurns when his father engages in a jovial chit-chat with her, as if she’s his saving grace. As if she’s fixing something, him, that needed to be fixed.

Alex lets her know in the parking lot of the school that he’s tired, not really interestedand tells her that he’s sorrybefore he asks her to get out, rigidly.

He hopes Michael does the same. Anger looms within him when he notices the blonde beside Guerin the entire night. She’s laughing at something he says, links their elbows together. Michael’s grinning ear to ear. It impales Alex. He leaves abruptly before the second song even plays. Doesn’t even realize that he has over 11 missed calls, from himthat night, until the day after, when he’s at the army reserve handing in his filled-out application.

He doesn’t check his voice-mail, not when he’s having his premature sendoff-get-together with his brothers and others, in the military personnel, people he wouldn’t have even known if it weren’t for his dad. Not when he received his order to mobilize at an operating base in Herat. Not when he takes the day off to say his goodbyes, to everyone but him. Not when he removes the sim from his phone and slips it behind the casing of a photo-frame.

He says things out of anger when Michael slips in through his window the day before he’s set to leave. Everything, forgotten, mostly burnt from his mind so he doesn’t have over 800 words that if unveiled, would have disintegrated him on the spot.

A pang goes through Alex. He knows that Michael hasn’t forgotten a single thing. It’s the way in which he grits down on his jaw, the jowls of his chin protruding out from under his skin. Michael stabs his fingers into the soles of his palms, his flesh turning white in the surrounding area. His face is void of any color. The blood rushes out and seeps under the fabric of his jacket.

The thing about Michael was, he never forgets. Even if he wanted to, it was impossible for him to. His worst burden, Alex notes. He has probably etched the words into the matrix of his bones, scorching it into his mind only to replay it repeatedly, distastefully-

Alex had the luxury of drawing a blank. It took years of practice but he was adept at it.

“I’m sorry, Michael.” He starts with, feeling immediately overcome by how long it’s taken him to even say it, “I’m sorry for everything.” Hopes it’s inherent that everything meant absolutely every. Single. Thing.

Michael is bitter as he scoffs, emotion making his voice tight. “You can’t do this.” He’s mostly speaking to himself. He rubs at his face as he laments into the palms of his hand. There’s defeat wearing thin on his shoulders; As if he’s imagined this exact conversation countless times but never concocted an outcome that would be sufficive enough to mitigate years of absolute agony he endured.

“You can’t do this,” he’s breathless as he repeats. He looks disoriented, reaches for the other glass of water and quaffs it down in futility. It doesn’t help.  Alex reaches instinctively towards Michael, recognizes the conflict, far-too familiar with it himself-but stills when Michael gets on his feet abruptly.

The sound cuts through raucous room, everyone’s head whipped in the direction of the thud.

“I need air,” Michael is tight with fury and hurt; wistful eyes meet his, albeit for a second, before Guerin strides out the dinner, his torment puncturing into every stomp he made.

Alex tosses his head back, lips pressed in a thin, exasperated line; Alex owed Michael a lot. He owed Michael so much more than a mere apology. He owed him his time, his space and him.

Alex felt the familiar light-headedness, knows what’s to come. The detachment, the inhibition, the folds enclosing the locked void in his mind, threatening to unfold.

He reaches into his pocket, throws two bills of twenty, somehow makes it into his truck, drives out of town, into his driveway, into his room. He goes to close the blinds, removes the comforter off of his bed and kicks off his shoes.

Toby is scratching on the door to his room. He’s locked out. The scratching is incessant but not painful to Alex’s heightened hearing. He settles furthest away from the window, curls up on the wood floor with a blanket and his elbow, to support his head.

He has his phone beside him, has it on silent but watches the screen keenly. His eyes are heavy, lids looming lower. Alex presses his nose to the floor, breathes in the musk and concentrates on the splinters in the footboard slat.

It’s only when Isobel sends him a wordy ‘thank you, thank you, thank you…’ message does Alex succumb to his exhaustion.

[paris-willow-grey-blog]

OC Profile!

So, this being my first post, i reckon I should introduce my character. This will probably be reblogged further down the line and updated a bit as I go along; but here is the profile of Paris Grey!

BASICS :

Name: Paris Willow Grey

Age: 19

Race: White (Caucasoid)

Gender: Female

Height: 5'2

Weight: 118lbs

Eye Color: Blue-green

Hair: Long, usually braided, and dark brown.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

APPEARANCE EXTENDED:

General Appearance: Braided hair, and a red jumper. She wears denim shorts, knee high socks and smaller, black boots. Sometimes she wears a flower in her hair, but only if her hair is down.

Facial appearance: Freckled. Very freckled. They become much more visible in the sun; though. She doesn't wear makeup, and has dimples.

Skin color and appearance: Her skin is pale. It isn't quite tanned enough to be considered tan, but it is more tanned than quite a few people she talks to.

General body build/type/figure: Petite/small, and skinny. Not a model body type, mind you.

Characteristic Gestures: When confident in herself or in what she's saying, she stands straight with her shoulders back, or sits with her fingertips touching. When nervous, she locks her ankles, and plays with her hair. Her usual stance is one hand on her hip while standing straight, or resting her chin on her hand if sitting down.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

RELATIONS:

Family Background/Lineage: Her father was a respected journalist before he had her, and her mother died during childbirth. She was put up for adoption at 3 years old, and taken in by another foster family.

General relationships, past or present: Her foster mother was kind and caring, and would knowingly take her own life if it meant her children could keep theirs. Her foster father was almost never around; and in hindsight, was very obviously a cheater. Her foster sister was sassy and a little bit bossy, but cared about her family. Even if they weren't blood related. She can't remember anything about her relationship with her real father.

Involvement with any associations, guilds, or militias: She was put into a training association at the age of 13, and stayed there until she was moving out. After moving out, she needed money, and found a job at an assassin organization which she was practically forced into.

Any enemies, villains, or rivals, and how did this come to be: The owner of the assassin organization, who wants her back. He goes by the name of Joan Balmer. This came to be when she was taken into questioning by the Avengers, and was recruited to work for them eventually. He found out that she ratted them out, and moved the organization to another location, to plan their revenge on her. She can hardly go outside without feeling extreme anxiety about that place.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

PERSONALITY:

General happiness, 1-10: 7/10. It gets ruined pretty easily.

Social level 1-10: 9/10. She doesn't trust people too easily.

Distinctive personality traits: She's outgoing and a little over-the-top. She's dramatic, too.

Defining flaws/quirks: She is a little egotistical, and not the brightest. She's smart when it comes to some subjects though.

Likes: Dogs, cats, animals in general. She also loves anything theatre related, hence her overly dramatic personality.

Dislikes: She hates not having the upper-hand in any situation. It's not like she'll hold a grudge or anything after it, she just doesn't like it in general. She also hates being told what to do; which comes as a problem when something is important. Just don't act bossy around her; she won't listen to you at all.

General Personality Type: Entertainer, always cheerful and will happily take an audience anytime.

Introvert/Extrovert: Extrovert, 100%.

Method of Handling Anger or Rage (Repress, throw things, etc): They try to vent, or write it out on paper. When something really pisses her off, though, she sometimes cries.

Admirable Traits: Confident, and kind to almost everybody. She's able to stand up for herself easily; and forgives people who deserve a second chance. She's great at telling if people deserve a second chance or not, too.

Negative Traits: Her ego is a little high. She also becomes judgmental easily. If a person judges her, or gives her a nasty look, she'll return the behaviour anyday.

Things That Make Uncomfortable or Embarrassed: If people are in her personal space, she becomes very uncomfortable. She becomes embarrassed easily. If something embarrasses you, it'll probably embarrass her.

Hobbies: Writing, and even performing sometimes. She also likes fantasising about anything at all. Anything.

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HISTORY:

History (Paragraph, chart, timeline, etc): Was born in the UK, Winchester into a family of medium income. Her mother died during childbirth, due to issues with her pre-existing conditions which she never found out about. She can't remember much about her real father, other than that he was a respected journalist, but was forced to quit due to his wife being pregnant. He was struggling with finances, and eventually had to put her into a foster home when she was 3 to keep her safe. Her foster mother was the best person she'd ever known. She was the most uplifting part of her entire life; and kept supporting her for the longest time. Her foster father was never around. He said that he was at "work". Her foster sister was a little cautious around her at first, but eventually settled into a new life with her. When she turned 18, she moved into an apartment of her own in another country. She needed money to keep up with her rent charges, and got offered a job at the previously mentioned assassin association. She worked there for almost a year, and regrets every moment of it. She was found by the Avengers and taken into questioning when she had a breakdown during one of her missions. They decided she'd be useful, and took her in, to work for them.

Most Painful Things To Witness in One's Life: The innocent people who just happened to not have enough money to stop the organization from putting them on the target list, and how their life met their untimely end.

Traumas/Psychological Scars from the Past: She's now a little uneasy at the sight of extreme bleeding, but other than that, just can't bring herself to use a gun anymore. She also has a few phobias from working there.

-Atychiphobia (fear of failure)

-Claustrophobia (fear of small or confined spaces)

-Pyrophobia (fear of fire)

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TICKLING INFO

Ler: She's a big fan of teasing the Lee, since it makes the tickling worse sometimes. Her favorite kind are anticipation teases. She just wiggles her fingers over the skin before digging in. This is why safe words are a thing. If you say the safe word (you may have to say it about 3 times), then she'll stop and get you water, or whatever you want for about 5 minutes until you've recovered. She takes time into aftercare, too. It's important to her that the Lee fully recovers.

Lee: She isn't one to admit that she's ticklish. At all. She'll lie, but if you start making threats to tickle her, it becomes more obvious than ever. She hates being teased. It's torture. She squirms around, and if that doesn't work out, curls up into a ball, and is unable to do anything else after that. She doesn't say stop until she means it, though.

Worst spots: Belly or navel, underarms and feet.

Any tools: She uses feathers sometimes, but other than that, hairbrushes. She'd die if you use any of those on her, though.

And that's it! Hopefully this covered everything that needs to be talked about. Ill take any constructive criticism on her; and I'll fix/add anything that needs to be fixed or added.

[romanticatheart-posts]

King Sized Revelations - 9

This chapter: Liam and his father finally have the talk about the scandal and what it meant for each of them. There is a lot of angst and feels, so for those of you who might be sensitive to those issues, I completely understand if you don’t read it. It’s just an intricate part of this series...

I really struggled with this chapter, trying to capture the deep seeded emotions from both Liam and his father while giving closure at the same time. I hope I did it justice...

Pixelberry owns all characters.

Master List

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Liam’s POV --

While riding horseback on a trail to the ruins, Constantine suddenly stops, and you notice tears in his eyes. “Father?” He doesn’t try to hide them, and then begins to speak. “Liam, I know I’ve been a fool…” 

He pauses, letting those words permeate before continuing. “…everything I did, it was for you, however misguided it was.” “Father now is not the time–” Constantine interrupts. “No. This is the perfect time. We have been at odds far too long and I’m not ready to die until you and I can clear the air…” 

“… there is so much that has gone unsaid and...” He trails off as he hangs his head and you notice a sorrowful expression on his face. He is right though, there are many words that need to be said, but is he ready to listen?

“Father, maybe you’re right. But before we go any further with this, I need to know that you are prepared to hear what I have to say. And know that once we’re finished, we will never speak of it again.” Constantine nods in understanding. “Yes, I am aware this might not be pleasant for either of us, but necessary all the same.” With that, you nod in agreement and then dismount your horse. “I’m guessing there’s no urgent need to visit the ruins today, so why don’t we rest the horses for a bit?” 

You both tie the horses to a tree, so they can graze and then find a seat on a couple of stumps nearby. After a few moments of taking in the scenery, Constantine takes a deep breath, breaking the silence. 

“Your mother always loved it out here.” You are taken back by his sudden mention of her. It had been so long, you thought he had forgotten about her. “Oh?” “When she and I were first married we would ride out here on occasion when I felt that she needed a break.” “I’m sure she appreciated that. Did you bring Leo too?” You hear a slight chuckle. “You know your brother. I think it was because of him that she needed the break to begin with.” You can’t help but laugh a little yourself. “Probably.”

Constantine’s expression changes taking on a more serious note. “She would have been so proud of the man you’ve become Liam.” “And why do you say that?” He smiles as though he remembered some heartfelt conversation they’d had about this very topic. “She always knew you were destined for greatness, but I don’t think even she envisioned it would involve you becoming the king.” You try to imagine her reaction, and you can’t help but smile. “Yes, I think it would have been quite a surprise.” 

Constantine’s countenance grows more thoughtful. “She loved you very much Liam… I hope you know that.” “Yes, I do.” There is a long moment of silence and then Constantine sighs. “You might not know this, but after she passed I began having dreams about her.”

How could you have known? He’d been so closed off any time you mentioned her. It’s not unusual that you had dreams, but your stoic, kingly father?  “Nothing in particular mind you, but she was always singing, laughing and carefree, much like she had been in life. Many times I would retire early, in hopes of seeing her, even if it was only in a dream.” You wonder if that was his way of coping too. It had certainly been comforting to you. “I had similar dreams as well. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you talk about mother before, especially not something so personal.” 

“I know I should have…” He pauses. “… though at the time, I feared reminiscing would only cause you to withdraw even more. Now I see that perhaps I neglected to grasp the importance of what sharing our thoughts would have provided in the healing sense.” “I won’t lie father, things would have been easier if I had known you missed her too. I understood being the king meant having to exhibit stability to the court and our people, but it was troubling to never witness a single emotion in private. Many times I thought I was wrong for having feelings at all.” Constantine sighs mournfully. “Liam, I know I didn’t handle things with you the way I should have. And as much as I would like to change that, I could never go back to that time in our life. Despite what you may think of me, I loved your mother very much and losing her was…” Constantine stops for a moment and takes a deep breath. “After her untimely demise, I blamed myself for many years. Had I not been the king, I’m certain her life would have been spared. It wasn’t supposed to…” 

He trails off again and you look at him as a tear slowly streams down his face. He has never appeared so vulnerable as he does in this moment and a surge of compassion and warmth washes over you. “No it wasn’t.” 

“We should have been more careful. I should have been more careful.” You reach over and place a comforting hand on his shoulder to which he turns and embraces you. After a few lingering moments in silence, Constantine breaks the embrace, composes himself and then speaks. “Before we learned she had been a target, I was consumed with grief, but it was soon replaced with anger when the truth came to light. At that point my primary concern was in bringing the perpetrators to justice by whatever means necessary. Looking back, that time would have been better served on seeing to your needs, rather than chasing ghosts.”  

You finally have some understanding as to why you had felt so alone after your mother’s death. Your father simply didn’t know how to handle the grief himself, much less help you with yours. You can’t fault him for that, he is only human after all. 

There is an awkward silence between you now and your body tenses slightly, knowing the discussion that follows may not end so peacefully. Your thoughts begin to race. What could he possibly have to add that will bring any cause for understanding the travesty he created? The memory of it still fresh in your mind, and the stench of your father’s unjustified deceit hangs heavily in the air. 

After several long minutes, Constantine stands and walks over to his horse. “I have something to give you.” You watch curiously as he carefully lifts something from a pouch that hangs on the saddle. When he returns, he places an object in the palm of your hand. “This should be in the hands of its rightful owner.” You immediately recognize it as one of his most prized medals. You look at it briefly and then turn to Constantine with a surprised expression. “But… this is your favorite medal.” “It’s true, it was presented to me many years ago as a reminder that gallantry and virtue is the seed to which our small kingdom will grow and thrive, but after everything I’ve done, it would be a disgrace to keep it. I want you to have it. Consider it a peace offering.” 

You stare at it for a few moments and then turn to him. 

“Father, I… I don’t know what to say.” “You don’t have to say anything, but I on the other hand…” Constantine hesitates for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts as you carefully place the medal inside your breast pocket. “…I know my actions hurt you in many ways Liam and there hasn’t been a day since your coronation that I haven’t regretted it.” 

Maybe there is more to this than you had originally thought. “Father, I’ve tried to understand what was going through your mind when I realized you were the one behind the scheme, but I never found a single reason to justify your motives. You say it was for me, but how can you honestly believe that? I had given up so much to become the Crown Prince after Leo’s unexpected abdication, but not once did you ask if that is what I wanted. You just assumed I would be your successor when the time came, and in fact you were so hell bent on it that not only did you exploit your authority against the lives of innocent people, you did the same to your own son. I have to say, ‘hurt’ doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt.” 

“Liam, you have every reason to be bitter, and quite frankly I don’t blame you. I’m not proud of what I did, and I have many regrets in my life. But this? This is the one that shames me the most. I don’t expect you to understand my reasons, but with so much at stake and knowing how you felt about Catherine, I just couldn’t stand idly by and watch as everything I… we, had worked so hard for, be taken away.” 

You take a deep breath trying to stifle repressed emotions that threaten to erupt at any moment. Your father, the one you had thought to be an upstanding man and honorable king, used his power for something so unspeakable. If it had not been for Catherine’s determination, he would have carried that secret to his grave. “Father, the part most concerning to me is that you wouldn't have given it a second thought had we not discovered the truth.” 

“You have no reason to believe me son, but I had already resigned to acknowledge the truth to you on the engagement tour.” 

After hearing these words, a sudden rush of anger forces the veins in your neck to protrude slightly and your stare becomes menacing as you turn, square shouldered to face your father. “Just when did you plan to reveal this deception? After my marriage to a woman whom I could barely tolerate…? While the woman I love stood helplessly by to watch? All because she had been blatantly ridiculed and cast out due to the unwarranted accusations you brought against her…? After any hope of resolving the scandal was completely lost!? And for what? For the sake of preserving the monarchy’s integrity and alleviating your guilt!? What about me father? Did you ever consider the effect it would have on me? Your own son!?” 

Constantine is not surprised by your reaction nor does he try to dissuade it. He knows he is in no position to dispute the validity of your argument. He turns to you as you stare off into the distance with a less than pleasant expression. “I know you’re angry and I certainly don’t blame you. If I could change any part of it I would, in an instant. The burden I placed on you was far more than anyone should have had to bear, but if it’s any consolation, I’m thankful that it turned out the way it did.” You sit firmly, staring out at the landscape and Constantine sighs. “Liam, I had planned to reveal the truth to you as soon as possible. I was simply waiting for an opening in your schedule. And as it were, I wound up in a hospital in Shanghai before I could tell you, and by then you already knew.” 

When you think of how feeble he had looked that night and how he had almost seemed relieved to admit his guilt, your expression softens somewhat. “I’ll admit, you did seem eager to make your involvement known, but why was it so important?”  

Constantine drops his head for a moment and when he turns to you, there is a mist in his eyes. “Because seeing your misery reminded me of how things were after your mother passed…” He pauses as his shoulders slump and then he takes a ragged breath. “Liam, whether you believe it or not, I do love you. It was hard not to notice the emptiness and hopelessness you felt. In truth, I first saw it the night after the news broke, and those photographs went public. I… I never expected your reaction, or how it would affect me.” 

“Did you honestly not know how I felt about Catherine?” “Not really. I knew you cared for her of course, but it wasn’t until the night of your coronation that I realized the extent of that love. And it became even clearer after her arrival back to court. It was obvious there was more than just a simple admiration between you two. I knew you weren’t happy with the arrangement, but you managed to maintain credibility during the engagement tour. And while Catherine displayed poise and grace, there were a few instances when I would catch a glimpse of anguish in her expression as you and Madeleine interacted together. Call it instinct, but if things had continued that way, I feared you would abdicate like your brother.” 

“Don’t think I hadn’t considered it father. Catherine is the only reason I didn’t. Even in her own struggles, she encouraged me to keep fighting and that gave me strength to endure for however long was necessary. She was and is my rock and I would have done anything to be with her. She is everything to me.” “I’m fully aware of that son.” “Do you? Do you truly understand just what she means to me?” “Yes I do. And honestly, I couldn’t be happier. Seeing you happy is all the proof I need. Catherine certainly has been an inspiration and I’ve even told her as much, but her modesty precedes her. She reminds me of your mother to be quite frank. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner, and I can’t say enough how sorry I am for… well, for everything.” 

Constantine catches a tear rolling down his cheek, wiping it to the side. “I realized a long time ago what a terrible mistake I made. When I first met Catherine, I had no idea just how much her presence would bring life to this court and to you as well. In all my years, I’ve never seen it quite so unified and peaceful.” You contemplate his words for a moment and then sigh. 

“Father, I won’t deny that my feelings toward you have been troubled, but I believe your attempt to make things right should be acknowledged. That’s not to say that I haven’t found comfort in knowing your actions failed, but what kind of man… what kind of son would I be if I gave in to ill will against my own father? It’s only for that reason that I can say, while I won't forget the breach of trust, I can't harbor animosity any longer. If Catherine can find it in her heart to forgive you, then so can I.” 

“Th-- Thank you Liam. I know I don’t deserve it, but I find peace in it nonetheless.” 

Once you and he have mounted your horses, you begin the journey back to the estate. You feel lighter somehow and most of the trip is spent in satisfied silence. After arriving back to the stables, you can see the press is already setting up for the conference that is being held soon. You both enter the estate and then head to your respective rooms.

 Catherine’s POV -- 

You are sitting at the vanity putting on the last of your makeup when Liam enters the room. He walks straight over to you, bends down placing a kiss on your cheek and then smiles at you in the mirror. “You look beautiful, my queen.” You smile back, then stand facing him and wrap your arms around his neck and his rest on your hips. “And you my king, are extra handsome today.” He kisses you tenderly and then looks toward the bed where you have meticulously laid out his clothing for the event. “I suppose I should get cleaned up, so we can get this conference behind us. I am in desperate need of some quality time with my lovely wife this evening.” You smile. “Sounds perfect.” 

Sometime later, after the press conference has concluded, one of the farmers walks up to you and Liam with questions about excavating a section of the orchard. Since this is a subject that doesn’t really require your input, you kindly excuse yourself and head inside. 

While waiting for Liam you undress and slip on your robe, climb into bed and grab a book on the bedside table. As you lay there reading the door opens suddenly and Liam enters. His expression is unreadable. “Liam, what is it?” He walks over and sits beside you. He takes your hand and stares intently into your eyes. “Regina told me what happened this afternoon. Is there something you forgot to mention?”

 Next chapter: With the relationship between Liam and his father on the mend, things couldn’t be better for the royal family. After the press conference, Regina tells Liam some disturbing news.