#i have died a million times found like three shelters

[foxstens]

five pebbles is the best area

[mariacallous]

Meduza's The Beet: ‘Russia ruined my old age’

In frontline areas, elderly Ukrainians want nothing more than to outlive the war 

By Lucy Duvall

Millions of Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Many people displaced within the country moved to relatively safer western regions, while others fled to Europe or beyond as refugees. 

In the eastern hotspots of the war, those who have remained are often low-income, sick, or elderly people, many of whom feel they have nowhere else to go. They live in homes damaged by shelling and walk ruined streets, attempting to find some normality just kilometers away from active front lines. In some areas, this has been the reality since 2014.

Ukraine has one of the highest proportions of older people in the world, with around a quarter of the population over 60 years old. Displaced older people face significant challenges in rebuilding their lives, and many have found themselves crammed into small, shared rooms in temporary shelters or ended up in state institutions throughout Ukraine. 

Some of the seniors still living in wartorn areas believe they would be a burden should they move in with their children, and leaving Ukraine would mean starting over again as refugees late in life. For others, remaining in their homes is an act of defiance: Their pride as Ukrainians makes them feel there is nowhere else they would rather be. So they stay, risking death to live out their final years at home — or as close to it as possible. 

Kharkiv: Safer than Bakhmut 

In Kharkiv, a large three-story building that once operated as a hostel has been turned into a shelter for displaced senior citizens. Many of the residents come from frontline areas. Lyudmyla, 82, came here from Bakhmut, a city in the Donetsk region that Russian forces captured at the end of May 2023 after more than six months of heavy fighting. 

Evacuation efforts continued for months, with Ukrainian authorities and volunteers begging lingering residents to leave the city as its fate grew dim. Those who remained in the city the longest were often the most vulnerable people — the disabled, sick, or elderly — or those few who were “waiting for Russia.” By late May, Bakhmut Mayor Oleksii Reva reported that only about 500 people were still living there, among the ruins. 

Born in 1941, Lyudmyla said she was too young to remember living through World War II. But she described her memories from the current war as “terrible.” Before coming to Kharkiv, Lyudmyla had lived in Bakhmut her entire life, and even as Russian forces advanced on the city in the fall of 2022, she was loath to leave the three-room apartment she had once shared with her late daughter.  

Most of Ukraine’s elderly people are women — and many of them, like Lyudmyla, have outlived their husbands or other immediate family members. Lyudmyla said her husband died more than 20 years ago and her daughter passed away due to illness just months before the start of the full-scale war. 

As a result, Lyudmyla — like so many other older Ukrainian women — found herself living alone in increasingly dire conditions. By the time she evacuated in November 2022, Bakhmut was without water, electricity, and heating. “It was below freezing in my apartment. Everything had frozen: water was standing up in its container,” the 82-year-old said. To keep warm, Lyudmyla wore layer upon layer of sweaters and jackets. “We even slept like that,” she explained. “It was like that day and night.” 

Despite the harsh living conditions, Lyudmyla maintained that volunteers evacuated her against her will. “They took one look at me and saw that I was on the fence about it,” she said, recalling the circumstances of her evacuation. “They pulled me from my house. I was standing there like this, in my slippers and dressed in rags, [and] they took me away like that. Everything was left behind in the apartment.” 

The volunteers brought Lyudmyla to Dnipro, and from there, she made her way to Kharkiv. She now lives in a small room with two twin-sized beds for her and her roommate. The shelter’s medical staff look after her, and she has all the basic necessities, including food, heating, and a running faucet. 

That said, the entire Kharkiv region remains under near-constant attack. Two Russian missile strikes on downtown Kharkiv injured 17 people late on January 16, and smaller settlements in the region report shelling almost daily. Ukrainian officials extended the mandatory evacuation order for families with children in the Kharkiv region earlier this week. According to Governor Oleh Syniehubov, 3,043 people, including 279 children, live in the 26 villages slated for evacuation. 

The evacuation order does not include the city of Kharkiv itself, which, for now, is relatively safer than Bakhmut — a devastated, Russian-occupied city surrounded by ongoing hostilities. But a year after her evacuation, Lyudmyla remains indignant. “I haven’t forgotten my city, and I never will. And I curse myself for evacuating — I should have stayed until the end,” she said. “It would have been better to get blown up with that house than here.”

Kupyansk: A frontline town once again

Last March, the Ukrainian authorities began mandatory evacuations of families and other vulnerable residents from Kupyansk — a key railway junction Ukrainian forces had liberated during their surprise counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region in September 2022. Sixteen months after its liberation, Kupyansk is less than 10 kilometers (six miles) from the front line, with Russian forces moving to recapture territory in the northeast. 

The Ukrainian authorities completed mandatory evacuations of families with children from the eastern part of Kupyansk in late November. But an estimated 5,500 people were still living in the city, including Oleh and his wife Katya (names changed), who are both in their late eighties. 

In the kitchen of their Soviet-built apartment, Katya made tea as she and Oleh told the story of their lives. The husband and wife were born before World War II; Katya spent her childhood in Rostov, in southern Russia, and Oleh in Volnovakha, in eastern Ukraine. Oleh said he remembered Nazi Germany’s troops occupying his hometown when he was just a boy. “Our childhood was like this,” he said, referring to the war raging outside. “The Germans ruined my childhood, and Russia ruined my old age.”

Katya has lived in Ukraine for 70 years, 58 of which she has spent married to Oleh. They built their life together in Kupyansk, raising two children (who have since moved to Europe) and weathering the ups and downs of the Soviet Union’s final decades. 

A retired truck driver, Oleh was part of a convoy deployed to Chornobyl (Chernobyl, in Russian) in 1986, after an accident at the nuclear power station caused the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power generation. Oleh said he was tasked with transporting gravel contaminated with radiation from the disaster site. “I was sent there for a month; it was an order,” he recalled. “I left and came back in the same clothes. No one checked for radiation; no one measured it. I didn’t see a single doctor.”

Oleh said his involvement in the clean-up effort earned him veteran’s status, disability benefits, and the apartment where he and his wife still live. Recalling Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursion into the Donbas region in 2014, Oleh noted that he and Katya have lived through three wars “plus Chernobyl.”

Located just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border with Russia and with a pre-war population of almost 27,000 people, Kupyansk was the first town to surrender without condition to Russian soldiers in February 2022. Few had time to escape the city, and locals told journalists that the occupation authorities set up roadblocks, making it impossible for people to leave. 

“We woke up in the morning [and] our neighbor said, ‘The Russians have come.’ We don’t know how it happened,” Katya said, recalling the first day of the occupation. In the days that followed, Oleh went out to collect his pension, only to discover that the banks were closed. He then went to the supermarket to buy food and encountered a “sea of people” waiting to receive humanitarian aid. 

Millions of Ukrainian seniors rely on government pensions, which averaged around 5,350 hryvnias ($140) per month in the third quarter of 2023. Those living in occupied territories have lost access to these funds altogether and face pressure to take Russian citizenship to receive social support.

Oleh was unable to collect his Ukrainian pension throughout the six and a half months that Kupyansk was under occupation. He said that, in a moment of desperation, he accepted money from the Moscow-installed authorities. “We needed to live. The banks were closed, the ATMs didn’t work, nothing worked. There were only speculators; you’d hand over your card, and they’d go to some place in [Russian-occupied] Luhansk or Donetsk and [take out cash] there,” he explained. “We were surrounded by frauds.” 

One day during the summer, Oleh went out to pick up humanitarian aid. He was wearing an old button-up shirt from the Soviet era, emblazoned with the names of factories. A woman waved him to the front of the line, telling him, “Grandpa, you can go first.” Some “correspondents” took pictures of him, Oleh said, which were later “broadcast” in Russia.

Russian state media often reports on Moscow’s “humanitarian missions” in occupied regions of Ukraine. According to Ukrainian media reports, however, occupation authorities in Kupyansk created artificial food shortages and then brought in Russian products that residents couldn’t afford. Oleh and Katya said they didn’t experience any problems with Russian soldiers during the occupation. But other residents weren’t so lucky. After the liberation, Ukrainian authorities discovered four “torture chambers” in various parts of the city.

More than a year later, in the fall of 2023, Russian forces were pushing towards Kupyansk once again. But as of mid-November, the couple refused to leave their home. As the 5:00 p.m. curfew drew nearer, you could hear the distant sound of bombing outside of Oleh and Katya’s home. The elderly couple says they simply wait out the attacks in their apartment. “We’re afraid things might end badly, and we hope they don’t destroy our home,” said Oleh. 

“I just hope for positive things,” Katya added. “I don’t want Russia here. Only Ukraine.”

Kostiantynivka: A wartorn haven 

A three-and-a-half hour drive away, in Kostiantynivka, Lyuda, 58, and her husband Serhii, 62, live in a tightly packed two-room apartment with their friend Ruslan, 49. From here, the nearest front line is roughly 20 kilometers (12 miles) away. 

Lyuda and Serhii are from Dyliivka, a village less than 15 kilometers (nine miles) southeast of Kostiantynivka. Dyliivka was once a vibrant place, home to a “wealthy collective farm,” explained Serhii, who worked as a combine operator harvesting crops on the farm’s 7,000 hectares of land. Lyuda worked there too, as a milkmaid, and the couple raised their two children in a four-room house with a veranda porch. They had never thought of leaving Dyliivka. When war broke out in the Donbas region in 2014, they stayed, even as Russia and its proxy forces captured Kostiantynivka and other nearby towns in the Donetsk region (Ukrainian forces retook these areas within months).

But after the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the situation in Dyliivka quickly deteriorated. On one occasion, Serhii had just returned home from visiting a friend when missiles began whistling overhead. Then came a loud boom: a missile had struck the roof of their neighbor’s house. The blast sent the glass flying from the windows, and debris from the neighbor’s roof hit their house. “When I saw what was happening with my own eyes, I got scared,” Serhii said. “Then the shock wore off, and we stayed.” 

The husband and wife continued to live in their damaged home for months. Their neighbors began to flee en masse after a missile strike killed a local man. By mid-December 2022, the small village was without electricity and running water. Those who stayed “had nowhere else to go,” Serhii said. “[For us] it’s the other way around,” he added, explaining that he and Lyuda could always go stay with their adult children in the Dnipropetrovsk region. 

“They want us to go there,” Lyuda said. 

“I’m the one who doesn’t want to go,” Serhii interrupted.

“I don’t want to go either,” Lyuda continued. “I want to go home to Dyliivka.”

Lyuda came to Kostiantynivka in January 2023 after Serhii implored her to leave their home village and stay with Ruslan in his apartment. Just days after she arrived, however, the apartment complex came under a missile attack. The impact shattered one of the two windows in Ruslan’s home and left the apartment across the hallway in shambles. In shock from the attack, Lyuda ran outside and saw a man lying dead in the road. 

Serhii joined his wife in Kostiantynivka in May, moving into Ruslan’s damaged apartment. The three adults now live there together, surviving on the money they make from selling scraps of paper and glass bottles to nearby recycling drop-offs. According to Lyuda, Serhii can’t collect his pension because “his card was blocked.” They sometimes receive aid from Ukrainian soldiers or money from their children, who still encourage them to move. But Lyuda says she’s too afraid to make the journey by car and, on top of that, she doesn’t want to burden her children and their families.

The United Nations estimates that 40 percent of the population in Ukraine, or some 14.6 million people, will need humanitarian assistance in 2024. According to Ukrainian officials, the number of internally displaced people, like Serhii and Lyuda, is approaching five million. And more than 6.3 million Ukrainians live outside the country as refugees. 

Asked if he and his wife would consider going abroad, Serhii maintained that he has no desire to go “anywhere far away.” (Under martial law, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving Ukraine. But at 63, Serhii is over the conscription age.)

He also brushed off questions about how it feels to live in a damaged apartment. “I’ll speak for all the people who have suffered,” Serhii declared. “Us Ukrainians are thinking about staying alive, and houses are a secondary issue. [We’re just thinking about] staying alive and surviving this war.”

“Our plan is to go home,” Lyuda said. “To survive and go home.” 

[chano4kauwu]

Maybe drop some oc lore? Like what they're like, interests, that kind of stuff? :0

Thank you for such a question/request! I am pleased to hear that someone is asking me about my OC :") I will try not to stretch this post by millions of letters. I have nothing to say anything definite about the characters, because all the action takes place in a world like ours. In America. About the characters, I will tell you a basic little information about each : ") I have 19 of my characters.

Here I showed their physique and height. Plus I only needed the base colors of each character.

I'll start with the main three characters that I most often draw:

Fritz Hagen. He is 22 years old. He's German. He's a biology teacher at school. He is not a serious person at all, he constantly jokes stupidly and tries in every possible way to make amends to his ex-boyfriend, with whom they met - with Ron. He killed his parents as a teenager, so Ron has been afraid of him ever since, that he might kill him too. Fritz and Ron broke up two years ago. And Fritz can't let go of their breakup in any way, wanting to meet Ron again.

Ron Williams. He's English. He is 25 years old and works as a chemistry teacher at the same school as Fritz. Ron is a terribly hot-tempered, dissatisfied person. He is well able to pretend to be an intelligent, well-mannered person - but in fact he swears most of all. He tries to avoid Fritz. But Fritz comes to him without asking. Deep down, Ron still loves Fritz and worries about him. In this world, the main role is played by the pupils in the eyes. His pupils are the same in his eyes, so he is gifted in the exact sciences, he has an excellent memory, logic, thinking. He had already had some knowledge of chemistry since he was 4 years old. He is also an albino.

3. Ben Summers. He is an American and he is 17 years old. He goes to school with Ron and Fritz. They are his teachers. Ben was born with his Siamese twin brother. His brother died at the age of 5. He got a small and unhealthy heart, which could not stand it and stopped. Ben has been suffering from amnesia related to his parents since childhood. All his childhood he could not remember either their names or their faces. He was often scared of them because he saw them "for the first time". His mother died of an illness and his father crashed in an accident. He still doesn't know about it. His parents died when Ben was 10. He lived for some time with Fritz's family, who sheltered him. Ben also happened to witness the murder. Fritz knows Ben saw it, but he threatened him - if anyone finds out about it, Ben will face the same fate. He has been friends with Ron and Fritz since he was born.

Ben (right) and his brother Al (left) 4. Claire Taylor. He is 27 years old. American. He works as a physics teacher at school with Ron and Fritz. He was called by a female name because the family was expecting a girl, but a boy was born. His mother bought a lot of things for the girl, and until the age of 7 he went in dresses, played with dolls, addressed himself in the feminine. He is a very touchy person. Manipulator and he is very jealous. He is also an owner. He dated Ron for a while. Until he found out that Ron was also dating Fritz at the same time, whom he hated. He hates his younger sister Margo more than anyone else in the world. Claire is the heaviest, nasty-looking person. nobody wants to have anything to do with him. Some are even afraid of him. There is also a pendant hanging around his neck. It's a gift from his girlfriend who died in a plane crash. She was the only one who could see a good person in him.

Ron, Claire and Fritz/Claire and Edith are stuck together in an elevator.

5. Margo Taylor. She is 17 years old. American. She's a classmate with Ben. She is most afraid of her brother Clare. Especially at home. At school, she is the most beautiful girl, she wins many competitions wherever she participates due to her appearance. But in fact, she is a quiet, not noisy girl who only plays a role in public. She understands that many friends will turn away from her if she shows herself real.

6. Edith de Fleur. 29 years old. A Frenchwoman. She is a French teacher at the school where Fritz, Ron and Claire work. She was most unlucky with relationships. Men do not look at her, considering her boring and not very interesting. She is a quiet, modest girl who has a personal home library. Her twin sister was married twice and she had many partners. She is madly in love with Ron and shows it to him in every possible way. But he doesn't seem to see it. At the same time, she does not notice the courtship from Claire, who already loves her, but she does not notice him already. Also, Edith's whole body is covered with many different freckles. Especially a lot of them on the face, shoulders, hips.

7. Rick Evaco. 27 years old. Brazilian. He was born in the favelas of Brazil and lived for a long time in the poorest family. He is the oldest child. There are three children in their family. His father became very good friends with one of the influential people on the black market. He earned enough money so that Rick could leave Brazil and move to a prestigious place. He moved to Spain, where he was able to pass the exam and go to college. There he was able to show himself, his knowledge. Rick turned out to be not the stupidest, on the contrary - one of the smartest students. During the summer holidays, he visited America and became friends with Ron and Fritz, who helped Rick a little with money. Now he is a successful businessman who has two companies in Spain, one in Brazil and one in America.

Rick with his sister. 8. Ines Sarto. 25 years old. Italian. A sweet, calm, quiet girl. She was in the same class as Ron at school while she was living in America. In Italy, she met Leah in a cafe. At that moment she was working as a waitress. Now Ines is engaged to Leah after a long relationship. Inez still communicates with Ron on the Internet. She often uses a translator, since she began to forget English.

Ines and Leah 9. Leah Gentile. 26 years old. Italian. She was born in a large family. She is the second oldest child. There are 7 children in her family. Leah's parents are terribly religious people. She ran away from her family at 17 and stopped communicating with them at 20 when she said she was dating a girl. She smokes a lot, is a rude and tough girl. She protects Ines and worries a lot about her if she goes somewhere alone. She often swears and does not behave culturally in society. But not in front of Ines.

10. Engel Weber. He is 26 years old. German. He is rude, not polite, harsh and uncomfortable person. For a long time he was close friends with Fritz. They were friends until Fritz pushed Engel's sister into a pit with iron bayonets. When Engel found out that Fritz had killed his sister, he swore revenge on him. But by the time he realized, Fritz had moved to America. Due to the loss of a loved one, Engel stopped caring for himself, he gained weight, he has mental and not only health problems. His hair was dyed gray with white tips. The only goal left was to take revenge on Fritz for what he had done.

11. Josh Carter. 30 years old. American. He works as a teacher of several foreign languages at the same school as Fritz, Ron, Claire and Edith. He's a terribly deceitful, cunning man. He is never interested in the affairs of another person. If he asks something like that, it means he needs something. He was in three relationships, and only the last girl was able to injure him. There's a burn on his left side of his body. His ex-girlfriend threw a kettle of boiling water at him in the hope of killing him. But it didn't work out. He realized that all girls are fools and he remains single. The only one who really matters to him is his friend Henry.

Josh and Henry 12. Henry Gate. 30 years old. American. He works as a psychologist at the school where Fritz, Ron, Claire, Edith and Josh work. He is a terribly sentimental, empathic person with weak nerves. For a psychologist, he takes everything too close to his heart. He often tries to help everyone to his own detriment. The only person who is particularly important to him is Josh. It is still a mystery to everyone how they were able to make friends. He is terribly fond of collecting books and drawing. Especially landscapes.

13.Ed Ryder. 17 years old. American. He's a classmate with Ben and Margot. Ed lives with one father, his mother left them when Ed was 9 years old. My father's salary is not enough for normal living, and sometimes not enough for normal food. Ed is endowed with a slightly feminine physique and appearance. Therefore, he followed in his mother's footsteps and went to earn money through prostitution. So he was finally able to provide for himself on his own. Despite his position, he remains optimistic and often jokes. Especially on sexual topics.

14.Amintas Exarchidis. 31 years old. Greek. He works as Rick's bodyguard. They became good friends, despite the closed and not verbose nature of Amintas. Aminats has three younger sisters and one older brother, who provided great support in his youth. He, like Rick, lived in a poor, not rich family, so they quickly found a common language. Despite the numerous scars that are on his body, he still tries to resolve any conflicts peacefully.

[erikaqueenpauline]

My wife visited me yesterday, on Christmas Eve, through a stranger... A Christmas Miracle.

My wife died during this exact time of year, two years ago, on December 11, 2020. there was snow on the ground just like there is today, and I found out about her death in this exact homeless shelter, that I'm living at now... So I've been having these terrible flashbacks to finding out the most devastating, soul-tearing news that my wife, my puzzle piece, the soulmate I had finally found, was not alive any more. That I was never gonna hear her laugh or touch her skin again, or smell her hair, or kiss her lips or see her pretty eyes, her adorable, radiant smile. Prior to this, she has made her presence known at LEAST three times since her death. I'm pretty sure she does it to remind me she's still here with me - waiting. That she didn't go away! It makes me really happy when she does something to demonstrate her presence, and she seems to know when I'm at my lowest points and need comforting, or reassurance. She always took care of me when I was in need... "Mama Bear" was one of my pet names for her because she was a little like a mom to me in that she was wiser and more level headed than I was. she guided me, steered me away from danger. I listened to her and abided by her advice or when she told me to do something, which is something I've never done with anyone else, not even my parents. I always trusted her, because she always had my wellbeing and best interest in mind. she loved me so much and knew I needed guidance and a firm directive every once in a while, one of the million reasons I love her. ANYHOOZLE, the first three visitations I'll recount at another time, what I'm about to describe is her best and most visceral appearance to happen thus far. Like I said, it's a rough time of year for me, was in the ER two nights ago due to feeling suicidal and was concerned by how much appeal the idea held. not wanting mom and sisters to go through what I'VE had to go through after Liz died. Basically changed my mind, and convinced myself to live, and left the hospital via a drunk cab driver (Im pretty sure, or throwed off some pills or something) who made transphobic remarks and almost got us in a wreck, which I was oblivious to until he proclaimed that we had almost just got in a wreck. Whatever. Weird ass drunk transphobic christian cab driver yapping in my ear about how he "isn't down with that". Oh yeah, forgot for a sec our society is fucked and the counter culture can't count, to quote the Late Eyedea.

Anyways then this black woman who looked a lot Liz - same height, same complexion, glasses - appeared out of nowhere while I was walking on East Wash and helped me pick up something I dropped and I said "sorry if this is weird but you look a lot like my wife who passed away." She said "I'm still around. You'll see me again." And I know that was Liz talking through her. Then she turned and walked away. A Christmas Eve miracle. ❤️

[eretzyisrael]

Queen Elizabeth II and the Jews

[I, like millions around the globe I'm sure, were shocked and saddened to hear that Queen Elizabeth passed away this evening. Many of those millions, like me, have gotten to know the Queen as a human being and wife and mother and monarch through watching "The Crown." All of us Crown viewers learned that Queen Elizabeth didn't have an easy life. May she rest in peace.]

A few little-known facts about Queen Elizabeth II OBM and her connection to the Jews by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller (Aish.com)

Her Mother-in-Law Saved Jews During the Holocaust:

The third season of The Crown features a Greek-speaking, tough talking nun. Shockingly, that nun was Queen Elizabeth II’s mother in law, Princess Alice of Battenberg. Even more surprisingly, The Crown never explores Princess Alice’s heroism during the Holocaust, when she saved Jews by sheltering them in her home in Nazi-occupied Athens. It’s an amazing story that ought to be known.

Born in 1885 in Windsor Castle - where Queen Elizabeth II now lives - Princess Alice was Queen Victoria’s great granddaughter. She was deaf - a fact that the royal family hid - and learned to lip read as a child. Historians have speculated that this might have made Princess Alice more sensitive to other people who were different from the mainstream in some way.

When Alice’s brother Edward was crowned King Edward VII in 1902, one of the guests at his coronation was a dashing Greek prince named Andrew. The two fell in love and married. Alice moved to Greece where she had four children: three daughters and a son, Philip (Queen Elizabeth II’s husband). The family was riddled with dysfunction. Alice’s husband became a dissolute playboy and eventually moved away. Her three daughters all became ardent supporters of Hitler and each one married senior Nazis. Only her son Prince Philip resembled her, eschewing Nazism and spending time with Jewish friends and his British relatives.

When World War II broke out, Prince Philip volunteered for the British navy, and battled Nazis with distinction. Princess Alice resisted in more secret ways. Remaining in Athens, she invited the Cohens, a distinguished Greek Jewish family with whom she and her husband had long been friends, to hide in her house. Rachel Cohen, her daughter Tilde, and her son Michel moved in with the princess. The apartment was small and located just yards from Athens’ Gestapo headquartered. Once, Princess Alice was even brought in for questioning, but she refused to divulge the fact that she was sheltering Jews in her home.

After the war, Princess Alice founded an order of nuns. She returned to London in 1967 and died there in 1969. She requested that her remains be interred in Jerusalem, and in 1988 they were buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Queen Elizabeth II Hired Jewish Mohel to Circumcise Prince Charles:

Queen Elizabeth II hired an Orthodox Jewish mohel to circumcise her son Prince Charles. Rabbi Jacob Snowman (1871-1959) was a London mohel of great renown, and it’s said that the Queen was impressed with Rabbi Snowman’s skill and experience.

The tradition of British royals to ask Jewish mohels to circumcise their sons goes back to King George I, who was born in Hanover, Germany, and reigned over England from 1714-1727. Back in Germany, some aristocratic parents hired Jewish mohels, and George I brought the custom with him to England. Years later his great great granddaughter Queen Victoria hired Jewish mohels to circumcise all of her sons. She is said to have believed that her family tree went directly back to the Biblical King David.

Coincidentally, Queen Elizabeth’s mohel Rabbi Jacob Snowman had another royal connection: his younger brother Emanuel Snowman was chairman of Britain’s renowned Wartski jewelry dynasty, which sold wedding rings both to Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and to Prince William and his wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge.

British Jews pray for the Queen every Shabbat:

It’s a Jewish custom around the world to recite a prayer on Shabbat for their government leaders. In Britain, this means praying for the welfare of Queen Elizabeth II and her family. British Jews ask God to “preserve the Queen in life, guard her and deliver her from all sorrow.” The prayer goes on to ask that the Divine “put a spirit of wisdom into her heart and into the hearts of all her counsellors” too.

ath at a memorial to Arab soldiers who died attacking Israel.

She Departed from Royal Protocol to Listen to Holocaust Survivors:

While Queen Elizabeth II seems notably cool towards the Jewish state, when it comes to Britain’s Jews recent years have found her conciliatory. The royal family has shown a particular interest in the welfare of Holocaust survivors of late.

On January 27, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Queen Elizabeth hosted a group of Holocaust survivors in St. James’s Palace in the center of London. Notably punctual, on this occasion the Queen threw protocol to the wind. As she mingled with the survivors, one of her aides informed her that it was time to wrap up the event.

Instead, the Queen continued to talk, to listen, and to reassure. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was present and later recounted: “When the time came for her to leave, she stayed. And stayed. One of her attendants said that he had never known her to linger so long after her scheduled departure. She gave each survivor - it was a large group - her focused, unhurried attention. She stood with each until they had finished telling their personal story.

“It was an act of kindness that almost had me in tears. One after another, the survivors came to me in a kind of trance, saying: ‘Sixty years ago I did not know if I would be alive tomorrow, and here I am today talking to the Queen.’ It brought a kind of blessed closure into deeply lacerated lives.”

In January 2022, Prince Charles commissioned a royal series of portraits of Holocaust survivors. “As the number of Holocaust survivors sadly but inevitably declines,” he explained, “my abiding hope is that this special collection will act as a further guiding light.” The portraits are to be displayed in Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II’s official home.

Jewish MOM

[tpwkjerii]

oh, zombie!

you’re certain you’ve met the end when you’re cornered by flesh-hungry zombies, but a man with a bat and the bone structure of a god proves you otherwise.

pairing: jungkook x reader

warnings: cursing, shooting guns, weapons, mentions of death, minor angst, fluff, blood, zombies (duh), attempted murder, kinda heated makeout session, namjoon is an accidental cockblock, kissing

genre: zombie apocalypse au, thrill/gore (not too descriptive or graphic), strangers to lovers

word count: 9.8k+

a/n: the zombies in this fic have enhanced smell for corpses and human stress hormones!! and help i have like two other jk drafts rn (& disclaimer: i don’t own the gif above!!)

Fucked.

That was the best word to describe you and your current predicament. Now, with the loud groans of at least four zombies and heavy bangs against the door ringing in your ears, you were really starting to regret entering this grocery store.

You knew you should have trusted your gut when you first approached the store, but the thought of having actual food (not the dry ramen packets you were currently surviving on) and more water (you were on your last bottle) tempted you to push open the glass door and rush into the supermarket without so much as a noise scan. It took only eight seconds for the zombies and their enhanced smell to know that you entered. You were barely able to grab a single bottle of water before you heard an eerily low groan and immediately rushed for shelter in the dairy freezer.

Your twenty seconds of recklessness led you to where you are now, pushed against a cold door while zombies banged heavily against it. You held onto the inner lock as you reached down for your gun, which you were certain only had a few more bullets; regardless, it was your best shot at escaping this store alive. Gathering yourself, you inhaled and exhaled deeply with hope that you could shoot them all fast enough.

Just as you were about to release the lock and face your fate, the groans fell silent and were replaced by the sound of heavy and almost cartoon-like thwacks. Your feet froze as you realized that that was no sound or action a zombie could make — there was another human outside. You had only a few seconds to decide your next move, which would ultimately decide your future and whether you die in the middle of a grocery store dairy storage freezer or not.

Whoever killed the zombies outside could either be a kind-hearted person who didn’t want to see you succumb to a tragic fate or a person who wanted to save you from death by zombies only to kill you for your survival supplies. Considering the fact that they just knocked at least four zombies on their own, you prayed that it wasn’t the latter.

A few silent seconds passed until you eventually moved your hand, and you prayed that this wouldn’t be your second fatal mistake of the day as you slowly unlocked and opened the heavy steel door. Your gun visible in your other hand, you stepped out to see who your potential savior (or murderer) was.

Your eyes landed on the face of an extremely handsome man. Despite the obvious disarray he was in (then again, everyone who manages to survive during a zombie apocalypse is at least some form of messed up), it was clear as day that he was attractive. He had alluring doe-shaped eyes that were deceivingly innocent-looking, long dark hair that fell messily over his forehead, and the facial structure of an absolute god. The cut on his lip, small scratches scattered across his face, and his silver earrings only added to his intimidating impression, and upon seeing the heavy metal bat he held in his right hand, you instinctively tighten your grip on your handgun.

You were so enraptured by his captivating appearance that you nearly forgot the situation you were in.

“Who - who are you?” you finally asked, attempting to keep your voice as level as possible and praying that your face wasn’t red since he definitely noticed you checking him out.

He didn’t look intimidated at all, and a part of you died internally when his lip curled into a smirk. This was not looking good for you. “Are you gonna put that gun down?” he asked, the depth and warmth of his voice throwing you off. He laughed as you only blinked and he continued, “You certainly didn’t have a problem with me when you were checking me out earlier, so why keep the gun up now, babygirl?”

If you weren’t blushing before, you definitely were now. You cursed under your breath as you moved your hand down and quickly placed your gun back in your thigh holster, deciding that he was safe and probably wouldn’t kill you. “I wasn’t checking you out,” you muttered, and he laughed at your obvious lie.

“Whatever makes you feel better, babygirl,” he said, a teasing tone in his airy voice.

Your brows knitted together in irritation at the pet name. “Don’t call me that,” you mumbled, looking down at your worn sneakers awkwardly.

He laughed again, and you found yourself oddly enchanted to his tiny laugh. He took a step towards you, causing you to look up at him as he told you, “I won’t call you ‘babygirl’ if you tell me what your name is.”

You cleared your throat awkwardly before you answered, “My name’s Y/N, what’s yours?”

He grinned, which somehow turned his entire demeanor upside down. With his wide smile, he was no longer the intimidating guy that took down three zombies on his own with just a bat, but rather a nice guy that just wanted to help out a fellow human from being killed by zombies.

“Jungkook,” he answered simply as he began to walk away from you and through the store aisles.

“Jungkook,” you repeated, familiarizing the way his name rolled off your tongue with a nod. “So, Jungkook, what brought you into this store?” you asked, rushing to walk alongside him and skim through the aisles.

“This your first time outside, Y/N?” he asked, abruptly stopping to turn and look at you. You froze and dropped the bag of chips you were holding at the sudden eye contact. He sighed and moved to pick up the chips and place it back onto the shelves. “I was wandering around the area, and I saw that you walked right into a trap,” he told you.

“A trap?” you asked, your mouth falling open in surprise.

He nodded and motioned for you to help him fill his rucksack with water bottles. “Looters will leave trace scents or pieces of human remains to attract zombies to popular places survivors will drift to. Once any survivors enter and get killed by the zombies, the looters will come back, off the zombies, and take their supplies,” he explained with a grimace.

Your face twisted, and you suddenly felt even luckier that Jungkook saved you. “How do you know? I mean, how did you know that the looters were here?” you asked, still a bit unsettled at the fact that you basically walked straight-first into a death trap.

Jungkook zipped up his backpack, now full of at least 20 water bottles, and headed towards the dried foods. “I spotted one of their vans when I was walking around, so I figured they were in the area. Then I saw you entering the store and bingo — I was right,” he told you nonchalantly as he stuffed various dried fruits and snacks into his pockets.

“Take some of these,” he added, gesturing towards the few remaining dark chocolate bars.

You nodded, briefly admiring his casual attitude as you shoved two handfuls of the chocolate into your jacket pockets. “How did you recognize them? Have you had any… run-ins with them?” you wondered curiously, picking up your pace to match his quicker steps as he made his way down the remaining store aisles.

“They approached me to join them when this whole thing started,” he started, pausing to laugh softly at the shocked expression on your face. He shook his head as he continued, “I said no because what they do is twisted. Luring people to their deaths for some sick form of fun. They say they do it for the supplies but we all know that’s a lie.”

You nodded your head thoughtfully. “Oh, well, I guess that’s an admirable and sane choice.”

He murmured in agreement, and you walked alongside him, unconsciously humming a song that had been stuck in your head for a while. Being with Jungkook, who was both stronger and more knowledgeable than you, provided you with a sense of comfort. Additionally, he wasn’t shooing you off and willingly accepted your company (for the past 10 minutes, at least). Before you even knew it, you two reached the front store doors.

He walked out first, holding the door open behind him. You faltered, a second thought of “does he really want me to go with him?” running through your head.

He raised a brow, opening the door a bit wider. “You coming?”

“Wh- what?” you stuttered in disbelief.

“Do you want to come with me or not?” he asked. “C’mon, babygirl. We don’t have all day. Those looters are bound to come back soon.”

At the mention of those evil people, your legs moved instantly. You rushed out of the door towards Jungkook’s side and eagerly turned to face him. “Where to?”

He laughed, and you swore it was one of the most enchanting tones you’ve ever heard, before saying, “What’s the place you’re staying in like?”

You thought back to your small home and the painful disarray it was in. It was a miracle that you were able to survive so long considering how ill-prepared you were for an apocalypse to happen.

“Er, probably not as good as yours,” you answered sheepishly.

“Fair enough.” He nodded at the anticipated answer and began to walk in the opposite direction that you came from. You continued alongside him, internally screaming at how lucky you were. Not only did Jungkook completely save your life, he let you stay with him! You didn’t understand why, seeing as you were arguably an impediment to his survival, but you were grateful regardless.

The city around you was lifeless. What was once home to millions of citizens and the hustle and bustle of daily routines was reduced to empty stone buildings, the only people left either roaming as the undead or too afraid to come out. Within two weeks, the city and all its people changed entirely.

As you walked alongside Jungkook, you wondered what type of life he led before the apocalypse. Was he a student like you? Did he have a job? Was he a police officer or firefighter? Did he have family?

Several questions imposed themselves in your brain, and it was enough to almost distract you from Jungkook’s words.

“That van over there is a looter van,” he informed you, pointing towards a parked black van that had unrecognizable red symbols sprayed on it. “Each one has different symbols on it, but they’re all in red so they know where each one is and don’t mess up a potential job.”

You nodded and absorbed his words. You definitely passed a van like that when you were walking towards the store. “That’s good to know,” you whispered, your voice strained with mild fear.

He didn’t say anything else in response and continued forward, gently tugging you along with him when you lingered in your spot a second too long as you stared at the van.

Jungkook led you for a few more minutes, each second only increasing your curiosity as to where he was taking you and what he was really like. Silence prevailed until you heard a low groan and the distinguishable sound of a foot dragging along gravel. You stiffened and unconsciously moved to grip Jungkook’s hand.

He stopped in his tracks and gently pushed you towards a building wall. Once both your backs were pressed flat against the stone wall, he adjusted the grip on his bat and you reached for the gun in your thigh holster. The zombie’s groans grew louder as it approached. You knew they couldn’t see and had a very limited sense of hearing, but you wondered if you or Jungkook had anything on you that attracted its hunger for rotting flesh or stress.

You held your breath as the zombie came into view, its decaying body and unsettling groans disturbing you. It walked closer, although not directly towards you. You raised your gun the same time as Jungkook lifted his bat, but you didn’t have to pull the trigger and Jungkook didn’t have to swing as the zombie only walked straight past you two, leaving only its rotting scent behind.

You breathed out in relief and relaxed your shoulders as you placed your handgun back in its holster. “Thank god,” you whispered.

“Let’s go,” was all Jungkook said before he grabbed your hand and pulled you with him. It seemed like you weren’t the only one anxious to get out of the open.

Jungkook’s home was much, much better than yours (if you could even call your tiny studio that).

“Holy shit,” you whispered as you admired the fortified mansion. High stone walls and a metal gate surrounded the large two-story house. “You have this place all to yourself?” you asked Jungkook. Now you were really curious what his profession before this was.

He shook his head as he unlocked the gate with a key. “A few friends live with me,” he answered simply before slipping the key back in his jean pocket. “They should all be awake by now.”

You nodded and followed closely behind him as he walked up the short pathway to the front door. As he opened the door, you heard a loud yell come from within.

“Kookie!” he yelled, his voice smooth and deep.

You saw Jungkook’s face turn red as he quickly shut the door with a slightly mortified facial expression.

“Uh -”

The door burst open. “Kookie!” a man shouted before enveloping Jungkook into a tight hug. You stepped to the side, observing the affectionate interaction with a grin. The man who barreled into Jungkook had black, fluffy hair that was held back by a black hairband. He was on the thinner side, but still built, and appeared to be a bit taller and tanner than Jungkook. When he released the hug and turned to face you, your breath hitched.

He was attractive.

“Who’d you bring home?” he asked Jungkook, a boxy smile directed towards you.

“Her name is Y/N, I caught her just before some zombies got her,” Jungkook answered as he nudged you and the man inside.

As you stepped through the front door, you observed the large home’s tasteful interior. A pristine white kitchen was to the right of you, apparently well-stocked based on the two open cabinets that were filled with snacks and ramen. To the left of you was an open living room with one large couch and two smaller ones surrounding a paper-filled coffee table and a large TV mounted onto the wall.

Impressive, you thought.

The fluffy-haired man stepped in front of you, his contagious smile still going strong. “I’m Taehyung. It’s nice to meet you!”

You smiled at him. It’d been a while since you met new people, much less people with such warm and friendly dispositions. “It’s nice to meet you too,” you returned honestly.

Jungkook cleared his throat, announcing suddenly, “I’ll show Y/N around.”

You turned to face him, noticing that he had taken off his bags and leather jacket. His bare arms were now exposed, and you immediately noticed how sculpted he was. A sleeve of various tattoos decorated one of his arms, drawing your attention to the ink on his defined muscles. His other arm was more bare, but still had a few figures on it. Realizing that you were probably staring for too long, you tore your eyes away with a nod before you set down your own bag and followed Jungkook.

He took you past the living room and kitchen through a hallway, showing you where the first floor bathroom, in-home gym, and office were. You gaped at the book-filled office that also housed several weapons. Lined across the wall were several guns, knives, and other weapons you couldn’t even name. After you recovered from what you saw in the office, he led you up the stairs.

“This is Taehyung and Jimin’s room,” he said, pointing to the first door in the hallway. “Jin and Yoongi’s.” He pointed to the door next to the first one. “Namjoon’s.” He then pointed towards the first door on the opposite side of the hall. “And mine.” He pointed to the door next to Namjoon’s.

You nodded, resisting the urge to ask about their family members since you knew it could be a sensitive subject for them. “Are they all home?” you wondered. “Well, except for Taehyung, I guess,” you added as an afterthought.

Jungkook nodded. “Jin, Yoongi, and Jimin are probably in their rooms. Namjoon will be out for the next few days getting some stuff, so you can stay in his room for now.”

Your lips parted in shock. “No, no! That’s his room. It’s fine, I can sleep on the couches if anything!”

“It’s fine, he won’t mind,” Jungkook insisted.

But you shook your head in persistence. “Really, I’m completely fine with the couch. I wouldn’t want to make Namjoon feel uncomfortable or anything.”

He sighed and shrugged, seemingly relenting to your wishes. “Alright, we can head back down then,” he said as he turned back to the stairs.

Before you followed him, your eyes landed on the last door all the way down the hallway. You had no idea what was behind it, yet it still emitted an ominous and mysterious aura that called out to you. “Wait,” you said before you even thought about it. Just as he turned to face you, the realization that he probably didn’t tell you what was in that room for a reason (whatever that was) hit you.

“Er - nevermind!” You laughed awkwardly, hoping he would drop it. But it was too late — he already noticed your lingering gaze on the locked door.

“Don’t go in that room,” he stated bluntly before turning around, not giving you a chance to respond. “There’s nothing in there that’s of importance to you,” he added as he walked down the stairs. You rushed to follow him after him, still intimidated to be in this big house with completely new people, muttering words of agreement.

Everyone in this house was shockingly nice. Jimin was undeniably kind and spent your entire first night at your side, making sure you felt comfortable in this new place. Yoongi, although more reserved, didn’t hesitate to check if you were alright whenever you spaced out or got scared by a sudden noise. Lastly, Jin was incredibly attentive; from asking you if you had any food allergies or if you preferred baths or showers, he did his best to welcome you.

(They were all also really attractive, but that's besides the point).

Before you knew it, a week passed. Seven days of playing board games with Jimin and Taehyung, cooking with Jin, talking about conspiracy theories with Yoongi, and working out (and trying to avoid) with Jungkook.

Why were you trying to avoid him? Well, despite having met Jungkook first, you couldn’t help but start to feel awkward around him. Not because he made you feel uncomfortable or the reverse, but rather due to your undeniable attraction to him. It certainly didn’t help that his personality complemented his beautiful appearance well. On the outside, Jungkook appeared cold and intimidating, but on the inside he was soft and kind. He was exactly like one of the many fictional characters you’d fallen in love with before.

Your first official day at the house, you kept your cool pretty well. Of course, Jungkook and his endearing behavior and large, doe eyes had to ruin it. Then again, it was also on you for not listening to your initial instinct of avoiding the gym machines. What exactly happened?

Well, after three failed attempts of using the machine from hell (you didn’t even know it’s name), Jungkook finally decided that it was just getting sad and moved from his machine to help you.

“You’re supposed to use your arms to bring it back,” he said with a teasing tone as he neared you. You jumped in your seat and looked up at the mirror to see his figure stopping directly behind you. Your breath hitched as he leaned down and… oh fuck, did his arms just brush up against yours?

Face burning red, you looked away with a violent cough. “Er, I knew that.”

He laughed softly at your embarrassed expression, the enchanting sound of his lap wreaking havoc on your already weak heart. You turned towards him and gently pushed his chest with a scoff.

“You don’t have to laugh at me,” you grumbled.

“Sometimes I can’t help it,” he countered with a smug smile.

You particularly liked when he smiled since he reminded you of a bunny whenever he did — especially when he had a large smile and his eyes formed happy, crescent moons with twinkling stars. Jungkook’s grin (and laugh) was as infectious as Taehyung’s and Jin’s, and he was, overall, a perfect person in your eyes. Even as he made fun of you (jokingly, of course), you swore he was sent from the stars above.

Deciding it best to not catch feelings for your savior and person who graciously housed you, you tried to keep your distance from him since then. Whenever he entered the room, you tried your best to subtly leave (bless Seokjin for being exceptionally understanding of your “cramps”) and when he tried talking only to you or directing the conversation to you, you roped someone else into the discussion. It worked for the most part as you talked to the others more and ignored the way Jungkook made your heart race whenever you thought about him, but today you were out of luck.

“Y/N and Jungkook, supplies run today.”

You gaped at Jin from your spot on the couch. “What? Me? Are you sure?” you asked, silently pleading with your eyes.

He rolled his eyes and nodded, bending down to gently pat your head. “Yes, you. Don’t worry, you’ll have Kookie with you.”

“And this,” Yoongi added as he dropped a gun much larger than your small handgun in your lap.

You looked up at him in shock. “I don’t know how to use this!”

He shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out if you’ll need to use it.”

“C’mon, Y/N. You’re gonna have to pull your weight if you wanna stay with us,” Taehyung told you, winking at you when Jungkook entered the living room with his gear. Your eyes widened at him, but you couldn’t say anything as Jungkook approached you.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

You sighed and stood up begrudgingly. With an excessively-large gun in hand and empty backpack strapped to you, you exited the house with Jungkook at your side. Together, you silently walked down the same path he took you up almost a week ago.

You embraced the peacefulness of this secluded area. Jungkook’s home was quite secluded, and the surrounding trees were home to blissful breezes and a variety of chirping animals. Despite the downfall of humanity, it seemed that wildlife was flourishing, you noted.

“So I guess I’ll ask now,” Jungkook started, capturing your attention. You turned and looked up at him, anxiously waiting for him to continue. “Were you staying with anyone before? I assume not since you’re with us now…”

You shook your head. Your voice lowered as you answered, “I was all by myself.” He frowned while you continued. “My parents were on a trip abroad with my best friend Hobi when it happened.” Your eyes teared up as you mentioned your family and Hobi, who was basically your older brother.

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook said softly, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder.

“It’s ok,” you mumbled. “The last call I got from my parents before all the cell towers went down, Hobi was doing alright with them. I’m thankful that they have him.”

“I’m sure that Hobi is doing a good job taking care of himself and your parents,” he responded soothingly.

You nodded, blinking your tears away as you diverted your gaze towards your moving feet. “So what about you?” you asked after a few silent moments. “Do you have any family?”

He cleared his throat and tightened his grip on his backpack. “My parents didn’t make it,” he answered bluntly.

Your head whipped towards him. “I’m so sorry,” you said rushedly. “I don’t know why I even asked you, I overste-”

“It’s fine,” he cut you off, gently turning your head to face the road path ahead of you two. “I was the one who asked first, anyways.”

You looked down again in shame. “Sorry again,” you murmured.  

Jungkook smiled down at you before a small laugh escaped his lips. Your heart picked up it’s pace when he laced his hand with yours and pulled you forward. “Come on, the supplies won’t get themselves.”

You felt an odd sense of deja vu as you ran out of the grocery store, Jungkook following behind you and a horde of hungry zombies behind the both of you.

But let’s back up a few moments to ten minutes prior to this predicament.

You and Jungkook finally reached the grocery store that Jin had been scoping out via hidden camera for the past week. Your eyes were delighted by the sight of shelves lined with a variety of foods and freezers that still had cold air circulating behind the glass doors.

“This is one of the few places that run on solar power, so the electricity still functions in here,” Jungkook explained when he noticed your confusion at how he was able to turn off the lights and the gust of cold air that greeted him as he opened one of the freezer doors to grab an ice cream bar.

“I’m surprised no one’s hit this place up yet,” you said as you took out the list of supplies that Jin gave you before you left.

“Jin’s been watching this place for a while. He thinks no one’s come here because it’s kinda far away.”

You nodded in agreement, thinking back to the long walk you and Jungkook took to get here. You supposed not many people wanted to risk being out in the open for so long and didn’t find the commute worth it.

“Is Jin watching us right now?” you asked Jungkook curiously.

During your short few days at their house, you quickly learned each person’s role. Yoongi, who used to be an engineer, builds all the cameras and weapons. Jin, a former director and computer whiz, monitors the cameras that he and Taehyung set up around the city. Taehyung, a film and dance student, helps Jin set up the cameras in obscure places and trains with Jungkook and Jimin. Jimin, a skilled dancer, often accompanies Jungkook and Taehyung during training and supplies runs. Unfortunately, Jimin sprained his ankle recently and Taehyung injured his arm during training, leaving the supplies-run to Jungkook.

The only person you had yet to meet was Namjoon. According to the others, Namjoon was a former pre-med student and scientist who was on a trip to find something. Of course, they didn’t tell you what that something was. And while you were curious, you also didn’t want to overstep your boundaries and risk being kicked out.

“Probably, he usually watches camped out places to monitor and che-”

You and Jungkook both turned your head at the recognizable low rumble of a car. He was quick to grab your hand and pull you down onto the ground, out of view from the front glass windows. You held your breath at the sound of a car door opening and then the ringing bell as the front door was pulled open a few seconds later.

Jungkook reached towards his large gun, but he halted when he recognized the distinguishable stench that the random person carried in. Your eyes widened when Jungkook began panicking, his fingers fumbling for his walkie talkie.

You heard a heavy thud and the sound of the ringing bell again as the mysterious person exited the store. You waited until the rumbling of the car grew distant before you looked up and cursed loudly.

“Fuck! He dumped a dead body here!” you cried, stomach churning at the sight of the pale corpse.

Jungkook groaned from beside you and rushed towards the front of the store, poking his head out of the door and looking both ways. “Fucking looters!” he cursed as he moved his head back and hit the window.

Steering clear of the dead body, you walked towards Jungkook and craned your head to see what he was looking at. The sight of several zombies, more stumbling out of random buildings and streets to join the crowd, heading straight for the store. “Shit! What are we gonna do! They’re already down the block!”

Jungkook ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Fuck, ok, did you get everything?”

You quickly scanned through the paper list and peered into your open backpack. “Most, but I forgot to get some things,” you answered quickly as you mentally checked off each item you saw.

“Which ones?” Jungkook asked, already zipping up his backpack.

A blush spread across your chest and neck, and you wished that you didn’t have to answer. But judging by Jungkook’s stressed face as the zombies’ groans grew louder, you knew you were in no position to stall. “Er. Feminine hygiene stuff,” you blurted.

Jungkook paled before blushing immediately after. His body movements stuttered momentarily before he nodded and headed towards the back of the store. “Shit, ok. Start running!”

You stared at him in bewilderment. “What? I’m not leaving you behind!”

“Just go!” he shouted.

You felt the alarm in your body grow as your head darted between Jungkook’s frantically moving body and the group of zombies just down the street. Knowing that even Jungkook didn’t stand a chance against all those zombies, you ended up on a decision that you really hoped would end up working out.

“Fuck,” you whispered as you looked down at your large gun and adjusted your grip. In one swift move, you kicked open the door and began shooting the zombies, which were now coming from both directions across the street. Your aim wasn’t the best, but it was good enough to pierce bullets through a good amount of them straight in the neck or chest.

“Jungkook! Hurry up!” you cried as you held down the trigger, praying that Yoongi packed enough bullets in the gun.

Small piles of rotting bodies began forming as deceased zombies collapsed to the ground and the other ones climbed over them to get to you. But the few zombies you managed to kill were easily outweighed by all the live ones still clamoring towards you. A cry of frustration left you as you realized that the noise from the gun and the obscene amount of stress radiating from you and Jungkook were just attracting more zombies in the area.

Jungkook ran up towards you, several boxes of various tampons and pads in hand. “I didn’t know which one you wanted! Let’s go!”

In a normal situation, you would have thanked him for his thoughtfulness, but this wasn’t a normal situation by any means.

You and Jungkook ran out of the store towards the house, both turning back occasionally to shoot any zombie that was getting too close. Your breaths grew uneven from exhaustion, but the sheer amount of adrenaline pumping within you kept you and your weak legs going.

“Don’t get too tired! I’ll shoot, just keep running!” Jungkook instructed you when he noticed you clutching your side in pain.

“It’s fine, I’ll be fine!” you responded. But you spoke too soon as you tripped over a rock not even a minute later. “Shit!” you cursed as you landed on your hands and knees before immediately standing back up and catching up to Jungkook, who had stopped a few feet ahead of you when he noticed that you fell.

He didn’t say anything as he gently turned your hands over and examined them. Cuts, with blood flowing freely from them and tiny rocks stuck in between the open skin, covered the palm of your hand and your fingers. Jungkook’s eyebrows creased in concern as he moved his eyes down your body to your knees, which now had deep, bleeding gashes in them from the rocks that cut through your jeans and broke your skin.

“Jungkook, it’s fine. We have to go.” You moved your hands to your side and pulled him to continue running, cringing at how your blood stained the bottom of his black denim jacket and his hands. He cursed, obviously wanting to say something, but continued alongside you.

Thanks to the unexpected delay, the zombies had gained on you by a good few meters. You winced as you turned around and pressed the trigger of your gun, the spray of bullets taking a few of them down. But your tiny sense of relief didn’t last long as you soon heard an empty click and noticed that nothing was leaving the end of your gun — you were out of bullets.

You cursed and turned forwards again. “How many rounds do you have left?” you asked Jungkook, panting heavily as you continued running next to him.

“Not that many,” he answered, concern evident on his face.

You looked back at the relenting zombies, hot on your tail, and cursed. How were you going to get yourselves out of this one?

The answer to your question was presented to you in the form of a poorly-driven SUV that was heading down the road and straight towards you and Jungkook.

“Thank god!” Jungkook cried as he pulled you to the side and out of the vehicle’s path.

“Thank god?” you repeated in confusion.

The black SUV halted to a stop in front of you and Jungkook, the doors opening automatically.

“Get in!” you heard a new voice shout.

You and Jungkook didn’t waste a second to climb into the car, which quickly sped away once Jungkook slammed the door shut behind him. Neither of you had the chance to breathe as the zombies, which seemed to have grown even faster, jumped for the back of the car.

“How did they get even faster?” Jungkook cried as he pulled your shaking body towards him.

“The fast ones might be mutations, I found more reports on them the other day,” the silver-haired man in the front with glasses answered. You assumed that this was Namjoon, considering his answer and that Jungkook didn’t mention anyone else.

“Mutations?” you cried, jumping when a hand smacked your backseat window. “These fuckers are mutating?”

Namjoon didn’t get a chance to answer as he harshly turned the steering wheel, sending the car swerving and you and Jungkook barrelling to the other side of the car.

“Namjoon you’re so shit at driving!” Jungkook exclaimed as he rubbed the side of his head that clashed with the glass window.

Namjoon scoffed. “Don’t talk to your hyung like that when I just saved your life! And who told you not to put on seat belts?!”

“Yeah, let me just put on a seatbelt while there’s zombies cha-”

You gasped suddenly and pulled yourself up towards the front. Head directly next to Namjoon’s, you reached your bloody hands up towards the steering wheel. “There’s a bunny!” you shouted as you swerved the car out of the way, sending Jungkook to the other side of the car and wincing as your waist collided with the firm side of the passenger seat.

“Y/N, what the fuck!” you heard Jungkook moan.

“We were gonna kill the bunny!” you protested in your defense as you rubbed your side and sat back down next to Jungkook.

“We have other things to worry about!” he yelled.

“God! I’m sorry, you’re right,” you groaned as you leaned back down into the back seat.

“They’re slowing down!” Namjoon suddenly announced, his eyes focused on his windshield mirror. “Look, they’re retreating!”

You and Jungkook both turned around towards the back window. Just as Namjoon said, the zombies stopped chasing you, instead shuffling in place or back the other direction. With the threat of zombies gone, you let out a breath of relief and closed your eyes.

You kept your eyes shut as Jungkook grabbed your hands and gently ran his fingers across the open wounds, his touch sending electricity through your body. Despite the rush from his soft touch, exhaustion still tugged at you and weighed down your eyelids.

With the comforting feeling of Jungkook’s hand wrapped around yours, you drifted into unconsciousness.

Your nap was unfortunately short lived. It took only a few moments to arrive back home, and upon exiting the car, the three of you were immediately greeted by everyone else in the home.

“Y/N!!” Jimin greeted as he walked slowly over to you. Jin closely followed the blond to make sure that he didn’t hurt his ankle.

“Jimin!” you said with an equal amount of excitement, throwing your hands up into a welcoming gesture.

Jimin and Jin gasped as you revealed your bloodied and cut up hands.

“You’re hurt!” Jin sputtered as he rushed towards you. “Your knees too!”

“It’s fine, it only stings a little,” you admitted sheepishly. It wasn’t a complete lie — you didn’t exactly have the time to think about your injuries while running for your life.

Jin shook his head. “Come inside, I’ll treat the cuts a-”

“It’s fine, I can do it,” Jungkook said, suddenly appearing at your side.

The older man raised his eyebrows. “You sure, Kookie? Don’t you want to rest?”

Jungkook shook his head and silently pulled you into the house, leaving you to shrug in confusion at the guys behind you. You followed Jungkook through the first floor, up the stairs, and into his room.

His bedroom was similar to what you expected. The walls were painted a dark grey color and there wasn’t much in the room other than the basic furniture and a few pictures and art frames. You sat down on the plain black sheets as Jungkook walked to his dresser and pulled out a first aid kit.

“Why didn’t you just let Jin treat my cuts?” you asked Jungkook quietly, noticing faint signs of exhaustion in his slow movements.

He hesitated to respond. His hands stilled on the top of the red kit as he slowly responded, “I thought this was the only way I’d be able to speak with you… alone.”

“Why?” you asked, praying that you weren’t blushing as assumptions instantly formed in your mind.

He cleared his throat and opened the kit, instantly reaching for several bandaids, disinfectant pads, and antibacterial wound ointment. “Well,” he started as he gently grabbed your hands and turned them so your palms were facing up. He opened the pack of disinfectant pads and swiped them across your hands and knees. “I wanted to ask you why you’ve been avoiding me the past few days.”

Your heart dropped. You didn’t realize that Jungkook noticed how you tried your best to steer clear of him; but it wasn’t like you could really tell him that it was because you were starting to have feelings for him,

“Was it something I said? I did?” he asked as he spread the cold ointment on the open wounds.

“No,” you answered quickly — a little too quickly judging by the way his head darted up to meet your eyes. You blushed under his stare and continued, “You didn’t do anything to offend me, Jungkook.”

“Then why are you avoiding me?” His voice was uncharacteristically soft, almost pleading.

You groaned inwardly and wished you could cover your face with your hands, but Jungkook held them firmly in his as he bandaged them. A few seconds of dragged-on silence passed before you looked down at your lap and responded vaguely. “I didn’t want to make things awkward between us.”

His hands stopped and his brows furrowed in confusion. “Why would things be awkward between us?”

Blood rushed to your face as you looked up to make painful eye contact with him. “Do you really want to know?” you whined, already anticipating Jungkook’s answer since you’d become quite familiar with his stubbornness over the past few days.

“Yes,” he started. “Please tell me,” he said, feigning an expression of a wounded puppy.

You cursed under your breath and brought your freshly bandaged hands (you ignored that one of the bandages was only half on, courtesy of Jungkook’s prior confusion) up to your face.

“Do you promise not to make fun of me? Or kick me out?”

He laughed, although the soft sound didn’t match the nervousness in his expression. “Yes, I promise.”

His words prompted you to breathe in deeply, mentally preparing yourself for your confession. You can do this, you said to yourself. If you could shoot and run from at least thirty zombies, then you could definitely tell Jungkook you had feelings for him. Right?

It wasn’t like you could keep on avoiding him forever, anyways. With the rate that the apocalypse was going and based off the past few days, it looked like you were going to be at this house a while. You just hoped that your reveal wouldn’t make your stay awkward for either him or you.

Jungkook cleared his throat. “Y/N?”

You hummed, still stuck in your thoughts before finally responding. “I… I may or may not be incredibly attracted to you and have feelings for you,” you admitted reluctantly. Jungkook’s lips parted in shock, but he didn’t get a chance to respond before you continued in a panic. “You already promised you wouldn’t make fun of me or kick me out! No take backs!”

He laughed, and you cringed as you were sure it was a laugh of rejection and that the dulcet notes would be a new cause of your nightmares. But the words he said after proved the opposite.

“That’s a relief.” You looked up, a bewildered look on your face. “I like you too,” he mumbled bashfully, his long hair falling in front of his face as he looked down at his lap.

Your body froze. “D-Did I hear that right? Have I not gone crazy?”

He looked back up at you with a grin. “Crazy for me,” he joked with a wink.

Unimpressed, your face dropped. “I take it all back, I’ll go pack my-”

Jungkook shook his head with a chuckle. “Kidding, kidding,” he said, enveloping his slender hands around yours. “But I was completely serious about liking you back.”

“Really?” you asked, still in slight disbelief that Jungkook, who could literally have his portrait and biography in a hall of all Earthly legends, had feelings for you.

“Yes, really.”

You opened your mouth, ready to shoot a doubtful reply, but Jungkook cut you off with the lift of his hand. He rested his hand back down around yours before continuing, “I know you’re probably going to say something self-deprecating or a joke or ask me if i’m joking again, so you might as well let me speak first.”

He grinned at the way your face heated, priding himself on how well he knew you already.

“The way you wish each of us goodnight every night, the way you wake up early to help Jin prepare breakfast, the way you cuss whenever you’re nervous, the way you always try to keep up with whatever stuff we’re doing - even when it’s stupid - and keep a smile on your face; everything about you made me fall for you. Even before the apocalypse, I never felt this way for anyone else.” He took a deep breath, gently squeezing your hands. “The night I first brought you here, it felt like seeing you enter that store and meeting you was fate. You make questionable decisions, we both saw that today, but I’m glad that one of them brought us together because I honestly don’t think I can ever meet anyone else like you.”

A wide smile spread across your face and tears pricked your eyes. Never in your many years of life had anyone told you such genuine, heartfelt words. And no one noticed (or appreciated) those small things about you - your habits that were always brushed over - like Jungkook did.

You agreed with his claim of you making questionable (stupid) decisions, but in this moment you were thankful for your sometimes-dangerous spontaneity and rash decision making. Because if it weren’t for that sudden moment of desperation where you ran into the grocery store, you never would have met Jungkook. Your heart wouldn’t be racing like it was right now and your hands wouldn’t be warm from the feeling of his wrapped around them.

“What do you say?” he asked weakly, bringing you out of your thoughts.

“What is there to say?” you countered before you released your hands from his and interlocked your fingers around his lower body. The position was a bit awkward, but you didn’t mind. Less than a few seconds later, your lips were pressed against his.

Jungkook moved his hands from the small of your back to your neck up to your hair. He pulled you in closer to him as he deepened the kiss. You gasped and tightened your grip around him as he effortlessly lifted you up so you were sitting on his lap with your legs wrapped around his waist. He swiped his tongue against your bottom lip and gently bit it, drawing a moan from you.

You shifted in his lap, pulling a deep groan from him as he pulled away from your lips to trail kisses down your jaw and neck. A shiver ran down your spine as you felt him suck on your collarbone and upper chest to leave marks for him to see the next day. Just as Jungkook slipped his cool hands under your shirt, a startling voice rang from the other side of the door.

“Jungkook!”

The long-haired boy beneath you groaned in annoyance but continued to kiss you. “Just ignore him, he’ll go away,” Jungkook mumbled against your lips as he dragged his hands against the skin of your stomach.

You nodded, embracing the fiery feeling of his kisses and his hands against your bare skin.

“Jungkook!” the voice cried again, causing Jungkook to curse and groan again. “It’s urgent!”

“This better be good,” Jungkook grumbled as he reluctantly pulled away from you.

You frowned at the loss of his touch, but you didn’t have much time to mourn it as he instantly straightened his back once Namjoon said, “It’s about Project B.”

Your brows raised at Jungkook’s sudden reaction to whatever this “Project B” was. He turned to you with an apologetic look before gently setting you onto the bed and moving towards the door.

“Sorry,” he apologized quickly as he straightened his shirt. “I’ll talk to you tonight, I promise.” With that, he was out the door, leaving you in his room with only your thoughts (and hands and knees that had yet to be fully bandaged).

It had been nearly 8 hours since Jungkook had promised that he would speak to you at night. By now, the moon was high in the sky, it’s radiant glow doing nothing to calm your nerves. You knew that whatever Jungkook and Namjoon had to discuss was urgent, but how could he just leave you like that? You were barely able to process the best kiss of your life by the time you realized that you were still sitting stupidly on his bed after he left the room.

You sighed and moved from the window seat in the living room to the kitchen. Joining Jin at the counter, you plopped your head against the stone material with a groan.

“Jungkook and Joon are still in their little lab?” he guessed, nonchalantly flipping his book to the next page.

You nodded pitifully, now knowing that the mysterious room was a lab of some sorts.

“Here,” Jin said before standing suddenly, prompting you to look up at him. He grabbed a bowl of washed fruits from beside the sink and gestured for you to take it. “Bring it up to them.”

“But Jungkook said I ca-”

“I don’t care what he said. Tell him that they shouldn’t have skipped dinner,” Jin instructed firmly.

You nodded, a bit intimidated by Jin’s sudden sternness, and quickly took the bowl with you up the stairs. You slowly approached the door at the end of the hall, the ceramic bowl filled with strawberries and peeled clementines wobbling in your shaky hands. As you took each step, you imagined Jungkook bursting through the door and expressing his disappointment in you for even thinking about entering the room.

Luckily, that didn’t come and you reached the door in less than a minute.

Clearing your throat, you knocked against the door with your elbow. “Jungkook?” you called.

No response.

“Jungkook? Namjoon?” you called again, only to be met with what sounded like a low groan.

Your breath hitched in your throat. That noise didn’t sound pleasant at all.

You placed a weary hand on the door knob but quickly pulled it away as if it was burning hot. Debating thoughts battled in your hand: Jungkook clearly told you not to go in the room but what if Jungkook or Namjoon was in trouble? Wouldn’t leaving despite knowing that one of them could be hurt make you a terrible person (or girlfriend—you didn’t really know what you and Jungkook were yet)?

Taking a deep breath, you grabbed the silver doorknob and twisted it open. You stepped into the dimly lit room slowly, gasping at the sight before you.

“Lab” was definitely the right word to describe the room that almost mirrored your high school chemistry class. Seven tables sat in the room, four of which were filled with stacks of papers and folders while the other three had various lab equipment tools atop the black tabletops. It didn’t just end at the tables either.

“What is all this?” you mumbled to yourself as you examined the crowded walls. There was barely an inch of blank wall left as papers, newspaper clippings, photos (some rather disturbing), and notes decorated the wall like a second wallpaper.

You slowly walked through the room, examining the items pinned to the walls. Most of it was related to the zombie apocalypse, with newspapers (from when those were still around) detailing the first outbreaks and theories of the cause and papers filled with concepts you barely remembered from chemistry, physiology, and biology. Accompanying the scientific notes and articles were several pictures, some of zombies and others of medical abnormalities that you couldn’t quite explain.

One picture caught your eye, and you barely managed to place the fruit bowl down on a table with just enough space for it before you rushed over to the photo. The aged photo had three people, presumably a family, in it. A mother and father stood proudly behind their son, their hands on his shoulders as he beamed at the camera with his hands on his lap. The boy looked familiar. His round eyes and bunny-like smile eerily reminded you of -

“What are you doing?”

The unexpected voice sent a shiver down your body, and you jumped as you turned around to face him.

Jungkook.

You mentally hit yourself — you were so distracted by the items of the room that you failed to notice Jungkook waking up at his spot with Namjoon, slouched over and faces pressed onto one of the paper-filled tables.

“Um,” you started, unable to find the right words as you stared at his unreadable facial expression. You couldn’t tell if he was angry, disappointed, sad, scared, or possibly even all four.

He let out a frustrated groan and ran his tattooed hand through his long hair. “Just tell me what you saw,” he instructed firmly.

“N-not much!” you stuttered, your eyes wide. “I — Jin fruit! Yes! I just came here to bring you Jin — I mean fruit! I came to bring you fruit! Like Jin told me to!” Heat spread across your face as you attempted to explain yourself.

Jungkook’s eyes narrowed between you and the ceramic fruit bowl you pointed to, and he would’ve laughed at your clear disarray if he didn’t feel so anxious.

“You were looking at the walls, you must have seen something,” he deduced.

Your body stuttered as you gestured towards the photo you were looking at. “Nope! Just some things about zombies and… and this picture of you — fun stuff!”

He sighed and you cringed as he placed his hands on your shoulders. But he didn’t scold you or tell you how disappointed he was like you expected; instead, he let his head fall and mumbled something that you weren’t sure if it was meant towards you or himself.

“I guess it’s time I told you the truth.”

Your brows furrowed at his words. The truth? Judging by the contents of the room, they were studying the zombies; and it wasn’t all that surprising considering that Namjoon was technically a scientist and almost-doctor. Why was Jungkook so afraid to tell you?

He lifted his head up, and your heart clenched at the look of pure vulnerability on his face. “Will you promise me that you won’t judge me or run away?” he whispered.

You nodded. “Of course.”

“My parents were scientists who worked for the national lab. I didn’t really know what happened at their work or what projects they were doing because I was in university doing my own stuff,” he paused and briefly closed his eyes to take in a deep breath, “but one day I went home and they told me about an idea they had that was so great.

Super humans, they said. Humans with enhanced senses that would make them superior to regular humans and form the perfect army. I told them it was a shitty idea and that this was stuff they shouldn’t mess with, but they got upset and kicked me out.” He laughed bitterly. “This wasn’t the first time my parents and I ever disagreed on anything, and I thought they were smart enough to not go through with it so I just left. But I guess I was wrong because one day something at the lab went wrong.”

Jungkook hesitated for a second upon seeing the disturbed expression on your face — you knew exactly where this was heading.

He willed himself to continue. “A few months later I got a call from the hospital. They told me that my parents were severely injured while at work, and when I went to see them, they told me the truth of what happened: how they went through with the project but realized too late that it was a mistake, how they were trapped by the government, and how they created monsters.

My parents died from their injuries two days later, and a week after that there was a covered-up breakout at the lab they worked in. Only one day after the breakout, there was the first outbreak in the city only a few miles away. And now we’re here, trying to find a cure for the mess my parents started.”

“I’m sorry,” you immediately said, a mournful expression on your face. You couldn’t imagine the guilt and sorrow that Jungkook must feel.

He scoffed. “Sorry? Why are you apologizing? This entire thing is my fault,” he muttered.

Your face fell and you moved to grasp his hands. “Jungkook, I don’t see how any of this is your fault,” you spoke honestly, your voice soft.

His eyes widened and he pulled his hands away from you. “Y/N, my parents are the reason this apocalypse happened! And - and they told me about their idea and I didn’t do anything to stop it!”

“You did what you could,” you stressed. “You told them it was a bad idea and they made their own adult decision to go through with it.” You took a step closer to him and looked at him in the eyes. “You can’t blame yourself for your parents’ actions.”

He shook his head and looked away. “I should’ve fought harder,” he countered stubbornly. “I’m a terrible person.”

“Jeon Jungkook, look at me.” You used your finger to turn his head so his gaze was directed towards you again. “You are not a terrible person. If you were, you wouldn’t have saved me that day at the grocery store or risked your life to get me pads or spending your days working to find a cure that isn’t even your responsibility.” You took another step towards him and slowly wrapped your arms around him. “You’re a good person, Jungkook. I’m saying this from the bottom of my heart,” you murmured with your head against his chest.

He was silent for a few moments until his body relaxed into your hold. “Thank you,” he mumbled as he gripped your waist and upper back and rested his head atop of yours. “Do you still feel… the same for me?” he questioned cautiously.

“No,” you answered quickly, causing him to quickly pull away from you in offense. You giggled at his reaction before continuing, “I like you even more now. You were honest with me and now I feel closer to you.”

His face relaxed as he let out a relieved sigh before bringing you back into his arms again. And for a few moments, the two of you simply basked in each others’ embrace.

Jungkook was the first to break the silence. “We’re not very close to finding the solution, you know,” he mentioned with a disappointed tone.

You shrugged. “It’s ok. This isn’t something you can really rush, but I’ll be here with you every step of the way.”

He pulled his head back to look down at you, a gentle expression painted on his face. “Promise?”

You smiled at him. “I promise,” you whispered before you moved to close the distance between your lips and kiss him once again.

The future was unsure for you and Jungkook and tomorrow or the next week wasn’t guaranteed. But you were sure that if there was anyone you wanted to survive and overcome a zombie apocalypse with, it was Jungkook (and his unconventional group of friends that he calls his family).

a/n: ngl i would feel so safe in a zombie apocalypse w bts akjnkas. also might write a drabble about hobi in this plot hehe. i hope you enjoyed and pls leave comments as they’re rlly encouraging and will  help me improve in the future :’))

[kassandras-one-braincell]

Abby Anderson x GN!Reader - Please Don’t Leave Me

Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt: Please Don’t Leave Me (I’m creative with my titles)

Can be found on AO3 here.

Setting: before Abby leaves to go golfing. Abby and the reader are in an established relationship.

Warning: angst angst angst, excessive usage of the f-bomb and discussions of murder.

(Y/N) replacer safe.

Word count: 1846

Fuck, she’s really doing this.

Every day since Isaac had granted the Salt Lake Crew leave to hunt down Joel Miller, you tried to bargain with Abby, tried to make her see some sense. That killing him won’t take away any of the pain she feels. The grief. The gaping hole in her heart. But she’d always brush you off, distancing herself from you, suppressing her emotions with bicep curls and crunches as per habit.

Each passing hour, a nail was hammered into the coffin of the woman you love. And this morning is the final nail.

The quaint apartment you call home is filled with a cacophony of rustling and pleas as Abby shovels supplies into her backpack, preparing for her hunt. In her mind, Joel’s death warrant is signed, the execution nigh. And God are you desperate, trying to drill some semblance of reality into her stubborn mind one last time before she embarks on a journey she’ll only regret.

“Abby, please just listen to me for one minute—”

“I need to do this.” She heads to your small shared closet, refusing to look at you from your position by the bed. You frantically try to intercept her path, knowing full well she’s much, much stronger and can reposition you with ease. But it’s worth a try.

“This isn’t going to solve anything,” you implore, clutching the wood.

“Move, (Y/N).”

“Abby, this isn’t going to bring him back. You know that.”

“Move.” Her tone is exasperated, utterly focused on packing her shit and promptly leaving. Your heart sinks to your stomach.

“That girl in the hospital. The immune one. She must have been like a daughter to him for Joel to kill a group of innocent people for her,” you plead, feet firmly planted on the floor. Searching for her eyes, those blue irises alight with a maelstrom of hateful determination. They meet yours. “Killing him will just put her through all of this.”

Abby reaches for the closet door and slowly pulls it open, acknowledging your reluctance to move, deciding to disregard it. The wood begins to dig into your back and you’re forced to step aside. “This isn’t going to end, Abby. You fucking know this.” As she folds some spare clothes and places them in her backpack, you fall gracelessly to the bed, needing to sit down. Bile climbs up your oesophagus. Shit, where was her sense of fucking empathy?

“Abby…” Once again, she doesn’t so much as spare you a glance, folding the garments in robotic fashion. “Abby, you said she was a kid. A kid.”

The final shirt is stuffed haphazardly into the bag. She grits her teeth and turns to you. “He killed dozens of Fireflies, (Y/N). Dozens. And that’s all we fucking know of. There could be hundreds of others because he’s a stone cold killer.” Her face flushes with anger, no remnants of the woman you know left behind. “No one person is worth that many fucking lives.”

You let out a breathy laugh in sheer disbelief. “But it’s not about them, is it? Not to you.” The words escaped you in a hiss, one that didn’t go unnoticed. “Never fuckin’ has been.”

Abby rolls her eyes and grabs her maps from the coffee table, iron fist crumpling the papers beyond legibility. “There could have been a cure. A fucking cure to all this.”

On the surface, her words are rational. One life for a cure that would save millions was a worthy sacrifice, that you would be foolish to deny. But the odds of developing this cure were slim, and the girl would have likely died in vain. You knew this. Abby knew this. Jerry knew this.

With a shaky breath, you cradle your arms, never before having felt the urge to cage yourself around Abby. Fingers firmly gripping at your elbows, you let the cards fold. Unadulterated truth.

“You’re in denial, Abigail.”

A tut. “Don’t you fucking ‘Abigail’ me.” Her previous efforts to maintain a steady tone have been vanquished, anger seeping into each progressing word.

She’s gone.

And it’s this precise revelation that fills your eyes with oceans. Throat closing up, nose burning with the urge to spill over, you attempt – attempt – to articulate yourself, to no avail. Seconds later, rivulets trickle from your eyes to your cheeks, and you find yourself sniffling like some stupid kid… No, not a kid. A grieving adult, bereaved by the loss of a lover. Because the other figure in the room is but a husk of the radiant soul you fell for.

“All…” You pause to inhale, deeply: a futile effort to regulate your breathing, to lay rest to the turmoil suffocating your ability to fucking think. “All that’s going to happen is… You’re going to have to—” Hiccupping, you close your eyes, praying no more tears would fall. “To live with the guilt of orphaning a kid.”

Sentence finally out, you surrender to your sorrows, allowing them to wrack your chest with sobs and heaves until it gets too much, salt freely spilling from the floodgates. You can’t…you won’t bring yourself to look at Abby – the machine in her place, one programmed to kill and kill alone.

It’s wholly terrifying.

Distress flickers in her eyes, her frown slackening for a fraction of a second at the sound of your despair. “No one is forcing you to come,” she puts plainly, as if that has anything to do with the issue at hand.

“You know this – isn’t about that. Fuck, even Owen knows this…this is a bad idea.” Too dejected to cry. Too dejected to battle the hitched breaths you take trying to force out the words.

Words that fall upon deaf ears. “That’s not what Owen told me.” She slots a Swiss army knife into her cargo pants’ pocket, headed with a canteen in hand towards the kitchenette. “He was there, (Y/N). He agreed that Joel needs to die.”

“Because he’s fucking scared of you!” We all are, nearly breaks free from your lips, but that’s not what Abby needs to hear right now. Nothing that will push her away. Further away. The reigns you have on your lover are fraying, leaving you grasping at nought but strings. Frenzied, you attempt a softer, less concrete approach. “Baby, it isn’t normal to be so…hellbent on revenge like this.”

Silence. The delicate trickle of water sounds from the faucet as Abby fills her canteen. Then, a sigh, one of frustration as opposed to defeat. “If you think calling me ‘baby’ is going to erase four motherfucking years of grief, you are sorely mistaken. You’re smarter than that.”

Patience thinning, you stand up, wading through strewn supplies across the apartment floor towards the kitchenette. “Four years and you still haven’t given yourself time to mourn properly,” you reason, deliberately obstructing her path out of the kitchen with your body again. “Maybe if you had you’d see some fucking sense.”

God, that was a mistake. Shit, shit, shit shit shit the last thing you want to do is piss her off, not with her mind in such a volatile state, devoid of all logic.

“I appreciate you’ve lived a fucking sheltered life since the outbreak,” she seethed. What?

“That’s not true—”

“And you have no fucking idea what it’s like to have someone ripped away from you like that.” Volume rising, words a mantra fuelled by detest. “And you know, maybe, just fucking maybe, this’ll be my one chance to put an end to this shit!” The fist not clutching her backpack clenches. And for the first time ever while alone in her company, you flinch.

“He fucking deserves this, (Y/N)! If I can show him a fraction of the pain he caused me—”

“Abby, you’re scaring me,” you whimper, closing in on yourself. Genuinely afraid she’d raise her hand towards you.

Had you a mirror, you’d know truly how perturbed you look in this very moment. Streamlines drying on your cheeks, eyes reddening and puffy from crying, wide with fear like a doe face-to-face with a moving car. Body subconsciously making itself smaller, reducing its surface area, reducing the likelihood for any incoming swings to hit.

She lowers her guard, colour returning to her knuckles as she unravelled her fist. Knitted brows returning to their natural place above her eyes, mouth parted as the horror of her behaviour settles in.

“You know I would never hurt you, right?” Even her previously stern voice cracks at this.

It takes tremendous willpower to not fall back as she takes a tentative step towards you.

Drying your eyes with your sleeves – her sleeves…you forgot you’re wearing her old sweater, the notion sour on your tongue – you break your mutual gaze. “You’re not you right now,” you whisper, not trusting your larynx to produce anything above a mouse’s squeak. “This isn’t the Abby I know.”

For the first time this morning, a sentiment other than bloodlust registers in her face. Hurt.

Either unable or unwilling to respond, Abby recommences her packing in solemn silence.

Shit, you have three, perchance five minutes at best to dissuade your girlfriend from leaving and doing something that will haunt her for all eternity. Yet all you can do is brace yourself against the wall and allow a second tsunami of tears to wash over you, pangs of anguish striking your heart. “Abby—”

“I’m going, (Y/N).” Firm, with a shred less conviction, but firm enough.

A violent sob tears through you as you beg, beg, the vessel of the woman you adore, “Please don’t leave me.”

For a fleeting moment, your heart stops as she hesitates in her tracks. A flicker of hope seizes your mind, that perhaps she has reconsidered, that finally some logic has entered her train of thought.

It all crashes down when she reaches for the spare rifle ammunition by the front door.

“Fuck, Abby—”

“I’ll be gone a month at most.”

Hail-Mary.

Hail-Mary.

Please.

Chest shuddering with each sob that wracks through you, you utter through violently trembling lips and hiccups, “You’re so – fucking blinded – by your hatred – right now – that you can’t – fuck, see – this will – kill you—”

The gravity of the situation threatens to make your knees buckle.

Abby plucks her jacket from the coat hanger and wades over to your crippled stance by the kitchen. A hand brushes your salt-slicked cheek as a lock of hair is swept out of your line of sight. “I love you,” she whispers in pained honesty.

“Abby…” You try to take her hand, to ground her, to remind her of the life she’s leaving behind on her relentless pursuit of this warped sense of justice.

“Goodbye, (Y/N).” She squeezes your palm and lets go, zipping up her pack as the front door to the apartment creaks open and slams shut.

Death is a word that isn’t used lightly, especially not after an epidemic takes the world by storm. But part of your spirit certainly died the moment that door closed behind her.

(I’ll leave it up to you whether she has a change of heart or leaves and scores a few hits above par.)

[hogwartsfirebolt]

cw: wizarding war, and the violence it ensues.

The year bled.

It bled great gouts of wizards, beacons of hope shining bright red at the tip of their wands. Led them to their deaths, in the battlefront that had taken their friends and family, yet remained unsatisfied.

The year took his Hagrid, took his Ron, the year flung a sword into Harry’s survival instincts and turned them inside out — backwards, all wrong. He lived and breathed for his days on the front, inhabited the outermost trench for longer than anyone was allowed, his wand glowing green more often than red.

Voldemort’s tooth — sharp, a snake’s poisonous incisive — hung on a thread, rested against Harry’s throat, had for the better part of the season. Yet the war raged on.

There’d been a time when things had been simpler.

“Will you be resting this fortnight?” Hermione had asked him when she’d served, a few days earlier. She was at a safe-house, now, replenishing her core, drawing energy from the underground streams that pulsed with golden magic so she would be ready to return to the fight. It was was everyone did, every couple of weeks, what their warlord had ordered.

Harry’d not been to a safe-house in three months. He’d not known anything but carnage in all those days, was beginning to suspect that the inexhaustible nature of his core didn’t extend to his body, definitely didn’t extend to his mind.

“Where are they getting this strength? These numbers?” Ron had asked, the night before a Death Eater had torn his head right off his neck.

They still did not know the answer. It happened everyday, at the strike of dawn: dozens of Death Eaters arrived at the front, and it didn’t matter that Harry sliced right through their ranks like a sword, there were dozens more the next morning. And they still did not know the answer.

It was not simple. Nothing was simple.

“They must have found a way to clone their soldiers. It can be done — they have Voldemort’s knowledge on soul-splitting.” Kingsley had written, in the letter Harry had received two days earlier. “Soon enough they will press at their advantage. I trust you will know what to do. Do not fail me.”

There was no “soon enough”. The advantage was already being pressed, every waking second, on multiple fronts. Harry spent his days blocking them with his magic, with his body, and his nights fighting against their secret weapon, they one they seemed to reserve for him only — the mind games.

“They impersonate us?” Arthur had asked, when he’d brought health potions the previous week.

“They show up as you, or Molly, Gin, R-Ron. I’m not sure what they want, they seem to be trying to extract information, but not on our lines, not on our manpower. I don’t know what I have that they want.”

“Don’t trust anyone.”

The days cut him, and the nights suffocated him. He got approached by group after group of imposters, wearing a different face every night. People Harry loved and hadn't seen in months. Those ones didn't hurt as much. Not like it hurt when it was people he had loved and lost.

Arthur had told him not to trust anyone. Some nights, he didn’t even trust himself.

He was going mad, sending away whoever it was that wore Cedric’s body, that showed up in his mother’s face, that slipped into Sirius’ limbs like they would into a coat. People he trusted, people he loved, and whose memory would forever be tainted by this, in his mind.

The night Draco Malfoy showed up, Harry thought it was another mind trick. Then, he realized that it broke the pattern. He’d never trusted, never loved, never even tolerated Draco Malfoy.

But there he was. He showed up, nose bleeding, broken arm cradled against his chest, miserable, everything Harry raged against. His tears shone bright silver over his cheekbones, down his jaw, carrying magical energy, draining him.

“Please,” he said. “Please, I don’t know where else to go.”

Harry didn’t trust him, he shouldn’t help him. But he did. He mended the fractured bones, cut his own palm with a knife and gave him some of his magical energy, poured it right into his gaping mouth. Saved his life.

Malfoy stayed.

Something like guilt, if he was still capable of that, draped itself across Harry’s shoulders as he fed him their food, let him drink from their goblets, gave him their healing potions.

He didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust himself.

Malfoy talked, at least, which was useful.

“Portraits.” He coughed, shivery from the core-loss. “They all have hundreds of them, their magical energy split. Not their souls, that’s not sustainable, it’s their magical energy. And they take them out, give them life. There’s an energy source, and an ancient spell, a rune ... I wasn’t told, but I saw, she performed it in front of me. Please, I’ll tell you. I ran. I need your help.”

Harry didn’t need to ask who she was.

“I can fight. I can help. Please. Please, they killed my mother.”

And there were the tears again, but crystal clear, no longer carrying Malfoy’s power. Harry had successfully stopped the drainage.

“I shouldn’t.”

“Please. Write to your general, I’ll say anything, I hate her.”

There had been a time in which Malfoy’s desperation would have made him feel at an advantage, would have made him laugh, prod at the wound. But that time was long gone, desperation was the only thing he knew now, as well, and there was no winning. It was a winless fight. Malfoy was too human, too scared, not an instrument of war.

“No. We don’t know he’s telling the truth, I forbid you from sheltering him.” Kingsley’s letter said.

There’d been a time when things had been simpler.

But the war raged, the weeks blended into each other, and the pain, renewed as it was every single day, numbed him.

Harry was human. Harry was scared. Harry was an instrument of war.

He sheltered him anyway.

“One wrong move, and you’re out. You have one chance.”

Malfoy nodded, weeping right there in the trench, in his blood-stained clothes. Harry couldn’t afford to distrust him, was too busy staying alive.

And Malfoy did not fail him. In the morning light, dozens of Death Eaters Harry had killed a million times marched into the battlefield, and Malfoy fought next to him. Harry’d not had anyone watch his back in months, and it made for a nice change.

At night, they fended off the imposters, and Harry fed him his own magical energy, watched him grow stronger with it. His core was inexhaustible, he knew. He didn’t have to send Malfoy away to regain strength, he gave it to him, every single night.

It was forbidden, but it was also the only thing that seemed right in the vortex of destruction he’d been living in.

“She keeps an artifact at the Manor. It looks like a prophecy, is kept under lock and key inside her chambers. I saw it, she made me clean it once. I think it’s the source of all this. I think if you destroy it, this will be over.” Malfoy said, three weeks after they’d been fighting side by side. He looked stronger, energized, and if Harry closed his eyes, he could feel his own magic inside Draco’s corestream, like an extension of himself.

“How?”

He felt Draco prodding back, felt him extending his energy so it circled back to Harry, so it flowed freely between them.

“There’s no time to look. Burn down the manor.”

The discovery that they could access each other’s magic should have been monumental, yet felt like nothing at all. They’d known, they’d experienced it every night for weeks. An intimacy unlike any other, between enemies, between allies.

“I thought I forbid you from taking him in.” Kingsley’s letter said, when Harry proposed the idea. It didn’t feel like a reprimand. It felt like a father, telling a child off for keeping a stray kitten. “I have sent reinforcements to the front, come to headquarters. Both of you. We’re burning the house this week.”

The plan was to march off to Malfoy Manor the morning after they arrived at headquarters. Instead, they slept for three days straight.

They were in different rooms, but Harry only had to close his eyes to trace his energy back to Draco, and it soothed him.

They’d been enemies. They were human, they were scared. Now, they were allies. Now, they were one, more than they were two.

“I think we can read each other’s minds.” Malfoy said when they woke up, except he wasn’t anywhere in the room. The voice had come from Harry’s head.

“So it seems.”

They found each other in the kitchen, had breakfast, made vague conversation, not a single word spoken out loud.

“Is the war ending?”

“Once they stop multiplying like crazy, we can beat them, and stop fighting. Live our lives, maybe. But I don’t think the war will ever end, Draco.”

He wanted to explain that he felt like he would carry it forever, but he didn’t have to. In the space between thinking it and wanting to communicate it, he already had.

“I know.”

For the first time in months, when Harry searched inside himself, he didn’t feel empty. There was energy, magic, there was someone else with him, in the space that had existed between his anger and his grief.

“Also, I can do wandless now," Draco added.

“Yeah, that’s on me.”

“Do you think this means we are …?”

“Yeah.”

They showered.

After, they apparated to Malfoy Manor, didn’t even have to touch to do it together, the crack of the spell going off in unison, turning heads once they arrived. The entire Order was there, and, in front of them, the house aflame.

The Manor bled. It bled tendrils of black magic that dissipated into thin air, screamed, called to the tooth hanging at Harry’s neck. He wrapped his fingers around it and held it tight — his trophy, his burden.

All that was left of the enemy army were twenty wizards that scuttled out of the blazing house like fleeing rats. She wasn’t amongst them. Somehow, Harry knew she’d died trying to protect her energy source. He knew that he would have, and soldiers weren't so different.

He and Draco took care of the survivors, both their powers pulled into a single explosion of green.

“Wow.” Hermione said, standing next to Harry.

“We think it’s over.”

“You two are …”

“Yeah.”

“Permanently.”

“Yeah.”

“You know that’s forbidden.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

The year had bled, had been an open wound. Then it had been cleaned and stitched, messily, but closed. It ached. It bore the name of the friend Harry had loved the most, his other half. It would never go away, it would scar.

But it was healing.

Harry reached out with his magic, and felt Draco meet him halfway.

-

Written for @drarrymicrofic prompt "forbidden"

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Find the Word Tag Game

(Septuple Feature Oh God)

Part One

tagged by: @druidx​ & @drabbleitout​ & @pertinax--loculos​ & @asher-orion-writes​ my words: sarcasm, loath, warden, dream, mix, please, catharsis, time, call, brave, shock, tease, fail, volume, reality, lady, passion, guard, split, twitch, breathe, yawn, gulp, hurl, vindicate, touch, gasp, pain, eyes tagging: @drippingmoon, @druidx, @drabbleitout, @ashen-crest, @zmwrites, @sleepyowlwrites, @muddshadow, @aschlindartroom​, anyone who wants to, and George Gipe, who wrote the Back to the Future book and died the immediate following year from a bee sting your words: mark, make, miss, morning, more, minute

sarcasm (Rebirth)—

"Sorry for the trouble," the first voice stammered. "May I ask how many passengers you have?"

"Three including myself."

"Okay...okay, yes, we've just gotten the signal from Delegate DeCosta. We're going to send a guide out to lead you to our docks. Again, we're so sorry for the confusion!"

Within a few minutes, a small shuttle passed in front of the Rodedra, and Thrive set the ship on course to follow it around the Node.

"They sure know what they're doing," Warren said.

Thrive shook his head. "Was that sarcasm?"

"I...I don't know."

loath (Eternal)—

"There were eight-point-three million Tytivans," Thrive said. "...All gone, yet the flora and fauna are untouched? How...how does something like this happen?"

"Darkness."

All heads turned to Ommy, who'd just spoken up for the first time, voice monotonous and distant. Their eyes coated in shimmering blue and silver vortices, staring blankly at the wall. Attaila held their hand.

"The swell...rises." They halted. "...So...angered. Full of loathing."

Warren and Thrive looked at each other.

"Sound familiar?" Warren muttered unhappily.

warden guard (Rebirth)—

Thrive took a guarded pause to watch the two graha slamming through venevans with their blunt weapons, taking rifle fire that barely penetrated their stone armor, though it cracked it in several places and didn't look like it would last much longer.

"Go," Thrive ordered. "Keep them alive!"

Sussa and Nyra fought their way to Gosrah and Nar.

Thrive ducked a swinging club, using his own force to knock the venevan away from him. He fired from the ground, suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of [Ysha's] warriors in the battle, ignoring the creeping sense of being in over his head. He rolled away from another swinging club mashing into the ground and bounced to his feet, aiming a shot at the offender's forehead.

dream (Meridian)—

Warren fell asleep again, weird visions plaguing his brain, and when he woke up, Scot was gone and Thoeala was tending to the fire. Thrive still had his arms around him.

"Morning, Papa."

He noticed the sunrise framed perfectly within the doorframe and rubbed his eyes. The events of the previous night easily could've been a dream. "Uh...morning."

Thoeala trudged into the shelter and sat down. "The good news is we've made contact with a freighter passing by this planet's orbit. The bad news is they won't be here until nightfall. So...I guess we're staying here another night."

"Unfortunate," Thrive said, and his voice was hoarse, indicating he'd been asleep until a moment ago. "Fortuitous that we've found someone so close, however."

mix (Eternal)—

Everyone dug in. Warren eyed his plate—a healthy portion of the red-meat bird along with some stringy white substance that could've plants or noodles or both, and a bright turquoise pureed something mixed in with the white strings. It didn't look unappetizing necessarily, and it did smell very interesting, bordering on gross but tolerable.

Thrive demonstrated to Osillo how to use the utensils and took a hands-on approach with Warren, curling his fingers around Warren's over the brassy tool with the hook on the end and using it to wrap a few of the stringy bits around it.

Warren squeezed his wrist in thanks and scooped some of the substance into his mouth.

please (Aurora)—

The R'lisians said something in hyulisi, and Thrive turned to the commander.

"They want to know if we need help."

Warren's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "Wait, really? They're gonna help us?"

"Lilori is at the front of the line, in that very battleship there," Thrive said, pointing to the largest ship. "It's the Laiori R'si. They're available if we would like their assistance."

Sig looked at their crew. "What're we thinking?"

A rounding chorus of overlapping confirmations and demands to take the offer as well as a few threats of mutiny rose up in a loud cacophony of voices. After a second, Sig raised their hands, breaking into a grin.

"Okay, okay. I wasn't actually gonna say no, you idiots." They looked at Thrive. "Please tell them we accept. Grady, work with our obhelian guest to get the plans over to the R'lisians."

catharsis release (Eternal)—

Warren sighed and passed a hand over his face. "...How's Guetry?"

Thrive's fingers paused over the keys again and his jaw went rigid. "Still in prison."

"Did you mean what you said about going after the Consortium if he's not released after a year?"

"Absolutely. He's as much under my protection as you are."

Warren tactlessly allowed the small smirk that cropped up in response. "Hm," he said, thoroughly pleased. "Turn-on. Unexpected.”

"Doubtful," Thrive muttered immediately.

"What would you do if someone tried to do me harm?"

Thrive glanced over Warren's shoulder at the door. "I can't tell you that. What do you need, Hondris?"

time (Meridian)—

Setting the comm on the bed, Warren folded his arms. "Okay. But you loved Guetry and his partners."

"I did." Scot turned to him with a small smile. "In my own way." The smile turned to mild confusion. "I...would live vicariously through him when it came to his exploits."

"You could feel what he felt?"

"In a sense. I wasn't supposed to, at first—I was supposed to go into sleep mode for his privacy, which guaranteed I could function on minimal power, so I wouldn't abandon him but could be unconscious to my surroundings, but then...one time I didn't. Not intentionally—the intimacy escalated rapidly. But it was...beyond anything I'd ever experienced up to that point. And he never asked me to go idle again, not unless his partner was uncomfortable with the idea of me being awake, and then I would. But...being able to connect to Guetry like that was...infinitely special." Scot looked a little melancholy then. "Being with others on my own...I enjoy bringing pleasure to others, but since I'm unable to feel anything myself, it's different."

Warren tilted his head. "Do you want to be able to feel it?"

"Yes and no. I don't mind not feeling anything..." He hesitated, as if unsure he wanted to admit it to even himself. "...But I do miss how it felt specifically with Guetry. I don't think I'd be able to recreate that with anyone. Not with all the tech upgrades in the remainder of existence."

call (Rebirth)—

Sussa activated the lowering mechanism and joined [Thrive] at the threshold. "You're sure you have the energy to do this?"

"I'd do it even if I didn't. The graha need all the help they can get." He gazed down at the pale brown planet beneath them as more of the ramp lowered away. "...Plus, I have a promise to keep."

"Right," Sussa said. "Prioritizing revenge is a great idea."

"I wouldn't call it 'prioritizing,' per se," Thrive murmured, taking a few steps back. "I'm merely sending a message everyone in the Milky Way will hear."

He sprinted down the ramp, using the edge to fling himself over via frontward flip and into freefall. Sussa followed, executing a graceful swan-dive behind him.

brave dare (Aurora)—

The stars blinked back into space. A long silence choked the bridge, and Thrive carefully got to his feet. A dark film hovered around him, and he stretched his back straight, lifting his arms into the air, the form suit pulling tighter over his muscles and shoulders, accommodating his movements. He inhaled deep, loud, like intended to breathe in the entire oxygen supply of the ship. When he exhaled, he brought his hands to his face and absorbed the remaining black mist.

Warren didn't dare speak. He felt as if his soul vaulted out of his body.

Thrive eventually turned to Warren, and immediately something looked off. His eyes...too dark. Too wrong. No heart or warmth within them. The stiffness of his turn suggested he hadn't done so in eons, and the way he zeroed in on the aghast expression on Warren's face gave away the fact that he was no longer Thrive at all.

He tilted back against the console and smiled.

Warren stood, as calm and cautious as he could allow himself to pretend to be. "Don't touch it," he muttered to the Emmuli. "That's important to me."

"This body...is important to you," the Emmuli said. Their stunted vocal pattern coming through Thrive's voice sounded just as his eyes looked. "No...not the body. Much deeper. Much richer than the body. You will mourn for centuries, won't you?"

shock (Aurora)—

Thrive reached over to grasp Guetry's shoulder through the mist, rain pattering off their faces. Guetry didn't stop shooting, the lightshow beneath his skin becoming more volatile, his own eyes streaming, whole frame shaking. A trickle of blood rolled from his nose to his ear.

The cloud began to dissipate but a spear of smoke still lodged itself into Guetry's ribs with a sick crunch on its way out. He dropped his aim in shock.

Thrive instantly shoved him away with a blast from his palm, making sure he'd come to a rest amongst Varussa and Emnophene, who grabbed him by the arms to pull him to safety behind a rock. Before Thrive could stand again, the Emmuli spiked a spear into his side.

Every breath was a thousand nettle stings in Warren's throat—he watched helplessly as more spears pierced through Thrive's chest, his back, threaded through his legs and arms, strangling him, dragging him to the ground despite his struggling. He watched him as he was pulled back down to a knee, to his hands as the dirt curdled beneath him.

tease (Eternal)—

Thrive paused. "Just because I will have retired doesn't mean you have to."

Warred turned to find him perched on a console, watching him with overwhelming affection in his expression. "What do you mean?"

"You should find work for the Consortium, like what Guetry used to do. Not only will it keep you occupied, but it will also give you a chance to explore and do some good for the galaxy."

"You're saying I should actually get paid for risking my life from now on?" Warren teased. "And besides...I don't think I could go anywhere without you."

Thrive moved to the viewscreen, standing beside Warren with a straightened spine and a sparkle of amusement in his eye. "I can't imagine why not."

fail (Meridian)—

[Thrive] took off again. Dodged the volunteers attempting to hold him back before he was overpowered and grabbed by the arms by tens of them to stop him from doing something he couldn't take back.

"There's no one to save! No one's survived!" a voice cried out to him. "There are no survivors! The entire area is a crater!"

Warren dropped to his knees on the ramp, throat closing and face already wet.

From Thrive ripped an anguished wail he couldn't even bring himself to reconcile when ——— perished, when he shot away from Slodia, when ———. It came from his soul, pain of immeasurable depth. His body failed and he collapsed, voice cracking at the end, and it echoed across a startlingly quiet scene of endless destruction and smoke.

volume(tric) (Aurora)—

Gouna nodded at Warren and Thrive as they entered. "I know you're thinking it may have been easier to do this in my office, but Corin already had most of the materials we need to do this. Plus, he's got a ——— ready in the back room."

"Remember that I'm invaluable later when you're mad at me."

Thrive stood by a console displaying complex diagrams in volumetric form. "Why would I be mad at you, Corin?"

"I don't know, it's just something safe to say in regards to me, I think."

reality (Eternal)—

This was supposed to be a dream, too. A nightmare. Anything but reality. But what did reality even mean?

"I have a theory."

Warren would've jumped ten feet out of his skin if he cared anymore. He addressed Thrive at the window yet again, his inhale deep and audible. "Yeah."

A long enough stretch of even more of the quiet passed before Thrive opened his mouth to speak again. He still wouldn’t meet his stare.

"…You're not going to like this."

"Get me the fuck out of here, Thrive," Warren blurted. "Please. Please. Just…anything. Fucking save me. Get us out of here."

Thrive swallowed, jaw clenched. He smoothed his robe over his form suit, bracing himself.

The tension was immense.

"I think we're going to have to die."

Warren smiled. Not a trace of humor within it, not an ounce of happiness or pleasure. Irony, of course, but no mirth. He shook his head as if it would do anything against his utter disbelief. "What?"

lady (Aurora)—

"Cool, thanks, babe," Warren said, and brandished the paper at the lady. "Can we put this here?" He held up his left hand and waggled his ring finger.

"Yeah." The lady took the paper and peered down at it, then Warren's finger, holding them close to one another and measuring the writing against the dimensions of his digit. "Yeah, that's a pretty good fit. It'll go up the whole finger, though."

"Great."

The artist brought him back to her chair, asking him what colors he wanted, and soon the needle was in his skin, permanently branding him with Thrive's name in Solnai. The whole process took less than thirty minutes, then Warren happily paid and left, grinning at the tattoo wrapped in plastic wrap on his finger.

Thrive took his hand to look at it under the light of the streetlamps. "She did an excellent job on the character strokes."

"Barely even hurt, too."

passion (Meridian)—

Another pause choked the shelter, but Warren felt a swell of interest through his and Thrive's bond that sent him reeling.

"You discussed this while I was gone?"

"It was merely curiosity," Scot echoed. "It poses no consequence to me one way or another. I figured that, since you and I both are passionate about science, it would be an experiment of interest to you. Warren gave his blessing in any case."

Now the hand on Warren's forehead stilled. "...Did he, now?"

"The choice is ultimately yours," Scot said. "If the idea doesn't appeal to you, there are no hard feelings."

Thrive was silent for a bit longer than expected. The crackling of the fire outside served as their soundtrack for several minutes, and Warren swallowed the lump of nerves in his throat, taking full advantage of the fact that without his abilities, Thrive wasn't able to read him.

guard (Rebirth)—

Thrive peered over his shoulder at the ship. He watched it for a moment. "This reminds me of Ruria Lake."

Warren craned his neck to look at him from his crouched position behind a boulder. "Not nearly as cold, right?"

"It'll be dark soon. If we can get her guard down, maybe one of us can get on the ship."

"And you're volunteering out of the kindness of your heart, is that right?"

"I'm the only one who can handle whatever's in there on my own."

Warren sniffed. The aroma of burning foliage and acrid chemicals filled the air. "Alright. Worth a shot."

split (Meridian)—

Scot approached, arms outstretched with something draped over them. A form suit, ———. When Warren looked at him, though, he found a large gash splitting open part of Scot's skull, ripped through his synthetic skin, and some of it melted to the black metal beneath. A few wires had been exposed, peeking through the otherwise mostly intact chassis.

"It's not too bad," he said to Warren's evidently horrified face. "Mostly superficial. I'm not in any discomfort, which I suppose shouldn't be a surprise. My self-diagnostics have come back normal, except I seem to be partially blind in my left eye and I feel static in my teeth."

twitch (Rebirth)—

Warren swallowed a bigger glob of mucus than he expected, and wished more than anything that he had some coffee to make that mistake less horrific. "Okay," he said. "Two heads are better than one, I guess."

"In terms of task teams, yes," Thrive said.

"Okay," Warren said again. "In that case...maybe mention how you're the one who killed ———."

A muscle in Thrive's jaw twitched. "I'm not sure how that's relevant."

"Well...you could have easily coasted your way through this war without being affected one way or another, right? You're technically just a legal resident of the Milky Way. Yet you chose to do what was right for a whole people and in doing so, fucking assassinated the head of ——— at the time. That's a pretty fantastic show of loyalty if you ask me."

Thrive's eyes thinned for a beat. "...Perhaps."

"Perhaps," Warren mimicked, smiling. "Also there's that whole thing about risking your neck to single-handedly save Earth from an entire eliyi fleet, but I dunno if that's important enough to mention."

breathe (Meridian)—

The programmer leaned forward. "I am Harmony Willis. What is your designation?"

Another set of blinks. The face contorted in confusion and steady awareness. "I am the SCOT unit assigned to Guetry Danon Sympa...and my designation number is 734A252D682O."

"Not so subcutaneous anymore, huh, Scotty...?" Warren breathed before he could stop himself. 

The chassis blinked at him. "Yes…" He nodded, slow and unsure of the gesture. "I am...Scotty." He jerked a bit and his brows pinched. "I can...see?"

"You could be the only individual in the universe that Thrive won't be able to read through touch." Warren glanced at his studious face next to Scotty. "Not sure what kind of accolades that inspires, but—"

"Guetry…"

Warren clamped his mouth shut. "Do you...not remember what happened?"

yawn (Rebirth)—

When he woke up, a sliver of light peeked in from under the door, breaking up the otherwise pitch-black. Warren rolled out of bed and put his t-shirt back on, yawning but feeling refreshed.

"Hello?" he called out into the empty hallway, not expecting a reply. "Are we there yet?"

He entered the bridge as Thrive was in the middle of a call on the comm. It sounded like they were speaking fehrzhai. Warren waited at the door until the call finished.

"We're in their airspace now," Thrive informed him. "How was your rest?"

"Damn good," Warren said. "How long was I out?"

"Almost twelve hours."

"Fuck yes." Warren took a seat next to Thrive and rested his feet on the console. "That's what I'm talking about. That's a good nap."

gulp (Eternal)—

[Thrive] got inside the vehicle, pulling Warren up with him, and closed the door. In an instant, oxygen filled the space and Warren was gulping in as much as he could. He became dizzy from the effort, but he ignored it in favor of not dying. A violent shiver overtook him as he sat in the alcove that was big enough to hold at least six grown humans squeezed together.

"If I get frostbite on my balls, I'm cutting yours off," he said, hugging himself.

"Feel free. I don’t need mine," Thrive replied distractedly, acclimating to the vehicle controls. "They're a hinderance and a tactical flaw anyway."

hurl heave (Aurora)—

The projector fired and [Thrive] sprang upward, twisting to avoid the blank, throwing an arm to pitch from his hand a powerful blast of force that produced a sound not unlike a jet breaking the sound barrier.

Warren covered his ears and ducked to avoid the shower of glass from the window, the floor vibrating beneath his feet and the air trembling around them. He felt Sussa grab at him to move him away from any immediate danger, but it was over as quickly as it had happened. He snapped his wide gaze from the pieces of glass on the tile over to Thrive, an unforgiving high-pitched ringing lingering in his head.

Thrive stood in front of the projection panel, staring with wide eyes at the enormous crater and the exposed wiring ahead of him. His chest heaved in his effort to catch his breath, and he dropped to a knee amidst the rubble.

"Thrive," Warren said, all of the destruction flying out of his head as he strode from the observation room over to his side. "You okay?"

"Yes," Thrive said, placing a hand on his face as Warren approached. "I'm...fine. I've just...yes, I'm alright."

vindicate excuse (Rebirth)—

Warren grabbed a homegrown crystal shot glass from Corin as he whizzed by with a glowing, floating tray of foggy red beverages. "I'm already head over heels in love with you. No need to win me over anymore."

"Was that what I was doing?" Thrive asked cheekily.

Warren knocked back the shot and licked his lips as the liquid cooled a path down his throat. "Yeah. You don't need to try very hard, though, do you?"

He tossed the glass onto the sand and it split in half.

"Excuse you, bitch!" Corin yelled at him.

Warren didn't acknowledge him, instead bobbing his head toward [Skywaste's] stage. "One of our songs."

Thrive caught Guetry's eye and winked at him, tipping the rest of his drink into his mouth. He handed his glass to Calen, who danced past with Lohra and shook the glass above his head.

touch (Aurora)—

"No. It's...a rare and precious thing, oras'at. Our minds are permanently connected. Very few obhelians formed such a bond…" Thrive sighed. "I cannot believe I took advantage of you like that."

Warren sobered up real quick at that, though his pounding headache remained. "Whoa, what taking advantage? I don't remember doing it but if you did it then I agreed to it. Okay?"

Thrive swung his legs over the edge of the bed and rubbed his face, still evidently attempting to evaluate why he'd done such a thing. "Right. We should be able to keep tabs of one another now even from across the galaxy, much like how we can feel what the other is feeling through touch, but without the tactile aspect. I must have felt it especially necessary in that grotto. Oras'at was rarely committed because while the benefits are numerous, in the event of one partner's death, the other party would be flattened. They would experience the worst pain of their life, possibly be temporarily paralyzed. There have been cases here and there of the partner left behind dying as well."

Warren forced himself out of bed and realized he still wore his pants from the night before. He dragged himself over to his clothes. "You've never told me about this."

"Because I never would have considered it an option under normal circumstances." Thrive took a flimsy blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. "As I said...I must have felt either threatened or connected to you in a way I never thought possible."

gasp (Aurora)—

A sharp pain pierced Warren's skull at that moment, sending him to one knee. He reeled in the scream he wanted badly to emit as his spine erupted into fiery agony. He fought the urge to pass out, battling the illusion of the ship rocking and glitching around him.

"S-shit…" he gasped. It was worse than ——— and the frozen lake and anything else he'd ever felt combined, like a piece of his brain had ripped itself apart. His heart raced beneath his ribs and he grabbed at the floor for relief. "No," Warren shouted through the pain as blood coursed from his nose, dripped from his chin onto the carpet. "Don't...please…"

The Emmuli emitted a satiated sigh and sauntered to him, trailing Thrive's fingers through his hair. "What a beautiful specimen. To see you through the eyes of a bonded mind...there is something...very enlightening about it. You have become god and safety." They gripped Warren's hair and yanked his head back to look up at him, their smile turning venomous. "I have waited for so long to taste your fear." They snatched Warren by the throat and lifted him into the air. "And it is exquisite."

pain (Meridian)—

Thrive carefully folded his hands on his lap and dropped his gaze to his knuckles. He was silent for a long time, jaw clenched painfully tight. "I'm going to fight for you."

That sent a jolt of heat into Warren's chest. "Good. I'm glad to hear that; it means you're willing to change. I still need to step back. I feel too much for you, and if you're going to keep hurting me like this, for my own good, I need to step back."

"I love you."

Warren swallowed around the lump in his throat as Thrive met his eyes. The sentiment wasn't meant to be manipulative or to send him on a guilt trip, but it was genuine. And emotional.

And lost.

"I love you," Warren responded. "...More than I think even you will ever know."

eyes (Eternal)—

Thrive broke concentration from ——— and slowly looked to the hillside, at the cresting army of eliyi, and Warren witnessed something happen that he couldn't accept, not for hours, not for days. The glow in his pupils pulsed, and he stretched a hand at the wall of eliyi.

All of them were dissolved instantly, all at once. Empty space as suddenly as a blink over the stone. The dust swirled in a weak cyclone with snow kicked up by feet that were touching the ground a second ago, faded to nothing but atoms in the wind.

The glow disappeared and Thrive glanced up at Guetry's shuttle, which had stopped directly overhead.

"Get in," Quincy said, holding a hand out to Warren.

Warren, however, was rooted to the spot. He stared at the hillside, where hundreds of eliyi had been just a moment prior, with nothing short of horror and disbelief, his limbs going numb in it. He turned his face to Guetry, who had gone still in the door of the shuttle, blown back by the event as well. They locked eyes for a second.

[gamerwoo]

[Tales from the Pack] Joshua: Second Chance (Part Four)

Characters: Joshua x female reader

Genre/warnings: werewolf au, fantasy, fluff, fluffy angst, Josh being a grumpy old man lmao

Word count: 2,042

Summary: After his mate died, Joshua always blamed himself and never wanted to imprint again. However, fate has other ideas when he meets you: a young, energetic werecoyote that’s quite the opposite of him. He insists he doesn’t want a new mate – nobody’s even sure if he’s ready for a new one – but he can’t ignore his instincts.

Previous | Next | Second Chance Masterlist

Because of how exhausted he was, Joshua was in and out of consciousness for a while. He couldn’t even keep track of days because he was sleeping at weird hours -- but it had really only been two days. He never stayed awake for very long -- the longest was always just to eat and go to the bathroom if he had to, and then go back to sleep -- but the first thing his eyes always found when he opened them was you.

You, however, weren’t asleep for nearly as long. You woke up again in the morning to see Joshua was still asleep -- you didn’t know he’d ever woken up. You still had a million questions bouncing around your head about who he was, what happened next, and the like, but you decided to just go with it until you found out. No point in panicking, right?

“You should be all set to go home today,” Minjee reported.

The wolfsbane was cleansed from your system -- mostly thanks to Joshua, otherwise your recovery would’ve been slower since you didn’t heal as quickly as the werewolves -- so all you really had to do was rest until your body fully recovered. But that was the same for Joshua, so it worked out. 

However, Minjee wasn’t sure what was happening when you were discharged. Would you go home with Joshua and his pack mates? Would he turn you away and have you go off on your own? Even Hansol and Kyung said they weren’t sure when Minjee had asked.

But you just nodded, not even having those thoughts cross your mind, “Okay.”

Minjee sat down on the edge of your bed and studied you, “Do you mind if I ask a few questions first?”

“Sure,” you shrugged without hesitation.

“What’s your name?”

“_____ _____.”

“And where are you from, _____?”

“The Capitol.”

Minjee’s eyebrows raised, “So you’re not too far from here, then. We’re in the Capitol -- southeast of the castle.”

Huh. You didn’t know that. That was at least convenient to be close to a familiar place. But the Capitol was huge.

“Do you have a pack or family?” Minjee continued.

You shook your head. You’d been on your own for a few years now.

“You’re alone?” she asked.

In the other room, Kyung and Hansol looked at each other. 

“So then why were you running around the forest at night, _____?” Minjee continued.

You shrugged, “Got bored.”

Minjee definitely thought you were...interesting. You were all by yourself, you were running through the woods in the dark for fun, and you still somehow didn’t seem fazed by any of it. And to top it all off, you still kept glancing over at Joshua and rubbing one thumb over his knuckles like you were already comfortable with him. He was a complete stranger to you, you hadn’t even spoken to him or seen him awake, but you didn’t seem to care. You weren’t even asking her questions like she expected. It was like you didn’t care about anything, you were just rolling with whatever came.

“Hey, Jee?” a girl opened the curtain and popped her head in. She had loose springy curls that were tied into two buns on her head, brown skin, dark freckles dotted over her cheeks and nose, and golden eyes that shifted over to you. Her eyes widened slightly for some reason before returning to Minjee. “Two of our other alphas are here. They want to know what’s happening with Joshua.”

“He’ll be good to go home when he wakes up,” she replied warmly with a nod. “He’ll definitely need the help home, though.”

The foreign girl turned her head, listening to what someone else was saying to her before turning back again, “Jihoon wants to talk to you.”

“Send them right in.”

The girl stepped aside to let two men through the white curtain -- you wondered if it was actually a bedsheet. One was short with light brown hair, and the other was taller with silver hair. The shorter one had an undercut with the rest of his hair looking a little wavy, while the taller one’s hair was fluffier and parted to the side. Like the girl, they both had golden eyes that seemed to study you curiously.

Jihoon and Seungcheol assumed you must’ve been the girl they’d heard about considering your cot was still beside Joshua’s, and your hand was wrapped around his. You didn’t react to their staring, just blinking back at them. But they took note of one physical difference that Soomin either forgot to mention or simply was unaware of: instead of gold eyes, your eyes were an icy blue. 

The taller one’s eyes moved over to the doctor, while the shorter one continued to blatantly stare at you. Of course, you stared back.

“Is he really well enough to come home already?” the taller boy wondered. “It’s only been two days.”

Minjee nodded, “Hansol has medicine he’ll have to take three times a day to help with pain and healing, and Joshua will have medicine to take every twelve hours. ______ will need medicine as well, but... Um, other than that, the two just need a lot of rest -- especially Joshua.”

“What about her?” the shorter one asked, nodding his head toward you.

Before Minjee could say anything, you opened your mouth, “What about me?”

Jihoon’s eyebrows raised in surprise, almost like he didn’t think you could or would talk, “...Sorry.”

“Can you guys keep it down?” a groggy, raspy voice asked beside you.

Your head whipped to the right as you felt Joshua’s fingers squeeze yours. He was rubbing one eye with his free hand and letting out a yawn before he blinked his eyes open and looked between the two alphas.

“He lives,” Seungcheol chuckled. “How do you feel, Shua?”

“Like shit,” he replied, draping his arm over his eyes.

The two alphas noticed Josh was keeping his hand in yours despite being awake. Their eyes flickered from your hands, to each other.

“What’re we talking about?” Josh asked after a few seconds of silence.

“Uh...well…” Seungcheol tried desperately to find the right words to ask what he planned to do about you, but he was too scared to bring you up to Josh. He didn’t want to upset him already.

Thankfully, Minjee spoke up, “I need to know what’s happening with _____.”

Hearing your name, you broke out of your trance of staring at Joshua now that he was finally awake, and looked at the doctor.

Joshua tore his arm away from his eyes and lifted his head slightly to narrow his eyes at Minjee, “Who?”

She gestured to you, “Your mate.”

Hearing the title made him growl lowly in his chest as he slowly turned to look at you. Despite the aggressive noise, you could hear his heartbeat pick up when his eyes landed on you. It was also the first time he was seeing you awake, and deep down, it felt amazing to see you actually alive and well.

However, he still managed to tear his hand away from yours.

“She’s not coming home with us,” he scoffed. “She’s not my problem.”

“Josh--”

“Jihoon, you can’t tell me what to do,” he cut off the alpha. “I’ll do perfectly fine on my own, thank you. I don’t want or need another mate.”

However, everyone was surprised to see that you weren’t speaking up. They looked at you and found that you didn’t even seem bothered by Joshua’s words or actions. You had lifted your now empty hand closer to your face, looking at it as if you’d see traces of Joshua or something. But your expression was neutral before you looked up at Josh and shrugged.

“Alright.”

Seungcheol blinked, “A-- Alright?”

“Yeah,” you shrugged again. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It kind of is…” Jihoon said like you were stupid.

Hey, maybe you were. You didn’t know how any of this worked. You didn’t even fully grasp what was going on.

“It’s a good thing you’re braindead, I guess,” Joshua snorted under his breath before laying his head back down. 

“We’ll just...take him home now,” Seungcheol told Minjee awkwardly, bowing his head slightly in a silent apology.

“I’ll go get their medications,” the doctor replied as she stood. “You can get Hansol and Joshua ready to be discharged.”

The curtain was pushed aside so the two patients could now interact. Seungcheol and Kyung were going to have to help support Joshua as he walked at least to the edge of the forest so Seungcheol could properly carry him without getting odd looks. But Hansol was good enough to walk home on his own, and you were, too. So you got out of bed and changed back into the clothes you were in when they found you -- but now they were washed and clean.

“So..._____,” the taller alpha began just to make some sort of conversation in the awkward silence, “where are you going to go now?”

“Uh…” you trailed off before shrugging. “I don’t know, probably back to the cave.”

“Cave?” the girl repeated as the group looked at you with varying looks of surprise. “I thought you were from here?”

“I am,” you nodded, “but I don’t live here.”

“You live in a cave?” the shorter alpha checked.

You shook your head, “Well, no. Recently, I’ve been staying in a cave because I found it. Before it was just...wherever there was some sort of shelter.”

“So you don’t live anywhere?” the wolf you had yet to meet asked. He had shaggy strawberry blonde hair and stayed close to the other girl.

“I guess not.”

You were too busy going back to putting your shirt on that you didn’t notice the way the pack pointedly looked at Joshua.

-

As the pack was leaving and walking down the few steps -- going slowly as to be accommodating for Josh -- you followed behind them. You weren’t really sure what to do with yourself for the rest of the day since you still weren’t feeling 100%. Maybe you could just go find a place to nap or something.

The pack continued onto the path, but Joshua turned his head. He saw you still standing on the middle step, looking this way and that with a thoughtful look on your face as you held a small paper bag with your medication in it. He stopped walking, causing the two who were helping support his weight stop. So the two behind him stopped, as well. They all turned to look where he was looking, which was at you.

Joshua very loudly cleared his throat, catching your attention. He was looking at you in annoyance, and his eyes rolled when you continued to just stand there and stare at him.

“Well come on,” he snapped.

“...Huh?”

“Let’s go,” he said with more force. “I’m tired and wanna go home. If you trail behind and get caught in another net or get attacked by wild animals, that’s not my problem.”

He turned back and continued walking again, the two beside him moving with him despite them continuing to glance back at you.

Was he...inviting you home with them? But didn’t he say you weren’t going with them? So--

“You should probably hurry,” the short one -- you realized his name was Jihoon -- told you, though he had traces of a smile on his face. “He’s pretty irritable.”

“Shut up, Hoon,” Joshua called behind him.

Jihoon chuckled but continued walking.

Hansol, however, stayed back to wait for you. He understood you must’ve been a little confused. You were dying, only to wake up to a mate, members of his pack, and now you were being told one thing and then something completely opposite. So he waved you over.

“C’mon, _____,” he called with a warm smile. “We’re gonna take you home.”

Home. That sounded nice to you. It was a word you hadn’t heard or thought of in a while now. So you bounded down the steps and walked beside Hansol as he began telling you about their pack and the house.

Ahead of you, Joshua was grumbling to himself in annoyance about the whole situation.

[inknopewetrust]

Manipulate Me

Summary: As Peter travels Europe as a normal kid, the world’s peril throws a wrench in his plans. With you by his side chaperoning the trip as an undercover S.H.I.E.L.D agent, the mysterious introduction of Quentin Beck leaves you breathless. 

Pairing: Quentin Beck/Mysterio x Fem!Reader 

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: None! 

A/N: Thanks so much for requesting this @mrs-blooooom​ ! I had a great time writing for Quentin Beck again. For context, reader is Peter’s older sister but also happens to be a shield agent (it was the easiest route of explanation as to why she would be meeting with Fury and Maria Hill). Requests are currently OPEN and you can check out who I write for in my request guidelines tagged in my bio. Thanks for reading! :) *gif not mine* I do not own any of the dialogue from the film. 

“May-” 

“-And don’t forget the passports! Oh! The passports!” 

“May!” 

May stopped scrambling around the apartment only to find that you had the two passports already in your hand. The tired aunt pushed her disheveled hair out of her face, pushing her glasses back up her nose, and slowly calming down. It was fine... Peter had you, Peter had all his friends, Peter would be fine in Europe. 

“Everything is going to go fine. I’ll be with him at all times and if he decides to wander off and do his Spiderman stuff––well then I’ll just have to call in some Avengers to stop him.”  

“I trust that you’ll be able to keep him out of trouble if it comes down to it.” May picked up Peter’s suitcase off the floor and listened to his heavy footsteps draw down the hallway and into the living room where you had gathered with her. 

“All ready?” He asked with those inquisitively wide eyes that reminded you so much of your mom. May handed him the suitcase but not before capturing the boy in a tight hug. Her “motherly” instincts grew since she returned from the blip. It was strange without the two of them. You, stuck here in New York without a leader in either Fury or Tony and the remaining members of S.H.I.E.L.D, Avengers and then the developed Sword, were left to pick up the pieces and build a life without them. That was the most difficult part. 

“Promise me that you won’t get into any trouble?” May asked Peter who in reply rolled his eyes with a chuckle. 

“It’s just a school trip. Besides, Y/n is going to be there and I’m sure she’s told you a million times that she can keep me in check.” You smacked the side of his head but he just ignored you and turned to the door, opening it with a rough pull with his spider-y force. 

“We’ll see you in a few weeks, May!” 

If you were able to take back all the words you said and never go to Europe, you would ask Stephen Strange to reverse time. 

Venice was a mess. The water-creature-man-thing...? had erupted the small city into a chaotic terror with locals and terrified students trying to find cover. Peter was somewhere flying with webs while another hero whom you had never seen before was assisting him. After a few minutes of trying to guide a group of students to safety, you secured cover underneath an awning in front of a store. 

“Ms. Parker! What do we do!?” Flash was almost in tears from fear which you couldn’t help but judge. It was water? the kid survived Thanos’ snap so he could survive this. Not to mention Fury would have your ass if any of the kids died on your watch. 

Out of nowhere the ground started to fill up with water and cracking of concrete or bricks began echoing throughout the small courtyard you trapped them all in. The green man came swooshing in with a cloud of smoke, almost like an illusion, and stopped the water with the sheer force of his magical abilities. The creature reformed into what looked like a water man and the green man dodged the attack with made the sound of bricks tumbling increase in intensity. Suddenly, the tower to your right began crumbling and you pulled as many students as you could closer to the building you sought shelter next to. 

“Get back! Get back!” 

“Who is that guy!?” Jason, one of the students shouted out but you couldn’t answer the question because you didn’t know. 

“I don’t know, but he’s kicking that waters ass.” Brad voiced exactly what you would have said. 

The green man continued to fight the water as the tower crumbled beside you all and then, like the blink of an eye, the monster was gone and the water scattered, soaking your shoes with a safety that was much welcomed. The man landed to sounds of cheering from the students and locals that found themselves in the same spot as you. But something was different. 

Maybe it was the fact that you couldn’t see his face, or maybe the fact that you had never heard of this hero and you literally worked for the agency that worked with them all. Maybe he wasn’t from this world? Space? Another universe? You could have sworn that you heard of the idea of a multiverse. 

But maybe it was the fact that beneath all that smoke and mirrors that made up the helmet of the mysterious man, it felt as though when he looked around at his admiring fans, his eyes trained on you, staring through your soul with some feeling that wasn’t welcomed or unwanted either. Intrigue, that’s what it was. And when he flew off, everyone was left with a curiosity that sparked a great debate throughout the entire world. Who was this man? 

Well, the T.V. at the hotel identified him as Mysterio. Peter managed to make it back in one piece which you were able to celebrate in a brief moment outside before the voices of interested students and the television interrupted the moment. Betty and Ned were searching every website for some kind of clue but nothing other than what the news reported was to be taken as fact. It wasn’t aliens, it wasn’t witches, it was just another hero. 

So that was what you went with. That was until you opened your door to Fury sitting in a chair next to the window. 

“Oh my God!” You shrieked and Fury laughed, laughed, at you. 

“You scare too easy.” 

“What are you doing here? I thought you were in spa-” 

The slight reveal of a green hand made you shut up. "Fury” tilted his head with a slight “Ah, well.” 

“Is this about that Mysterio guy?” 

“We’ve got him at a site. Says he’s from another Earth and that these creatures destroyed his own and intend to destroy this one too.” 

“Another Earth? So, the multiverse.. it’s real?” 

“Fury” didn’t respond to that, but he simply rose and gestured over his shoulder to the window. 

“There is a car outside. Go and wait in it while I go get Peter. The big man told me I need to scare the kid.” You smiled at the thought as the man left to go retrieve your brother. 

You had been part of the world of superheroes far longer than Peter had. You had been there when Loki first attacked New York way back when and that seemed like so many years ago. With the blip, it seems like an entire eternity. Nick never let you in on his secrets of his relationship with Carol Danvers, but you had met the Skrulls when you went on a mission three months ago to visit Monica Rambeau in space. Unlike her, you weren’t blessed with some badass powers, though she didn’t always have them. 

Peter looked terrified walking out to the car and when he saw you inside, he breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t be alone. The site of S.H.I.E.L.D in Italy wasn’t far from where you had all taken up residence for the last day or two, but it was secluded, down in the catacombs of old buildings that no one would suspect. It reminded Peter of a Mission Impossible movie that you had watched with him before the two of you left for Europe, he felt more like a spy than a superhero in that moment. 

As you walked behind the two down the long corridors of the abandoned treasure that was used as a make-shift S.H.I.E.L.D, you were surprised to see Maria at a computer, though now knowing about Fury, you were sure it wasn’t even her. The center of the room was filled with scattered agents who you weren’t familiar with and then a projection in the middle of the room, along with the man without the helmet. 

You weren’t one for fawning over men. Jesus, you worked with Thor sometimes and while you were aware of his Godly looks, you never gawked. But this man, he wasn’t a God, he was just naturally beautiful. Dark hair, blueish-gray eyes that surely did pierce your soul, and a stature of a man who knew how to carry himself with power in the world. It was like he walked out of your dreams and into reality. 

“This is Mr. Beck.” Fury introduced you and Peter to the man. Mr. Beck approached Peter with a small smile and held out his hand. Peter looked nervous but responded with his own shake. 

“Mysterio?” 

“What?” 

“It’s just what my friends were calling you.” 

“Well, you can call me Quentin. You handled yourself well out there today. I saw what you did with the tower. We could use someone like you on my world.” 

Peter looked puzzled but Quentin looked behind the boy to you. He held out his hand with another smile which you returned. Maybe there was a shock when you touched hands, but you were sure it was just your imagination. 

“Y/n Parker, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” 

“It’s good to meet you, Y/n.” 

“Likewise.” 

Did time rush by faster when you were in the presence of someone you were obviously attracted to? Yes, because before you knew it, the night was over, and Fury was leading you and Peter back out to the car. Peter was absolutely smitten with Quentin and could hardly break conversation. The man gave the attention to Peter like Tony did. It was like life imitating itself in another time. Quentin reminded you so much of Tony. Smooth with words, handsome, gifted in almost an unfair way, and he took an interest in the last piece of close family you had. You wanted nothing more than for Peter to have a figure in his life to give him a positive purpose. With Tony gone, he’s struggled trying to find his niche again. 

“See you, kid.” Quentin looked disappointed but hopefully that his and Peter’s paths would cross again one day, even with Peter trying to avoid being identified by his class or the world. At some point, someone would figure it out if they hadn’t already. 

“Yeah, see you.” Peter said as he walked out, following Dimitri, who Fury ordered to keep Peter in check with you. You were more than capable of doing it yourself but for some reason, Fury felt the need to send another agent. 

“Good luck, Quentin.” You told him and he nodded his head, glancing at the holographic map of Venice next to him. 

“I fear I’ll need it. But I’m hopeful that the good luck will be for more than just winning this fight.”

Swoon. That’s what you did for the remainder of the night and into the early morning. You couldn’t sleep a wink after the revelations that Quentin relayed to you and Peter about the elementals. That worried you too. How in the world was Peter supposed to sit by while other heroes with indisposed and couldn’t help? Sam and Bucky were on their own missions, Carole and Monica were off, Stephen and Wanda were no use and Thor was off on his own adventures with that team of riff-raffs from space–you know, the one with the talking tree. 

But somewhere in all the jumble of thoughts, the scenery of the canal that had been a scene of something far different, calmed the noise. Enjoy the trip. This was the first time in years that you had traveled for something other than work and yet it was still filling every thought and moment. The thoughts were so loud and invasive that you didn’t register the person coming up to your right, ready to take the bag off your shoulders. You felt the tug and turned around, ready to punch the person but they dogged it, pulling it off your shoulder. It was a game of tug of war for the bag, but the person was strong. 

“Let go! I said let go!” You pulled as hard as you could, therefore the bag came flying back to you and its contents spread across the sidewalk. The person glanced at the wallet on the ground and then back at you before you both dove to the ground. They grabbed it first and you tackled them to the ground. Wrestling with grunts and yells, you hadn’t noticed the audience of one that rushed to help. A blast of green light shot the person off of you and you clutched the wallet to your chest tightly, trying to reel in your ragged breath. 

“I heard yelling from my hotel...” The hero started only to realize that it was you and with a turn of your head, you had realized it was him, Quentin. 

“Oh! Are you alright?” He extended a hand, which you readily took to stand. He then helped collect the scattered items and put them back in the now ripped bag before handing it back to you. 

“I’m fine. Thank you.” 

“It’s no problem.” There was a brief, awkward lull but you weren’t sure what else to say. 

“So, do you always wander around at night in a city you don’t know?” It was an icebreaker, a line that he knew would make you at least chuckle. 

“No... I just had a lot on my mind. What you told us in there–it’s a lot of information to retain.” 

“I’m sure an agent like you could handle it though.” You smiled bashfully at the compliment. Quentin gestured over his shoulder and shoved his hands in his pockets. You realized he wasn’t wearing his uniform anymore but just a pullover sweater and some dark jeans. How he shot the green light in the first place you didn’t know, but all heroes worked a little differently you suppose. 

“Would you like to take a walk? I promise I won’t try to steal your wallet.” 

“How do I know I can trust you?” The conversation was so light, and carefree that for the first time in a long time, you felt like a normal person. Quentin returned your cheeky smile and began walking. 

“I’m pretty sure a woman like you could figure out who trust and who not avoid. Isn’t that what they train you for? Agents?” 

“I suppose so, yes.” 

“Can I ask you something?” You asked Quentin and he looked at you with a nod of his head. 

“How did you know the elementals would turn up in our Earth?” 

“Intelligence. My wife, she had worked for our version of your agency. Before they came to destroy our city, one had already manifested itself in Mexico. It was as if there would be a pattern to follow. So when she passed, I used her intelligence to figure out where they might be, which led me here.” 

“I’m sorry for your loss.” 

“Thank you, it’s been some time now. She would be glad to see Peter helping me, and you helping out with the cause.” 

“Peter really took a liking to you. I could see it in the way he could barely contain himself.” You laughed, changing the heavy subject to one more light. 

“He’s a good kid. You’re related I assume?” 

“My little brother.” 

“You should be proud of him. He is doing a lot of good for the world. I just wish he was more confident in his abilities to realize identity protect isn’t everything.” 

Quentin was right, it wasn’t everything. But it was more than identity for Peter. It was also no Tony to lead the way, his want to be a normal kid, his need to have friends and well, MJ to like him. But neither of you would know what it was like to be a teen hero, that was a lot of unneeded pressure. 

“It seems that I brought you around full circle.” The sound of Quentin’s voice broke the silence and the realization that you were outside the barely standing hotel. You sighed and tugged the bag on your shoulder. 

“Thanks for saving the day, Mysterio.” 

“Anything to help protect Agent Parker.” 

If you hadn’t just met him a few hours ago, you would have asked him to come upstairs but that was far too forward for the world you created for yourself, so you extended your hand as he had earlier. 

“May our paths cross again.” 

He grasped your hand tightly and agreed. 

“Hopefully under better circumstances.” 

You watched then as he walked away, unaware of the man underneath the facade of Mysterio. How he already knew who you were, knew all your secrets, and was ready to manipulate you to take down the institution that denied him success so many years ago. 

[notmrskennedy]

Bites and Bullet Holes

(Spencer Reid x Female leaning but sorta GN! Reader)

Summary: Spencer, during college, was bitten by a dog. Working a case involving dogs brings back old memories and friends...

W/C: 3,384

Warnings: Dog bites, bullet holes, bad writing? 

A/N: Guess what I found y’all? I haven’t edited it one single bit but I hope it goes over well anyway. When I was working at the kennel I kept having anxiety over one of my kids getting into a fight so I made this. Be a little extra gentle with this one. 

---

As he leaned over the victim, he made the mistake of thinking about you. Spencer thought he’d gotten over it. The whole randomly thinking about you thing—the thing that’s happened too many times before. He’d chalked it up to you being best friends 15 years ago. Told himself that it’s normal to miss your friends from college. 

But over a dead body? This was new. 

Though he supposes the dead girl could’ve looked like you in another timeline. There’s facial structure similarities—at least to you 15 years ago at 19. She’s been strangled with her dog’s leash and there’s some unspoken quality about her that just…jerks him into nostalgia over you. 

(You are probably the one that got away, but if he’s being honest, you live in DC. He could go see you right now if he wanted to.)

Morgan leans over Spencer and points at the dog leash. “It had to be someone she knew if the dog went off with our un-sub.”

Spencer nods, fidgeting with the 15 year old scars on the inside of his wrist. Whether or not Morgan noticed, he thankfully doesn’t press. Spencer is having enough trouble stamping down that knee-jerk reaction to think about you, let alone if Derek thinks to point out the magical, ‘hey weren’t you bitten by a dog?’

Spencer doesn’t remember the incidence well enough to comment. He wonders if you do. 

“We’ll have to check shelters for the dog,” Spencer remarks. “3.3 million dogs enter shelters every year in the US.” 

Morgan nods, pulls off a glove, pulls out his phone. Spencer looks around the park. Behind the police tape are plenty of people walking their dogs. The sorts of breeds that you’ve gushed about 15 years ago. His brain knew too much about dobermans, shepherds, mallinois—he could even hear that pretty little gasp you had when you’d point out a particularly well trained monster of a pet. 

Spencer wonders if you ever did anything with your finance degree, if you even ended up finishing college at all. You’d come close to dropping out over calculus—he hadn’t been around long enough to help you through the even harder stuff. This wasn’t the first time he’d wanted Garcia to look you up, but it was the first time he’d considered it. 

“Music to my ears, mama,” Morgan laughs into the phone and Spencer tunes back in. 

“I’ll get that puppy BOLO out,” Garcia chirps back. Spencer can imagine her wringing a fluffy pencils through her fingers. “We’re going to find this doggie and make sure that psycho didn’t get him too.”

Spencer smiles despite himself. Penelope would’ve liked you. 

#

JJ sets coffee down in front of his stack of files. She smiles, gracefully sits down next to him. Spencer tries his best to ignore her insistence. Tries to ignore the ever prominent eye contact screaming ‘We’re going to talk about something uncomfortable!’ 

“So, Spence,” she says, pausing for his attention with a sip of her own coffee. He looks up for half a glance before going back to the files. He doesn’t know why, but he’s sure there’s something in this stack of work the first victim had brought home with her. They all knew the un-sub, he had to be somewhere. 

“Spencer,” she says more insistently. He makes the mistake of looking up, of letting her place a hand on his. She gently turns the wrist over and pointedly glances towards the teeth marks. “Are you doing okay?”

He opens his mouth, but decides some things are better kept to himself. He thinks about saying that no, he wasn’t alright, that being plagued by thoughts of the first-love-of-his-life is haunting him more than the dog fight. 

That he can see your face in each of these victims. In their dogs. In the places they died. 

Dogs didn’t like him. They never did. The dog bite wasn’t the big deal out of the altercation. 

JJ won’t understand, so he offers her a truthful smile and says, “I’m okay. Seriously. More than 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year. I’m not special.”

JJ nods. Spencer goes back to his files. He forgets to hide his lovesick agony. JJ forgets not to notice. 

#

It’s 4AM and he knows he’s remembering it wrong. That the dog hadn’t been that big. That the teeth hadn’t really gotten him that bad. The bright red devil eyes and thousand yards of slobber were more than grossly incorrect. 

He sits up in bed and forces himself to remember the parts that were real. How real you had been. Before and after. 

Your car had broken down as you were leaving for work—already late—and you’d begged him for a ride. Promised calculus homework on your boss’s couch and only having to let the dogs out. No shit. No bleaching crates. No nothing. Just you, him, and some calculus homework. 

He’d caved. Now, running his hands over his eyes, he laughs at how obvious he had to have been. A skinny little 19 year old pimple of a boy majorly crushing on the first person to pick him out of a crowd and decide they’d be friends. The first friend who’d forced him to a tailgate at a football game. The only person he’d do absolutely anything for. 

And it was just like you promised. Your cute little nose wrinkle. Your horribly frustrated glares. Your over dramatic ‘I’m dropping out!’s every fifteen minutes. And it’d been great until you both heard a thunderous snap of a wooden fence and the wildest, most murderous howling he’d ever heard. 

You’d both bolted for the door, scrambling to get through the gates into the back. There’d been a moment of calm. Another beat. Another. And…you both had stumbled around the corner to find the next door neighbour’s dog, broken chain, trying to kill one of the kennel’s dogs. 

There had been no moment’s hesitation on Spencer’s part. He’d stupidly rushed forward, lodged his hand between the neighbour’s mutt and the sweetest dog he’d ever met. He’d yanked her free from the mutt’s jaws, only to find his own wrist dragging along the teeth. 

(He realised later that he’d always had a propensity to run head first into danger. No calculations needed.)

There’d been two beats for the dog to process it’s chew toy was in Spencer’s arms. To process that Spencer made a better victim. That Spencer’s throat and limbs were softer and easier to tear. Thankfully, he’d scrambled back enough that when the dog launched, it didn’t catch flesh. It chomped on air. Less than three inches from him. 

Fangs. Tightened lips. Black gums. Slobber. 

The mutt could be equated to Stephen King’s The Sun Dog. Always hesitant to process his trauma, it’s the one book—gifted by you during a Halloween birthday for him—that sits untouched on his bookshelves. There’s too much of you in the inscription in the cover. Too much of that horrible mutt in the pages. 

The next part of the night blurred in his memories. In his near perfect memory, it blurred. Trauma, right? 

You’d screamed. You were in front of him. You had the dog’s chain in your hands. He was running. The dog was heavy in his arms. His arm stung. You were screaming. He should’ve gone back. 

Five god-awful minutes later, you’d come into the house. Limping. Clutching onto your arm. You’d taken one look at Spencer running his wrist under the tap and forgotten about your own injuries. Despite the blood dripping off your arm. Or the quiet yelp every time you stretched. You’d barely taken ‘I’m fine, you’re the one bleeding’ as a reason to not bandage him up first. 

The only thing that calmed down the dream every time he had it was the memory of holding your hand while you got stitches. How your face pinched with the pain. How you’d said, ‘next time, it’s your turn to take the bullet.’ How he’d smiled and promised. 

Spencer watches the clock tick by and decides it’s too late to go back to sleep. Hotch’ll be up in an hour. No need to delay his start. Women were dying. Women you would’ve been friends with.

#

“Okay, crime-fighters, I found our connection,” Garcia chirps over the speaker phone. “All of our victims attended very specialised dog training courses at a facility just outside of DC. The owner said they’d send in one of their trainers to talk to you. Should be there anytime now.”

“What kind of specialised training?” Emily asks. Spencer feels like he should be contributing, should be processing any of this, but his head is pounding. He doesn’t have a hangover, but god does it feel like it. 

Garcia hums as she types. “It’s a military facility. Awww, they’ve got puppy pictures on their website!”

“Garcia—“

“Right, right. It’s a top notch facility and oh! A bunch of the FBI dogs graduate from there. I wonder if they get little caps and gowns and—“

“Hey, baby girl, the trainer’s here. We gotta run,” Morgan interrupts, though he’s all smiles to stare at whomever is plaguing his interest. 

There’s another squeal of please get puppy pictures before the call cuts and Spencer finally has the self preservation to look. And god does he look. 

15 years has made no difference on your skin and he can’t believe he’s not staring at you from across a lecture hall. The only indication you’ve changed is the nervous smile you’ve plastered on and the dog at your side. Every fun fact about german shepherds instantly crosses his mind and he can’t help but drop his jaw a little further. 

It sinks to the floor when you spot him and wave. You wave. At him. In front of coworkers. 

He’s out of his seat before he can stop himself. That easy smile reserved for movie nights falls back into place on your lips. Twinkles in your eyes. 15 years haven’t passed. Maybe he needs to check for pimples again. 

“Y/n,” he croaks and the same time his name leaves your lips. The dog at your side stands and you correct the gesture with a harsh word in what he’s sure is German. 

“FBI, huh?” Your eyes trail over every inch of him, crossing your arms in a relaxed, familiar kind of way. “I expected more math, Mr. I Like Derivatives.”

“The shepherd there doesn’t look like finance either, y/n,” he teases back like no time has passed. Like he doesn’t immediately feel incredibly guilty for ditching you for the academy. 

“Oh come on,” you huff, “you really think that I was cut out for an office job? I lasted six months.”

And before he can warn you, even think about warning you about the team that’s slowly creeping up behind him, they are all suddenly there. Very keen on knowing the ins and outs of how you know Dr. Spencer Reid. 

“Reid, you gonna introduce us?” Morgan smirks, clapping a painful hand on Spencer’s shoulder. You busy yourself with petting the dog at your hip, looking everywhere but Morgan’s insistent gaze. 

“Guys, this is my friend y/n from college.” 

JJ raises an eyebrow at the lack of explanation, but plows ahead with introductions. Takes charge of guiding you to an interview room. Gets through the entire interview without once asking about your relationship with him. 

Morgan watches Spencer rubbing the scars and makes the leap. “You okay, kid?” 

Spencer breaks from staring at your face as you talk about getting your start in Germany—Germany—and swallows. This was fine. It’s okay to tell his friend—his brother—about the story he’s never really talked about. 

“I stupidly put myself in the middle of a dog fight,” Spencer grits out, flexing and un-flexing his fingers. Every scar burns and he can’t help but stare at your smile again. “Y/n saved my life. She choked out the dog, Morgan, before he got a hold of me. Left the hospital with 12 stitches.”

“Oh,” was his all too helpful response. They both turned back to the interview. How everything jovial about your entire countenance shifted once JJ started mentioning the victims. 

“Look, Agent Jareau,” you say, leaning dangerously far away from the conversation, “They are—they were really smart women with some dangerous dogs. I don’t know—I just—there’s a lot of sickos out there.”

Every profiler within a 20 mile radius can hear the change in tone, can hear the fear. Spencer knows a lot can change in 15 years, but he thought for sure you’d never become a serial killer. He doesn’t know if it’s all his years in the bureau or if he’s still too attached to you, but you don’t seem like the killer. Not like JJ seems to think so. Sure, you’re terrified, but the dog you have is nosing your arm. Giving you big ole puppy eyes. Spencer doesn’t think a serial killer can pour that much into a relationship with an animal. 

“What do you mean?” JJ clocks the movement and switches to a maternal type of body language, tone. “Is there something going on?”

Your hand pauses on the dog’s head, and it noses your hand into action. “I, uh, just got a weird letter two weeks ago. It wasn’t—it was just weird. Off-putting.”

“Right before the first victim,” Spencer mutters. Weird letters indicated stalking. Victims with you as a central point meant stalking. Stalking meant you were probably next. Oh, god, you were next. 

JJ stretched a hand across the table and took yours. “You’ll get through this. You’ll get through this, y/n.”

#

Spencer didn’t know what to do with his hands. It was so much worse than normal. Should he stand? But what should he do with his hands because crossing them seemed too defensive? Or should he just sit down? But where? And was that rude?

Instead, he just took the cup of tea you offered and followed you like a lost puppy. Granted, it was your house and he was definitely lost. He also felt vaguely at home—there were a decent amount of bookshelves by his standards and even more mismatched furniture than he had. The house was well cared for and when you sat him down on your couch, you swept away a stack of training manuals, all sporting worn covers. 

Was it wrong to feel like he was settling onto your old apartment couch for movie nights?

You puff out a breath of air and lean your head dramatically into the back of the couch. “So, since you’re my FBI escort, is it wrong to ask if you still like cheesy 90s movies?”

He shakes his head. Grins. “You still have Legally Blonde?”

You just giggle as you head for a stack of movies. You strike up some conversation as you rummage and he knows he’s hooked all over again. It’s going to take weeks to get over you again. It’d taken months the last time, and he feels slightly less attached this time. But did he really think it would take more than a simple question about the latest thing he’s read? He wishes he knew you better, just as well as you seem to still know him. 

Though by the end of the movie, you’ve both returned to your college days. Practically curled into each other’s side. You still have horrible commentary about the movie, peppered in with Spencer’s annoying movie trivia. If it was anyone else, he figures, he would’ve been kicked out long ago. 

You still distinctly smell of vanilla, flailing the scent around as you move closer and further and closer again. You wear enthusiasm with your whole body and if you aren’t turning rapidly between facing Spencer and the movie, how could you possibly begin to explain correctly? 

Your shoulder keeps a constant pressure against his, your knees half over his thigh. There’s too many instances of hollering and laughing that you grab onto his knee to steady yourself. If this hadn’t been a protective detail, he might’ve lost his mind. 

Thank god for focus. Work. Work. Work. Not your hands on his knee. Definitely not your smile as you declare your affection for scented resume stationary. Totally not how hot it’s getting under your too affectionate gaze. 

“Spence, I really missed this,” you whisper, nudging your shoulder with his. “I know it’s weird to be thrown together after 15 years, but I—I missed you.”

“I—“ missed you too; fell in love with you in college; think I love you now. 

But there’s no time for heartfelt declarations when someone’s incessantly banging on the door. Spencer’s got half a mind to get the door for you, holster his gun, focus on keeping you safe. The banging doesn’t soften as he calls out that he’s on his way. If anything it gets worse. 

And it should’ve been the first red flag of the night. 

Spencer opens the door and thinks very loudly, “why the fuck do I always run headfirst into danger?” 

Their un-sub, a buzzcut that looks more Army that not, shakes a pistol at Spencer and demands to be let inside. There’s only so many ways to defuse the situation, so he back ups, tucks you behind him. Their un-sub winds a little tighter, shaking like one of those monkeys with cymbals. 

“McLaggen?” you whimper behind Spencer and the Army man fires a shot into the floor. You grip tighter onto Spencer’s shirt, digging in your fingers dangerously close to his skin. 

The buzzcut is red, boiling over with rage, words bubbling out of his throat. “Y/n, I just can’t stand to see you with them. You never notice me. You’re always working, so I thought I’d get your attention. Cut the competition. I just—you mean so much to me, y/n. You mean too much.”

Spencer is sure he won’t remember this day accurately as he pushes you just a little further behind him. He’s about to do something so incredibly stupid. Dear lord, why the fuck is he like this? And he lunges. 

The gun’s trapped in both of their hands. There’s one more bullet fired—at the ground he’s sure. There’s a squeak of fear. Just enough of a distraction. One more ounce of weight thrown around. One more lasting punch. McLaggen lands on the floor. The gun skitters away. McLaggen groans as he’s handcuffed.

You gasp and he realises immediately that he’s bleeding. That he’s on the floor. That there is a bullet lodged in his thigh. Again. 

One string of swears later, you’re on the phone with 911. Yes, he’s shot. Yes, there’s another in handcuffs. No, I’m not a whore, send the damn ambulance.  

You take his hand as he lays there, much like he did in the hospital 15 years ago. Unlike then, you’ve got tears pricking at your eyes. You’re sniffling like a school girl, and he’s not sure if you’ve said that aloud. 

“Spencer!” You wipe a stray tear. Squeeze his hand too tightly. “Why the hell, you freakin’ moron, did you take a bullet for me?”

He laughs, bubbling up out of his chest before he can stop it. You are too pretty to be this upset at his laughter. You are too lovely to be worried about him. To still be worried, like nothing has changed one bit. 

Every inch of him is trembling. Blood loss and bullets are bitches.

“Y/n,” he wheezes through dry lungs and more leg pain than he remembers there being, “I promised.”

You blink your eyes. What the hell are you talking about, Spencer Reid, you absolute idiot?

“I promised I’d take the next bullet. In the hospital.” He grins, groans as he moves to drag you into a hug. “I’m a man of my word, y/n, and I promise that if I keep the leg, we’re going out. Properly.”

“You’re lucky I like you,” you grumble into his ear and squeeze his neck tighter. If the paramedics don’t bother to pull you off, who’s to say you won’t stay like that forever? Attached to the loveable, danger prone idiot, who traded dog bites for bullet holes?

[certainenthusiastfan]

Serenity wheeler headcanons:

- she was born in America like Joey in New York City and lived there till she was two and Joey was five when their parents moved back to their fathers home country in Japan.

- her eye disease was retinoblastoma, a rare cancer that affected her eyes but her parents and doctors couldn’t figure it out at first because it was a rare disease. So they assumed she had glaucoma or degeneration, but on the day she learned the time has come, the doctors finally found out her diagnosis, which led to her making the video tape as she wanted to see him one more time before not only going blind, but when she dies from her illness.

-Serenity is a straight A student thanks to the encouragement (pressure) from her mother who wanted her to become successful despite losing her sight. But when her mother got the news that her daughters illness was cancer and she might not make it, her mother was devastated thinking her daughters future was gone. But after getting the surgery and her eyesight repaired, Serenity decided to not make her whole life about school and started to go out and make friends, something that irked her mother.

-Serenity is the holder of the red eyes aka like kisara holds the blue eyes. When she recovered from surgery, her health improved and she started to feel more energy and raw emotions she never felt before. It started to come out whenever she and her mother got into fights about which schools her mom wants her to go to and who to marry, but one day when her mother remarked how Joey was a bad influence on her and to not call him so much, she turned pale when she saw her daughters eyes turn red as she hissed “I’ve spent almost seven years from him while dad was beating him and you left him with that man! you don’t get to keep me from him anymore when it was thanks to him I can see and I’m still alive with a chance for a normal life! “

-Serenity is a terrible cook due to not learning how to do so as her mother saw that she should do it for her daughter. But Serenity started to teach herself at her friends house after her surgery as her mother still won’t let her do anything.

-Serenity was sheltered after the divorce by her mother as she feared Serenity would get hurt by a man like she was with her ex husband (while believing Joey would be no different) so Serenity wasn’t allowed to date during her time at the hospital. Her mother was baffled and irritated that Duke Devlin showed up at their doorstep as Serenity went with him to the movies.

-Serenity starts standing up for herself more at school since her surgery thanks to the courage Joey and his friends gave her. From the bullies who picked on her for her bad eyesight (and jealousy cause Serenity was the most beautiful girl at school), the teachers that made her uncomfortable and her mother who she had kept the peace for years to be a filial daughter.

-Serenity was in the swim team at her school before her sight started getting worse. Being in the water reminded her of the beach Joey took her to before the divorce, and she hoped to see him again so they could go swimming and show her new skills. It was one of the few things she could do independently without her mother hovering over her.

-She found the hospital bill, saw that her surgery wasn’t three million dollars, but two thousand instead. She showed her mother thinking the hospital made a mistake, only to see her mother become pale and full of fear. That’s when she found out her mother lied about the cost of the surgery when she’d found out Joey wanted to help in hopes of keeping him away. That confession followed other truths that came, her parents weren’t divorced and she kidnapped Serenity and left Joey when as an American born citizen, they weren’t bound to the laws of japans custody laws. Serenity couldn’t remember what happened next, but the next thing she knew was that she had a suitcase in her hand and was on her way to the airport while her mother was running after the cab she was in.

-Serenity meets Arthur and Rebecca when she arrived in Japan and realized Joey was in Egypt. They let her stay with them as she told them her situation with her and joeys mother. The next day, Arthur informed Serenity that he contacted his lawyer to negotiate transfer of custody from her mother to him, along with her handing over the left over money that Joey got from duelist kingdom in exchange to not report her to human services and going to prison.

-Serenity was happy to see the others again when they returned from the ceremonial duel, when Joey asks what she’s doing here and if their mom knew, she tells him “we don’t have to worry about that.��� When Joey goes to her new house that Arthur had her stay in, she breaks down and tells Joey everything. She cried in joeys arms that night.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Treat Your S(h)elf: Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger (2016)

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.”

- Sebastian Junger,  Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

The phenomenon of tribal solidarity is the subject of Sebastian Junger’s enthralling book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. Junger offers a rich but unevenly researched patchwork of history, psychology, and anthropology to explore the deep appeal of the tribal culture throughout history. The result is less of a tour de force book that I would have expected from the likes of Sebastian Junger than an interesting and thought provoking read. Certainly it should be read by anyone interested in the human condition.

As a British ex-military veteran and a fan of Junger’s other books I naturally found it fascinating.The memory of my most recent tour in Afghanistan was still raw upon my return to Britain. Although the book really focuses on returning American army servicemen and their integration back into the American ‘tribe’ there were several themes that I and many others who had seen war could readily identify with.

“Tribe” is not a typical Junger book. He doesn’t tell one knockout story, as he did in the “The Perfect Storm,” which made him rich and famous, or as he did in “War,” which — along with his documentaries “Restrepo” and “Korengal” — established him as one of the world’s most mesmerising chroniclers of the Afghanistan war. Rather, he gives us an extended-play version of an article he wrote for for Vanity Fair — one that’s part ethnography, part history, part social science primer, part cri de coeur. Junger previously served as a war correspondent for Vanity Fair, embedding for long stretches at remote American outposts in Afghanistan’s frightful Korengal valley. This experience may help explain his interest in the intimate bonds that define tribal societies as well as the despair that can come from being wrenched out of a situation that makes those bonds necessary.

Junger’s premise is simple: Modern civilisation may be awesome, giving us unimaginable autonomy and material bounty. But it has also deprived us of the psychologically invaluable sense of community and interdependence that we hominids enjoyed for millions of years. It is only during moments of great adversity that we come together and enjoy that kind of fellowship — which may explain why, paradoxically, we thrive during those moments. (In the six months after Sept. 11, Junger writes, the murder rate in New York dropped by 40 percent, and the suicide rate by 20 percent.)

“I do miss something from the war,” Bosnian journalist Nidzara Ahmetasevic tells Sebastian Junger halfway through the book. Ahmetasevic is talking about the wartime closeness she shared with friends in a basement bomb shelter in besieged Sarajevo. “The love that we shared was enormous,” Ahmetasevic says. “I missed being close to people, I missed being loved in that way.”

The sentiment lies at the heart of Tribe, a book offering a surprising thesis about the ways humans have traded communal belonging for excessive safety.

Junger gets a considerable amount done in a quick 133 pages: Tribe posits a reason why white settlers found life among Native American tribes appealing, theorises about false PTSD claims among returned U.S. veterans, and conveys the author’s equality-minded view of how heroic behaviour varies between genders — all in addition to remarks on hitchhiking, attachment parenting, Junger’s dad’s opinion of military service, and more. It’s an awful lot of ground to cover in such a short book, and it’s inevitable that Tribe would either feel inchoate and sketched or else aggravatingly dense. Because Junger is an adventurous storyteller (rather than, say, an academic theoretician), he opts for the former.

It’s not necessarily a good thing. The book’s lightness makes it accessible, an easy entry point to weighty subject matter. But its concision can make Tribe feel breezy even as it discusses life and death — if not sometimes confusing.

As a former anthropology major, Mr. Junger takes a special interest in tribal life. He notes that a striking number of American colonists ran off to join Native American societies, but the reverse was almost never true. He describes the structure and values of hunter-gatherer groups, including the ones that lasted well into the 20th century, like the !Kung in the Kalahari.

Unfortunately, these parts of the book are also the dullest and most problematic. There’s a numbingly familiar quality to much of the social science research he cites. It is not exactly news that nations with large income disparities are less happy than those without them, or that group cooperation increases levels of oxytocin, the bonding hormone. He notes, for example, that American mothers in the 1970s had a level of skin-to-skin contact with their babies that traditional societies would consider criminally low. Fair enough. I wonder, though, if he realises that in saying this he’s crashing open the gate for every helicopter parenting (or attachment-parenting) demagogue out there? And that parents who actually have to go to work for a living - and therefore can’t have their babies pinned to their chests all day long for three years straight - will read these words and start rolling the eyes back in disbelief.

Though Junger cautions against romanticising tribal cultures, he sometimes does exactly that, and in ways that can be annoying.  Tribe aptly opens with Benjamin Franklin’s observation, decades before the American Revolution, that more than a few English settlers were “escaping into the woods” to join Indian society. Franklin noticed that emigration seemed to go from the civilised to the tribal, but rarely the other way around. White captives of the American Indians, for instance, often did not wish to be repatriated to colonial society. At this distance, it is simply astonishing that so many frontiersmen would have cast off the relative comforts of civilisation in favour an “empire wilderness” rife with Stone Age tribes that, as Junger notes, “had barely changed in 15,000 years.”

The small but significant flow of white men — they were mostly men — into the tree-line sat uncomfortably with those who stayed behind. Without indulging the modern temptation to romanticise what was a blood-soaked way of life, Junger hazards an explanation for the appeal of tribal culture. Western society was a diverse and dynamic but deeply alienating place. (Plus ça change…) This stood in stark contrast to native life, which was essentially classless and egalitarian. The “intensely communal nature of an Indian tribe” provided a high degree of autonomy — as long as it didn’t threaten the defence of the tribe, which was punishable by death — as well as a sense of belonging. Tribe is then essentially a critique of modern civilisation, beginning with Junger’s observation of the inexorable appeal of Native American way of life to early settlers (“The intensely communal nature of an Indian tribe held an appeal that the material benefits of Western civilisation couldn’t necessary compete with”).

“The question for Western society isn’t so much why tribal life might be so appealing - it seems obvious on the face of it - but why Western society is so unappealing.” Junger is making a provocative point, but he is no provocateur. He swiftly justifies this jarring idea:

On a material level it is clearly more comfortable and protected from the hardships of the natural world. But as societies become more affluent they tend to require more, rather than less, time and commitment by the individual, and it’s possible that many people feel that affluence and safety simply aren’t a good trade for freedom.

All of these points have been covered in other, heavier books. Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday examines traditional tribal lifestyles’ usefulness in the present day. The entanglement of war with human closeness and purpose is the focus of Chris Hedges’s War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. (Both Hedges and Junger include the same anecdote, in fact, about a teenage couple in besieged Sarajevo, that dies, sniper-shot, on the banks of the Miljacka River.) Junger also briefly mentions the work of seminal disaster researcher Charles Fritz, noting that Fritz could find almost no examples of mass panic during large-scale disasters. This plays into his overarching point that difficult experiences can be unifying rather than shattering. The exact same studies by Fritz and fellow researchers — and that exact same, crucial point — are detailed in Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant A Paradise Built in Hell.

Junger uses these insights towards another point. “Because modern society has almost completely eliminated trauma and violence from everyday life, anyone who does suffer these things is deemed to be extraordinarily unfortunate,” he writes. “This gives people access to sympathy and resources but also creates an identity of victimhood that can delay recovery.” This is an important observation. It, too, resonates quite closely with previous work - in this case Harvard psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman’s seminal book Trauma and Recovery, which remarks that “to hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins victim and witness in a common alliance.”

At best what Junger tries to achieve, then, is to assemble parts of all those books into one slim volume. So much the better for the busy reader. Unfortunately, Junger’s quick look at violence, trauma, and modern anomie also omits important information from other books, and as a result ends up on shaky ground, failing to consider counterpoints or bring its own arguments to a close.

Junger in the second half of the book proceeds through an examination of how disastrous or violent circumstances can create similar human closeness, and includes a discussion of how our society’s distancing itself from such harsh conditions has inadvertently sharpened those events’ capacity to traumatise the people who endure them.

War is hell, so this scourge of loneliness may seem the inevitable price for those who fight in them. The second half of Tribe insists that this impression is gravely mistaken. “Studies from around the world show that recovery from war is heavily influenced by the society one belongs to,” Junger observes. Iroquois warriors, for instance, did not have to contend with much alienation because the line between warfare and normal Indian society was vanishingly thin. This is not to deny that the Iroquois were traumatised by combat, but it was generally acute PTSD, limited in duration and distress. Their trauma was ameliorated by the fact that the trauma was shared by the entire tribe.

War, then, for all of its brutality and ugliness, satisfies some of our deepest evolutionary yearnings for connectedness. Platoons are like tribes. They give soldiers a chance to demonstrate their valour and loyalty, to work cooperatively, to show utter selflessness.

Is it any wonder that so many of them say they miss the action when they come home?

Part of the takeaway from this book is that regarding military service as a source of permanent psychiatric disability is incorrect for most (American) soldiers. Junger includes a lengthy discussion of how the U.S. Veterans Administration mishandles former soldiers’ mental health issues, and how America’s cultural misunderstanding of war plays into that deleterious milieu. The information isn’t wrong per se, but what it has to do with the rest of the romanticising of foregone tribal way of life, etc., or why that necessitates anything more than the 2015 Vanity Fair article from which the book sprung is never quite made clear. Worse, Junger says that the low rate of combat engagement among U.S. soldiers means their diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder often aren’t real - but he fails to consider that some soldiers develop PTSD from military sexual trauma, or from other adverse experiences outside of combat or before their enlistment.

Worse, he seems to misunderstand the diagnosis entirely. Here, as in the Vanity Fair article, Junger describes his own bout with what he calls “classic short-term PTSD,” departing from this insight to further dissect trauma and the ways modern society misunderstands it. The problem is, there really is no such thing as “short-term PTSD.” It sounds like what Junger had was post-traumatic stress, a weeks - or months - long psychological adaptation to adverse events (in his case, exposure to war) that typically resolves on its own.

Although psychological care can sometimes be relevant, most mental health professionals don’t regard this as an illness. (Tellingly, Junger’s approach to his diagnosis involved little more than an acquaintance’s ad hoc comment at “a family picnic.”) Post-traumatic stress disorder is only diagnosable after three to six months, does not often go away on its own, and can endure for a lifetime if untreated. The implication that Junger’s case is typical PTSD is misleading - and to some extent, calls his conclusions into question.

The problems in his argument go even deeper. “In Bosnia — as it is now — we don’t trust each other anymore; we became really bad people,” Ahmetasevic tells Junger. “We didn’t learn the lesson of the war, which is how important it is to share everything you have with human beings close to you.” Junger’s thesis is that other cultures (the “Stone-Age tribes” white settlers once joined) did learn that lesson. But he assumes that violence is innate to humans and necessary for human closeness, never parsing evidence that it is not. And he doesn’t examine what this Bosnian journalist means by “really bad,” and how becoming so after the war might have arisen directly from the painful, long-lasting effects of the severe trauma Junger doesn’t quite seem to believe in.

If there is any doubt on this point, consider the alarming rates of PTSD among our warrior class, and the desire among many of them to return to war — a subject on which Junger has been at the leading edge of the public discussion. When combat vets return home, the alienation and aimlessness of modern society aggravates their psychological traumas and prompts them to yearn for the brotherhood of combat. It’s not for nothing that a recent book on post-traumatic stress is entitled The Evil Hours.

Many soldiers actually miss war. “Adversity,” he writes, “often leads people to depend more on one another, and that closeness can produce a kind of nostalgia for the hard times.” Soldiers go from a close-knit group in which everyone has a purpose to a society in highly individualised lifestyles are “deeply brutalising to the human spirit.” Soldiers who come home to situations in which there is no social support from family and community are more likely to suffer PTSD than others.

Thanking veterans for their service aggravates the problem, in Junger’s opinion. “If anything, these token acts only deepen the chasm between the military and the civilian population by highlighting the fact that some people serve their country but the vast majority don’t.” Tickets to games and other such perquisites can incentivise veterans to see themselves as victims, making their reintegration into society much more difficult.

What they really need is the one thing that will make them feel like valuable members of society: jobs. In their tribe-like military units, they each had a specific function without which the group could not perform. The worst thing that can happen to them when they return is to feel useless, marginalised. The suicide rate in America mirrors the unemployment rate, Junger points out. The best protection against devastating depression is meaningful work.

“Ex-combatants shouldn’t be seen - or be encouraged to see themselves - as victims,” writes Junger. Lifelong disability payments for PTSD, which is treatable and usually not chronic, actually debilitate veterans, Junger claims. In war, the passivity of victimhood can be deadly, he explains. Turning veterans into victims when they return is not only confusing but also destructive because it erases their sense of self. Instead of sympathy, “veterans need to feel that they’re just as necessary and productive back in society as they were on the battlefield.”

Of course much of this book is really around the American experience of war and the experiences of American veterans returning home. So some points don’t quite stick with either British or European experiences. For example neither British or other European societies thank veterans for their service as a matter of course. Of course there are special days to commemorate major war events and even an armed forces day but on a general day to day basis one doesn’t go up to a military person to thank them for their service probably because British and European servicemen and their service don’t enjoy a privileged standing. Respected and admired yes, but not deified. How British and other European countries take care of their returning veterans is hard to detail as the experience varies in terms of disability allowances and other measures. Certainly a misunderstanding of mental trauma or PTSD of returning veterans has led sometimes to a criminal mismanaging of taking care of those most affected. Again, it varies from country to country.  

Contemporary America is a considerably less consolidated society than it used to be. Cultural diffusion and economic stratification have increased the isolation felt by those who have borne the heat and burden of battle. I won’t a forget photograph shown to me by an older brother who had served with distinction in Iraq. He made a few American friends from the US soldiers serving there alongside and one day he was shown something that captured the dark humour and cynicism of war. The photo captured a graffito scribbled on a wall in Ramadi, Iraq, that read: “America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war. America is at the mall.”

Multiple studies demonstrate that “a person’s chance of getting chronic PTSD is in great part a function of their experiences before going to war.” The relationship between combat and trauma seems to be a murky one. For instance, “combat veterans are, statistically, no more likely to kill themselves than veterans who were never under fire.” Junger says that even a significant number of Peace Corps volunteers report suffering severe depression after their return home, especially if their host country was in a state of emergency when they did. In Junger’s telling, particular burdens endured by socially disadvantaged Americans - from a poor educational background to chaotic broken family life - can make a candidate especially susceptible to PTSD. Indeed, these risk factors “are nearly as predictive of PTSD as the severity of the trauma itself.”

The decline of social order and solidarity has contributed to a loss of what researchers call “social resilience.” This has simultaneously supplied more potential candidates for PTSD and impaired society’s ability to help them recover. The United States must place a premium on boosting its levels of social resilience. Americans should no longer be content to simply thank veterans for their service; sporting events are not places of healing. Nor should they seek to outsource the responsibility to the federal government. The solution lies closer to home, in the mediating institutions of civil society — from families to churches to community and professional associations. I think this echoes the views of quite a few veterans in my experience with them.

More sensitively and perhaps controversially, ex-combatants shouldn’t be regarded, or encouraged to regard themselves, as victims. This I also agree with. America is still a tremendously affluent country, Junger writes, that can afford to perpetually care for a victim class of veterans dependent on government largesse, “but the vets can’t.” They have generally performed exemplary service for which they should be honoured, and they must know that their service is not over.

Next, Junger says, veterans (like most social animals) depend upon a sense of purpose that begins with a job and a position in society. Here the “hire vets” initiatives and retraining programs are necessary but insufficient. The traditional means of securing social resilience has been egalitarian social provision. Individualist America may blanch at that notion, but it should at least act to build a more open economy and inclusive culture where individuals can reliably advance by merit and develop social capital.

Not being an American I don’t wish to speak out of turn but as a veteran and especially in speaking with other British and foreign veterans I think Junger is on the right path. Victimhood and a lack of purpose are the unseen enemy that the returning veteran will continue to fight when he or she comes home.

To all this I would also that - arguably perhaps in America especially - a revival of national cohesion is needed if - as a nation that pays lip service to honour the sacrifices of its servicemen - it is to arrest the full savagery of battlefield trauma. This will require what Edmund Burke called “a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.”

One clue about how to achieve this can be found in the early pages of Tribe, when Junger tells an affecting anecdote about his father. Not long after the end of the Vietnam War, the author had received a Selective Service registration form in the mail, in case the United States government ever needed to conscript him into the military. When he announced that, if drafted, he would refuse to serve on political grounds, his father’s reaction caught him off guard. Although sternly opposed to the war in Indo-China, Junger’s father insisted that American soldiers had “saved the world” from fascism during World War II and many never came home. Junger writes;

“‘You don’t owe your country nothing,’ I remember him telling me. ‘You owe it something, and depending on what happens, you might owe it your life.’” This did not oblige anyone to enlist in an unjust war - “in his opinion, protesting an immoral war was just as honorable and necessary as fighting a moral one” - but it did mean that the country had just claims on its citizens, and refusing to sign a registration form constituted a dereliction of duty.

Year after year, Americans hear arguments for taking the stink out of their sulphurous political rhetoric. It would be better for congressional productivity. It would be better for our international dignity. It would be better for their national literacy, their local advocacy, their general civility and the future etiquette of their children. But the one argument I had not heard, until reading Junger’s book is that they should clean up their act for the sake of their returning troops.

Junger never makes this point explicitly. What he writes, simply, is this: After months of combat, during which “soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion and politics within their platoon,” they return to the United States to find “a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about - depending on their views - the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president or the entire U.S. government.” Soldiers go from a world in which they’re united, interconnected and indispensable to one in which they’re isolated, without purpose, and bombarded with images of politicians and civilians screaming at one another on TV and cable.

It’s a formula for deep despair. “Today’s veterans often come home to find that, although they’re willing to die for their country,” he writes, “they’re not sure how to live for it.”

With that, Mr. Junger has raised one of the most provocative ideas for bitterly divided Americans to grapple with without mentioning a single political candidate, or even a president, by name.

In this age of social and economic fragmentation, many of America’s disadvantaged fellow citizens have begun to chafe against an elite class - left and right - that often behaves as if it were exempted from the national compact. Junger only hints at the necessary leap beyond a social-psychological view to a political-economic analysis. He writes, "As great a sacrifice as soldiers make, American workers arguably make a greater one…. [w]orking in industries that have a mortality rate equivalent to most units in the US military." He suggests, "It may be worth considering whether middle-class American life - for all its material good fortune - has lost some essential sense of unity that might otherwise discourage alienated men from turning apocalyptically violent."

Nobody then should be surprised if the ranks of disaffected citizens – not least those who have borne arms in our name and in their defence - ultimately decide that the sensibility of the tribe is superior to their own.

As a proud Brit who is guilty at times of poking fun at America but borne out of sincere fondness and respect for America I do sincerely hope during these turbulent times that they are capable of coming together and recognising their tribal identity is to be Americans first and other labels (liberal or conservative or red state or blue state) whilst not inconsequential are not important enough to undermine the primary American tribal identity. They did it so marvellously after 9/11, but that feeling as we all know soon dissipated. It can’t afford to be a house divided from within when there are predatory wolves pawing at the door (I’m looking at you Russia and China). Junger correctly writes America is a strong nation, “The only one who can destroy us, is, well, us…..which means that the ultimate terrorist strategy would be to just leave us alone.”

Tribe is an important, thought-provoking book that encourages Americans to see its veterans and American society in a fresh light. Policymakers of all political stripes would do well to consider Junger’s arguments, for as long as they fail to fully integrate returning soldiers, everyone will continue to pay a high toll for their incredible service and sacrifice.

Junger’s “Tribe” even if it was written in 2016, remains relevant and serves as an important wake-up call. Let’s hope we all don’t sleep through the alarm. But this too brief and too scattershot book with an important message won’t get us all the way there. There is an old South African Zulu proverb, ‘If you want to go fast, go on your own. If you want to go further, go together’. It’s up to all of us.

[stillebesat]

Meeting Virgil (5x1) -Second Time

DECEMBER DRABBLES DAY 19 Sanders Shorts: Remy Sanders Sides: Virgil Blurb: A Special Delivery Prequel. -Five times Remy tried to give Virgil a child and the one time he succeeded. Inspiration: @book-of-charlie​ asked: What did Virgil mean by “the last 5 times?” Fic Type: STORK!AU, Winged!Remy Overall Fic Warnings: Bad Parenting implications, Injuries, Hitting, Spooky Themes  Taglist in Reblog. To Catch Up: First Time

Over the years Remy had found himself delivering children to their new parents in all sorts of places. In a variety of houses, the middle of camping trips, on cruise ships, and even one memorable moment on top of the Eiffel Tower. 

Remy grimaced as he ducked under yet another dripping branch of the millions in the forest he found himself in, the two month old baby boy, Henry, securely sheltered under his leather jacket to avoid getting soaked. 

At least the rain had let up an hour or so earlier, but he hated wandering through new growth forests like this. The trees and bushes were too close together for him to be able to effectively use his wings because the branches would snag them, slowing his already slow progress. 

He was vulnerable. And Remy didn’t like feeling vulnerable. Especially out here in a dark creepy forest.

“Who in their right mind would live in the middle of no---” An old dilapidated house suddenly appeared through the mists, like a creepy opening to a horror film. “--where.” Remy squeaked, eyes going wide, his wings wrapping around young Henry protectively as he hesitated on the edge of the trees. Was he about to encounter the Addams family or what?! 

But this is where the purple ribbon had lead, so it had to mean only good things would be found in that house. Right? It had to mean that the parents were--

A cold hand snaked out of the darkness slapping over Remy’s mouth muffling the scream that tore from his throat at the unexpected touch.

“Oh for the love of!” A familiar voice hissed in his ear as the hand dropped to his shoulder, brushing his wing as Remy was roughly turned around to see the glowering face of the Emo Edgelord who’d refused the baby girl back in NYC.

What the WHAT!? Of all the--

“What are you doing here?!” They both cried at the same time. 

The man growled, running a hand through his rain soaked hair. “I’m working, idiot, and heaven forbid if you’re the mysterious Mothman that’s been sighted I’m going to--”

Remy scoffed, pointing to himself. “Me? I just got here, genius.” His wings half spread before snapping shut. “I haven’t been in the backwoods of Virginia since the nineties!” And that had been a nightmare family vacation Remy would rather forget he had ever taken. 

“So what, you’re following me now?” The man demanded.

In retrospect...perhaps the purple line should have been an obvious sign, but how was Remy supposed to know it would be this guy when he chose the ribbon? 

Sure, he’d kept an eye out for purple ribbons to see if they would lead to him because Remy desperately wanted to prove his point that this Emo Nightmare would make an excellent dad.

But. 

He’d done over two hundred deliveries since their first encounter and while some of those ribbons had been purple and he may have followed every single one to see if they led to Mr. Rapunzel here--it wasn’t like he’d actively been seeking him out! 

Especially here. When they weren’t even in New York! 

Remy shook his head, scoffing. “Why in the world would I follow you---”

“Virge?” A distorted voice cracked over a walkie talkie at the man’s hip, interrupting them. “You still there, bud?” 

The man--Virge? Tensed, raising a warning finger. “Don’t say a word” He hissed as he grabbed the walkie, raising it to his mouth. He took a breath, voice getting slightly deeper as he spoke. “Still here, Mags, I haven’t died.” He glared at Remy releasing the button. “Yet.” He hooked the walkie back to his belt. “Why are you here ruining my investigation, Angel?” 

Remy rolled his eyes. “Not an Angel.” He smirked. “Nor the Mothman either.” Though if one of those was around he’d love to see this Mothman creature in person. 

“Riiight” Virge crossed his arms. “And your wings are white because…?” 

“I’m a S.T.O.R.K., Virge.” He pulled his black tipped wing to the side revealing the sleeping Henry. “Figured that one would be obvious to you.” From how he’d freaked out the last time, Remy doubted it would be something this guy would just forget. 

Virge tensed, going as pale as a vampire. “You brought a baby out here in the middle of nowhere?!” He hissed. “Are you crazy?! What if he catches a cold! Leather is hardly the warmest thing when it’s soaking wet and--”

Yadda yadda, Remy was well aware of the downsides to wearing leather. He’d been in his fair share of storms with that exact jacket afterall. “Well if you think you can do better.” He said holding little Henry out. “Then you take him, and wrap him in that grungy hoodie of yours. I’m sure that’s plenty warm.” 

Virge tensed but took a step forward, growling under his breath as he tugged at his hoodie, pulling it over his head. 

Huh. Was it really that easy? After how hard he had refused the baby girl, Remy had expected it to be more difficult to convince Sugarbee here to accept being a Dad--he flinched as the hoodie landed on his head.

“You shouldn’t be so smug.” Virge said tersely, rubbing his bare arms. “You look like a constipated cow. Now are you going to cover the kid or not?” 

A COW?!  

Remy let out his own growl of frustration, yanking the hoodie off to wrap it securely around Henry. He should have known. “Gurl! Why can’t you just take him?” He demanded. “I was led to you. You can’t deny that.” 

Red tinged the man’s cheeks as he glanced to the house, his grey eyes looking like the storm clouds swirling over their heads. “Oh sure, explain to my crew that I found a random baby in the middle of the woods while out looking for cryptids. That will go over real well.” Virge shook his head, taking three giant steps to the right, making a wide circle around Remy. “Get him to better parents than me, Eagle One, before he catches a cold.” 

Unbelievable. Remy whirled, wings spreading out. “He already has a good Dad, you Emo Nightmare, if you would just take him!” 

“Not a good Dad. I already told you.” Virge called back, the purple ribbon flashing to blue as he vanished deeper into the forest. 

Third Time

[hadtochangemyurlquick]

your writing is so so great! could I please request a one shot where maybe Toni falls of a cliff/gets injured badly in order to protect Shelby and her friends and they are insanely worried (both for Toni and Shelby’s mental wellbeing) JUST LIKE IN YOUR LAST ONE SHOT, I actually think the girls are the best thing Toni could ever get and she deserves all of the comfort and love

it’s 2.3k of hurt/comfort fresh off the presses. i have not even read it. initially it was gonna be a lot angstier but i couldn’t make the stakes high enough in that so we’re sticking with this for now. i’ll post it on a03 as soon as i get positive feedback bc i crave validation and also i ahve not eaten lunch and am running on three hours of sleep and if you’re wondering if that’s your fault. well.

Toni woke up and groaned, her head pounded and she was cold all over, shivers wracking her body.

She gave a slow cough, and dust rattled around in her lungs.

She was alive, at least. That was something.

Fuck, Shelby.

“Shelby?” Her voice was so hoarse it barely pierced the gloom, but it was clear. Toni was alone.

The worst of her injuries seemed to be her leg, which was trapped under a rock she didn’t have the leverage to move. She didn’t have the space to move at all actually. There was no light in the alcove, or the space between rocks she was in, but hopefully it wasn’t airtight.

Her head was bleeding, and her back was bruised, and there were scrapes up and down her arms, but she could really barely feel her leg.

There was water, which was very very bad, but it was only ankle deep, and the soft trickle she heard did not indicate she only had a few hours left.

The thunderstorm had come on suddenly, tropical ones sometimes do. It wasn’t Toni’s first time caught up in one, usually they were in the trees and they had to race for a nearby cave or the beach just in case lightning decided to strike. But she and Shelby had been by the cliffs, looking for more caves or maybe a place to get ten minutes to themselves.

The rain had dropped down like a hammer, the wind was strong enough it carried them both off their feet. Toni remembered, vaguely, being slammed into something hard. She grabbed Shelby’s hand and kept them going against it, wind and hail pelting them hard enough to bruise. She hadn’t heard the distant rumbling, stupid, but had shoved Shelby into a cave and at the wrong second her grip slipped and the wind picked up, and she was flung away.

She crawled into some pace between rocks and the rumble had been a mud slide. Everything was kinda hazy after that.

At least the storm seemed to have stopped. She rubbed her eyes and winced at the pain in her head. Probably a concussion.

God what if Shelby was buried too? What if Shelby was dead?

That was a nasty storm, what if the other girls were hurt, even if they were on the beach?

What if Toni died here, alone and cold and bleeding and hurt?

“Toni!” Someone screamed.

She closed her eyes, allowing herself to sink into the relief. From how far away they were, and muffled by the rock slide, she couldn’t recognize it, but she’d give anything that it was Shelby.

“Toni!”

She tried to call back but her voice wouldn’t let out much more than a rasp and a series of coughs that shook her to her spine.

She tried slamming her fist against the rock ceiling but that made the water at the bottom start trickling faster.

“Toni!”

The voice sounded further away and she began to panic, what if that was her last shot?

“Toni!”

She settled for slow scratching at the mud trapping her in and the voice started getting closer again.

“I think I hear something over here!” Someone called. “Toni, is that you?”

“Yes,” she tried to rasp out, “Yes, I’m here!”

“I can’t hear anything,” someone said.

She kept scratching.

“There’s definitely something there,” someone said. “Maybe it’s an animal or something.”

“She has to be around here somewhere,” someone said. “TONI!”

The water around her ankles was filling up faster, had almost reached her navel. The more she scratched the higher she got, the rocks behind her head felt less stable.

“Toni if that’s you knock twice okay?” Someone said.

She knocked twice.

“Guys she’s down here!”

There are more voices, scratches and banging around on top of her head. It all feels incredibly dangerous, like they might get sucked down too, but she doesn’t have a way to warn them.

In the end Dot managed to get them to their senses, got them to stand back and used the hatchet to slowly carve a hole in. It was enough for her to peer through and Toni realized what she must’ve looked like. Bloody and pale and broken.

“Yalright Toni?” Dot asked.

Toni shook her head, and with the penlight she knew Dot could see it. At least the fresh air was nice, she suspected the ventilation wasn’t as great as she thought it initially was.

Dot pulled away to address everyone. “Okay guys, it’s filling with water which means we have to be super careful.” Dot reappeared, “Any major injuries?”

“Leg,” Toni tried to rasp out.

“What’s that?”

Toni pointed at her leg.

“Ah shit, is it trapped?” Dot asked.

Toni nodded.

Dot disappeared again and her voice was too quiet for Toni to make out.

“Toni?” It was Martha, which at least meant she was okay. “We’re gonna get you out of there you just have to stay calm.”

Where the fuck was Shelby?

The hole they dug got a little wider, she could hear Dot over-exerting herself, Fatin simply exerting herself, Leah going into hyper drive. Nora gave instructions from the sidelines and Martha kept talking to her.

Where was Shelby where was she.

When Dot’s hand finally managed to reach her hand Toni let out her first audible noise in hours and it was a scream of pain. Her leg felt like it was falling out of her socket and she collapsed back into the water with a splash, it now at chest height.

“Toni,” Martha’s voice returned, “We might have to amputate.”

“No,” Toni rasped, tears streaked down her dusty face. “Please no.”

She knew they couldn’t hear her but still. She found herself begging, begging like she never had before.

“Shelby wants to talk to you,” Martha said, she sounded unsure. “Is that okay?”

Toni nodded, as aggressively as she could. So Shelby was okay, it was her voice in the beginning.

“Toni,” there was Shelby’s voice, she almost closed her eyes at the sound of it, but she didn’t want to miss her eyes. “Toni I’m here.” She reached her hand out and Toni bent as far as she could, letting their fingers intertwine in a loose hold before she collapsed back down again. “We’re gonna get you out of this, okay?”

Toni wiped at her eyes. “Shelby.”

“I promise,” Shelby said, “you’re gonna be just fine.”

They managed to carve her out, Toni wasn’t quite sure how. She faded out after a few hours, when the water reached her chin. When she woke up she was back on the beach, in clean clothes in the shelter, her leg was elevated and wrong looking, and her head was in Martha’s lap.

“You’re awake,” Martha said, Toni’s hair was probably filled with a million different braids. “Let me get Dot, alright?”

Toni nodded and to her horror tears started streaming down her cheeks the moment Martha left. Maybe it was exhaustion, pain, but it felt like fear. That all consuming crippling terror.

“Hey,” it was Shelby’s voice, not Dot’s, that came through the shelter. She spotted the tears immediately and Toni closed her eyes, willing them to stop. A soft, calloused finger, wiped them away and Toni leant into the touch so desperate and cold and her arms wrapped around Shelby as Shelby lifted her just a little into her arms.

“You’re alright,” Shelby said. “I’ve got you.”

Toni was aware she was shivering and shaking, her entire body felt weaker than it ever had.

“I’ve got meds for you, alright?” Shelby said. She pulled away. “You need to eat somethin first, and drink somethin, you’re probably dehydrated.”

She helped Toni sit up against one of Fatin’s balled up sweaters and gave her some of the goat jerky Shelby had managed to smoke. Toni chewed slowly and felt exhausted afterwards, and didn’t argue when Shelby handed her a pill and some water. She fell asleep to Shelby’s hands caressing hers.

Things faded in and out. Shelby and Martha were both there as much as they could be but it was Rachel who took up the mantel more often than not. One hand meant taking care of Toni was about as productive as she could get.

“How does the leg feel?” Rachel asked, when Toni was more lucid than usual.

“I can’t feel it,” Toni said. “Probably not a great sign.”

“Well I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Dot said we got to wean you off of the painkillers because you might get addicted.”

Toni rubbed her eyes, the last thing she wanted to think about right now was her mother.

“I’m also probably blowing through the stash,” she said.

“Hopefully this is the last major injury we get,” Rachel said. Toni looked at her. “Fine. Be that way.”

They were silent for awhile, Rachel picking at some of her bandages and Toni focusing on the sounds of the waves crashing against the shore.

“I don’t think Shelby’s a homophobe,” Rachel said. Toni looked at her, “I know I know but—she was really freaked out when we found her. She’s definitely got a major guilt complex or something, but I don’t think she hates you. At least not anymore.”

“Okay,” Toni swallowed hard.

“I just mean—ugh,” Rachel went from picking at her bandage to picking at her clothes. “Listen I’m not saying you have to forgive her but just like. You didn’t see her once we found you. She was freaking out man, kept saying how god had taken you. Remind me never to go to Texas like she and Dot keep inviting me?”

“Can’t be all bad,” Toni said, ignoring everything else Rachel just said. “I hear the Mexican food is great.”

Rachel hummed.

“Hey,” Toni kept her voice soft when Shelby came in that night with dinner. “I wanna talk to you.”

“Eat first,” Shelby said. “I need to check your scrapes. How does your head feel?”

“Like I have a mild concussion,” Toni said.

Shelby re-bandaged the worst of the scrapes, and cleaned them again. A lot of them were so bad they were yellow with pus, and likely Toni would have wicked scars there.

“Nora said it was an off shore hurricane, one of those that dies before it reaches the mainland. It was probably almost dead which is why it only last a few hours.”

“Oh,” Toni said. “Does that mean were close to somewhere?”

“It could, but it might mean we’re closer to Japan,” Shelby said. “How’s the leg?”

“I can’t feel it,” Toni said. Shelby nodded.

“Dot wants you to only use the meds to sleep,” Shelby said.

“It’s a good idea, with like—my mom and everything,” Toni looked away and Shelby took her hand.

“You know I don’t think less of you for that, right?”

Toni nodded.

“Good.”

They ate in relative quiet, for dessert there were lychees which Shelby had evidently picked up for the two of them if her blushing was anything to go by.

“I wanna talk to you about something,” Toni said at last. Shelby nodded. “Rachel was talking to me about how they found you.”

Shelby frowned, “alright?”

“Did you—“ Toni furrowed her brow, “Shelby did you really think god had taken me away or something?”

Shelby looked away away, fidgeting with that damned cross necklace. “Toni you didn’t see it.”

“Shelby I’m pretty sure I’m the only other one who did.”

Shelby shook her head, “No, no Toni you didn’t see it—not the way I did. The storm came on so suddenly, and there was lightning and thunder everywhere, and your hand was in mine but I turned around I just barely saw you go flying, like you were actually being sucked up into the sky.”

“But I’m okay,” Toni said.

“No,” Shelby kept shaking her head, “It was my fault. If I had held on a little tighter, or if I hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have been there at all.”

“I would still be on this island—“

“None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t been here,” Shelby said. “Don’t you see? I had feelings for you and you got food poisoning, we kissed and everyone nearly starved, Rachel got attacked by a shark after we had sex—Toni what more do you need?”

“Shelby,” Toni grabbed her hand and squeezed.

“I mean you got pulled away by Him when I was about to tell you I—“ Shelby cut herself off. “It’s a sign, is all. It’s a sign.”

“Shelby look at me.”

When Shelby does her eyes are red and wide and scared.

“Shelby do you really think God would kill me for this,” Toni traced a thumb over Shelby’s hand. “For loving you?”

Shelby swallowed hard. “I can’t rightly say.”

“Shelby,” Toni’s voice cracked, and she couldn’t even blame it on the dust. “You really think he’d do that? Kill some random ass teenage girl because she happened to love another teenage girl? I know I don’t know a lot about the Bible but I’m pretty sure Jesus was too busy turning water into wine to worry about if a couple of girls were kissing behind the church.”

Shelby kinda smiled at that and Toni ached to pull her into her arms, to run her fingers through her matted her and kiss her until the cows came home. Or the goats. But her body was too weak, and she had to settle for pressing a kiss to Shelby’s knuckles.

“I love you,” Toni said. “Now say it back.”

Shelby looked at the door to the tent, worrying her jaw, she looked back at Toni, “I love you too.”

She flinched and waited, but all they heard was the gentle crashing of distant waves and Shelby seemed to sag.

“I’m gonna be fine,” Toni said. “And we’re gonna be fine. And I love you.”

Shelby nodded, “I love you too.”