#i know i have ptsd from very specific things that happened and i live on a hospital path so every day i hear sirens

[willowfey]

starting to think maybe waking up with an anxiety stomachache every single morning and then needing to spend the entire day trying to get rid of said anxiety just to maybe have a few minutes in the evening of feeling relaxed before going to bed is perhaps not normal

[scoobydoodean]

dean would be the most dedicated boyfriend/husband & i hate the way people talk about him like he’s a player who could “never settle down”.. please he just needs a moment of affection 🥲

People love to rewrite literally every single fucking thing that happened with the Braedens into various made up stories passed on as fact, but when Dean was with the Braedens, he treated Ben like a son. He taught him how to work on cars. He cooked Lisa and Ben breakfast every morning. He contributed to the household. They specifically wrote a scene where a pretty waitress passed her number to Dean while he was out with a neighbor and Dean disposed of it without a second thought (6.01). He didn't leave the Braedens so he could go fuck someone else. He left because his presence put Lisa and Ben in danger and then soulless Sam (who had ulterior motives) convinced him he was going to ruin their lives and probably get them murdered and his PTSD went haywire and 6.01, 6.02, 6.05, and finally 6.21 reinforced all his fears about them being hurt because of The Curse Of Loving Dean Winchester, and it left him feeling so upset and scared of them being hurt that he thought it was better for their safety if he cut ties.

Long before all that, Dean was so in love with Cassie that he told her about hunting after just a couple of months and then he was heartbroken when she rejected him and he was willing to be vulnerable enough to tell her so directly. The idea of Dean as some kind of suave playboy who could never settle down because he likes to fuck and suck too much is just ???? Like quite arguably, Dean seeks out casual sex as a substitute for the affection he wishes he could share with a life partner, but liking sex and having casual hookups isn't a crime and doesn't preclude a person from being interested in a long-term relationship and/or a stable home (something we know Dean was actively aching for at various points from episodes like 1.13, 2.20, 3.10, 5.12, 5.17). It was that he felt he couldn't have those things because of the circumstances of his life, and the narrative repeatedly reinforced that belief, and Dean eventually settled into peace with the fact that he has a family anyway despite everything!! It just isn't a traditional family. And he also gets a stable home and his own room!!! It's just underground and warded so he feels safe and cosy. People not recognizing that Dean DOES have a family and a home carry the same confusion as John in 14.13 (who also—btw—always knew that Dean wanted a home THE MOST).

JOHN My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you – you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would… get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family. DEAN I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. It just isn't the traditional family!!! And Dean is very loyal to that family and he takes care of that family he is the hearth of the house!!!

[syzthefrizz]

Tips for writing dream sequences (from someone who has really vivid, weird dreams on a frequent basis)

My biggest pet peeve with fictional dream sequences is that they make too much sense!! They're too relevant! There's not enough random crazy stuff! That's not always unrealistic per se, but you are missing out on some of the fun ways you can reveal information about your character's mindset, fears, struggles, and future.

Most of my dreams have a goal or objective driving the plot, and it's usually urgent. Ex. "escape the huge storm on the horizon", "find a place to sleep for the night in an unfamiliar town", "find a bathroom". This is especially true of stress dreams.

Everything going on in the dream makes perfect sense to you during the dream. It doesn't feel like reality per se, but you think it is. You're living in a house full of vampires that could eat you at any moment? Seems legit.

Emotions and situations from the dreamer's life can/will find their way into dreams, with varying levels of subtlety. The dream could be about the stressful event itself, or it could be some sort of exaggerated metaphor. Ex. I was worried about whether I was a competent CS major while I was still trying to find a summer job/internship, and I was worried about what my professors must think of me. Such a good student on paper, still without summer plans. I dreamed that I ran into my professors all having lunch together at a restaurant (during a dream with a completely different storyline), and I was wearing my pajamas. They judged me.

Certain things are very hard to do in dreams. This could vary from person to person. For me, it's always driving (the brakes never work right), flying (I can't stay off the ground for very long), and running (it's like trying to run through waist-deep water).

People with PTSD may dream about the traumatic event happening differently than it actually happened. (Take this one with a grain of salt - I don't suffer from PTSD, I just research it sometimes so my blorbos can suffer accurately).

You can have a string of loosely connected or disconnected dream sequences back to back, each with an entirely different plot, setting, etc.

People can have reoccurring themes or plotlines in their dreams, which are often connected to their lives/psyche somehow. I frequently dream about running away from tornadoes and being in situations where there's some catastrophe coming but I'm the only one who understands that there's a problem and nobody will listen to me.

It's common for me to have a dream setting that I KNOW is someplace I'm familiar with, but it doesn't actually look like that place at all. Ex. "I dreamed that we were at my house, but it didn't look like my house..."

Dreams can end in cliffhangers. Sometimes I wake up right before I'm about to eat something delicious.

Sometimes people have dreams about doing things that they would never, ever do in real life, and they wake up feeling disgusted. This is Not a manifestation of their secret desires (*glares at Freud*).

Images are the most memorable parts of dreams. I forget the specific plot points, but I can still picture dozens of liminal spaces my brain has created, even years after I dreamed about it.

Dreams will fade from memory very quickly unless the dream had a strong impression on you, you write details about it down or you tell someone about it before you forget.

If you realize you're dreaming during your dream, sometimes you can control the dream going forward. This is called lucid dreaming. I've done it accidentally a couple times, and it's really hard to "hold on" to the dream and control it. I usually wake up soon after starting. With practice, you can get better at it.

Sometimes a normal/good dream can turn into a nightmare, and vice versa. Most of my dreams aren't really good or bad, they're something in between.

Your subconscious brain is CRAZY intuitive. We can argue over the existence of prophetic dreams (I've heard so many crazy stories), but at the end of the day, your subconscious brain knows things that you don't consciously know. If your character is in love with someone, their subconscious brain will know even if the character doesn't. Relationship problems? Deepest darkest fears and insecurities? Your brain knows. A dream predicted the downfall of my first relationship eight months before it happened, down to the reason why we failed. You can absolutely foreshadow this way. A character might subconsciously know what the consequences of their or other people's actions will be, understand things about the situation they're in, know things about the people they're interacting with, and more, despite their conscious realizations.

There are plenty of ways to make a dream sequence relevant to your story, but don't forget to add in some fun, random details. Character A is secretly in love with Character B? Have Character A dream about Character B confessing feelings to them while in a Vine Nostalgia themed restaurant over a plate of mac-n-cheese. The details are the fun part, and you can get as weird as you want. I once ran into my aunt in a dream, and she was wearing a backpack with a bunch of (fake?) hands sticking out of it, making a fan that rose above her back behind her head like some sort of peacock feather costume piece. I was so freaked out that I woke up. I dare you to get weirder than that.

Not everyone's brain works the same way. I have vivid, random, detailed, memorable dreams on a frequent basis. When I describe them to people they often ask "what were you on?". My roommate only remembers her dreams when they're nightmares. I have some friends who say they don't dream. Other friends have really boring, mundane dreams about their normal lives. Some people have weird dreams but only once in a blue moon. It's a good idea to decide off the bat what kinds of dreams your character has, and how often they remember them.

That's it for now, but I might make a part two if I think of more things to add. Feel free to reblog with your own personal dream expertise!

[literaila]

HEYYYY!! It's me again!!

I have two things to discuss today.

Firstly, have you seen those reels where Megumi reminds Gojo of Toji and he gets freaked out? So has this ever happened in the Gojo household? If yes, how dramatic does Satoru act?

Secondly, I have a request, It would absolutely make my day to see Satoru jealous. (Yes, I know we saw a it with Nanami, but can you blame a girl to want more?) Like if the reader got hit on, I am sure he'll pull something like he did to Megumi with Nobara and Yuji.

Thank you for reading this,

You are amazing and I love you.

(I'll do anything you ask me to.)

no doubt, for the first couple of months (two years) megumi lived with satoru, every time the boy woke up in the morning with his hair deflated, or walked in the room scratching his head, or sat on the couch, or went into the bathroom—satoru had to refrain a wince.

it’s not that the likeness was uncanny… but… well, the attitude was.

when megumi had on that evil smirk—usually when one of his many plots against satoru came to fathom—it was clear that the very man satoru had erased from existence had shared some of his more… admirable qualities with the boy.

sometimes it was the way megumi spoke. the tiny little inflections that satoru was probably making up, but were also definitely there. the little sigh when he asked the boy a question or the clearing of a throat when megumi was confused.

and the eyes.

megumi’s eyes were always cold, always hesitant, always moving around, constantly looking for some problem to focus on. and his glares, and his eyebrows, and uuugch.

sometimes satoru had to run into the bathroom just to cower himself away for a moment.

and if megumi happened to knock on the door, already scowling when satoru opened it a crack, really, the gasp that came next was unavoidable.

“what’s up with you?” megumi demands, shaking his head at the older, very immature man. “can you move?”

said man would open the door as little as possible as he squeezed by, trying and failing not to stare at the little boy—who has very dark hair, dark eyes, and dark intent specifically when it comes to satoru.

none of it goes unnoticed.

so if satoru is leaning over the counter, his eyes pleading with yours, you already know what it’s about.

(you’d learned about satoru’s weird superstition about two days into becoming his co-parent).

“no,” you say immediately, going back to making both of the children’s lunch.

“i didn’t say anything.”

“still no, satoru.”

“but, please,” he falls against the counter dramatically, wide blue (alien) eyes basically perfect spheres as he widens them. “just this once?”

“it’s a supply store.”

he shakes his head intently. “that’s not the issue.”

you give him a bland look, unamused with his stupid qualms, and put the lid on a container.

“he looks freaky,” satoru whispers, conspiring. “there’s something off.”

you look over to megumi who is sitting at the table, swinging his legs and chewing on some cut up ginger.

he looks as pleasant (frowning) and sweet (irritated) as always to you.

you raise a brow at satoru, choosing not to argue with him about this. god knows you do it enough.

“do you want me to cry?” satoru asks, pouting. “i have ptsd.”

you roll your eyes. “ever heard of exposure therapy?“

so satoru takes megumi to the store to get markers and papers for a school project, giving him questionable glances from beneath his glasses, and making weird comments under his breath about psychopaths and plastic surgery.

when they get home megumi is annoyed as ever, attempting to slam the door in satoru’s face before he can walk through.

you’re, of course, sitting with tsumiki at the table and watch as this interaction happens.

megumi stomps by and tells you, “please kick him out. he’s being weird again.”

and satoru just opens the door, red faced, finger pointing at the little boy, demanding: “see?”

so, yeah. satoru suffers with the memory of toji, and his biggest ideation (hurting the six-eyes user) comes to life in the form of a little boy who now lives in his home. just two rooms down the hall.

seriously, who really won that fight?

but as the months (years) go on, satoru learns to mostly ignore the resemblance between the two. sure, when megumi wears his hair differently or says anything in that rough, angry voice satoru gets a little freaked, but so what?

(if he has to go sit in his closet for a couple of minutes it’s just because he’s tired, okay? it has nothing to do with being afraid of a six year old or anything of the sort).

still, things slowly begin to change as megumi grows accustomed to satoru’s antics, and satoru becomes accustomed to being called out for them.

(you do it occasionally, but satoru knows you’re mostly joking. you’re nothing if not the benefactor of his schemes.

on the other hand, the only other person to ever seriously call him out about his ego was… suguru.

so. there’s that.)

and eventually, satoru doesn’t even notice if megumi is looking at him with devious intent. he’s well prepared and not afraid of some whiny little kid who can’t even reach the top shelf in the fridge.

(he hides behind you, usually.)

but even satoru can’t ignore the way megumi begins to change as he grows. literally, several inches by the time he’s eight.

and then there’s the way his eyes—his cold, evil eyes—change when he’s talking to tsumiki, or you. the way he softens when you’re trying to tell him something, or when he needs help. the tiny, affectionate grin that grows on his face when tsumiki is bouncing around, so full of energy that she can’t sit still.

satoru looks at him sometimes, and he doesn’t see the gifted sorcerer killer that the boy comes from, but a brother. a son that gets to be adored by the best person in the world (him you)

that is, of course, until megumi looks satoru’s way and the scowl is back, even harsher than before.

and then theres the learned attitudes, the things that you all shared—you, satoru, and the kids—just as a result of being together for so long.

isn’t there something about developing the traits of the people closest to you?

so, even though megumi is a photo copy of his father, satoru begins to see other things in the boy.

like the crinkles by his eyes, matching tsumiki’s.

or the way that his eyebrows go up when he’s trying not to smile, and the eventual twitch of his lip when he can’t help but laugh at something. satoru’s dreamed of that sight since he was seventeen and first set his eyes on you.

and then the eventual pout that megumi develops when he’s giving everyone a hard time. the pout that satoru practices in the mirror, making sure to save for only the most dire of occasions.

(also, satoru can’t help but think of megumi as the thing that keeps him… humble, in the face of everything. that question that continuously reminds satoru to keep growing, keep getting stronger, just so he can protect everything that matters.

he won’t admit it, but satoru knows that someone had to do it. someone had to be a replacement for the only other person who could ever compare to the strongest sorcerer.

and if suguru could meet megumi, satoru thinks, sometimes, when no one else is around to hear it, they would get along.

they have a lot in common, after all).

sure, megumi might have the same face, and same smirk as toji. he might as well be a literal clone of the man, just waiting to age into his skin.

but, satoru decides, one day a couple of years in, when there’s that innate protective feeling as he observes the boy—one that satoru never thought he had, much less be able to feel—maybe it’s more that toji resembles megumi, and not the other way around.

so satoru doesn’t flinch anymore because megumi’s face brings up memories he’d prefer to keep locked away—he flinches because megumi was waiting in the shadows.

just to scare him.

(secaond idea is here)

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

personally I don’t think the dod should have opened an academy at all. if they were going to open a school, I dunno man maybe with the fact that they’ve been lied, abused, hurt, nearly killed, emotionally scarred by grown adult dragons, they would have known better to not allow 7+ dragons as students or if anything allow them to be in the same winglet as younger dragons.

sure, dragons like Sora, Flame, Umber. They’re not very old, they need a proper education and are at least closely affiliated with the dod. But then you see Onyx and she’s like?? 19?? Okay, sure! She CAN be enrolled into the academy. After all, she’s lived in isolation and generally in a bad environment and she should have a good education… but maaaaybe the dod shouldn’t have thrown her into a winglet full of 3-5 year olds? Her kidnapping Ostrich (which I shouldn’t even have to explain why that’s a horrible crime) could have been avoidable if they like, gave her homeschooling or some gosh darn thing! I specifically emphasize her kidnapping Ostrich compared to her more heinous acts like trying to overthrow Thorn or working for Vulture because that is a direct attack to the school—to the students. Same for Sora who, yes, I’ve given her a pass, but by acknowledging her age, her committing a terrorist attack to the SCHOOL could be avoidable! And that was a targeted attack! Actually, there should have been more of a reason to seclude her because she served in the war and could very likely (and did) have PTSD from it, whereas a crowded environment of dragons species could make her distressed and have a hard time to learn. I won’t bring up anything about Icicle since the dod wouldn’t have known, but they still should’ve acknowledged her and the other former war soldiers like Carnelian attending the school

Just imagine the amount of dragon lawsuits the dod could be getting if they further continue. By publicly allowing and trusting adult dragons to enroll in the academy, or not putting a system for age groups, their whole academy could be taken down if. Say a princess attends the Jade Academy and she ends up being held hostage by a 7+ dragon student. Reasonably, the Queen and King would be enraged by both the persecutor AND the dragons who allowed the persecutor to attend the school! I know this may seem like an exaggeration, but it goes to show that the dod HAVE TO BE CAREFUL. And this goes to show that they are not, despite everything that has happened to them.

The dod do not set a safe learning experience—it is just as dangerous as outside of the academy. I rest my case.

.

[christinesficrecs]

Slowly trying to catch up. Any help would be appreciated. 🩷

I’m looking for a fic where stiles was an omega and still in high school. There was a lacrosse championship and the players on the team swapped out his pills and caused him to go into heat. I remember Derek had to go to the hotel they were at and the other players put together money to get them a suite.

menxmenxmen found it. Thank you!! Bruises and Bitemarks | 121.5K | Explicit Biologically, Stiles is weak. When he presented as an omega, he knew that to be the truth but that never stopped him from running his mouth as a defense mechanism. However, it could only save him so many times before he ended up pissing off the wrong person. After he's attacked in the parking lot outside of school, Stiles realizes he can no longer protect himself with just pure wit and sarcasm. When the attack lands him in the hospital, his dad forces him to pick between two options, report the alphas who attacked him or join a kickboxing gym run by omega rights activist and alpha, Derek Hale, a man Stiles has been in love with for many years.

specific post void sterek fic where Derek leaves bh for his own good Stiles really struggled with anxiety ptsd and is afraid of doors great dad son bonding between him and John Scott is really not positive character in this but one day Derek comes back and get to know about what's happening in bh and one last thing whole gang went to meet grandma stilinski in Poland she's amazing cook

tin-wufborf found this one. Thank you! The Law of the Jungle by Nutellargh | 75.8K | Explicit After the Kanima fiasco is over, Derek takes his three betas and leaves Beacon Hills. Stiles knows he could contact him if needed, but they barely keep in touch, and only about mundane things. 4 years later, after a steady stream of supernatural issues they somehow manage to deal with, Lydia is the one to contact Derek when Stiles starts looking worse and worse everyday, with no idea as to how or why.

all i remember is a scene where stiles, erica, and maybe allison and lydia, are hanging out at a dinner when they get attacked by peter who’s the alpha (this is a s1 fic) and he bites erica, i remember she was is a wheelchair at the moment because of a seizure, i know it was sterek but i don’t remember anything else

Hi!! I was wondering if you or your followers could help me find a fic I’ve been looking for. It is NOT “electricity in the contact” but it is very similar! The pack goes to some kind of convention in NY and stiles and Derek have to pretend to be mates (so much mutual pining and jealous Derek). A guy flirts and dates stiles and Derek gets upset and eventually the pack (including stiles dad) leaves bc the convention is over but stiles stays before going back to Derek and they obviously end up together.

I’m looking for a fic that I just can’t seem to find. It’s Sterek and it was one where Stiles was having sexual relations with Derek solely for money and stuff but stiles just kinda stuck around since I think he ended up living with Derek. Derek was rich the pack consisted of Erica, Boyd and Issac.I remember one specific thing about the fic which is where stiles was swimming in Derek’s indoor pool and he felt a lil silly and drug Derek in with him then they were having a moment then Erica comes in and the pack has fun and then Erica announces she was pregnant then stiles gets all sad since he himself didn’t see himself as pack and he ended up leaving

[marshvlovestv]

So basically my Ghosts neurodivergence headcanons at this point are: Sam, ADHD; Pete, autism; Patience, OCD; Sass and Hetty, depression; and Isaac, uhh.... is in Cluster B somewhere (I say vaguely so as not to be misunderstood, but to be clear, personality disorders are really just a collection of deeply ingrained coping mechanisms and the fact that I can recognize this in Isaac is actually something I like about him!). Not to mention, all of the ghosts have PTSD to some extent, if not from traumas that happened in life, then from the memory of actually literally dying.

But the thing I find most interesting has to do with Flower, because her neurodivergence is mythology-specific. She wasn't an addict or anything in life, she just happened to be very, very high when she died, and now, as a ghost, she is permanently under the influence of drugs. Her brain does not work the same way it did when she was alive, and that's just something she has to live with now. It's just a really interesting angle on neurodivergence to me.

It also makes me wonder about Trevor, who died of an overdose. They're not specific about what he took and I don't personally know what kind of shit rich finance bros take, but just based on how he behaves I feel like it's not too much of a stretch to say he's a little more... wired? all the time? than he maybe would have been in life? Idk.

Also Alberta: she didn't seem like she was actually drunk before she got poisoned, but maybe the moonshine worked its way into her system as the strychnine did. Maybe she's a little bit tipsy all the time!

[apparitionism]

Bonus 4

First, a PSA: If you are eligible to vote in next week’s US election, please VOTE FOR HARRIS as well as every other Democratic candidate on the ballot, and do what you can to persuade as many other people as you can to do the same. I assume anyone who bothers to read my writing is smart enough to understand why that’s necessary—and why engaging in any sort of protest-vote or sit-this-one-out charade is counter to the interests of most living breathing people at this point in history.

Anyway. Here I offer the final part of last year’s Christmas story... again and as usual, where were we? I recommend the intro to part 1 for where we are, canon-wise (S4, essentially, but diverging); beyond that, Myka has just returned to the Warehouse after a holiday retrieval in Cleveland (Pete, in town visiting his family, was tangentially involved), where Helena, whom Myka hadn’t seen since the Warehouse didn’t explode, served as her backup—a situation facilitated by Claudia as something of a Christmas bonus. Post-retrieval, Helena and Myka shared a meal at a restaurant; this was a new experience that went quite well until, alas, Helena was instructed (by powers higher than Claudia) to leave. Thus Myka returned home, both buoyed and bereft... and here the tale resumes. I mentioned part 1, but for the full scraping of Myka’s soul, see part 2 and part 3 as well.

Bonus 4

Late on Christmas Day, Myka is heading to the kitchen for a warm and, preferably, spiked beverage, intending to curl up with that and a book—well, maybe a book; a restless scanning of her shelves had left her drained and decisionless, hence the need for a resetting, and settling, beverage—and to convince herself to appreciate the peace of these waning Christmas hours. She peeks into the living room, just to assess the wider situation, and regards a sofa-draped Pete. He returned from Ohio barely an hour ago, which Myka knows because she had heard Claudia exclaim over his arrival. Then things had gone quiet.

Now, he appears to be napping.

Myka tries to slink away.

“Claud mentioned about your backup,” he says as soon as her back is turned, startling her and proving she’s a terrible slinker. Small favors, though: at least she hadn’t already had her beverage in hand and so isn’t wearing it now. “That had to be weird,” he goes on, sitting up.

She’s been wondering whether the topic would come up, whenever they happened to get beyond how-was-your-trip pleasantries... she entertains herself for a moment with the idea of referring to Helena, specifically with Pete, as “the topic.” So she tries it: “‘Weird’ does not begin to describe the topic.” It is entertaining, as a little secret-layers-of-meaning sneak. But there’s yet more entertainment in the offing, with its own secret layers: “Incidentally, speaking of weird—which I’m sure was also mentioned—I met your cousin. Thanks for giving her an artifact. Very Christmas of you.”

He rounds his spine into the sofa like he’s trying to back his way through the upholstery and escape. “Don’t be mad. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know it was an artifact.”

Myka is tempted to keep him guessing about her feelings, but she doesn’t really have the energy; she gives up on entertainment and tells the truth: “I’m not mad. I’m serious: thank you.”

“I think you’re trying to trick me,” he skeptics. “Soften me up for something. But if that’s for real, then you should thank my mom more than me.”

Pete’s mother. The extent of Jane Lattimer’s role in Myka’s life is... surprising. Then again the extent of her role in Pete’s life has turned out to be surprising too, and that’s probably a bigger deal, all things considered.

Pete goes on, “Because I was gonna blame her, but should I give her props instead? It was her idea to give the little feather guy to Nancy, because of how after I got it I saw that it’d probably PTSD you.”

“I appreciate the seeing, but... wait. After you got it. How’d you get it in the first place?”

“I was in this antique store,” Pete says.

As if that explains everything—when in fact it explains nothing. In further fact, it unexplains. “Why were you in an antique store? According to you, you hated those even before the Warehouse turned them into artifact arcades.”

“Mom was picking something up there, and this guy showed it to me.”

“Your mom, this guy...” Myka is now beyond suspicious. “What did this guy look like?” A pointless question. As if knowing that could help her... as if anything could really help her. This is madness. “Fine. It doesn’t matter what he looked like, because I’m stopping here. I can’t keep doing this. For my sanity, I can’t.”

“Keep doing what?”

“Tracing it back. You win. You all win.”

“Do we? Doesn’t feel like it. And that doesn’t seem like a reason you’d be thanking me.”

“No. That isn’t. But as of now I’m trying to keep myself from focusing on... let’s call it the causal chain.”

“I’d rather focus on the popcorn chain.” He points to the strands that loop the Christmas tree.

They are the tree’s only adornment. Every prior holiday season of Myka’s Warehouse association, Leena has decorated the B&B unto a traditional-Christmas Platonic ideal; this year, in her absence, Myka, Steve, and Claudia, trying to replicate that, had purchased a tree. And transported it home. And situated it near to plumb in the tree stand, which was an exhausting exercise in what they earnestly assured each other was complicated physics but was really just physical incompetence.

They had then settled in to do the actual decorating, starting with popcorn strings... but once they’d finished those, they were indeed finished, pathetically drained of holiday effort. And they’d succeeded in that initial (and sadly final) project only because, as they’d all agreed once they’d strung the popcorn, Pete hadn’t been there to shovel the bulk of their also-pathetic popping efforts into his mouth.

“Take them down, slurp them up like spaghetti if you want,” Myka says now. “Christmas is pretty much over.” The statement—its truth—makes her stew. At Pete? But the situation isn’t ultimately his fault, no matter what part he played. And why is she so set on assigning, or marinating in, this vague blame anyway? She got something she wanted: time with Helena. It didn’t work out as perfectly as she’d wished it would, but she got it.

She tries to resettle: her heart to remembrance, her brain to appreciation.

The doorbell rings, its old-fashioned rounded bing-bong resounding from foyer to living room and beyond, bouncing heavily against every surface. Myka lets the vibrations push her toward the kitchen; she’s had enough of interaction for now. Her beverage and book, whichever one will provide some right refuge, await. As do remembrance and appreciation.

She hears Pete sigh and the sofa creak; he must have shoved himself from it in order to lurch to the foyer. A minute later, he yells, “Guess what! Christmas might not be over!”

Still kitchen-focused, Myka yells back, “If that’s not Santa himself, you’re wrong!”

“Never heard of that being one of her things!” Pete shouts, even louder.

“Quit shouting!” Myka bellows, so loud that she drowns out her own initial registering of what he’s said, which then starts to resonate in her head, a stimulating hum that resolves into meaning... her things? Her things... Myka’s torso initiates a turn; her body knows what’s happening, even if her brain—

“Hey, H.G.,” Pete says, and now every part of Myka knows.

Except her eyes, but once she moves to the foyer to stand behind Pete, they know too: There Helena is. Her body. Embodied. The illumination of her, in the foyer semi-dark... her bright eyes catching Myka’s, warming to the catch... oh, this.

Seeing the sight—greeting, once again, her perfect match—she is struck dumb.

There’s movement behind her, though, and she turns to see Steve and Claudia poking their heads into the space like meerkats—well, no, in South Dakota she should think prairie dogs... but they’re both built more like meerkats than prairie dogs, so she should probably keep thinking meerkats out of... respect? Whatever: they’re animal-alert, heads aswivel, faces alight. It surely signifies something.

Turning back to Helena, trying to get a voice in her mouth, she coughs out, “You’re back? Now? I mean, already? How did you—”

“To quote myself: ‘when I can, I will,’” Helena says, as matter-of-factly as anyone could possibly speak while maintaining intense eye contact with one person, and Myka thanks all gods and firefighters above that she is herself that person. “Now, not forty-eight hours later, I could. Thus I did. I should note that I’m unsure as to why I could, but perhaps it’s a gift horse?” Her focus on Myka does not waver. Pete and the meerkats might as well not exist, and Myka in turn is mesmerized.

“Maybe that’s the horse you rode in on,” Claudia says. Is she trying to break the spell? Myka wishes she wouldn’t... she ideates shushing her, even as Claudia goes on, “But better late than never, Christmas-wise, right?”

“Did you enjoy your additional portion of squash?” Helena asks Myka, ignoring Claudia’s interjection. Her tone is formal, presenting public, but her question is for Myka alone.

“It was very good for my heart,” Myka says. She doesn’t add, though she could, And so was that question.

Helena smiles like she heard both good-fors—like she’s grateful for both—and Myka thinks, for the first time out loud in her head, She feels the same way I do.

It’s... new. Different. Perfect? Not yet, the out-loud-in-her-head voice instructs.

But she can make a move in that direction. “Please put your suitcase in my room,” she says. Out loud, outside her head. Realing it.

“I will,” Helena says. She takes up her case and moves toward the stairs, presumably to real that too.

It renders Myka once again enraptured. She is taking her suitcase to my room. My room. She is.

The first stair-creaks that Helena’s ascent occasions sound, to Myka’s eagerly interpretive ears, approving.

Claudia and Steve don’t even blink. Pete does—well, more the opposite; he widens his eyes in the cartoony way.

But then he turns on his heel, Marine-brusque and not at all cartoony, and exits the space. Myka doesn’t know what to make of that. She’ll most likely have to address the topic—in fact, “the topic”—with him later. Fortunately, later isn’t now.

She does know, however, what to make of Steve and Claudia’s aspect: “I’m sensing some ‘aren’t we clever’ preening,” she accuses.

“We are clever,” Claudia says, dusting off her shoulder. “More Fred. Don’t sweat it.”

Exasperating. “Don’t sweat it? As I understood the situation, Fred was a retrieval and an insanely expensive dinner. Are we doing that again, or is she back for good?”

“She’s back for nice,” Claudia says.

Steve jumps in with, “To answer your question: we’re not a hundred percent sure.”

“See, we made a deal,” Claudia says.

“With whom?” Myka asks.

“Santa?” Claudia says, but without commitment. Myka’s response of an oh-come-on face causes her to huff, “Fine. Pete’s mom and company. And Mrs. F. And even Artie, in absentia.”

“What kind of deal?” Myka asks, because while she can’t dispute the indisputably positive fact that Helena is here, she mistrusts any deal involving Regents. Pete’s mom aside. Or Pete’s mom included: She can’t stop her brain from stirring, stirring once again to life those causal-chain questions: What’s being put in motion this time?

“A kind of deal about which things they’re willing to let us—well, technically Steve—say are nice,” Claudia pronounces, as if that explains everything.

Myka is very tired of proffered explanations that actually unexplain.

Steve says, “Claudia finally found the file on the pen. Seems that Santa’s list, once made, is kind of ridiculously powerful. And it turns out you can put a situation on the list.”

“For example,” Claudia supplies, “H.G. and you. Getting to be in each other’s... proximity.”

Steve adds, “And yours isn’t the only one I put there. That was part of the deal.”

“So you’re letting the pen reward nice situations with... existing,” Myka says. “And are you storing it on some new ‘Don’t Neutralize’ shelf? So nobody accidentally bags the existence out of them?”

Claudia says, “Kinda. At least for a while.���

This all seems deceptively, not to mention dangerously, easy. “But: personal gain, not for,” Myka points out.

“Right,” Steve says. “So here’s a question: what does ‘personal gain’ actually mean? The manual doesn’t have a glossary. So we’re trying to work it out. Let’s say Claud uses an artifact and then makes this utterance: ‘My use of this artifact was not for personal gain.’ And let’s say I assess that utterance as not a lie. The question remains, are the Warehouse and Claud and I agreeing on the definition of ‘personal gain’?”

“The question remains,” Myka echoes, fretting. “And the answer?”

“We’ll see,” Steve says.

It’s destabilizing, but that’s the Warehouse’s fault, not Steve’s. “I just hope the artifact won’t downside you for any disagreement. Because you’re remarkably nonjudgmental, and—”

“With a Liam exception,” Steve notes. “Or several. Ideally, though, the Warehouse and I can work through these things like adults. Unlike me and Liam.”

Myka respects his honesty. And yet: “I’m having a seriously hard time ideating the Warehouse as an adult.”

“We’re working through that too,” Steve concedes.

“You clearly have the patience of a saint.”

Steve chuckles. “Pete’s your partner, right? And in another sense, H.G. might be too?” Myka waves her hands, no-no-too-soon, because suitcases notwithstanding, she has certainly in the past thought she was making a safe all-in bet, only to lose every last copper-coated-zinc penny of her metaphorical money. “No matter what we call anybody,” he continues, “I think you get a lot more patience practice than I do. I’m just dealing with one little Warehouse and its feelings.”

“Aren’t its feelings... unassimilable?” she asks. “Or at least, shouldn’t they be?” It’s a building. Whatever its feelings, they should be talking about it like it’s an alien, not somebody who’s in therapy. Or somebody who should be in therapy.

“Maybe,” Steve says. “Or maybe not. That was part of the deal too, that I would test out how it feels. About personal gain specifically here, eventually maybe more. But if it has a meltdown...”

“Ah. We cancel the test, neutralize the pen, and face the consequences.”

Steve nods. “But ideally, if that happens, we will have leapfrogged whatever the looming Artie-and-Leena crises are. The two of them coming back here safely are the other situations we niced, as part of the deal.”

Claudia adds, “My big fingers-crossed leapfrog is over their stupid administrative ‘keep H.G. away from Myka and everybody else who loves her’ dealy-thingy. We’re hoping they’ll just forget about whatever their dumbass reasons for that were when they see how great it is for her to be back.”

“Dealy-thingy? Have you been talking to Pete?” Myka asks, trying for silly, for light—so as to deflect that “love her” arrow.

“Not about that. But wait, are you saying he loves her too? I mean I figured he was okay with her after the whole Mom-still-alive thing, but his Houdini out of here just now makes me think he’s not quite all the way to—”

“Never mind,” Myka says, as a command.

Claudia squints like she wants to pursue it. Myka crosses her arms against any such idea, in response to which Claudia says, “Fine. Here’s some funsies you’ll like better. Making that list, you’ve gotta have balance. Naughty against the nice.”

“And you think I’ll like that because?”

“I talked to Pete’s cousin, a little pretty-sure-we-don’t-have-to-tesla-you-but-let’s-make-super-sure exit interview. Heard some things about a guy. Bob? Seemed like a good candidate.”

Well. Pete had been right on several levels about Christmas not being over yet. “That’s the best news I’ve had in the past... I don’t know. Five minutes?” Other than the Pete-vs.-“the topic” question, it’s been an absurdly good-news-y several minutes.

Claudia goes on, “Personal gain, what is it? There’s also a warden from that place I don’t like to remember being committed to who’s about to have a Boxing Day that’ll haunt him longer than he’s been haunting me.”

That definitely raises questions—flags, even—about “personal gain” in a definitional sense, but letting all that lie seems the better part of valor, so Myka asks Steve, “Any Liam on there?”

“Too personal to let the Warehouse anywhere near,” he says, but with a smile.

Myka smiles too. “Would that I could say the same about my situation.”

Claudia snickers. “Your situation is Warehouse-dependent. Warehouse-designed. Warehouse-destined.”

“All the more reason said Warehouse shouldn’t object to easing the pressure,” Steve says.

“Are you kidding?” Claudia says. “Its birth certificate reads ‘Ware Stress-Test House.’”

Myka appreciates their positions—Steve’s in particular, even as she internally allows that Claudia’s is probably more accurate—but she would appreciate even more their ceasing to talk about her situation like they’re the ones whose philosophy will determine how, and whether, it succeeds. Or even proceeds.

And she would most appreciate their ceasing to talk about her situation entirely. So that she can go upstairs and be in her situation, because Helena hasn’t come back downstairs, a fact for which Myka’s rapidly overheating libido has provided a similarly overheated reason: she is waiting, up there in the bedroom, for Myka.

Which thought is of course followed by Helena’s preemption of same: she descends the stairs and presents herself in the foyer.

Damn it, Myka’s disappointed libido fumes.

Sacrilege! an overriding executive self chastises, and it isn’t wrong, for again, here Helena is. To fail to appreciate that—ever—is an error of, indeed, biblical, or anti-biblical, proportions.

In any case, now four people are just standing here, awkwardness personified.

Helena flicks her eyes briefly toward Myka—it seems a little offer of “hold on”—then turns to Steve and Claudia. “I didn’t greet either of you directly when I arrived. I apologize. Claudia darling, it warms my heart to see you... and this is of course the famous Steve, whose acquaintance I’m delighted to make at last.”

Striking to witness: Helena has essentially absorbed the awkward into her very body and transmogrified it into formality.

Myka loves her.

“Famous?” Steve echoes, like she’s said “Martian.”

“I’ve heard much of you,” Helena says, with an emphasizing finger-point on “much.”

Steve smiles his I’m-astonished-you’re-not-lying smile, through which he articulates, “Likewise? I mean, likewise, but with more. Obviously.”

Yes, Myka loves her: for her charming self alone, but also for how that charm extends; her sweet attention to Steve has him immediately smitten. Myka’s the one to catch Helena’s gaze now, intending merely to convey gratitude, but to her gratification it stops Helena, causing her to abandon her engagement with Steve.

Maybe she and Myka can stand here and gaze at each other forever. It wouldn’t be everything, but it would be something. Second on second, it is something. It is something.

Claudia interrupts it all, saying to Helena, “Can I hug you?”

Myka doesn’t begrudge the breaking of this spell, particularly not with that; she had been selfish, before, greedy to keep Helena and her eyes all to herself. She also doesn’t begrudge the ease of the hug in which Claudia and Helena engage; getting a hug right is simpler when its purpose is clear. And clearly joyful.

Over Claudia’s shoulder, Myka’s and Helena’s gazes lock yet again, and it’s spectacular.

However: it also seems to introduce a foreign element into the hug, some friction that Claudia must sense, for she disengages and says, “So. I have to go. I just remembered I have an appointment to not be here.”

Steve says, “I feel like I was supposed to remember to meet you there, wasn’t I,” Steve says, and Myka has never been able to predict when he’ll be able to play along instead of blurting “lie” (even if he does often follow such blurts with some version of an apologetic “but I see the social purpose”).

“I don’t think you were,” Claudia says, “because I’m revising the gag; it makes more sense if I just now made an appointment to not be here. So you couldn’t be remembering some nonexistent-before-now appointment.”

“But I still think the appointment ought to be with me, gag-wise and otherwise,” Steve says, doggedly, still playing. “In the first and second place.”

“Is this the first place?” Claudia muses, faux-serious, now rewarding his doggedness. “Is the appointment in the second place?”

They could who’s-in-the-first-place this for days, so Myka intervenes, “In the first place, if this is a gag, it desperately needs workshopping. But in the second place: Scram!”

“You mean to the second place,” Claudia sasses.

Myka scowls, wishing she could growl proficiently.

 Claudia’s eyes widen. “Scramming. Best scrammer,” she says, sans sass, proving the actual growl unnecessary. Interesting.

“Except that’s about to be me with the gold-medal scram,” Steve objects and concurs.

Myka pronounces, “I’ll be the judge of who’s what. Once you actually do it.”

“You’ll award the medals later though, right?” asks Claudia. Her words are jokey, yet her tone is weirdly sincere, as if Myka might forget they had scrammed on her behalf, and that such amnesia would be hurtful.

“Participation trophies,” Myka semi-affirms, “in the form of a healthy breakfast.” She adds, internally, Take the damn hint.

After much winking and nudging, the comedians at last absent themselves, and Myka and Helena are alone.

Unfortunately that doesn’t immediately yield the perfected situation Myka seeks, first and foremost because she doesn’t know what comes next. Take your own damn hint, she tells herself, but... how? They need privacy, and the only reasonable place for that is where Helena’s suitcase rests: upstairs. Myka can’t magic them there, so what incremental movement will be recognizable as an appropriate beginning?

She casts a wish for Helena to ease it all, as she had with Claudia and Steve, but Helena is stock-still, offering no increment. For both of them, upstairs seems to have become a different place... the promised land?

Nothing is promised, she reminds herself. Some things are newly possible, but nothing is promised. Certainly not when the Warehouse is involved.

So maybe the point, probably the point, is that it’s incumbent on Myka and Helena to realize the possibility.

Nevertheless, here they stick.

After a time—most likely shorter than Myka feels it to be—Helena announces, “Pete and I have had a chat.” Her articulation of “chat” shapes it into a synonym for “fight.” “Who won?” Myka asks.

“I believe it was a draw. He opened by saying he ‘didn’t get how far along this thing had got.’” Hearing Pete’s diction in Helena’s mouth is disorienting. “He then said he wants to protect you.”

That’s so Pete. “I don’t need protecting.”

Eyebrow. “I noted that I want to protect you too.”

That thrills Myka. At the same time, she wants to object to it nearly as much as to Pete’s assertion... internal contradictions, what are they? She lands weakly on, “I hope that persuaded him.”

“Pete finds deeds more persuasive than words,” Helena says. “Thus I’m ‘on probation where Myka’s concerned,’ until he determines I won’t damage you.”

That’s so Pete too. But. “That is my determination.”

“I expressed a similar sentiment. He responded, ‘And how’d that go last time?’” Helena’s wince after she says this is awful, and Myka dares to assuage it, stepping toward Helena with open arms, drawing her into an embrace.

This time, their hug—simpler because its purpose is clear—works, bodies soft-querying at the start, then firm, intentional. Not quite catching fire, but this is a palpable first cut into whatever membrane of uncertainty is obstructing their movement.

Slow, slow, they move apart. Yet they stay close, the embrace’s softness lingering as Helena says, “Selfishly, I didn’t concede his point, which is in any case indeed down to your determination. But I did note that circumstances have changed since then. And to be fair I must report that he allowed they have.”

“You’re both right,” Myka says. But: “Was this Cleveland mission contrived to... further change the circumstances?”

“I didn’t contrive it,” Helena says, fast. “I would have, if I could, but I didn’t.”

“I’m not saying you did. I’m saying I always wonder, because I can’t help it, how much, or how little, of what happens just happens.”

“And the rest—or if I’m understanding your implication, the bulk—would be...?”

“Some sort of social engineering.”

“On whose part?” Helena asks.

That’s disingenuous. “Your engineers of choice. Regents. Mrs. Frederic. Mr. Kosan. Ententes thereof.”

Helena runs a hand through her hair—frustration at the thought of those entities? Or just showing off? Then she shrugs, as if to dismiss both possibilities. “I favor any engineering that places me in private proximity to you.”

The words are beyond welcome. And yet. “I’m not objecting to it. I’m just...”

“Objecting to it.”

“No. Questioning its provenance.”

“Why?”

That brings Myka up short. “What?”

“If it produces an outcome you desire, what does the provenance matter? In this case, at the very least.”

It’s a reasonable question, and Myka’s most-honest answer would have something to do with the ethical acceptability of poisonous-tree fruits. For now, though, she goes with, “Because I don’t like being manipulated.”

“Don’t you?” That’s flirty, a near-whisper, compelling Myka to lean even closer. Helena knows—she’s always known—the power she has over Myka. And she’s always known how—and when—to wield that power.

“The manipulator matters,” Myka says, responding to the flirt, accepting the push away from ethics.

“Then would that I could in truth say I contrived that relatively banal retrieval. And sabotaged the elevator, so as to draw our attention to... that to which it was drawn.”

“I can’t say I was displeased with the drawing,” Myka allows. “So if you had...”

Helena moves her lips, a sly hint of curve, and says, “Oh, but perhaps I’ve manipulated you into that sentiment.” Again, an ostentatious flirt.

Myka’s knowing that flirt-show for what it is? That’s Helena-specific. In the past Myka has always had to be told when she was being flirted with: “He was interested in you,” an exasperated friend would explain of an interaction Myka found incomprehensible, and she would cringe internally at her inability to recognize such an apparently basic, obvious display. But with Helena she’s never needed a flirt translator. From the first lock of gaze, unto this night’s myriad connections; from that first brush of finger, unto the way Helena has just allowed their hug to linger; from the first just-for-you conspiratorial grin, unto this very moment’s slip of smile—all the advances, heavy and light, have been legible to Myka.

And based on what she is now reading, she has no ground left. “Fine. I like being manipulated if it means.” She clears her throat. “If it means I get closer to you. You win.”

“Do I?” Here’s the disingenuity again, but now Myka understands its intentional irony. Helena follows up with, “This establishment has no elevator,” Helena says, like it’s nothing more than a structural observation that checks a box on a form, a minor note in an overall architectural assessment.

“No,” Myka agrees.

“How fortunate,” Helena says.

Myka waits for the conclusion, the help... but it’s not forthcoming, probably in a that’s-down-to-your-determination-as-well sense. The next cut is clearly Myka’s responsibility too. So: “It has stairs though,” she offers. “That go. Up. Well, both down and up. Of course. As stairs do.” Stop talking, she tells herself, but her nerves don’t heed the advice. “As they have to? I don’t know; do they? Escher?”

“Ess-sherr,” Helena echoes, clearly uncomprehending. That she lets Myka hear her knowledge gap is a gift. For Christmas?

“He’s an artist. I promise I’ll explain later. Eventually. Anyway the stairs. I think you just used them? Without incident?”

Myka expects a comeback. She gets none, which leaves her in some non-place, absent as it is of Helena-attitude... but what form had she expected such attitude to take? Aggression? Naughtiness? Or “naughtiness”... does the lack of all that mean Helena is offering a self more authentic than the one who charms and flirts? But that doesn’t seem quite right, for the charms and the flirts have always seemed clearly intrinsic Helena-talents. Deployed, yes, but not inauthentic. So if this Helena is deploying fewer such talents, maybe it’s that she’s... less?

Ironically—of course ironically, because all of this is so, so layered like that—a reduced Helena is an even greater bonus.

All of this, which Myka had better figure out, fast, how to appreciate and accommodate. “Of course that’s no guarantee that travel will go well,” she begins. “So we should try not to trip on the stairs... wait, no, that would make it our problem, which I don’t think this ever was. Maybe better: we shouldn’t let the stairs trip us.” She considers. “But no again: what I really mean is, we shouldn’t give the stairs a reason to trip us. Right?”

Helena looks at her and blinks, charmingly blank. “I have no idea. Are you through?”

“I have no idea either,” Myka admits, still directionless without Helena’s attitudinal lead. Is this, like the semi-botched hug of two days ago, a seemingly terrible sign?

“Merely delay.” A little head-shake follows. Signifying disappointment? Making light of Myka’s inability to get through? Then Helena says, “And yet I don’t know how much more delay I can withstand.”

Those raw words are mediated by nothing more than molecules—the nitrogen-oxygen-argon-et-cetera invisibilities conveying waves to Myka’s ossicles—and for the second time, Myka ideates, in full awe, She feels the same way I do.

“Me either,” she says, literally heartfelt, sending the words back, a final push through everything, molecules and otherwise, that has stood between them.

Testing, she offers Helena her hand. Helena takes it.

These hands together: not a first. Not even a second. In the present circumstance, that translates to something very like “comfortingly familiar.”

Under the aegis of that comfort, they ascend the stairs, Myka leading the way, marveling that she can. Against her pulling hand, Helena offers what seems a single erg of resistance, a display, an I-am-letting-you affirmation.

They cross the threshold of Myka’s room, and then. Then, after Myka makes one turn and twist, a closed non-elevator door stands, for once and at last, between them and the rest of the world.

Closed, the door is, but not locked. In the door-closing instant, turning the lock—adding its presumptive click—had struck Myka’s hand as overly brazen: that’s a frustrating flinch her hand will have to work out with whatever part of her brain-body complex was certain enough to start this, start it by saying what she did about the suitcase... the same part that keeps telling her that Helena’s feelings match hers.

As Myka turns her back on the now-closed door, she sees her bed. She sees her bed. Disconcerting, in this new now, how large a percentage of the room’s space this one piece of furniture seems to be occupying...

But she’s self-aware enough to know that she’s overlaying the bed’s current brain space, the desires it signifies, on the physical. Whatever’s going to happen—or not—will happen, she tries to force into that space in her brain, pushing it down... for desire, sometimes indistinguishable from expectation, has devastated her before. But she tries too hard: missing the mark, she slips and falls into some past-obsessed cerebral fold, once again lost, quietly but deeply, in that devastation.

“Here we are,” Helena remarks into the silence. “Or, harking back to engineering: Here we are? I continue to be unsure as to why. I can accept unclear provenance, but I’d prefer more explication regarding my allowable movements.”

That’s help. That’s rescue. But oh: movements. The word nearly derails Myka in a different direction, but she gathers herself, resetting to reply, “It’s explicable, but I honestly don’t have the energy to explicate even my minimal knowledge of the mechanism. The most basic base is, Claudia and Steve worked out a deal to use that pen, and there’s a list that you and I are on. As a ‘nice’ situation. Anyway if you want real details, you probably should sit down with Steve.”

A mind’s-eye image comes to her, of Helena and Steve leaning toward each other, bringing complementary concentration to bear on some topic large or small... and then an incipient sound strikes her: the chime of their voices together, both seriously and lightheartedly, ringing notes she hadn’t before this new instant thought to anticipate. “Actually I think you and Steve sitting down would be really pleasant. Even productive. Given that you’ll be sticking around. I mean, if you’re willing, and if, or at least until, some definitional issues get worked out. As I understand it.” As I devoutly hope, she doesn’t quite utter.

“That addresses... some issues, I suppose. Yet a question remains.”

This is a bonus of a day: Helena turning into the queen of understatement? It’s freeing; Myka laughs and says, “Tons of questions remain. Which one’s on your mind?”

Head-tilt. “You said you didn’t have the energy... to explain the mechanism,” Helena says.

More delay, Myka knee-jerks... but she knows the reflex immediately as wrongheaded, for this is conversation, the value of which she should have learned by now not to discount. “Right. Sorry, I’ll try: so the pen, and honestly speaking of questions and provenance, I still have some questions about provenance, which I’m trying to ignore, but anyway, Claudia found the file, and—”

“That is not the issue I had in mind.”

“Sorry. I’m not getting anything right, am I?” Because of course she isn’t getting anything right.

“We’ll see,” Helena says.

“So what did I jump the gun on?”

“You don’t have the energy to explain.”

This muddles Myka; it will probably require another reset. “I did say that, but I can try to—”

“Myka,” Helena says, and her name in that mouth will never cease to be a singular wonder. “What do you have the energy for?”

Here again is the difference between the attitude that Myka, in her more cynical moments, might have thought Helena would maintain, and the reality she is instead offering: the question is suggestive, but guilelessly, graciously so; its import is genuine, not manipulative. “How do you do that?” Myka asks.

“Do what?” This question, too, is guileless, gracious.

“Stop me.” It’s the best definition Myka can produce of what Helena has in fact done, what she seems consistently able to do.

Helena breathes several breaths, like she’s waiting for the right words to arrive... no, more like they’ve already arrived, but she’s preparing herself, gearing up to deliver them. “I don’t want to stop you,” she eventually says, and Myka should have used that windup to prepare herself: for the admission this is, for how this don’t-want utterance nevertheless is want.

They are the most vulnerable words Myka has ever heard.

New, new, new... the fact is that historically, people have tended to twist and shy from revealing weakness to Myka. Fallout from her tendency to judge, no doubt, but it means that this, too, is new: here is Helena, and maybe in some other world someone else might have made such a mattering move but here in this best one it’s Helena, Helena ignoring that character defect, Helena blowing past it for a chance to change everything.

Everything. “It’s Christmas,” Myka says, because it is. And because now it is.

“So give me this gift,” Helena rejoins.

“You too,” Myka says.

For the space of one breath, they both wait—bracing for whatever fate intends to use to stop them this time.

But this time nothing stops them, for in the ensuing instant, they both give that gift, blowing fast past everything that, slow, might stop them, grasping at this chance to change.

The jolt of their contact reminds Myka of—no: the shock of it strikes her as—artifact activation, that calling of vested power into being, that enabling of such longed-for release. Before the Warehouse taught her to recognize this transubstantiating, she would not have understood this moment’s raw unleashing, its summoning and compelling of stored potential to manifest as what it has lain in wait, in desperate wish, to become.

But also: all the blood in her body knows she has never felt such power released nonartifactually before now, before this.

Before this world-encompassing, world-creating first kiss.

“You’re thinking,” Helena murmurs into the space of a pause for breath. “I can taste it.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Myka scrambles, kicking herself for not staying in the unprecedented moment, for letting thought intrude, as she always does, and it’s always bad, and Helena is now rightfully offended and disenchanted and—

“It’s delicious,” Helena says, punctuating—proving—by meeting Myka’s lips again, again again again, as if determined to never stop.

Myka would be perfectly happy, oh so perfectly happy, with that forever-continuation, but something in her brain has begun gesturing wildly, demanding her attention... something about her hand... brazen... she rips her lips away and yelps, “Wait! I have to lock the door!”

“The thinking continues,” Helena says, stepping back, freeing Myka, and spreading her arms in a ta-da endorsement. “You’re brilliant.”

A memory: “Bunny, you think too much.” No I don’t, she can now answer. Not for her. In time, given time, she’ll tell Helena how much this matters, but now is not that time. Not when Helena is saying, “However, as we’re behind a locked door, I’ll wager I can make you stop thinking... for at least one consequential moment...”

To Myka’s extremely consequential—and utterly, blissfully unthinking—delight, Helena wins that bet.

****

Later. Lazily, later: “I genuinely cannot believe we were stuck in an elevator,” Myka says. A thing to say, said. “As the prelude to all this.” Which is what she really means.

Against Myka’s neck, newly and blessedly intimate, Helena says, “Your limited capacity for belief is noted. Are you equally incapable of believing that we had the apparently obligatory, if not preordained, chat?”

“Obligatory... preordained...” Myka is still so lazy, she’s practically drawling, and the out-of-character surprise of it pricks at the edge of her ability to stay in such a state. Stay, stay, stay... “Honestly... just clichéd.”

“And yet I was able to add a reference to my Myka-index. Entry: Mirrors, your artifact-related discomfort with.”

Myka’s heart seizes: Helena has a Myka-index. That, plus their proximity now, surely requires her to do better than the little falsehood she’d rested on with regard to the mirror-discomfort. Pushing laziness aside, with something too much like relief, she acknowledges, “I misled you. There was an artifact, but that isn’t what bothers me. The real thing is that mirrors make me observe myself too closely. Too much. Which I do all the time anyway.”

“I wish you’d delegate that observational task to me.” Sweet. Helena sounds so sweet. And not just sounds: Myka can tell (hopes she can tell) Helena means it. Which is even sweeter.

And which in turn entails a need for Myka to think seriously about being observed. Being protected. Being willing—but more important, able—to delegate in the correct spirit, even minimally. “I can try.”

“I can accept that,” Helena says, and the approval is better than sweet: it’s buy-all-the-books-you-want indulgent. “But I must ask: do you honestly think any part of the Cleveland interregnum was the elevator’s doing?”

The true answer references Myka’s entire Warehouse experience, from day one: “Yes and no.”

Helena nods, her hair sliding mink-soft on Myka. “I can accept that as well.”

“And whoever’s at fault, our chat was interrupted,” Myka says.

“As it was poised to progress beyond ‘chat’... but in truth I would rather this happened here than in an elevator. Better environs for still further progress. Don’t you agree?” Helena moves her unclad limbs against Myka’s, in transcendent emphasis.

Of course Myka agrees. Which leads her to a painful realization: “So maybe the elevator wasn’t as judgmental as I... judged it to be.”

Helena bestows a kiss to Myka’s shoulder—small, intimate—bringing Myka’s mind back, sharp, to what those bestowing lips have so recently accomplished, which threatens to render her again overcome. She shudders, which reduces her to embarrassment instead, but Helena is kind enough to feign obliviousness as she says, “You did note your own judgmental nature.”

Myka’s soul twinges in genuine regret, collapsing her lip-recall. She regrets that too. “Do you think I need to go back and apologize? I feel all guilty now.”

“The elevator has most likely moved on,” Helena says, quite dry.

“You’re saying it doesn’t have my memory.”

“I’m saying that even if it does—an open question, though the lack of elevator memoirs argues in the negative—it’s unlikely to care as much as you do about what it does remember.”

“Story of my life,” Myka sighs out. Now she’s really saying it, because memory, and caring too much about it, is that story.

“For the best, I suspect. Your life story and an elevator’s shouldn’t be entirely congruent, should they?” Helena questions, and that makes Myka laugh and want to read an entire library shelf’s worth of elevators’ memoirs. Feigning seriousness, Helena continues, “Although we might revisit so as to investigate whether its conveyance of Bob proceeded properly after our visit. That could be revealing.”

“Speaking of Bob, I feel bad for Nancy. Because of course he’ll blame her.”

“For elevator mischief?”

Ah. Helena doesn’t know. “For naughty.”

“Naughty what?”

“The list. He’s back on it, thanks to Steve and Claudia.”

“Is he.” Her satisfaction is evident, and for a moment she and Myka are one in their schadenfreude. That, too, is delicious. “Better they punish him than we do,” Helena then says.

This sends Myka back to guilt. “It feels like cheating. We didn’t use the artifact, but we get the personal gain.”

Myka’s shoulder now receives an indignant exhale. In its wake, Myka is dwelling on how she would have preferred another kiss, but Helena says, “I was speaking of soul-consequences, not this personal-gain fetish you all seem to embrace. Or perhaps it’s an anti-fetish, but in any case was no hard-and-fast dictum in my day.”

“I’ll reiterate that you should sit down with Steve,” Myka tells her, and Helena accedes with a nestle that erases the exhale.

Are words about such things—ambiguously motivated elevators, deserved punishments, fetishes of undetermined valence—a waste of time? No... for again, they are conversation... the value of which, Myka has lately learned, is even greater when the words it comprises land as soft breath on skin.

In fact Myka has learned a great many things in this locked-door recent while. There is, for one, the gratifying fact that she and Helena are physically compatible, at least as evidenced by this first performance, in terms both of wants and of abilities to satisfy them. But nearly as important, particularly in its physical component but not only that, is her new understanding that while her life has offered her several circumstances with which she’s been reasonably satisfied—that she hasn’t minded—this right-now is orders of magnitude above such contentment. She must have in some soul-stratum known this would prove true, or she would not have been panting in its pursuit so seemingly hopelessly, with such dogged desperation.

She says, with gratitude, “This is what I wanted.”

Getting what she wants: that, too, is new. And very. very nice.

“I would hope so,” Helena says. As if she had some genuine doubt about Myka’s motivation? “No, that’s rhetorical; rather, I did hope so. You’ve realized that hope, and... well. I should be clear: this is more than I dared to want.”

Myka, endeavoring to bring everything together, says, “So what you’re saying, want-wise, is that it’s a bonus. A nice one.”

“I’m saying, want-wise, that my wildest hopes have been exceeded. Surpassed. Transcended.”

It’s something, that reply. Also more than a little over the top, rhetorically, which Helena obviously knows. “Pleonast,” Myka accuses.

Helena laughs. “Not inaccurate. I suppose your ‘nice bonus’ translation is technically correct, if a bit... with apologies, pedestrian?”

“It’s less pedestrian than ‘Fred,’” Myka says. A “hm?” from Helena reminds Myka that she hasn’t yet made that translation evident. “I guess ‘Fred’ counts as esoteric instead, so never mind. You’re right, ‘bonus’ is pedestrian. So is ‘nice.’ But maybe it’s a good idea to call our whatever-it-is something pedestrian. I don’t want to scare it away.”

“And what precisely do you think would ‘scare it away’?”

“Bigness,” Myka offers, weakly. It’s what she means, but—

“‘Bigness?’” Helena says, quotes evident. “From the woman who so recently deployed ‘pleonast’? Should I fear that you’ll regularly revert without warning to Pete-reminiscent locutions?”

Myka chuckles. “Spend enough time with him, it’ll probably happen to you too.” The laziness is back. Earned back?

After a time—or perhaps Myka only after a time processes the sound—Helena says, “God forbid.”

A further lag ensues before Myka manages to respond, with a drowsy “I agree.”

Sleep follows. That is certainly earned.

****

Consciousness resumes for Myka with a banging on her door and a shout from Pete: “It’ s really not Christmas anymore, because Artie’s back!”

“Being Artie about it!” Claudia shouts in addition. “He says get to work!”

“I’m awake,” Myka says as she becomes more fully so. This is a Warehouse morning, and Warehouse alarms ring as they do.

Then: I’m not awake; I’m dreaming, because the back of Helena’s head and her naked shoulders greet Myka’s opening eyes. That’s a bracingly new alarm.

Helena’s voice comes next. “He says get to work,” she quotes, playfully, and Myka would be willing to wake to such an alarm with joy for the rest of her life.

But assuredly, if the content of that alarm is the dictate, then no one is dreaming. There’s really nothing for Myka to say except, “Sorry, but one more time: Story of my life.”

“Now? Our life,” Helena corrects.

That is a literally life-story-altering assertion, and a self-deprecating impulse tempts Myka to scoff it away. Behind that impulse, however, lies a clear-eyed recognition that she must meet what Helena has said. How, how, how...

...and then her mind starts fully working. She begins to formulate a plan. One that will, if possible, manifest her gratitude, but also, display her difference from the Myka she used to be, that one from so few hours ago, who had not yet known the dream-surprise of this awakening’s sight.

“I’m going to tell them I can’t get the door unlocked,” she says. Steve isn’t there. She can get away with it. She sits up, ready to head for the door and tell that story.

Helena touches Myka’s shoulder. “Would it lend credibility for me to suggest out loud that I genuinely can’t believe we’re stuck in your bedroom?” More play, but the touch is becoming a don’t-leave-this-bed grasp.

Myka leans to kiss the restraining hand. “I think that would make them think you planned it. And were being nefarious about it. Shocked incredulity isn’t really your strong suit.”

“It’s true that my capacity for belief outstrips yours.” She pulls down on the sheet, exposing both her body and Myka’s.

Talk about overdetermined. Or is it, in this as-yet-unmapped terrain, underdetermined? To be determined later, if at all... Myka somehow marshals sufficient will to rise from the bed, while telling herself that she is not, conceptually at least, actually leaving it. At the door, she fiddles with the lock, expressing frustration to support her claim, after which Pete and Claudia make noises about toolboxes and battering rams, respectively, and then mercifully depart.

“They’re going to try to get us out,” Myka reports as she returns to bed. “Maybe violently?”

“Let them,” Helena murmurs. “That elevator and its manifestation of mischief... comparatively amateur. You’ve bested it handily.”

That jolts Myka out of a back-of-mind consideration of whether she might be able to jam the bedroom door’s lock with something easily to hand, or perhaps whether her dresser might be pushed across the room to block the door entirely. She then considers, front of mind, the possibility that Helena—her physical presence, her physical provocation—is a bad influence... or at the very least a naughty one... for these thoughts are so, so out of character.

“That, on the other hand, is not the story of my life,” Myka says, and the fact of it does make her more than a little nervous.

“A new chapter,” Helena counters, reading Myka’s mind and setting it right—in three words. Such economy.

****

Myka and Helena are engaged in adding to that new chapter (or at the very least, drafting a steamy interlude of same, even if it isn’t essential to the plot) when a banging on the door interrupts them yet again. As does shouting: “We’re back!” yells Pete, unnecessarily.

“Hey, Myka, what’s going on?” That’s Steve. Far more quiet.

“I brought Steve,” Pete says, also unnecessarily.

“I gathered that from his voice,” Myka notes.

“But!” Pete says, in aha-I-got-you mode, “what if it turns out all I brought was his voice?”

“Then I guess he’d still be here in some sense?” she says; she’s thinking on the Helena-hologram, on what a lack of visual might have meant, on how a more ontologically disembodied voice would have made her believe Helena was there, there but standing on the other side of a door. How she would have wanted to take her own battering ram to that door. The hologram’s present non-presence had stranded her, stranded them, in a strange shared space, offering no barrier Myka could use her body to break violently through.

“But!” Claudia exclaims, jokey, fighting with Myka’s ache of reminiscence, “what if it’s just me, doing my Steve impression?”

“That’d be a different thing,” Myka concedes.

“You do a me impression?” Steve asks Claudia.

Who exhales so dramatically, Myka’s surprised the door doesn’t just blow open. “You have stood next to me while I did it.”

“I have?” Puzzled-Steve is honestly Myka’s favorite Steve.

“Are we not a team?” Claudia demands. “Myka does a Pete. Pete does a Myka. Naturally they both suck, but the point is, why don’t you do a me?”

“Because you’d kill me?”

“Guys,” Pete says, “this isn’t getting Myka and H.G. out of the bedroom.”

Claudia says, “But let me just. Myka, H.G., you guys do impressions of each other, right?”

Helena raises her arms, a gesture of observe-this!—or maybe it’s at-last!—and exclaims, “I feel compelled to express disbelief about this circumstance!”

It takes Myka a second to get it, but once she does, she shouts, “I love blooming onions!”

For quite some time, there’s silence from the other side of the door.

Then Steve says, “Am I the only one who’s extremely confused?”

“Usually, yes,” Claudia says. “Except now, no. I’m with you. Pete?”

“Myka loves blooming onions,” Pete says, slow; he’s the one having trouble now with belief. Myka can picture his gobsmacked face. “There’s my endless wonder for the day. Also, I gotta rethink a whole lot of stuff she said about what she was willing to eat.”

Myka presses an apologetic kiss to Helena’s lips (and how nearly unbelievable it is to feel comfortable with such a touch being swift, to not need to hoard, to believe there will be more), then extricates herself yet again from the sheets, the bed. She heads for the door: to make a show of unlocking it, to send them away temporarily so she and Helena can reassemble themselves to rejoin the world—but. Problem. Big problem. “Guys. I really can’t get the door unlocked now.”

“‘Now’?” Pete echoes.

“You mean you actually could before?” Claudia asks.

Moment of truth. So, fine, truth: “I didn’t actually try before.”

“Ha!” Claudia barks. “Are we still on impressions? That might’ve been a decent one, for real, because the attitude? Way H.G.”

“Thank you so much!” Helena chirps.

“H.G.,” says Claudia, with a whiff of pedantry—and that she feels free to express such an attitude toward Helena is most likely because she’s on the safe side of a closed door—“I was complimenting Myka’s impression.”

“But in it, you recognized my attitude.” Helena’s words are a full preen, and as she speaks, she’s rising from the bed, approaching Myka, slipping arms around her, such that Myka loses her ability to track what’s happening on the other side of the door, even as splinters of sound catch in her ears—“hinges inside,” “lock plate solid,” and finally, “break it down”—whereupon she realizes anew that neither she nor Helena is clothed, and that being caught and seen in that state will constitute a disaster that outstrips a great many of the others in her experience.

“We have to get dressed,” she breathes at Helena.

“Wait,” Helena says. “I suspect a realization is about to occur.”

At times, Helena can be eerily prescient. But what is it this time?

As if in answer, Claudia says, “I have a really depressing theory. Myka, can you get the window open?”, whereupon Myka understands Helena’s deduction: this isn’t mechanical; it’s artifactual. More specifically, list-artifactual.

She cannot open the window.

“Yeah,” Claudia says, a defeated I-knew-it. “I’d be all ‘try to smash it!’, but since I can’t see you try it and, like, bounce off the glass, what’s the point? I mean, go for it if H.G. wants the lulz.”

“I don’t know what that means!” Helena informs her. That too is a chirp, and Myka’s pleased to note it’ll probably head off the slapstick.

“Kind of a shame,” Claudia says, but with a drag, like she’s picturing it, and Myka is less pleased to have to devoutly hope that picturing involves everybody fully clothed. “Anyway I hate to say it, but it’s pretty clear this is on us, the list-makers.”

Pete groans. “You were supposed to check it twice! It’s right there in the song!”

“Listen, we seriously argued about the wording,” Steve says.

“And oh guess what!” Claudia says, defeat apparently tabled for the moment. “Everybody in the world is going on about their day as usual due to the unshocking news that I was right.”

“No, I was right. I was the one who said ‘proximity’ was likely to be too vague,” Steve says.

Myka’s inclined to agree with him.

“Bro, I was,” Claudia says, “because I said it was likely to be not vague enough.”

Well. Now Myka’s inclined to agree with Claudia.

She sees the conundrum. “I appreciate it either way,” she says, and that quiets the combatants.

“Regardless, we obviously need different wording,” Steve diplomats.

“I think our first mistake was thinking an artifact would word like we thought it should. You need to get more into its head than you did before.”

“I was in a hurry before,” Steve says, a little less diplomatically. “Because you were yelling at me.”

“I am so so so so glad,” Pete hosannas, “that none of this is on me.”

Myka cannot let that stand. “Who gave his cousin a thing?”

A pause. Then, “Whoops,” Pete says, very sad-clown.

Later, she’ll thank him again, but for now, she doesn’t mind having wielded this little shiv, inflicting this little nick, so he’ll remember that there is, or should be, always a downside.

“How fortunate they’re not asking for our help,” Helena says, bringing her back to the upside.

“Who’s better with words though? You certainly are,” Myka says.

“You hold your own, Ms. ‘Pleonast.’ But ssssh. Don’t remind them.”

“We’ll fix it, we promise!” Claudia says.

“Don’t feel compelled to hurry!” Helena directs, cheerily.

Steve says, “I think she means ‘Don’t yell at Steve this time.’” His hopefulness is clear.

“He isn’t wrong,” Helena notes into Myka’s ear.

Pete announces, “I think she means bow chicka wow wow.”

“He isn’t either,” Myka notes back. “Even less so?”

Helena answers by kissing her with intent.

Claudia snorts. “I think no matter what she means, Artie’s gonna kill us.”

“Alas, the least wrong of all,” Helena grants with a sigh.

The wrecking crew’s voices fade, and they may still be making non-wrong statements, but for Myka and Helena there is at last, again, peace. And once Myka pulls Helena back to bed—a delectable spin she is now bold enough to put on their dynamic—there is at last again not-peace.

Lazily later—and these lazy laters are vying to be Myka’s favorite at-last—she says, “Not to overinterpret the artifact’s thinking, but this feels very nice. As an in-proximity situation.”

“This particular proximity seems more than a bit naughty, however,” Helena says, incongruously matter-of-fact. She isn’t wrong. “Pete obviously made an inference to that effect. Perhaps if Steve and Claudia can use that as a way of writing us out of the current situation.”

“I’m sure that’s for the best,” Myka says, with no small amount of regret, first attached to her embarrassment at Pete, Steve, and Claudia’s involvement in that inference, but even more due to the sad fact that this beginning must come to an end.

“Are you...” Helena’s words are a smile.

“No. I’d much rather stay here forever with you.” Her practical side then takes over, as even Helena’s body twined around hers can’t prevent. “But if they don’t fix it we’ll die—pretty soon, unless they can figure out how to get food in.”

“Would the artifact allow us to starve? That seem the antithesis of a situation that might be termed ‘nice.’”

“‘Termed’? Isn’t problematic terminology why we’re still here?”

“Granted. But of course we’ll die regardless.”

The casual, literal fatalism trips Myka up. She temporizes, “The artifact might have something to say about that,” placeholding, as she finds her way to a real response: “But artifact aside... will you though?” It’s a question about... well, about whether Helena is, for want of a better word, real. Speaking of terminology. “Die,” she adds, not as a word she must expel, for its terrible taste, but one she feels a need to place. As a marker.

Helena takes a moment. Before, Myka would have read that pause as censure; it would have pushed her overboard into I-have-overstepped agony. But the plates have shifted, and her footing feels—strange but nice (oh, nice!)—sure.

The answer, when it comes: “Here with you, I don’t want to be bronzed again. So yes.”

That leaves Myka warm, yet shaking her head. “I honestly don’t know a lot about romance.”

“Don’t you?” Helena asks, all of her limbs beginning to move again against all of Myka’s.

Which, for the moment, Myka resists: “So I’m not sure if it’s weird that I find it incredibly romantic for you to have said yes to dying.”

Now Helena’s smile is a smile; she rears away, back and up, showing Myka her face’s full measure of delight. “Weird or no, whatever you find romantic, I’m inclined to approve. If that’s acceptable to you.” Helena bows her head, as if to formally request Myka’s benediction.

The very idea of such an ask floods her with happy tenderness. “Is it okay for me to find that romantic too?”

“‘Okay’ seems a sadly weak word to convey the extent of my approval,” Helena says. “Further, I find it romantic for you to ask my permission to find any thing romantic. Unnecessary, yet romantic. Is that ‘okay’ as well?”

“It’s a relief,” Myka understates. “Can I call it a romantic relief?”

“I don’t see why not. However, to what extent is it romantic, or non-, that we seem to be finding—or placing—ourselves in recursive loops of romantic-allowable querying?” Helena accompanies this academically focused, seemingly serious question with yet more limb movement.

Myka is actively in bed with someone who’s questioning the romantic quotient of recursive loops of romantic-allowable querying. It is a level of “nice” that she could never ever have ideated on her own. “I genuinely cannot believe any of this,” she says.

“I can assure you that I will be taking some time—if allowed, and thus perhaps only in an ideal world, some great length of time—to determine whether your incredulity will ever cease to be tedious and elevate itself to ‘romantic.’ Some great length of time,” she repeats, playfully.

Myka knows Helena’s appreciation for time’s length is far greater than any ordinary individual’s... so this smacks of a promise. Myka’s gratitude rises, as does her willingness to pursue any and all romantic activity, despite her apparently romance-dampening incredulity... but then the limbs pause. “However,” Helena says.

“What’s this ‘however’?” Myka asks, now selfishly impatient.

Helena has, obviously and of course, heard and felt the impatience. Myka’s neck receives a press of lips, a curve of smile. “However: fortunately, at this juncture, belief isn’t required. Participation, on the other hand, is. So?” This is something Myka has always suspected was a Helena tactic, but here in intimacy she recognizes as true: challenge not for its own sake, but as an attitude in which to wrap something different, deeper, some authenticity Helena isn’t fully willing, or doesn’t quite yet know how, to express.

Myka moves her own limbs, her limbs that are even longer than, and just as flexible as, Helena’s. She moves them against Helena’s. She cannot believe she is doing so; nevertheless, she is. She is participating.

She places a chock under this particular incredulity, for unlike facts, the quality of emotions can escape her if she doesn’t consciously tie them down. She paints the word “bonus” on the emotion-wheel as she secures it, to ensure she elevates that felt quality too. Then she eases herself back to the full experience of the physical, this smooth beauty—and that is the word for every touch-heat-rise their bodies execute—that she and Helena together are creating... are enjoying.

She sighs soft against Helena’s neck; in return, Helena offers again her lips-on-skin smile.

They are participating. In this. Together. Lips on skin.

“So,” Myka agrees.

END

[master-jarrus]

So this au is kind of floating in my head (I want to name it something a little better than Happy Family Au because it's not all going to be happy it feels deceptive)

But I was thinking about it and this post

So stuff I am reconsidering for the au along with plot points that would get it rolling and possibly be spoilers for the fanfic:

So biggest one Garmdon has brain damage to his frontal lobe and it gets caught

He is willing to seek treatment (mainly therapy, checks up to make sure it doesn't get worse, specifically things like occupational therapy and behavioral therapy)

And he is willing to stop attacking the city in the moment so Misako and Lloyd move back with him

He does have "fits"

The frontal lobe controls a lot including your impulse control, ability to tell right and wrong and your memories

Garmadon's episodes are typically triggered by intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and ptsd episodes (technically the whole episode would be a ptsd episode but it triggers a spiral)

There are a few ways these episodes manifest

The trigger effects the manifestation

Ptsd, ptsd can look like a few different things (ask me how I know 🫠)

Most severe would be fully immersed in the memory, in his head he is in the middle of it and is trying to survive

Less severe would be he's aware that he'a not really there but he keeps seeing images in the corner of his eyes and/or the sounds, he also may be having sensations of touches he experienced during that trauma (anything from a touch on the shoulder to getting stabbed)

^ this one can be variety of severities and he is often staring off into space trying to think through it because he knows it's not what is actually happening but he doesn't make the most moral or rational decisions

Intrusive thoughts triggering an episode he acts on the thoughts, this can be very dangerous but usually he can be talked out of it

If he can't be talked out of it then he has to be restrained until he can be reasoned with

Anxiety especially anxiety attacks leads to him acting irrationally and lashing out

Lloyd is never left alone with Garmadon for his safety, Garmadon was upset at first with this but then had a minor episode in front of Lloyd and saw how much it scared him

When Lloyd is older and capable of defending himself from Garmadon he is allowed to be alone with him

.

Lloyd is the best kept secret

Everyone knows Garmadon has a wife but no one knows who she is or what she looks like

Only the scientists who sign ndas, Misako, Mystaké, Wu, and Garmadon know that Lloyd is his son and lives with them

Lloyd is allowed out of the volcano chaperoned but he goes by Lloyd Montgomery

.

Because they regularly go to Mystaké for calming teas and healing teas (can't get rid of the damage but it lessens the effects) for Garmadon they are much more aware and comfortable with their oni heritage

Garmadon had gotten comfortable in his oni form (has less headaches and and he feels like he can think clearer also four hands are handy) and his human form feels itchy like clothes that just don't quite fit anymore

Lloyd is really comfortable in his human form but he can access his oni form and a form that is a mix of dragon traits and oni traits

Lloyd doesn't like how aware he is of his powers in his other forms, they are muffled in his human form even though they are still accessible

.

Misako is glad to have her family together

She knows Lloyd is the prophesied Green Ninja but feels like this may be the best prevention to the prophecy, she is still studying it to be safe and recognize signs if they happen

Sometimes she's worried she didn't make the best decision by going back to Garmadon, she sees his struggles and sees the fear and trauma Lloyd has gained from seeing some of his father's episodes

But she's more worried of the damage will be done if she tries to take Lloyd and leave again

She has no sense of normal anymore, her son has wings today? That's probably fine, oh her husband and kid want to destroy things? Well everyone has those days it can be quite cathartic, the start of puberty comes with sneezes that shake the whole island? She's dealt with weirder

.

The scientist stick around but now the volcano is more of a research facility

A lot of them were actually marine biologists and switched over to engineering when they saw the perfect opportunity for study and extra funding they just needed engineering and a small sacrifice of morals

Those that actually wanted to destroy the city left

Some planned on playing Garmadon and the city by creating weapons and the selling the defense to the weapons and just building off it (it's called job security)

One of those scientist is Cyrus Borg, no one knows the tech lord works for Garmadon

Borg built Pixal as a defense for Lloyd if something happened where it was just Lloyd and Garmadon

Pixal is like an older sister/cousin to Lloyd and is often his chaperone

She does tend to stick around Borg more at first but soon became comfortable with doing her own thing and just keeping an ear or eye out

.

At 17 Nya gets a marine biologist internship

But they are super sketchy about the location and stuff

But it's a paid internship and it would help her and Kai out a lot

So she omits the red flags when talking to him about it

Besides she can take care of herself

The warehouse was clean

The nda is odd but if they are doing anything illegal it's void so...

Is that Lord Garmadon's volcano?

Was that a child!?

.

Anyways that's what I got

[cultofdixon]

Perfectly “Fine”

Daryl Dixon • She/Her Pronouns • OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder • Even in the apocalypse you know how to handle things in a way that keep you steady. But now the Saviors War has come to an end…and something ain’t what it used to be • ANGST/SFW • TW: Canon Violence / Panic Attacks / Nightmares / PTSD

Requested by: Anon

“Think you can handle being with Dixon in the Sanctuary?”

“Are you asking…because it’s Daryl I’m going to be with? Or because it’s the Sanctuary”

“Mostly cuz it’s the Sanctuary. The people that suffered Negan’s wrath deserve kindness, but we also need people we trust to take out those who still believe in Negan’s ways.” Rick finishes his explanation to notice Y/N’s restless leg and the way her contoured to concern. “Y/N. If anythin’ happens. You can always radio us. Or talk to him”

It’s hard to be in a relationship

——But it wouldn’t stop me

Y/N sighs rising to her feet as she makes her way to her truck they had loaded up for the trip to the Sanctuary. Rick frowns watching her open the bed to it and double checking everything they are taking over while Daryl gives her a confused look from the side of it.

“Okay. We’re set”

“I know” Daryl states watching her face fall on her way out of the bed before closing it. Did that strike a nerve? He suddenly frowns already not liking the idea of living at the Sanctuary, but more specifically her living there as well.

Y/N followed Daryl who took lead on his bike as she couldn’t stop thinking of every possibility that could happen in the Sanctuary.

Someone could instantly kill us

——It’s fine. We took their weapons away

A root could break out

——People have straighten out since the end of the war

We should take away any chemicals that could poison us

——Don’t think any of these people know where they are

The tapping on the stick shift stopped when Y/N reached the Sanctuary. She sighs feeling a bit of relief but it didn’t take long for her anxiety to kick back in when some of the residents stepped out of the building.

“Let’s keep it organized alright? Or no stealin’ from the truck. Cuz we’ll know” Daryl states taking lead on getting everything off Y/N’s truck.

It took a few hours for either of them to settle into the Sanctuary and Daryl was surprised when Y/N offered that they’d share a room together to keep an eye on each other’s back until the dust settles.

This is purely non-romantic

——It could be

Y/N found a room that had a bed and a futon. Strange what people wanted in the end of the world. Or what people wanted in the sick twisted system that the Saviors followed. Overall just. Weird. She felt weird and uncomfortable everywhere she was in the place and couldn’t drop everything to go back to Alexandria to find her security back. Have to work on it. Finding a new security.

“The hell yea doin’?” Daryl questions Y/N who was making her bed on the futon receiving a puzzled look from her. “I’ll sleep on the couch. You take the bed”

“No I’m already…Uh.” Y/N frowns crossing her arms, her right index finger tapping her left elbow a couple times. 7 times to be exact. Before sighing and grabbing the thick blanket from the bed and tossing it over the futon. “Fine. But we’re switching every other week”

“I can work with that” the archer sighs once he sat on the couch watching Y/N crawl onto the bed curling up in herself as much as possible hugging her knees to her chest. “Rick is kind of a dick for having us do this”

“He has his reasons…” Her frown seemed to be more permanent since they’ve been there and his heart broke at the sight of it. “Do you think we’ll be safe here?”

“I don’t know”

“Oh…”

“But I promise I’ll keep yea safe” Daryl makes that promise as he watches her features relax and the frown subside.

I don’t want to be here

——But he’s here.

The Sanctuary needed a lot of work and Y/N took initiative on organizing the pantry and gun locker that had very little compared to from before. You know the reason. Daryl was helping some of the men fix the front doors that were broken do to the truck crashing into the building. They had already took care of the walkers that infested the building and cleaned up but now it was simply making it another community.

After a few hours Daryl went to check on Y/N finding her still in the pantry. To be exact it’s been three hours and Y/N had already put everything new in the pantry while keeping everything precise. Daryl couldn’t have seen anything more organized except for when the old world was still running and it used to be a person’s job to restock shelves keeping tabs on everything in stock. Pretty much saying he feels like he’s in a closet sized supermarket.

“You chart everythin’?”

“Yes. Everything is accounted—“

“Sorry I need to grab something real quick” One of the residents came running in grabbing a can of food which lead to him knocking over a couple.

“Seriously?!” Daryl yells when the guy ran off after grabbing such. “Should write—-“ he didn’t have to tell her what to do as she already realigned everything and write down the inventory number before putting the notebook away in her pack. “You’re always on top of everything”

Just bring it up. He might not like you anymore.

——Everyone else knows. He should know.

“I guess. Uh. Are we working on how to get farming going on here next or…?”

“Or. I gotta do my usual sweep. You can plan out somethin’ if yea want, I can…meet yea outside?”

Y/N nods giving him a small smile as she walks past him out of the pantry to go do such while he watches her walk away. Something is off about her… his worry made him think too much about everything she’s doing even if it seemed normal.

But it wasn’t.

Her compulsions were in the more “normal” category. Organizing over and over again. The odd number tapping patterns. The bad switched with the good with her thinking. This place made them kick into overdrive, anywhere else kept it more dormant but she felt like she was caving in in an unpredictable environment.

Rick made a mistake.

——He knows best.

Daryl thinks I’m a freak.

——He never confirmed or deny that.

I’m at my fucking limit.

——We are. Fine.

Right?

“How’s Y/N holding up in that place?” Carol questions the archer as he took Y/N’s truck to grab some of the trade from the Kingdom to help them get started with farming. “It’s a new environment”

“She’s been there before. What’s new about it?”

Carol gave him a questioning look as she thought the most observant person she knows who know by now. “It’s just a question, Daryl. How is she?”

“Fine. I think” Daryl shoves the last crate into the bed before closing the trunk. “She doesn’t talk to me if anything were to bother her”

“She internalizes just like you, Daryl” Carol states and hopefully that was enough for him to check in on her. But she should really explain to Daryl what else could be going on. “You mind if I join yea back there?”

“Don’t yea have a kid and a boyfriend?”

“Seriously?—-Yes but they’d understand if I’m gone for a few days”

“Then tell’em and I’ll be waiting.” Daryl scoffs even more confused as he gets into the car moving the things Y/N had in the passenger seat out of the way only to get a hit nosey.

This girl and her writing… Daryl had always thought Y/N was a writer of some sorts as she always had a journal in hand. Hell, when the prison fell it was the one thing she came out with and thank god he stayed a moment for her to stick with him and Beth at the time. She’s always had it with her. Never thought to ask about it. Then right now an opportunity to look in it has risen.

[Entry 54]

Today was stressful. Everything fell out of order…Carol is missing, Maggie is at the Hilltop, Daryl was taken by Negan, Rick is lost in his own mind again like back at the prison when we lost Lori, and there’s more to it. But the more I think about everything wrong, the more I want to take myself out of it. I can’t keep everything together anymore. Glenn is dead. Abraham is dead. More are going to die. He could die. Fuck I can’t. He can’t die. I don’t want him to die. It should’ve been me. It should always be me

[Entry 11]

This place is nice. We definitely do not fit in a farm house. At least Carl is fine. He’s fine. He’ll live to live in this goddamn hell again. I don’t understand how people lived as long as they have. But we’ll make this work right?

[Entry 12]

That didn’t last long.

Daryl should’ve stopped by now but he continued to read her entries and they were very…dark. He didn’t know that she’s been feeling a certain way since the quarry and it was almost always after something bad has occurred. The events have triggered her. He thought all of these entries were bad and he really wanted to stop reading, ditch Carol, and check on Y/N who he mistakenly left alone in a shithole. His anxiety only grew when he read something that brought warmth in his chest and his body to relax for a second.

It wasn’t an entry. It was a list. She likes her lists…

D.D.

He’s smarter than he looks

His tracking technique is impressive

He cares so much

The way this man gives so much for everybody else

He always brings enough for everyone

His subtle smile is perfect

He’s been through so much

He makes me feel safe

“Daryl”

The archer quickly looks up from the notebook, closing it and starting the car once Carol buckled herself in.

“You were reading her journal?”

“You know about it? What’s in it?”

“I know what could be in it. Doesn’t mean I know exactly what’s in it”

“Then explain”

“Explain what?”

“What could be in it”

“Daryl, Y/N has OCD. It’s not life threatening unless it gets bad. She writes everything down to calm herself.” Carol swiped the notebook from the archer’s grasp. “Why did you read it when you clearly didn’t know?”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean? I just thought she was…quirky?” Daryl sighs only to hear Carol scoff to the comment. “What!”

“People with mental illness still have to fight in the goddamn apocalypse. “Quirky” is offensive to some because it down plays what’s really going on”

“You know a lot”

“Daryl. You have PTSD. So do I. We have our coping mechanisms. Who do you think respects them the most?”

Her.

________

Y/N suddenly jolts awake from the futon hearing the screaming as she shot forward turning toward the sound that came from Daryl’s sleeping form. She rises from the futon and brought herself in the bed with him watching him shake in his sleep.

Daryl suddenly felt his body relax and the shaking stop as he curls up a bit in her embrace.

When the archer woke the next morning he found himself with Y/N in the bed with him. Instead of her holding him they migrated to where it was him holding her. He stayed in that position for a little while longer

________

Once the truck was parked, Carol stopped Daryl from getting out as the two look forward finding Y/N sitting on the edge of the loading dock. She heard the truck but didn’t think much of it, he was coming back that’s all she really put to thought as she looks up at the night sky.

“I’ll take care of unloading. You give that back to her” Carol handed the notebook to Daryl as he stepped out shortly after.

Her smile was the first thing he noticed as he draws closer to her, especially when it started to fade when he lifted the notebook to her line of sight handing it to her.

“Oh”

“It was in your truck when I borrowed it”

“…did you…uhm” Y/N frowns gripping the notebook in her hands tapping the back of it rapidly in another rhythmic motion. Daryl suddenly took her hands gently into his after putting the notebook to her side. Her anxiety in the moment lessen but was still there waiting for his words.

“I was worried about yea” Daryl frowns feeling her squeeze. “The longer we were here the more you didn’t wanna talk. Hell neither did I but I knew what I was feelin’…just wanted to know what you were feelin’.”

“I just…didn’t want you to think I was weird”

“Why would I think that?”

“Because OCD has always been seen like that…by everybody else. In the old world it didn’t help that movies would associate it with serial killers. Same with bipolar or schizophrenia.” Y/N frowns gripping onto him tighter as she felt the air leave her lungs trying not to over think about it but she felt like she was losing. Her anxiety caught her when Daryl pulled his hands away but before she could think of every negative thing, he brought her hands to his shoulders before bringing his forehead against hers.

“Gotta breathe for me, doll.” Daryl knew she was starting to have an anxiety attack, he wishes he could do his own research on OCD and know more so he could be more prepared. He’ll learn. He’ll learn for her, from her. All he could do right now is have her latch onto him as he helped her steady her breathing without focusing on it too much to trigger herself more.

While the archer was taking care of her, Carol kept a respectable distance from them just in case. But she never had to worry. He would understand eventually.

Months have passed and the Sanctuary was turning for the better. They had managed to get crops going where the saviors used to grave the walker graveyard, turned it into a garden for their main crop being corn that would help with gas and sustenance. The pantry has the same system as the one in Alexandria where one person would come through to do inventory and make a list for a future run. The empty cells were turned into rooms and some the doors were removed but were still used for privacy areas. It may still look very factory like but at least it wasn’t like a prison anymore.

Daryl stood outside of his old cell surprised they even changed this place for the better. His old cell being one of many solo spots to relax. A lantern, a chair or rocking chair—whatever they could find, and a small table. They looked like singular study rooms in colleges and that was the idea Y/N was going with when she thought of it.

“Hey, you ready?”

A smile was quick to form on his lips when he heard her voice. Y/N smiles warmly to the archer when he brought his arm around her shoulders kissing her forehead.

“You?”

“Mhm. I have what I need” She smiles up at the archer as he captured her lips with his. “Come on. While we still have light out”

There’s always something calming about motorcycle rides while the sun is slowly fading from the sky. Watching the sky go from bright blue to hues of orange and purple before inevitably fading to black like the end of a movie.

The difference is the sky lights up at night showing the stars that shine bright enough to get lost in her beautiful E/C eyes.

Daryl hasn’t stopped smiling since they left and when they returned it remained, unlike the other days of going to such a heavy place. But knowing that she’s safe and calm in his presence…

Everything is perfectly fine.

[nerd4music]

I think overall there’s one of two „big“ problems happening for people who have a problem with TOWL (racists and the likes aside… 🙄).

1- The misunderstanding that this was truly much more a Rick and Michonne story than a TWD one. This was not TWD S12. It was about telling the story of these 2 characters and being able to put a dot at the end (or a dot dot dot). And you’ve laid all of that out perfectly. Like yes, in TWD, Beale (& the CRM) would have been draaaaagged out. But this was much more of a Terminus approach than a Saviors one if we will…

2- TWD was never the most ..subtle show. They tended to hit the audience over the head with stuff. And I’m not sure I would go as far as calling TOWL subtle outright either (idk, didn’t think about this until right this moment lol -obviously elements of it are, sure -just as elements on TWD could be on the subtler side) but compared to TWD, it certainly is lol. And there has been a very big „media literacy“ and „basic comprehension skills“ problem happening for a minute now. And I really don’t say this to be mean or make fun of people or anything but these are just facts. Some people really struggle with getting the information when they are not being hit over the head with it, over and over and over again. After the finale I saw several posts on my tl of people wondering why this, that or the other was not addressed or how/why this, that or the other did happen… and I was utterly confused because those things they claimed were missing were very much shown? I was like, there was literally a scene dealing with all of this? And it didn’t require any reading between the lines to be honest, no subtext, it was very much the text of the scene?! So it seems like some people just didn’t get a lot of things that were happening 🫤

(BTW I don’t mean that even if someone didn’t have these specific problems with the show, they MUST love it then. Likes and dislikes etc etc. As much as I really loved the show as a whole, if I decided to put down the Richonne-colored glasses I wanted to and did watch to the show with.. I’d definitely have a few complaints lol, though still very much enjoyed the show even then)

That's definitely what happened. And to some extent, I get why, considering Rick and Michonne are 2/3 of the main show's Big Three. But when the press and promos started, and people were still talking about some Marvel-style meet-up, I was like...oh they're definitely not listening to what's being said, because it's six damn episodes, and also The Richonne story, not the Team Family jamboree. And then acting as if it's somehow 'insulting' to the rest of the characters if Rick and Michonne didn't talk about them. The man had PTSD so bad, he couldn't remember his own son's face. Why would you think it would be good time for him to pause in the middle of his wife telling him about a traumatic moment during her pregnancy to ask about anyone else? Please be fr.

I feel you on the comprehension thing, which is nothing new for this fandom. The fact that so many people legit thought Rick didn't know how to drive stick and questioned the 'realism' of it but never stopped to think that it was because he only has one damn hand. Y'all were fine with every silly ass moment that happened in the main show, that was either sheer dumb luck or handwaved away, but now we need a complete breakdown from experts on how Rick managed to fight off walkers one-handed. Now y'all want the realism, when you've been so giddy for weeks because you need one of them to die for the show to be 'interesting'.

I'm really not listening to people who need the narrative to hold their hand through everything, or need to see every piece of the plot onscreen for it to be considered 'legitimate'. (I'm officially banning the phrase 'plot armor' for the foreseeable future).

People didn't get things, because they don't take a minute to sit with the damn material anymore. From live reactions videos to live tweeting/blogging, people are just watching TV to make content and have an online moment, not for what's actually being shown. And yeah, TOWL isn't perfect, but the minor criticisms I have for it doesn't take away from the fact that it is very enjoyable and easily the best material from the TWD landscape in a long time.

(sidenote: I will say one of my favorite things from these past six weeks is everyone struggling to figure out the overall TWD timeline, lmao.)

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

I’m newer to tumblr but an Arcana Veteran so coming across your account is a blessing 😭 your hcs are really good and I look forward to your posts!! I had an idea that I never executed on my own and i thought I might as well share it, so here goes nothing 😋

How would the M6 react to MC changing something drastic about themselves?

To be more specific, say MC always had long hair, more of a coolheaded attitude, or were always quiet and polite. And then out of the blue they’re shutting everyone out, slowly erasing almost every trace of their presence and being off the radar for a few months.

The LIs are worried because not a single soul has seen them. And then they suddenly return, and it’s like a new person, but very obviously still themselves. Shorter hair or other physical differences, soft-spoken personality, etc. But they come back to the M6 regretfully, never saying what *did* happen.

Assuming what they had was some strive for change, depression, or something else, it may be hard to explain to their dearest, but they eventually will. All they want is to be home.

just a silly idea of mine ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ



The Arcana HCs: M6 when MC changes without them

~ thanks for the ask @vegaspng! Sorry it took me so long to get around to but here it is. I'm writing this to be similar to what it's like in the recovery stages of PTSD or chronic depression, because I live for that kind of bittersweet hope. To anyone experiencing ot hoping to experience this, best of luck! You're not alone! - brainrot ~

- a little backstory-

The Devil is defeated. Vesuvia is safe. And your loved ones are building a new life with you that promises to be better than anything you can remember. Which is why you have to leave.

You've learned so much about yourself, your past, even the body you have now, and you're not sure what to do with it yet. That aside, you took on responsibilities and accomplishments the likes of which no single person could reasonably hope to carry, and you pulled it off. You didn't have to do it alone either. But now that things are going back to normal, you're stuck drifting in your own brain because you have no idea what normal is supposed to be like.

Your beloved has been wonderful. They've shown more patience than you ever asked for, listening to you process for hours and doing their best to help. You've worked through who you were after being brought back from the dead, you've worked through who you became through your fight against the devil, but you still know nothing of who you started out as. Which means you're not sure who you're supposed to be now. And you don't want to build a new life without knowing who you're building it for.

So one fine morning, you pack a bag, arrange for your absence, and kiss your beloved goodbye with the promise to return.

The journey is difficult, but rewarding. You travel across realms both magical and human, collecting traces of your past and encountering moments of who you used to be. You don't recover all of your memories, but you get the important ones. You find out who you used to be. It's less than you thought, but it's more than you had, and it's enough to move forward. So you set your sights for home and return to Vesuvia.

Your loved one is overjoyed when you return. They have a little adjusting to do, you have some mannerisms you didn't used to and they can't predict your behavior in the same way. But they're quick to recognize that it's all still you. Slowly, they get to know all the pieces you're building yourself with and fall in love with each one. And as time goes on, you get to hear about the whole thing from their point of view as well. What was it like for them, when you left? And what does life look like now that you're back?

Julian

The hardest part of you leaving was trying not to take it as a rejection of his love for you

He knows in his head why you need to do this, hell, the reason he ended up in Vesuvia was because he needed his own journey of self discovery

He just has to fight off his own inner demons telling him that you're going to realize you're better off without him and not come back

Which, for someone who found the drive to keep his own life because it had you it, can be quite the struggle

And because he's actually quite intelligent, he recognizes that it's not good to stay dependent on you to be his sole purpose in life. That's not your responsibility to carry

So he keeps faith in your promise to return, and puts all of his energy into becoming a better man for you to come home to

He spends time with Portia, getting to know her as an adult and becoming the kind of brother she says she wants and not what he assumes she needs

He seeks out time with Nazali so he can continue his medical studies and get more mentoring

He reconnects with Nadia and puts his knowledge of public hygiene to use with her plans for Vesuvia

He even manages to build a healthy friendship with Asra (who also misses you) and resolve their past toxic situationship

It's not easy, but he wakes up every morning a little more ready to face the day

When you come home, he's over the moon. Nothing and nobody can replace the happiness you bring him

He notices your changes right away, but he's too relieved to know that you actually came back to focus on them

Once you're settled back in with him and it's more apparent, he has a raging battle of opinions in his head about whether he should ask you about it or wait

He ends up asking you extremely vague, open-ended questions just in case you want to talk about it, but not letting himself pry

As time passes, he gets to know more of who you are and you begin to tell him some of the things that happened on your trip

He's fascinated, asking questions whenever you're in the headspace to answer them and connecting dots with you

He's never had the zest for life that he does now. Every night that he goes to bed with you, he's already looking forward to what the next morning will bring

And the best part? So do you. The future has never so been so desirable as it is now

Asra

They completely understand where you are coming from. In fact, they were the one who suggested the trip

He didn't suggest you going by yourself though

In the end what they care about more than anything is your happiness and wellbeing. So they'll give you every piece of advice and connection and helpful item they have, and promise to watch the shop while you're gone

But oh, he misses you desperately

When they gave up half their heart, it was in the form of their ability to have connections with other people. You being in their life covers for that

The only person he had a strong connection with before you was Muriel. And when you died, he went into the darkest, most twisted headspace he'd ever been in and did things he couldn't later comprehend

Their decision to bring you back, and the way they did it, is something you two have talked about once or twice, but there isn't much else to do besides try to forgive them and make sure it doesn't happen again

But this time, you're not alone. Which means he isn't either

Every day for the next week, someone new drops by the shop at your request to check on them

First it's his parents. Then it's Nadia. Muriel. Julian. Portia. Selasi, the baker. Natiqa on her way through town. Even Lucio at one point, with an apology letter that took months to help him write

Every time they feel like packing up and taking off until you return, they remember their promise to stick it out for you

And slowly, he begins to stay for other people too. It doesn't hit him until one month in that for the first time in his life, he's a part of a community because he's wanted there and wants to be there, not because he's with you

You're still their anchor, but now they have ties apart from you that give them a semblance of home, family, and belonging

The moment you return he's dropping everything. He will maintain some form of physical contact with you for the next 48 hours

They're one of the only people who remembers you before the plague, and seeing glimpses of that in who you are now makes them so proud and happy for you

You don't have to tell him everything right away. Though he is going to apologize profusely for every time he left you for a long trip with nothing to do but watch the shop and wait for his return

For every piece and memory you're ready to talk about, they will give you their undivided attention and then lavish the new discovery with all the affection they have

Nadia

She's torn. On one hand, her greatest joy is providing for you, so seeing the way you have an unmet need and can't come to her to fix it is hard for her

On the other hand, she perfectly understands the need to get away from it all to find yourself

And she's perfectly aware of how dominant her personality can be. You having access to your own space is very important to her

So she'll make sure you have everything you need and offer every available resource to you, and let you go

It's hard at first. You had been the one to wake her from her sleep, you had been the one to bring back her faith in herself

So without you around, her old insecurities begin to resurface. She didn't grow up in Vesuvia. She wasn't even the active ruler until several months ago

There were literal demons serving as her courtiers and she didn't do anything about them until you called them out

How is she supposed to speak with confidence if she doesn't have you to back her up?

And that's when, slowly, people start to drop by, and she's finally ready to accept their support

First it's Portia. Then it's Asra. Even Muriel drops by briefly. Julian makes a couple of calls as well

And then, it's her sisters

First it's Natiqa, crashing her lonely dinners and making her laugh with her wisecracks

Then it's Nasmira, quietly sweet talking the more stubborn courtiers into compliance

One by one, and never more than two visitors in the palace at a time, each family member stops by, taking their cues from Nadia and being her backup

And little by little, every childhood memory that haunts her gains a new light

She still gets tired of them and feels stifled every now and then, but she doesn't feel alone any more

It soon becomes known that Vesuvia doesn't just have an incredible Countess, their Countess has an army of loving supporters

When you return, she takes the next few days off and trusts her support system to handle the city for a bit

She'll ask questions, but as soon as she senses hesitation she'll give you space

She sees all these new flashes of personality in you, and as much as her heart aches for your trials, it flutters as you become more yourself

She already knew you were a worthy companion, but as you share more and more she's left in awe of who you are

The world is not ready for the power couple you two are going to make

Muriel

He understood what you needed to do right away. Going on a trip in search of his roots was exactly what ended up saving him

And getting to know you in the process was a delightful bonus

But when he realizes you're going alone, he's undeniably hurt. He's not the type to be selfish, but you went with him on his journey. He was vulnerable with you and it brought you two together

So why don't you trust him the same way? Why won't you make space for him in your life the way he did for you?

It's tricky to answer, because he makes a fair point and because he's never asked you for anything like this before

You're eventually able to explain the difference, how your trip is about finding out who you are on your own terms, when everything you've gotten so far has been on somebody else's

It's still painful for him, but he'll agree and let you go. He's not afraid of being alone

Until, for the first time in his life, he gets bored and starts wondering if someone's going to come bother him

Which is completely new. He's never had that train of thought before in his life

The closest was when Asra stayed with him and he wouldn't know if they would be back late or not

But now the hut is almost too quiet. The bed is too big. The forest is too peaceful. The eggs are too bland

And so, after two weeks of trying and failing to fall into old habits, he goes into town, grumbling under his breath the whole way

The panic that Asra greets him with when he walks into your old shop is almost enough to make him turn around and leave

Muriel? In town? By himself? Without being summoned? The world must be ending!

When he's finally able to mumble something about just wanting to visit and pick up some spices, Asra shatters a teacup

He's never been the one to surprise them before. It's fun. He could get used to this

And so, visits to Vesuvia get more frequent. Usually to the shop. Often to the palace. Several times to the community theatre, without needing to hide in the rafters

He's so relieved when you get back. You can hold a conversation with other people much better than he can

He notices the changes immediately, but he doesn't address them at all. His only desire concerning you is to be your safe place

He's come to appreciate the beauty of human complexity, so seeing new layers like this in you is heartstopping

You never have to worry about opening up. If you do, he'll accept you. If you don't, he'll accept you. He just loves you for you

Portia

Not gonna lie, it triggered her a little

She knows how this goes. You get tired of your quaint little life, you go off on an adventure without her, and you leave her to rot where she can't reach or help you with letters full of empty apologies

The conversation you facilitate between her and Julian after that rant is one of the hardest things you've ever done, but it's worth it

After things have settled, she lets you leave and holds onto the hope that you'll be back

And while you're gone, she distracts herself with work. She's got boundless energy, she needs to put that to use so she can't think too much

And so begins the craziest three weeks of her life. From the moment she wakes up to the moment she falls asleep, she does nothing but work

Normally, you're her reason to take a break. You put her back in the main role of her own life so she can let her hair down and live the adventure she's destined for

But without you around, the only role she's used to playing is support. So that's what she does, to the point of completely forgetting about herself

It takes a burnout induced three day fever to make her pause. Especially when she begins to recover and sees the sheer number of worried faces in her cottage

Nadia's spending every free evening with her. Julian's sleeping over most nights. Mazelinka's covering the daytime with her mysteriously perfect soup and brandishing a wooden spoon to keep her in bed

It makes her realize two things. First, that while it looks different, she has her brother's tendency to take on the world's problems to avoid taking care of herself

And second, that you shouldn't have to be the solution to that

It's rough, but she learns self care. Not just an extra step in her skincare, but letting herself do something just for fun. Putting herself first

Learning to sit and do nothing without feeling guilty because nobody can make some kind of profit from it

When you get home though, it's like she can fully relax again. You give her an importance that she has to fight to hold onto otherwise

She has the hardest time giving you space. All the changes you've made are so exciting to her, she wants to hear all about your adventures and growth!

You'll have to tell her plainly that you're not ready to talk about it right away, and she'll be very understanding even if it's hard

Every time you open up, she'll hang on your every word. You two are the main characters in her story, and she can't wait for the plot to develop with you by her side

Lucio

He doesn't make it easy for you to leave

He doesn't mind you going on a trip! Trips are fun! And even when they're serious and scary, like what he had to do with you in the Arcana's realms, they're always better with a loved one!

So why are you trying to go without him? Who's going to protect you?!

And equally important, who's going to be with him?!

He's thoughtless sometimes, but he's not dumb. He knows he's a better man because of you

And he also knows that he's not perfect. Deep down under all that bluster and ego, he's still a kid who never learned to love

You helped him with that. You unraveled every tangled oopsie with him, you didn't flinch when you saw the worst of him, and then you picked up his forgotten heart and filled it up with love

So why else would you be leaving except because you finally realized that he's not worthy of you?

You're able to explain it to some extent. You need to go on a journey similar to his. Only you need to do this by yourself because it isn't about fixing oopsies, it's about finding out who you used to be

He'll let you go because it's what's best for you. And he believes you when you say you'll come back. But what he can't bring himself to tell you is how afraid he is that who you used to be won't be able to love him

When you kiss him goodbye, he resigns himself to it being the last he'll ever get

At first he sulks. He crashes people's parties and picks fights with every bandit he encounters

But when he has the option to get blackout drunk? Take all the goods from the bandits for himself on top of the bounty money?

He can't

You taught him the importance of taking responsibility for his actions. Well, you made him a good man. So you're going to have to take responsibility for that and give him the chance to prove himself worthy of you

Which he does. He wakes up early. He moderates his drinks. He does the jobs he finds. He saves the money he earns

When you get back and fling your arms around him, his knees buckle from relief

He can tell you've changed, but it's okay if you don't want to talk about it. He can tell you all the ways he's changed instead!

If you were worried about his reactions when you do open up, you quickly realize you don't have to be

He doesn't expect you to be perfect. All he wants is for you to be you, for you to be happy, and for him to be the one you choose to do that with

[poisonedspider]

Alright, alright, a bunch of you told me to just go at it soooo. I'm putting it under a read more. Also very large trigger warning, this entire starter relates to suicide, mental health (specifically PTSD), trauma, etc. This is an open starter, so please reply if you want to and feel comfortable handling really intense mental health struggles.

There was honestly no point anymore. That was it, mic drop, curtain closed. I'm sick of the poison, wish I had something to live for tomorrow. The thing was, he wasn't even certain if he did. He had been in Hell a long time, pushing triple the amount of years that he was alive. It hadn't seemed so bad....at first. Hell, in some odd sort of way, was more comforting than his living years. At least down here he got to be himself, no judgment, because everyone else was on #teamdebauchery as well.

The lifestyle had been beyond fun at first. It had even been fun when he had met Valentino. Valentino, who had appeared like some fucking Greek God (or, Latino God, should he say?) and swept him off his feet. Found value in him, didn't mind his bad habits, told him he was beautiful and wanted. If he had known then what he had known now - well, he didn't know if he would have left with Val after his shift at Club 666.

It had still been a decade or so before the contract was signed. And then everything started to get messy. The drugs were never enough to numb it, the hundreds of men could never fill the aching pain in his heart. Between all three Vees, Angel had had to leave. Val, for the most obvious reasons. But he knew when he didn't belong somewhere, when he wasn't wanted. That had been his whole experience being Henroin's son. And he could only stand so many thrown slurs and insults before he would lose it.

He had when he was alive, after all. He had found solace in death.

And maybe, just maybe, that had been what had landed him here. Sitting on top of the roof on the edge of Pentagram City, between the Magne District and Cannibal Town. It was far enough away from the Entertainment District owned by the Vees, or the Mafia and Weapon district where he might run into family. Far enough away from the hotel.

The hotel. His friends. His chosen family. He loved them, but he couldn't say he knew if they felt the same. All they knew of him was the fake persona he put on, the show he performed every day. A bullshit lie, starring the one and only Angel Dust! Cue the fake applause track. He had done it to himself, of course. He would rather be rejected for an image of who he was, then be rejected for his true self. He'd already had that happen too many times. By his dad and brother. By Valentino.

Charlie, she cared, but she cared about everyone. But ever since Pentious had moved into the hotel, she had seemed to put less attention in her first and only patron. He didn't blame the serpent, but it had driven him into a further spiral. Valentino was right - addict trash like him never changed. No matter how much he tried, and put in genuine effort, it wasn't going to matter. At the end of the day, he still sucked dick for a living. He still hid cocaine under his mattress.

And of course there was Husk. Husk, who Angel had started to fall for, even though it terrified him. Love was terrifying. But Husk had always pushed away his advances. Seemed annoyed by him. Uninterested. Maybe their little 'moment' had changed things, but it hadn't seemed like it did. While Husk smiled at him more and seemed more proud of him, Husk still had said he was tired of Angel being fake. And the sad thing? Husk had probably been who he was most real towards. Flirting or otherwise, it was because he had....wanted to try. With him.

This all led to here. He of course had tied all possible loose ends, or so he thought. He had cleaned out his room, the neon lights and pictures and fluffy purple pillows shoved into boxes, looking like he had just decided to move out without a word. Given up. Maybe he had. Fat Nuggets had been the hardest. It hurt his heart to leave his hellpig behind, but Nuggets deserved a better mom than him anyways. He had left a note for Charlie, not about his plans, but secured under Nuggets' collar. Please take care of him. xoxo Angie

Short, simple. He knew she would, too. Just like she did for Keke, for Razzle and Dazzle. Getting the angelic weapon had been the easiest part. Valentino's cabinet was stuffed with them. While Angel didn't have the money to get one on his own, it was incredibly easy to take one from Val. One would think it wouldn't be, but despite their rocky relationship, Valentino trusted Angel. He knew Angel still loved him, and would never do anything to hurt him. Not to mention that by contract, he couldn't.

Valentino would notice one of his guns missing eventually, but it would be too late by then. He had thought nothing could possibly be worse than being alive. Now he felt like nothing could possibly be worse than being dead. And double dead? That was the only unknown. Though surely, nothing could possibly be bad when ceasing to exist. He would never know it. He'd be gone. Nothing. Just like he felt in that moment.

He flipped off the safety, taking a deep breath. He knew how to do this - guns were his specialty, he'd killed so many people before. But fuck if this wasn't scary. When he had died, it hadn't been intentional. Maybe it had been unconsciously - he had wanted to die, and he had taken just too many drugs, more than he knew he could handle. He had slipped into the coma, and he had never woken back up. This was different. This he had to actively pull the trigger. Angel didn't consider himself weak, but he hated how his hands were shaking in that moment.

Hammer pulled back, gun cocked, he looked over Pentagram City one last time. In an eerie way, it was beautiful. He didn't belong amongst any of the good here. An angel he was not, despite his namesake. No, he was just Anthony. Scared. Alone. Nothing. Worthless. He had to shake his head to snap out of it, knowing the best aim - gun positioned right underneath his chin, angled so that he wouldn't fuck it up and end up suffering until he died of blood loss. Finger on the trigger. It would be okay....it would be okay....it would all be over in just three....two....

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not going with my demanding housemate on an expensive trip to visit their hospitalized parent?

My housemate is not good with people, and despite this, relies on them very heavily. We're very close friends, but they frustrate me a lot. They make a lot of demands of people. This is because they're very bad at asking politely for things due to fear of rejection, their lack of empathy, and a genuine need for assistance. They have a lot of mental health issues (autism, ADHD, depression and anxiety for certain, I suspect also PTSD, borderline personality disorder and/or others) and minor chronic health issues. We live in a house owned by their mother, who is currently doing very poorly in the hospital where she lives interstate. I won't go into specifics but she may not live. A lot of my housemate's mental health struggles stem from their parents. They're dad has been physically abusive in the past (hence why staying with him is not an option) and their mother is emotional abusive. I've seen this first hand when their mother overstayed her welcome with us for several months. I dislike them both greatly, but of course what is happening to their mother is tragic. My housemate STATED, did not ask, that I would be coming with them to visit their mother interstate because no one else could come with them, and they feel they need another person to be with them in case things go bad mental health wise for them, either due to their abusive parents or the possible death of their mother. I went along with this because it felt expected and like the right thing to do. However, when it came to booking flights and hotels, I became very stressed. I have a big workload at the moment (I freelance), the trip would be a lot of money, and I knew I would be spending most of it in a hotel since their mother does not want me present at the hospital. I also would have had to reschedule some things and would have missed an event I am really looking forward to. I am also aware there's a high chance my housemate would like to stay longer than planned if their mother deteriorates, and the trip would get even more expensive. I had a big cry with my partner and they encouraged me to tell my housemate how I was feeling. I did and we reluctantly came to the conclusion that I will stay here but call them anytime they like over the trip and help them where I can re hotel and flight bookings and the like that I can do from home, and in the case of an emergency, will come interstate to help them. I don't know if this is the right thing to do. On the one hand I know I don't owe them being with them for the whole trip and have to look after myself as well, but on the other it's a really rough time for them at the moment. AITA for not going with my demanding housemate on an expensive trip to visit their hospitalized parent?

What are these acronyms?

[thealogie]

q&a report q&a report (late but better than never) q&a report i didn't catch quiiiite everything in detail but i did my very best

we got: dt ros watt (malcolm) jatinder singh randhawa (porter) cal macaninch (banquo) casper knopf (fleance, the kid actor) alasdair macrae (musician, murderer) annie grace (gentlewoman, musician) and i think? kathleen macinnes (singer)

the last three people all shuffled in a bit apart from each other after the round of everyone introducing themselves by name and character was already over so i'm not sure i caught them all accurately. i'll refer to people by first names

during the introduction round i think casper started introducing himself and got kid applause so the audience ended up giving every single person a sped up little round of applause like a cute lil call and response rhythm between introduction - applause of very specific short length which was kind of funny. the cast joined in for each others as well and everyone made funny faces while applauding.

most questions were asked by the moderator

question: What did you think about the production when they first heard about it? cal was confused but intrigued. a lot of "not sure how it was going to work or feel like". when david and cush got on it the binaural audio wasn't yet firmly part of the concept but he was intrigued by the approach through trauma and how that affects the macbeths' relationship.

question: Wow was it for them with the binaural audio knowing the experience is different for the audience? what do they think? dt: we don't quite now how it comes together. the sounds are all cued off us actors, not the other way around. all i know is without Laura we would be fucked! (Laura = live sound mixing person) ros: we never quite know how it sounds for the audience, we were able to put on headphones and experience scenes we're not in in rehearsal, but i want to watch the whole thing! the cue speakers have some stripped down sounds and music that are relevant for the actors. but the audio choices enabled us to create intimacy jatinder: i think it makes the audience better able to relate to mental health struggles and trauma, giving what happens in the characters heads into your heads and relate it to your own experience. i think everyone here in the room has some of their own experiences with mental health and… voices in their head

question to the musicians: how does your work add to the concept and experience? kathleen (i think mostly, but the other musicians might also have weighed in): music enables us to place the text in a very Scottish place, but without getting in the way of the text. The headphones make it possible that it mixes with all the layers, balancing between music, sounds and lines is possible thanks to the technology. you can have loudly, energetically played music but then mix it at a level where it doesn't interfere with lines, when usually you would have to play quietly to let the text come through, which creates a different atmosphere. kathleen: i was advised to sing when nobody is speaking and turn that to humming when somebody is. so it was also very useful to have the glass box and always see what is happening on stage.

question about the porter scene: how did that come to pass, especially making a more modern version out of it? jatinder: decided together with max to just play it and see where it goes, starting with improvisation and then fleshing it out. there was an interest in finding a modern equivalent to the original jokes that audiences would perceive in a similar way as audiences back then would have related to the original jokes. the scene purposefully takes a bit of the intensity out - basically an emotional intermission in the middle of this really intense and dark journey. but my job was also in the end of the scene to bring the audience back into it.

question to david: What makes you come back to the big parts? dt: Well, Max had a good idea and I like Max. I liked the idea of the themes of PTSD and child loss and I like the donmar warehouse. i performed here 20 years ago, which is remarkable because i'm in my mid twenties right now! (laughs all around). there's something a bit magical about this space and doing an olympic event of a part like this one in this intimate of a space.

audience member question to Casper (kid): What is your favorite bit of the play? casper: my favorite bits are the murdering… or the attempt to murder. (laughs all around) But no, seriously. I like scenes where I'm not being killed and I'm having a conversation with someone that's not about death. different cast member (not sure who): -Is- there even a scene like that? (everyone laughs) dt, turning to Casper kind of conspiratorially: My favorite bit every night is the audience's reaction to your neck getting broken. (raised eyebrows, nodding to the audience with a wide grin) That's always something.

audience member question: Do you notice the audience being different in any way with the headphones compared to your experiences in other plays? different cast members answer in bits and pieces (sometimes i have a vague memory who it was…) ros: with the headphones sometimes people are louder, sometimes i feel like you are more connected and zoned in on us! maybe because you don't have the opportunity to talk to your neighbor maybe… somebody else: i feel like it's very quiet and there is somehow less coughing than usual. (laughs around) i don't know why that is!!

audience member question: What other productions of macbeth influenced this one: [here be the the answer part with david's ian mckellen impression, see the other post] musicians (i think annie): we came straight, literally no break, from the RSC's macbeth production so we really had to empty our brains. there was no break in between, but the music is very different and Max's vision also very different, so we really had to unlearn parts

audience member question: The physical theatre stuff, the witch swarm, how did that come about? ros: We really tried to think more of what would be a physical representation of the voices in somebody's head. Everybody in Macbeth's life is watching, taunting, staring at him. It was always more about the intention of the movement, what these voices want to do to him and less what the movement itself is.

THANK YOU for transcribing all of this. I love getting an explanation for what the swarm of witches were meant to represent! It really did feel like a dance/feeling more than a literal scene and it’s fun to know that was sort of the intent. (Also the neck snapping bit - I also loved the audience’s reaction to that every night.)

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

You know, part of what bothers me, I think, about some Tonowari and Ronal adopting Spider fics is the demonization of Neytiri, and to some extent, Jake. I’ve made posts about this before, I am number one Spider defender, ya’ll know, but Neytiri’s reactions to him make perfect sense. 

Neytiri is 18 in the first movie. She’s already lost her sister and father right in front of her at an incredibly young age and very traumatically. The spectre of this war and of this destruction has been around basically her entire life. In the comics, Mo’at and Eytukan leave the decision of wether or not to open Grace’s school up to Neytiri and the other children. Neytiri advocates for this school, and then her sister is shot and killed right in front of her at that very building. Neytiri advocates for Jake, trusts him and defends him and lets a human into her heart again, only to find out he has been betraying her the entire time. It’s a vicious cycle I don’t think she can bare to even attempt to repeat again with Spider, and for good reason! In the comics, we learn that half the humans who were deemed trustworthy even defect back to the RDA and betray the Na’vi again. They lived side by side for fifteen years and still weren’t trustworthy. Girl has major trust issues. I’m sure the idea of her kids trusting a human and it getting a sibling of theirs killed like it happened to Sylwanin is very prevalent. Not even mentioning what it means that Spider is Quaritch’s son, the son of the man Jake betrayed her for, and the son of the man responsible for her fathers death and the destruction of her home. Again, she is eighteen in the first movie. Even if the Na’vi mature differently, expecting her to make an emotionally mature response to Spider is irrational, and deadass I think Spider is more empathetic to that than half of you. Obviously, adults are responsible for children and it’s not an excuse for her treatment of Spider. But honestly, Neytiri never directly harms Spider unless absolutely necessary. She leaves him behind to save Kiri. She pushes him in the comics when she blames him for almost getting Kiri and Tuk killed. She cuts him in the movie to convince Quaritch she will kill him. But then she pushes him behind her, not toward Quaritch. Even after this move, she trusts him not to attack her or anything. She pushes him behind her where he is safe. Sometimes the stuff ya’ll write her doing is wild to me. 

Our man Jake Sully (I am a Jake Sully apologist) is 22 in the first movie. I am 23 guys, he’s baby. If I suddenly had three kids and another on the way (I’m including Spider) I would kill myself. No lie. That man is baby that is not a fully developed brain. The way that man soaks up any attention from Grace like he’s never even seen a parent before? Telling. The way he protects Grace and Mo’at specifically during the fall of the Hometree??? I was sideeyeing the hell out of you Jake. Jake and Neytiri needed a full 20 years of therapy and being parented themselves before having any children, first of all, but that’s not the cards they were dealt hmm? Jake is now the leader of a clan of people in a culture and a society and a planet and a species he knew next to nothing about three months ago. And now he’s PARENTING IN IT??? AND HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD AT IT?? AND ALSO THERE IS A WAR??? AND HE HAS MAJOR PTSD?? Anyways what I’m saying is it’s a miracle any of the Sully’s are alive, let alone turned out even remotely chill. 

Saying that the adults around Spider failed him is absolutely correct and completely accurate. They also just were not really adults imo yet. They were barely there, kids who had to grow up way too fast to deal with horrendous things way too quickly, just like the kids in the second movie. Cut them some slack. The number one goal in foster care, family services, counseling, anything like that, is to keep families together. I kinda feel that way about Spider. He’s a Sully god damnit. Saying Ronal and Tonowari would be better parents is insane to me. Obviously, they would. There was no war going on for them, they have no past trauma, and they seem to be older. But idk man, I don’t think that’s his place. For me, found family is about mutual healing and growing with an odd little chosen family. No one is odder than that fucking human marine guy who became an alien and married an alien to have some alien hybrid children and now they gotta officially adopt that weird human kid that’s always around.

(obv I’m still reading all ur Tonowari and Ronal adopting Spider fics tho)