#i live under a rock and only discovered these existed the other day

[smores100]

Captive Prince trilogy | Polish version | cover art by littleulvar

[madametamma]

The Day Jon was born (A MAWS fanfic)

“I’m so sorry, but your son likely only has a few more hours to live.”

The news made Clark’s whole world lose sound, light, and color. He was frozen to the spot. His body reacting as if he didn’t move time wouldn’t go forward.

He and Lois were so thrilled over having a baby. Clark wasn’t sure he could due to his alien DNA, until one day in the middle of stopping a bank robbery he heard a noise he had never imagined before.

Two hearts beating inside Lois as she hid behind a turned over desk to cover herself from the armed robber’s gunfire. She furiously scribbled notes into a pad of paper for the story she’d write about this. The shock at the time got Superman shot over 58 times until the robbers themselves grew confused at his motionlessness.

He suddenly snapped out of his stupor, finished rounding the robbers up as quick as a flash and carried his perplexed wife out the door up to the privacy of the sky to give her body a proper X ray vision scan, confirming that she was indeed pregnant.

They were overjoyed at the time. So happy to bring a child into the world. They imagined teaching him or her catch, bringing them to Ma and Pa’s home for holidays. They wanted every part that parenthood had to offer together.

A few weeks later the fears started taking hold. Lois was on an emotional roller coaster. With some days feeling full of energy and eager to fight against her husbands insistence that she be less reckless with claims that no one could stop her from doing what she had to do as a reporter and other days where she cried in bed feeling certain she was going to be a horrible mother.

Through every breakdown Clark was there to assure her that everything would be fine although she wasn’t the only prone to anxiety and emotional episodes. He would also have more than his fair share of nightmares of something happening to the baby. A foe discovering of his family’s existence and taking them hostage? A strange Kryptonian sickness that he would have no idea how to cure? What if their child had powers like him? What if they had to live with the isolation and loneliness he grew up with as a boy. He would never wish that on anyone let alone his own kid.

Thankfully Lois and Clark never had a breakdown at the same time. They were each other’s rock. When one was in crisis mode, the other swooped in to let them know they believed everything would be alright.

That is until last night. 25 days before her due date, as Clark was brushing his teeth getting ready for bed, he heard the sound of a crash in the kitchen where Lois was. Near instantaneously he was at her side as she lay fallen on the floor breathing ragged, holding her baby bump.

“Something’s wrong.” She managed to hiss out through clenched teeth.

Clark flew her to the local hospital as fast as he was able, The doctors declared that if they had any chance at saving the baby, they’d need to perform surgery immediately.

As Lois was going under, quickly loosing consciousness, she gave Clark the most painful, terrified expression Clark had ever seen from her, it almost stopped his heart. It didn’t look right on the face of the bravest person he’d ever known, and it made him feel almost as small and helpless as she looked.

“C-Clark, y-you’ve gotta make sure our baby’s gonna be okay. You’ve gotta bring em to me, promise?”

“I promise.” The words came out before Clark even knew what he was promising. He would have given her anything in that moment.

She muttered a few words incoherently as her eye glazed over and succumbed to the anesthesia.

The rest was a blur for Clark. Never in his life had he felt so powerless and afraid. The only thing he clung to was the sound of the two heartbeats of his wife and baby until finally a doctor delivered him those awful words.

“I’m so sorry, but your son likely only has a few more hours to live.”

Clark somehow found himself sitting in the hospital room with his sleeping wife and tiny new born son. He was hunched over, head in his hands, not sure how long he’d been there or how he got there.

He finally managed to look over at his new born son, so small, pale and struggling to breath. Clark looked at him more closely with his super vision. There was something unstable about human, kryptonian DNA mixed together. The baby’s heart was weak and struggled with all its might to keep on beating. Turns out Clark was right all those years. He couldn’t have a healthy baby with a human.

He turned his gaze to Lois. How was he going to face her? The promise he made in the heat of a heartbroken moment shattered.

The light from the rising sun in the distance illuminated her face from the window. Usually Clark’s favorite sight in the world. The sunrise lighting up his wife’s beautiful, peaceful face as she slept so close by him but at this moment…

That’s when realization struck him. He looked back at his son. He had his kryptonian DNA. And Kryptonians heal when exposed to strong sunlight.

Without wasting another moment, Clark unhooked his child from the machines keeping him alive. If he was wrong about this, their boy would die but if he did nothing, he’d die anyway in a few more hours. He cradled his child in his two hands. He was small enough that he could fit nearly all of him in them.

“Lois, I’m going to try something drastic.” He muttered to his unconscious wife before flying off.

He held his baby firm against his chest and just went strait up above the clouds where he could be close to the sun. It was almost blindingly bright but Clark kept his eyes on the boy as he held him out enough that his skin could absorb as much light as possible.

And he waited…

And waited…

No immediate change. Were seconds or minutes going by? Clark couldn’t tell. His whole universe held still.

“Jonathan?” Clark mouthed out, saying the name he and Lois had agreed upon if they had a boy.

“Jonathan.” He said again a little louder this time.

“Do you know who I am? Do you recognize my voice?” So many nights Clark curled up next to Lois’s baby bump speaking to it about anything and everything, hoping that his child would know him by the sound of his voice once he was born.

“Cry Jonathan… Please cry.” He begged. Clark had been crying nearly this whole time and a new fresh set of fat tears rolled down his face.

“If you cry now, I’ll never feel bad about you crying for the rest of our lives. I will stay up all night, every night with you if you want to cry in your cradle, When you’re older I’ll sit with you if you cry over a nightmare, or if you cry about getting dumped or bullied at school. Just cry for me, Jon.”

No change.

“There’s so many great things in this world, Jon. You’re going to have an aunt Kara who will teach you stuff and an uncle Jimmy who will make you laugh and a grandpa and grandma who will make you feel loved and special, and you’re mom and dad will always be there for whatever you need, but you’ve got to live, okay?”

Still nothing.

Clark sniffled back more tears, his voice was choked up with emotion.

Suddenly, it was as though the whole world put back into its rightful place all at once it hit him. Jon let out a loud baby wail and wiggled slightly in his father’s hands. His skin was bright and rosy and Clark could hear a heartbeat strong and steady.

For a moment all Clark could do was stare at the child illuminated by the rising sun. Almost unable to process the miracle before him. When more tears fell and finally he could smile. He brought his son close and cooed,

“Daddy’s here… Thank you Jonathan.”

Lois was beginning to come around. She looked around and found her room empty. She couldn’t help but be worried that Clark wasn’t with her and neither was their baby, when suddenly a shadow cast over her. She looked to the window to find her husband smiling down at her eyes puffy from crying with their child in his arms.

Wanting to close the distance between them, without taking her eyes off her family, Lois moved to get out of bed to reach out for them only to almost immediately fall on unsteady legs.

Clark moved to catch her with one arm and move her back to bed. Once she was okay, he handed her their crying baby. “Lois, meet Jonathan. He’s beautiful.”

And now it was Lois’s turn to cry as she held her tiny son close to her chest, thankful that her family was okay. She didn’t need to ask. She could read it on Clark’s face. She held their baby and Clark held the both of them.

The doctors were astounded. They had never examined a healthier baby.

[cherryfennec]

what do you think would have happened if Timpani hadn't found Blumiere at the base of the cliff and he would have died? do you think the prophecy would have still happened? if yes, then do you happen to have any theories about who would have carried it out and would they have succeeded?

So this is a very difficult question! The topic of the prophecies in the Dark Prognosticus is just in general one of the more trivial things to consider.

So let's go through over the main scenario: Blumiere falls from a cliff and is probably hidden well under the rubble. Timpani, who happens to be in the area, can't really see anyone under the scarp because of the dirt and rocks so she assumes the pieces fell naturally due to a small earthquake or wind and there's no one there. While she walks away, Blumiere unfortunately is too weak to make it out of the rubble and ultimately dies.

Now...

What would this mean for Timpani and the Tribe of Darkness specifically? Well first of all, neither of them would end up dead/gone.

It is implied through the short snippets of the main villians backstory (which appear in-between chapters) that ultimately after losing his beloved and becoming Count Bleck, Blumiere wipes out his clan, which is rather gruesome but not unexpected for this game tbh. With him dissapearing instead (cause theres a chance they might've not even found him) everyone in the Tribe lives and he himself would be portrayed as an innocent person until the end, the loss of whom only brought sorrow to his family and friends. Other than that the civilization would still thrive for years to come.

As for Timpani: without having met Blumiere, she would've probably spent her days living a normal daily life, not even knowing someone like him ever existed. She could expand her hobbies, travel, make friends etc. She could even find a partner but... it wouldn't be the same and I'll elaborate on that in a bit. In general she would have had more time to discover herself and enjoy the little things.

What does this mean for the prophecy?

The Dark Prognosticus is kinda weird because it describes the future that relies on the book being read. Basically it knows that it will be opened, but because it will be opened the prophecy will happen in the first place, which it also knows. It gets confusing when you think about it too much. In any case the 'end of the world' requires someone to kickstart all the events.

Blumieres and Timpanis love was a very rare kind of love, an extremely strong and dedicated one. And if not for that fact, Bleck wouldn't probably go as far as to destroying everything just for her sake. Now without our specially picked out Champion of Destruction, would it even be possible for the prophecy to happen? As we said before if the Count died at the cliff, the book would absolutely know about it. With this in mind there are 3 options as I see it:

The prophecy couldn't be fulfilled/it wouldn't exist in this timeline. Basically: There was no other person that could play the role of the catalyst nor had the means to obtain the Prognosticus/didn't know it existed and so the danger never arrived and everyone lived happily ever after. (yipie no trauma for the Mario gang and especially Luigi yahoo)

The prophecy could be fulfilled by a new character who also fits the requirements and basically fills in for Count Bleck. Simply put: the book found someone else good for the role and it all plays out as written. This is where the plot is up to interpretation because there are just too many factors to take into consideration.'Who would reach out for help to Mario?', I don't know, maybe this new character could also be doing this for the sake of someone else I and that's who would be our Timpani replacement or something I guess.'Would Mimi and O'Chunks be there to help?', probably not because the reason they joined in on the plan in the first place is specifically tied to the person that the Count was. But you know who would definitely be there?

Technically we don't really need a new character and it's going to be a little obvious who I'm about to mention. The prophecy is much more altered in this scenario, and it basically revolves about Dimentio carrying it all out. So from the gossip you get from the barista about everyone on Team Bleck it is implied that Dimentio was the one who actively sought out the Count, not the other way around. From this we can deduce that he was aware of the Dark Prognosticus's existence and was out to get it by all means. Out of the known to us characters he'd really be the one person who would end up tied to the fate of the book in most cases. So in this scenario he simply steals the book from the tribe and tries to work it out by himself. 'Would he be able to carry it out alone?' I'd say there's a chance he could do it. Being built on deceipt and using others he might've been able to work from the shadows and make his way to the end goal. 'How would Mario learn about it?' Again, I don't know. It's up to the ones interpretation really. Imagine if Dimentio just goes around taking people who have the slightest trace of green on them and thus becomes like this underground villain and no-one knows anything him about other than his existence. He's like this rumour that people like to scare kids with. One day Mario hears about it, laughs it off then Luigi randomly dissapears and the chase is on, during which the red plumber learns about this mysterious figure and it's intentions bit by bit and theres like a side Peach and Bowser plot which ends with Dimentio taking up a fake persona and tricking them into saying their vows to create the Chaos Heart IDK.

I could try writing up a specific scenario for this but it'd require more time to plan out if I were to actually do it, I'd basically be writing a completely new story which tends to be difficult. (I'm currently trying my hand in writing a spm fic based on the 'Bad End Trio' Luigi design of mine and barely reached over 2k words. I'm not even near done and it's already been taking way longer than I thought it would. That's exactly why I very much respect writers.)

[thoughtportal]

The Congo’s role in creating the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was kept secret for decades, but the legacy of its involvement is still being felt today.

“The word Shinkolobwe fills me with grief and sorrow,” says Susan Williams, a historian at the UK Institute of Commonwealth Studies. “It’s not a happy word, it’s one I associate with terrible grief and suffering.”

Few people know what, or even where, Shinkolobwe is. But this small mine in the southern province of Katanga, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), played a part in one of the most violent and devastating events in history.

More than 7,500 miles away, on 6 August, bells will toll across Hiroshima, Japan, to mark 75 years since the atomic bomb fell on the city. Dignitaries and survivors will gather to remember those who died in the blast and resulting radioactive fallout. Thousands of lanterns carrying messages of peace will be set afloat on the Motoyasu River. Three days later, similar commemorations will be held in Nagasaki.

No such ceremony will take place in the DRC. Yet both nations are inextricably linked by the atomic bomb, the effects of which are still being felt to this day.

The Shinkolobwe mine – named after a kind of boiled apple that would leave a burn if squeezed – was the source for nearly all of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project, culminating with the construction of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

But the story of the mine didn’t end with the bombs. Its contribution to the Little Boy and Fat Man has shaped the DRC’s ruinous political history and civil wars over the decades that followed. Even today the mine’s legacy can still be seen in the health of the communities who live near it.

“It’s an ongoing tragedy,” says Williams, who has examined the role of Shinkolobwe in her book Spies in the Congo. She believes there needs to be greater recognition of how the exploitation and desire to control the mine’s contents by Western powers played a role in the country’s troubles.

Mombilo too is campaigning to raise awareness of the role played by the Congo in deciding the outcome of World War Two, as well as the burden it still carries because of this. In 2016, the CCSSA’s Missing Link forum brought together activists, historians, analysts, and children of those affected by the atomic bomb, both from Japan and from the DR Congo. “We are planning to bring back the history of Shinkolobwe, so we can make the world know,” says Mombilo.

Out of Africa

The story of Shinkolobwe began when a rich seam of uranium was discovered there in 1915, while the Congo was under colonial rule by Belgium. There was little demand for uranium back then: its mineral form is known as pitchblende, from a German phrase describing it as a worthless rock. Instead, the land was mined by the Belgian company Union Minière for its traces of radium, a valuable element that had been recently isolated by Marie and Pierre Curie.  

In no other mine could you see a purer concentration of uranium. Nothing like it has ever been found – Tom Zoellner

It was only when nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 that the potential of uranium became apparent. After hearing about the discovery, Albert Einstein immediately wrote to US president Franklin D Roosevelt, advising him that the element could be used to generate a colossal amount of energy – even to construct powerful bombs. In 1942, US military strategists decided to buy as much uranium as they could to pursue what became known as the Manhattan Project. And while mines existed in Colorado and Canada, nowhere in the world had as much uranium as the Congo.

“The geology of Shinkolobwe is described as a freak of nature,” says Tom Zoellner, who visited Shinkolobwe in the course of writing Uranium – War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World. “In no other mine could you see a purer concentration of uranium. Nothing like it has ever been found.”

In a deal with Union Minière – negotiated by the British, who owned a 30% interest in the company – the US secured 1,200 tonnes of Congolese uranium, which was stockpiled on Staten Island, US, and an additional 3,000 tonnes that was stored above ground at the mine in Shinkolobwe. But it was not enough. US Army engineers were dispatched to drain the mine, which had fallen into disuse, and bring it back into production.

Under Belgian rule, Congolese workers toiled day and night in the open pit, sending hundreds of tonnes of uranium ore to the US every month. “Shinkolobwe decided who would be the next leader of the world,” says Mombilo. “Everything started there.”

All of this was carried out under a blanket of secrecy, so as not to alert Axis powers about the existence of the Manhattan Project. Shinkolobwe was erased from maps, and spies sent to the region to sow deliberate disinformation about what was taking place there. Uranium was referred to as “gems”, or simply “raw material”. The word Shinkolobwe was never to be uttered.

This secrecy was maintained long after the end of the war. “Efforts were made to give the message that the uranium came from Canada, as a way of deflecting attention away from the Congo,” says Williams. The effort was so thorough, she says, that the belief the atomic bombs were built with Canadian uranium persists to this day. Although some of the uranium came from Bear Lake in Canada – about 907 tonnes (1,000 tons) are thought to have been supplied by the Eldorado mining company – and a mine in Colorado, the majority came from the Congo. Some of the uranium from the Congo was also refined in Canada before being shipped to the US.

Western powers wanted to ensure that any government presiding over Shinkolobwe remained friendly to their interests

After the war, however, Shinkolobwe emerged as a proxy ground in the Cold War. Improved enrichment techniques made Western powers less dependent on the uranium at Shinkolobwe. But in order to curtail other nations’ nuclear ambitions, the mine had to be controlled. “Even though the US did not need the uranium at Shinkolobwe, it didn’t want the Soviet Union to get access to the mine,” explains Williams.

When the Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960, the mine was closed and the entrance filled with concrete. But Western powers wanted to ensure that any government presiding over Shinkolobwe remained friendly to their interests.

So important was stopping the Communist threat, says Zoellner, that these powers were willing to help depose the democratically elected government of Patrice Lumumba and install the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1965 for a decades-long reign of ruinous plutocracy.

Attempts by the Congolese people to negotiate better conditions for themselves were attacked as Communist-fuelled sedition. “The idealism, hope, and vision of the Congolese for a Congo free of occupation by an external power was devastated by the military and political interests of the Western powers,” says Williams.

A wound unhealed

Mobutu was eventually toppled in 1997, but the spectre of Shinkolobwe continues to haunt the DRC. Drawn by rich deposits of copper and cobalt, Congolese miners began digging informally at the site, working around the sealed mineshafts. By the end of the century, an estimated 15,000 miners and their families were present at Shinkolobwe, operating clandestine pits with no protection against the radioactive ore.

Accidents were commonplace: in 2004, eight miners were killed and more than a dozen injured when a passage collapsed. Fears that uranium was being smuggled from the site to terrorist groups or hostile states vexed Western nations, leading the Congolese army to raze the miners’ village that same year.

Stories abound of children born in the area with physical deformations, but few if any medical records are kept

Despite the mineral wealth present at Shinkolobwe, since Union Minière withdrew in the early 1960s there has never been an industrial mine that could safely and efficiently extract the ores and return the proceeds to the Congolese people. After the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, any interest in extracting the uranium for civilian use withered away. “Uranium, even in its natural condition, resists control,” says Zoellner. “Right now Shinkolobwe exists in a limbo, a symbol for the inherent geopolitical instability of uranium.”

The ongoing secrecy around Shinkolobwe (many official US, British and Belgian records on the subject are still classified) has stymied efforts to recognise the Congolese contribution to the Allied victory, as well as hampering investigation into the environmental and health impacts of the mine.

“The effects are medical, political, economic, so many things,” says Mombilo. “We’re not able to know the negative effects of radiation because of this secrecy.” Stories abound of children born in the area with physical deformations, but few if any medical records are kept. “I had a witness who died with his brain coming out of his head, because of the radiation,” says Mombilo. “In all these years, there is not even a special hospital, there is no scientific study or treatment.”

Many of those affected by Shinkolobwe are now campaigning for recognition and reparation, but knowing who should receive them – and who should pay – is compounded by the lack of information made available about the mine and what took place there.

“Shinkolobwe is a curse on the Congo,” says Mombilo.

But he adds that for over a century, the country’s rich resources have made possible one global revolution after another: rubber for tyres made automobiles possible, uranium fuelled nuclear reactors, coltan built the computers of the information age, and cobalt powers the batteries of mobile phones and electric vehicles.

“Our world is moved by the minerals of the Congo,” says Mombilo. “The positive thing I can say is that in all these advanced technologies, you’re talking about the Congo.”

The Congo’s impact on the world has been immeasurable. Recognising the name Shinkolobwe alongside Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be the first step to repaying that debt. {read}

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer - Part 11

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 8k

warnings: swearing, some angst (as always) discussions of closeted queer folk (just in case) probably a lot more - will go back in and edit as needed!

A.N.: I'm back, Chat! After a million years and some change, I really hope you like this chapter even though to me it feels a tad like filler, so sorry it took so long to get back into the swing of things!! - Also, my taglist is broken, so if you would like to be put on it for the chapters going forward, please let me know!

To call the last few days a blur would be an understatement, more so considering how everything that had happened over the course of the last few hours could have filled the duration of those days themselves. 

And everything happened so fast, events falling into place one after the other in such quick succession that Dustin has barely had time to process all the steps he’d taken down the road since he and Max first left his house in search of Eddie – in search of you. 

Presently, he’s stuck trying to rationalize just how he’d come to find himself sitting huddled on the Wheeler’s sofa, stuffed in between Max and Lucas under the tense scrutiny of the Hawkins PD and the worried coterie of their parents.

Though perhaps “how” is not the question, but why, considering he knows exactly how it happened: they found Eddie, then they lost him, and after a very tense few hours, subsequently found him again, camped out with you at Skull Rock, looking very much like you’d been to hell and back.

From there their road circled back to Lover’s Lake, and now here they find themselves, in police custody with half of their party lost to the gate beneath the water.

It’s the closest thing Dustin can imagine to a worst-case scenario.

That’s not true, he tells himself, Eddie’s still in the clear, so it’s not all bad… not yet…

Still, it’s beyond bizarre to be sitting and getting lectured on the Wheeler’s sofa with Mike so far removed all the way in California.

Karen is nice, sure, and Ted is … well, Ted is Ted, hardly intimidating, but something about being under the direct scrutiny of the Wheelers and the Sinclairs and his mother and the Hawkins PD, all of whom he is actively lying to, has Dustin sinking further and further into the plush cushions in the hopes of somehow shrinking out of existence.

How badly he wishes he was anywhere but here. 

It’s not that he’s intimidated or anything so foolish, particularly by the bespectacled likes of Officer Callahan, only that Dustin is painfully aware of how this looks, their merry band of misfits camped out at the water’s edge directly opposite an active crime scene with binoculars in hand. Worse still, he’s painfully aware of how it sounds.

“What were you kids doing out at the lake?” Callahan asks.

It’s as good a question as any, but it leaves the lot of them reeling with just exactly how to answer it.

What are they supposed to tell them, the truth? That they were busy sending half their party through an interdimensional gate at the bottom of the lake to the Upsidedown?

No.

Under absolutely no circumstances will he be telling them the truth, not unless he wants to see the inside of a padded cell.

He could have told Hopper the truth (or at least some summarized version of it), but Hopper isn’t here, so Dustin and his friends open their mouths and all begin to speak at once as they fumble for some sort of credible answer as to what they were doing out at the lake. 

“Swimming—” Dustin says immediately.

Max shrugs her shoulders and offers what would have been the most practical answer…  

“Nothing—”

… if not for what came tumbling out of Lucas’s mouth.

“Taking a long romantic walk under the moonlight?” He squeaks, voice lilting an octave higher as his sentence comes to a close, making the statement sound much more like a question than anything else.   

The silence in the room is deafening, and Dustin suppresses a wince, fully aware of just how well and truly cooked their collective gooses are as he exchanges a horrified glance with you, sitting in a plush chair opposite the couch, wide-eyed and gaping at him from the other side of the room.  

It’s a wonder you’re even here, considering Dustin had been sure that you’d go right along with the others, but in a stunning turn of events, you’d elected to stay behind.

It was because, as you said; “I’m the babysitter, it’s literally my job���” – Dustin had been decidedly pleased about that, in stark contrast to Eddie, who had just about capsized the boat right there on the shore trying to reach for your hand.

“Don’t be silly,” He’s insisted, despite how unbelievably practical you were being. “There’s plenty of room,” There was not, as had been evidenced by Dustin’s own rejected application to join the expedition. “– come on,” 

But there was no arguing with you, as was always the case when your mind was made up. For as many reasons as Eddie could drum up for you to go, you had just as many reasons to stay, the least of those being that you were injured. 

“I’ll only slow you down,” You’d assured him with a slow shake of your head, “It’s gonna be fine, we’ll be waiting right here when you get back.” 

It’s yet another thing that is driving Dustin to the very edge of anxiety-induced nausea: they won’t be there waiting on the shore when the others get back … if they get back.

The adults are still gawping at their little group, eyes wide as dinner plates in patent disbelief of their swimming–nothing–romantic moonlit walk at the lake. 

“It was kind of, sort of a … field trip scenario…” Dustin says, gesturing flippantly as he fumbles through the poor excuse for an explanation. 

“To the lake…” Callahan deadpans.

“Yeah…”

“In the middle of the night…”

It’s less a question than an accusation.

Dustin resists the urge to correct the deputy, considering it’s hardly the middle of the night, and he nods, swallowing hard against the cotton blooming in his throat. 

“...I mean, it’s Spring Break.” he croaks, “...No school…”  

“Dusty…” His mother presses, “Somebody was just murdered there!”

It sets his teeth on edge.

“We didn’t know that at the time.” He insists, well aware of just how lame this all sounds. 

Desperate to claw back some shred of credibility, he elbows Lucas in the ribs. It startles the boy to attention and his head snaps around to regard Dustin with an incredulous look, as if to ask what the hell am I supposed to say?

Max takes the hint for him. 

“What’s the big deal?” She starts, “So, we were down at the lake — it’s called healing your inner child, look it up.” 

On the other end of the couch, Dustin is vaguely aware of hearing you breathe out harshly, muttering something that sounds very much like “Oh, boy…”

Before he can stop this snowball from rolling, Lucas is nodding emphatically, suddenly very eager to add his two cents to the notion. 

“Right, w-we were just trying to …” he trails off, swallowing hard as the rest of his sentence escapes him, and then, “… yeah, like Max said… do that.” 

If Dustin thought the first silence was deep, this one is a yawning chasm of infinite depth. They’re great at this, actually, not at all amateurish.  

“Right…” Powell says slowly, “...and this has absolutely nothing to do with Eddie Munson?”

Once again, they’re all speaking simultaneously, shaking their heads, gesticulating, and doing anything in their power to make themselves even remotely believable.

No really, they’re doing great.  

“No, not at all.”

“Of course not.”

And then, because this is already going so well, Dustin opens his big mouth.

“That weirdo?” He scoffs, refusing to refer to Eddie by any harsher language, and cringing at the way his voice breaks on the word, “We don’t even know the guy.”  

Erica Sinclair erupts into a bark of incredulous laughter from her position in the far corner of the room, and Dustin realizes his mistake the moment the words leave his mouth. 

Erica… how could he have forgotten about Erica, who very recently had been caught up in the brief euphoria of reading from the Good Book of Eddie Munson.

Erica, who has just caught Dustin in what is perhaps the most blatant lie he has ever told and is trying her damnedest to strike him dead with the daggers she’s hurling in his direction from the other side of the room. 

Oh, whoops… it’s the understatement of the century. 

“You know they’re lying, right?” She snarls, “The whole couch is on fire.” 

Her mother is quick to silence her with a harsh utterance of her name. 

Dustin can’t help but feel a sharp stab of betrayal as he gawps at the younger Sinclair.

He’d thought, perhaps foolishly, that their triumphant victory against Vecna during the last Hellfire meeting would be some kind of a turning point for their friendship. 

He kicks himself for being so naive and sinks a little further into the couch, pouting as she sneers back at him.  

To make matters worse, the police are clearly not buying what they’re attempting to sell. Chief Powell and Officer Callahan exchange wary looks before, slowly, their gazes slide across the couch and over to you.

You begin to fidget under their collective scrutiny, doing your utmost to look anywhere in the room besides directly at the officers. 

It’s only when Powell addresses you with the firm and formal usage of Miss followed by your last name that you finally look at him.

It takes him what feels like a very long time to speak.  

“Care to chime in?” He finally asks, gesturing to the absolutely bafoonery of the couch.

You glance at Dustin, and he feels a stab of anxiety lance through his midsection as he fails to decipher the unreadable look splashed across your face. 

Your attention snaps back over to the police when Powell repeats his overly formal addressing of you, the well of his patience growing ever shallower. 

You pull an innocent face and gesture dumbly to yourself. 

“Me?” You chirp, like you can’t imagine how they could possibly think you’re involved in this. 

You? No, surely not you, who had pulled Dustin and the rest into a quick huddle and quietly instructed them on how best to lie to the cops when they’d found themselves ambushed at the lake.

Dustin had been caught somewhere halfway between impressed and appalled, but he’d stopped himself before the question could even take root in his mind: how do you know anything about lying to the cops?

Eddie. Naturally.  

Officer Callahan doesn’t seem to have the same patience as his direct superior for your act. He heaves an overdramatic sigh and rolls his eyes behind his glasses.

“No,” he scoffs, “The other delinquent in the room.” 

The mask of innocence slips immediately from your face as you level the man with a hateful look.

“Oh, sure.” You snap, “Because name-calling is the best way to ensure cooperation — real mature, Phil…” 

“Wha— how did you—?” Callahan splutters indignantly before clamping his mouth shut and setting his jaw. 

Strangely, Chief Powell coughs harshly into a closed fist, and Dustin only realizes that the man is masking a chuckle when his deputy levels him with a dour look.

After a moment to collect himself, Callahan returns to you and shrugs. 

“Okay, fine – why don’t we put you in a pair of handcuffs and take you down to the station, see if that makes you feel any more cooperative.”

You blanch at the prospect and Dustin’s heart seizes in his chest in outrage. Before he can leap to your defense, however, the Sinclairs and Wheelers alike erupt into loud protests of the notion.

The collective vitriol of the adults is enough to cause Callahan to balk and suddenly he’s standing a little less tall. 

“Oh, really, Officer!” Dustin’s mother tuts, “There’s no need for that — I’m sure whatever it was they were doing was completely innocent,” 

He’s not entirely certain how sure she is of that, but evidently enough that she’s managed to overcome the horror she’d previously been experiencing at the thought of them going down to the lake where someone was just murdered. 

Still, considering you’re more or less an honorary member of the Henderson household, she goes on to paint a shining picture of you, insisting that you are a good girl – responsible.

The others respond with varying degrees of enthusiastic agreement and Dustin’s chest swells with warm, golden pride. 

Damn right. 

While you were only ever officially his babysitter, it never stopped the Sinclairs from asking you to carpool Lucas and Erica to and from school twice a week, or Karen Wheeler from enlisting you to look after Holly when she had the odd errand to run – though perhaps more specifically, covering for her last summer and remaining the soul of discretion when a momentary slip in judgment regarding a certain public pool lifeguard had seen her very nearly destroying her marriage and perhaps by greater extension her family as a whole. 

Karen Wheeler would have defended you like one of her own children if it came down to it, as is evidenced by the way she comes flying to your rescue.

“She’s their babysitter, for God’s sake.” She scoffs, gesturing toward you in a way that makes the chunky bracelets sitting on her slender wrists clack loudly together, “She takes the boys to the arcade and plays that …fantasy game with them – I mean, really… what kind of trouble could they possibly be getting into?” 

Unfortunately, as Dustin realizes too late, the Hawkins PD happens to know exactly what kind of trouble you could be getting into, and they are all too happy to share.

“Listen, folks…” Chief Powell sighs, taking the floor and rubbing a tired hand over his face, “I’m sure you mean well, but I’m afraid that your word just isn’t enough – the fact of the matter is that your babysitter has been caught trespassing at two active crime scenes in about as many days.” 

Callahan is quick to chime in.

“Not to mention she’s a known associate of Eddie Munson.”

Dustin bristles. He’d been waiting for that shoe to drop, and now that it has, he feels a thin sheet of ice beginning to form across his stomach lining. 

A sticky silence falls heavily over the room as the adults all exchange bewildered looks. Not even Karen knows what to do with that reveal.  

“What does that mean?” Charles Sinclair demands, brows furrowed tightly as he turns a hard eye on Lucas, as if his son somehow held the answer. 

He freezes like a deer in headlights, but Erica is more than happy to explain, pushing forward to stand in front of her father and remind everyone that she is still there, hands propped up on her hips as she levels you with a particularly snotty look. 

“It means he’s her boyfriend.” She drawls, peering back at the denizens of the couch and looking entirely too pleased with herself. 

Dustin’s heart seizes with terror. 

How the hell does she know that?

“Shut up, Erica!” Lucas hisses.

She reels on him.

“You shut up!” she snaps, and her mother quickly admonishes her for it.

“Erica!” She hisses. 

“What? It’s true – I used to see them at the mall all the time, swapping spit, sticking their tongues down each other’s throats… you know, making out?” She makes a show of visibly shuddering before twisting to address you, sitting mortified with your hands fisted in your hair and your face flushed crimson, “You guys are super nasty, by the way…” 

“Er-i-ca!” Her mother warns her sharply.

She puts up her hands defensively and retreats a step.

“It’s just the facts!”  

Still, the sentiment causes a nervous murmur to pass through the adults… you and Eddie Munson?

Apparently, your dating habits had been as shrouded in mystery to them as it had been to Dustin, and unfortunately, they are less likely to be as forgiving about it. 

His mother’s voice quavers as she turns to you and quietly says your name. He watches as, in spite of yourself, you shrink back a little further into the cushions as if you yourself had been hoping that information would not come to light.

“Is that true?” She squeaks.

You don’t answer right away, but to your credit, when you do you try to laugh it off.

“Which part?” You scoff, “The dating thing or that incredibly vivid description Erica just painted for us?”

The attempt at humor falls short on the adults, and in the silence that follows, Dustin can’t help but feel a little angry at how ridiculous this all is.

True, the descriptors were a bit much, Dustin doesn’t need to be picturing that any more than he already had been, but they’re all acting like she’d placed you at the scene as an accomplice to the murders, like you and Eddie are some kind of modern teenaged versions of Bonnie and Clyde, which is ridiculous – Eddie wouldn’t harm a fly, and if anything the truth bomb Erica just set off in the middle of the room means you’re the one who can personally vouch for that.

It would be a pointless endeavor, of course, they’re only going off of what they know of Eddie’s reputation, one that is currently telling them that he is a cold-blooded killer going on a rampage through the Hawkins High School student body…

Dustin feels himself begin to sweat. 

Suddenly everyone is holding their breath to see how you will react, and how everyone else will if the truth comes out. 

“...Technically we broke up…” you mumble sheepishly, tugging a the hem of your worn t-shirt.

The room erupts in a cacophony of noise.     

All at once, the Wheelers and the Sinclairs find themselves split down the middle over whether they find that information credible, waffling between thrusting accusatory fingers at you, at the police, at the couch, and every direction in between.

Ted Wheeler and Charles Sinclair demand to know if they’re lying to the police and what kind of trouble you’re getting their kids involved in, and their wives insist on returning to the rescue of your character, assuring the men that this is all a huge misunderstanding and that you would never dream of putting their children in danger.

Boy, if they only knew the truth.

Dustin’s mother begins to weep, wailing about the state of her poor nerves, all the while you sink further and further into the cushions and do your best to become invisible.

It’s a madhouse.

Dustin wishes, not for the first time, that he was back on the shore of the lake, and silently hopes Eddie and the others are having a better time than they are. 

Wherever they are, he hopes they are okay.

+++

Eddie is absolutely positively not okay. He can’t speak for the others, who all seem to be doing a much better job at handling the whole “crossing through a portal into another dimension” thing.

They’re calling it the Upsidedown like it’s the next town over, like they simply hopped in the car and drove down the interstate to arrive in this bizarro version of Hawkins with monsters and nasty shit.  

They’ve apparently been through this before, so Nancy says, and Eddie can’t even begin to wrap his head around what that could possibly mean.

That they’ve swum to the bottom of the lake where someone has just been psychically murdered and passed through to another dimension only to narrowly avoid being eaten alive by a swarm of demonic bats? Somehow he highly doubts it’s that specific, though only because he’s having a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that basically, everything he thought he ever knew about Hawkins is complete and utter bullshit.

Eddie supposes he always knew Hawkins was one of those places, the cliche of the happy little midwestern town pretending everything is nice and shining and wholesome meanwhile grandma’s skeleton is rotting in the hall closet. He’d always assumed there was something going on just beneath the shining veneer, just not on the level of “a literal hell realm existing right beneath his feet”.

Nancy is maddeningly calm about all this as if she didn’t just go diving into the pitch black of the unknown to rescue Steve, or rip off the bottom panel of her blouse and tie a tourniquet around his midsection to keep his guts from spilling out.

Harrington himself is taking the whole “almost being eaten alive” thing in stride in a really frustrating way, already walking and talking like someone died and made him king of the goddamn Upsidedown.

In fact, the only one who seems even remotely in the realm of appropriately manic about this whole thing is Robin, talking a mile a minute about rabies and the logistics of bat bites in the Upsidedown, but as far as Eddie knows, Robin is just like that.

Naturally manic, naturally caffeinated, probably on some kind of prescription drug like Ritalin if he had to guess… not that he’d hold any of that against her, Robin’s cooler than most. 

They’d had intermediate band together one semester before he realized he’d actually be expected to wear that stupid uniform and dropped out.

They’d even been somewhere halfway to friends during that brief period of time, though that “friendship” could be summed up to nothing more than the casual snide, sarcastic remarks during class, a joke here and there, and one instance of Robin getting way too high on half a joint they’d smoked under the bleachers.

It resulted in her becoming paranoid that Eddie was trying to get into her pants, which he most certainly was not, and inadvertently coming out to him in a moment of panic.

He swore to take her secret to his grave, quit showing up to class, and they didn’t speak again until she came riding in alongside everyone else on Dustin’s little rescue mission.

Eddie wonders if she remembers any of that… 

He supposes it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, particularly since Eddie seems to be the only sane one among them, which is to say the only one teetering on the edge of losing his shit, and it’s really pissing him off because none of this is normal. 

It’s a fucking nightmare.

Beyond the dark, however, the perpetual red lightning storm, the alien network of hive-minded vines, and literal goddamn monsters trying to kill them, Eddie is, foolishly, most concerned about you, as always. 

He’s well aware of just how stupid that is, to worry about you up on the surface with all the subterranean dangers that pose a direct threat to his life and limb - he’s not even sure that’s the correct way to quantify it, but it sure as hell seemed like he’d swum through the bottom of the lake and crawled out on the other side of the world. 

He wishes more than anything that you were here if only because then at least he’d have someone who he could turn to and know with confidence would agree, “Yes, Edward, this is in fact insane.” 

Normally he rails against the utterance of his government name because the only people who call him that are typically authority figures preparing to dole out some sort of capital punishment, or his mother when she was royally pissed at him – “Edward Munson if you think I’m about to let that slide you have got another thing coming,”.

And you, of course, though you only ever do so with the utmost fondness… and very often in an affected English accent, which despite being one of the worst impressions he’s ever heard, Eddie actually likes very much.

What he wouldn’t give to have you right here, trying to liven the mood by doing that stupid accent. He can almost hear you chewing through it. 

“We’re in a right mess, innit, Edward?” You’d say, “Pip-pip cheerio and the lot…” or whatever. 

Still, a decent-sized part of Eddie’s brain is attempting to crawl out of his skull and abandon him to the madness of this place, and imagining all the ways you would try to make the situation seem less dire if you were there is doing nothing to help.

Because you’re not there.

Why in the hell hadn’t you come with them in the boat? 

He knows why, of course, rationally so – there was no room, someone needed to stay with the kiddos, and most of all you’re hurt – but there are spiders in his skull, skittering around and irrationally whispering that the real reason you stayed behind was that after everything that happened, you couldn’t wait to get away from him. 

A larger part of Eddie than he is ready to acknowledge is pissed about it because you’d only just finished agreeing not to split up anymore.

Together is better, you’d promised him that, but another part of him understands why you might be desperate to get away. 

First Chrissy, then Patrick? He’s got to be cursed, why else would he be made to bear witness to those deaths? 

Eddie is laden with the feeling, wrestling with the guilt and the misplaced anger and the confusion, and everything else his body is trying to feel all at once as he trudges through the nightmarish woods.

Step by aimless step he follows, careful to avoid the network of vines and the concerned gazes of unlikely companions, who all continue to treat this like it’s nothing more than a casual stroll through the woods, like this is just another Tuesday. 

Is it Tuesday? He has no idea what day it is… and he can’t stop thinking about you, playing the moment on the shore over and over in his mind. Thinking about the way he’d reached for your hand, and how instead of taking it you’d carefully curled his fingers back in on themselves, shaking your head and insisting you’d only slow them down. 

“Hey, you doing okay?”

The voice startles Eddie, wrenching him violently – thankfully – from the mire of his thoughts.

Steve is there, giving him a strangely concerned look, having fallen back into step with him at some point over the last few contemplative minutes. 

Eddie blinks back at him, not entirely sure how to answer and wondering just how long he’s been there. He almost doesn’t realize he’d asked him a question until Steve’s brows jump up toward his hairline. 

“Me?” Eddie scoffs, he briefly considers lying, but the truth is out before the notion can really take hold, “No, Man. I’m pretty goddamn far from okay.”  

Harrington nods solemnly, in a way that seems, weirdly enough, almost remorseful, like it’s his fault they’re down here in this mess… which, it technically is, if they’re pointing fingers here.

True, Eddie didn’t have to follow them out of the boat, he could have sat there and waited for them to come back, but he knew they weren’t coming back, and he didn’t have to swim to the bottom of the lake, he could have just as easily swum to shore …

It hits him like a brick to the face.

Why the hell didn’t he swim to shore? 

Steve casts his gaze down to his feet, exposing the dark, angry ligature marks ringing his throat and Eddie fails to suppress a shudder.

That’s why – because Steve was in trouble, and some repressed kernel of do-right in Eddie, the same one that drove him over the side of the boat and down into the depths to the bottom of the lake, wanted to help.

Or at least it didn’t want the shame of having to look Robin and Nancy in the eyes if he didn’t help and the bats went and pulled Steve’s head off anyway.

Ego is a funny thing, sanity even more so, because as crazy as it had seemed at the time to dive in after Robin, crazier still was the concept that had he not, it could have resulted in yet another death – or deaths, perhaps – that he would have been indirectly responsible for.

Still, his body is still thrumming with adrenaline from the fight, and not in the good, buzzy way either.

He’s been picking at the blackened, drying blood on his hands for the better part of an hour now, and part of him has started to wonder if it’s ever going to come off, if any of the blood on his hands is ever going to wash away. 

Before he can get very far down the road with that line of thinking, Steve tries again.

“Thanks for this… by the way,” he says, plucking at the collar of Eddie’s battle vest sitting across his broad-shouldered form in a sorry state.

It’s filthy, splattered with ichor and viscera, and several patches have torn loose, much to Eddie’s dismay, but it’s the strangest combination of freezing cold and unbearably humid down there, wherever they are.

The way he figures, Steve needs it more than he does – that and it’s the only thing shielding their eyes from the knitted sweater he has got sprouting from his chest.

He basically had to hand it over, if for nothing more than modesty’s sake. 

Still, the sentiment startles him– gratitude? Really? 

Unaccustomed to basic human pleasantries from the likes of Steve Harrington, he finds himself at a loss and he suppresses the urge to twist around and make sure he’s actually talking to him.

For lack of anything else to do, he gives a lopsided shrug and gestures vaguely.

“Oh… yeah – no worries.” He stammers, “Least I could do.”

“...And thanks for... s-saving me… that was–” Steve clears his throat in an attempt to keep his voice steady – it’s awkward, “Yeah… anyway. Thanks for that.”

Eddie gestures vaguely, suddenly unsure of whether he wants the burden of Steve’s gratitude. 

“Wheeler did all the work, I just tried to stay out of her way…” He mumbles, “She’s badass,”

Steve chuckles in a way that feels oddly secretive.

“You have no idea.” He says. 

Of course, Eddie can’t possibly know what that means, but it’s compelling, nonetheless, and entirely true. 

He makes a mental note of it in the Rolodex of his mind:

Wheeler, Nancy: Good grades, pastels, kinda prissy. Dated that douchebag, Steve Harrington – Badass. 

A sticky silence bleeds between them after that, and Eddie passes the time stealing a handful of looks at Steve, casually walking alongside him, on purpose. 

He can’t help be feel ever so slightly amazed. 

If his shitty friends could see him now – only he’s fairly certain Steve isn’t friends with his shitty friends anymore, at least so he’d heard.

Normally it wouldn’t be enough to wash away the history of torment between them. Steve had, for a time, been the driving force behind a campaign to make Eddie’s life a living hell, but this situation is just too bizarre, too outlandish to discount – there might be some merit to Dustin’s hero worship of the guy after all.  

Suddenly he can’t help himself. 

“That was pretty metal what you did back there…” Eddie posits, and when Steve casts a curious look his way, he continues with tentative enthusiasm, “Biting that thing’s head off? Major Ozzy energy.”

Steve furrows his brow. 

“…huh?”

Uh oh. In an instant, the feeling is gone, replaced by the much less desirable panic of an impending social failure. 

Eddie scrambles to explain himself and bridge the valley between their interests. 

“Ozzy Osbourne?” He tries to no avail, “Bit a bat’s head off on –?” Steve’s face remains unbearably blank, so Eddie abandons ship for his own sake, “Nevermind…” he hums, “It was – yeah, it was cool…” 

Another one of those awkward silences falls heavily across their shoulders, and because he’s never learned to leave well enough alone, Eddie simply cannot leave it undisturbed. 

Surely Steve has got to know what he’s talking about, even if only indirectly. It’s not like Ozzy is an obscure reference. 

“You know Ozzy though, right?” He tries, “Black Sabbath?” 

He pulls a face and shakes his head, much to Eddie’s chagrin.  

Shit. Okay, lesson learned. 

Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is. 

He dismisses the notion too late.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Thankfully, they are not doomed to yet another unbearable silence as Steve quickly changes the subject, sweeping the interaction away with a wave of his hand.

“Hey, so… look, I’m sorry for what I did back there… starting that fight between you and...” He trails off when he realizes the reference has flown right over Eddie’s head, “Back in the boat house?”

Oh. He doesn't know how to respond to that. Eddie is not entirely sure anyone has ever apologized to him for anything... ever.  

Still, it strikes him as an odd thing to say. 

Almost everything Steve has ever said to him has been something worth apologizing over, but try as he might, Eddie can’t think of any particularly noteworthy zingers from the last few days.

And he does try, wracking his brain and coming up empty – but he doesn’t trust it, whatever this is, so Eddie levels Steve with an unimpressed look. 

“So, this is the part where you get all mushy and remorseful because you almost died, right?” He starts slowly, “You’re gonna tell me you’re sorry for being such a fucking asshole back in the day and I'm just supposed to forgive you because you almost had your head pulled off?” 

Strangely, it doesn’t elicit the expected response - no defensive comebacks, no biting retorts, just a weighted sigh that carries the heavy burden of guilt. 

“Oh, shit… wait, seriously?” 

Steve runs a hand through his hair, which is still somehow maddeningly perfectly coiffed – it makes Eddie feel frizzy and unkempt. 

“Look, we’re not in high school anymore…” He starts, then stops like he’s only just remembered that isn’t expressly true, “– well, you know what I mean…”

“Careful.” Eddie warns. 

Steve forces out a hard, frustrated breath and rolls his eyes – he’s barely even begun to make his point and he’s already fallen flat on his face. 

“What I mean is that there are bigger things happening here,” He huffs, “It kind of puts things into perspective and makes all the stupid petty shit seem…” He trails off as he searches for the right word.

Eddie is more than happy to help.

“...Stupid and petty?” He offers.

“Exactly. I was an asshole – I’m still an asshole, and I’m working on it, but some old habits die harder than others–”

“Clearly,”

Steve clenches his teeth and flexes his jaw and apparently resists the urge to make some kind of snide remark, electing instead to swallow the blow and nod.

He's doing it on purpose, and Steve knows that as well as Eddie does, even if it's not an overt show of effort. Part of him figures if he can get under Steve's skin and rile him up, it will make him drop whatever bullshit act this is and they can go back to hating each other like normal. But try as he might he can't seem to break him.

This may, in fact, be a genuine show of remorse. 

He can’t make heads or tails of it, except that Steve had very nearly died less than an hour ago, and nothing sets someone’s head on straight like facing the precipice.

Eddie can’t help but feel a little more than dumbfounded, because this has never happened even in his wildest flights of fancy. He almost can’t believe it, and what’s more, part of him knows he shouldn’t believe it.

He should know better, that at any moment the rug will be pulled from beneath his feet and he’ll find out it’s nothing more than a big elaborate joke, he’ll be doused in pig’s blood and find out he’s not actually the Prom Queen, and that will be that. 

Still, he seems genuine, as if Eddie would know what genuine even looks like one Steve.

Maybe Robin’s right and those bats are affecting him in stranger ways than they realize.

“I guess what I’m trying to say,” Steve continues, “Is that I treated you like shit and you didn’t deserve it, and I’m sorry about that.” he averts his gaze then and gestures vaguely in Eddie’s directly, “I mean, Henderson says your decent, and he’s usually a pretty good judge of character...” 

Eddie fails to repress a sardonic snort of laughter, though not at Steve so much as the concept of Dustin being a good judge of character when he's out here double teaming friendships with people who are meant to be enemies. 

“Is he though?” He presses.

Steve fails to repress a smirk and shrugs broad shoulders beneath torn, dingy denim.

“Yeah– well. The kid’s biased, anyway, he’s pretty much obsessed with you." He mutters, "It’s annoying as hell.”

It strikes Eddie that this is the first real conversation he’s ever had with Steve that didn’t involve him antagonizing him one way or another. 

Still, he can't help himself

“Don’t tell me Steve Harrington, arguable deposed King of Hawkins High, is jealous of the town freak?”

Steve pulls a face, brows pinched tight over his eyes and glares back at him.

“Don’t be a dick," He says, though his tone is oddly not malicious, "This is embarrassing for me, okay? I’m opening up here.”    

Part of him wants to hold Steve on the hook for it, out of some long-buried yearning for payback for all the shit he has put him through over the years, but in spite of everything and against his better judgment, Eddie suddenly feels a bizarre, misplaced fondness for the guy. 

You used to say that Steve was a mean girl with a God complex, but looking at him now, Eddie can see he's really never been much more than a big fish in a small pond.

Popular kids who don’t extend their shelf life by way of scholarships and collegiate glory tend to fizzle out and implode, and Eddie imagines that every day Steve spends in Hawkins, that little pond gets a little smaller, and he shines a little less brightly.

“So…" Eddie begins tentatively, crossing his arms over his chest and hugging his biceps, "You’ve been holding on to this for a long time, huh? The guilt?”

Steve mirrors his posture and casts his gaze down to his feet, shaking his head.

“You have no idea.” He chuckles.

Eddie scoffs.

“Don’t I?” He counters, “Guilt is my bread and butter, Man… I was raised on that shit.” 

He doesn't seem to know what to do with that knowledge. The sheer valley between their upbringings is evidently too wide a gap to bridge, so Steve pivots and yet again changes the subject.

“So, are you and the Psycho getting back together or what?”

It only takes Eddie half a moment to realize Steve is talking about you.

He gives him a terse look of warning, but when Steve raises his hands in an show of no offense, Eddie shrugs. 

Before he can think better about divulging the intricacies of his lingering heartbreak to the likes of Steve Harrington, the words come tumbling out. 

“I don’t know…” Eddie hums, “Things are pretty much fucked in that department.”

“What’s the problem?”

He swings his foot to kick at a rock, send it skittering across the forest floor, but remembers where they are and thinks better of it at the last moment, electing instead to roll in under his shoe as he passes it over.

“It just feels different now. Kind of like we’re just pretending…” 

Another one of those heavy pauses passes between them.

“Hey, listen, Man, I don’t wanna step on your toes or anything, but you guys broke up." Steve says, "Things are always gonna be different the second time around. That doesn’t make it any less real. Don’t be so goddamn cynical–” 

It's hardly a blow, but in spite of himself, Eddie bristles. He levels Steve with a hard, armored look. 

“Look, don’t patronize me, okay? I’ve got no delusions about what I did. I made my bed, now I’ve gotta be a big boy and burn it.”

“I don’t think that’s the saying.”

“You know what I mean.” He snaps.  

He supposes Steve means well, but Eddie can’t help but get defensive. It's like he said ... old habits and the like. 

Still, Steve meets his gaze stares back at him long enough to make him regret his tone. Long enough even to make Eddie uncomfortable with the proximity, and so he clears his throat, averting his gaze and staring down at his sneakers, tinged nearly black from the ichor of bat’s blood.

He realizes with a start that Steve is still barefoot and wonders how much further they've got to go before they're out of this mess. 

“Did you cheat on her?” Steve asks suddenly.

It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut.

“No,” He says immediately, feeling ever so slightly winded.

Steve nods then, pursing his lips like he understands what happened.

“Got in a fight and called her a bitch or something?” He says, "That's what did Tommy and Carol in–"

The notion makes Eddie's heart seize in his chest because beyond the fact that it makes him sick to have his relationship (or lack-thereof) compared to the likes of Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins, he would never stoop so low, no matter how angry he was, no matter what you did.

He may have been raised with a shocking lack of social skills, but Wayne had made damn sure that he knew better.

Of course, Steve could never know something like that, but he can’t help the way it leaves him bristling.  

“No.”

Steve continues to nod slowly, then pauses a moment like he has to really process the information before he knows what to do with it.   

“What was it then?" He asks, "What’d you do?”

“Nothing –” Eddie insists, feeling suddenly foolish for how defensive he sounds because it wasn’t nothing and Steve can see that as well as anyone, “I broke up with her – and I was kind of a major prick about it… I mean, not just kind of… I was mean about it.”

“Why?”

He’s loath to admit it, but now that the stopper is out, it’s hard to put it back in, and the truth comes spilling out.

“... I got scared…” Eddie mumbles, crossing his arms tighter over his chest and reaching up to tug at a snarled lock of his hair.

“Scared of what?” 

Eddie exhales harshly under the duress of this bizarre interrogation, hating the way he can feel his guts seizing up. When he got in the boat that evening, he didn't expect he was going to have to relieve all the mistakes of his recent past.

“Jesus, what are you some kind of cop? You’re kind of intense, you know that?”

Steve rolls his eyes and makes a chattering little mouth of his hand to mimic Eddie’s whining.

“Quit deflecting and just answer the goddamn question, Munson – what scared you bad enough to end your annoyingly perfect relationship?”

He could almost laugh out loud at the concept of Steve not only referring to his relationship with you as perfect, but apparently to the point of being annoyed by it. 

“Perfect relationship?” Eddie splutters, “What the hell are you talking about?”  

“Come on, Man – she and I used to run in the same circle, remember? I was there when you showed up. Don’t pretend you didn’t come in and sweep her off her feet like something out of a goddamn movie.”

It takes Eddie a moment longer than he'd like to admit to realize Steve is teasing him. Once again, he doesn't know what to do with that information.

Finally, Steve prods him sharply in the chest in a way that could almost be construed as good natured.

“What happened with you two?”

“Nothing happened…" Eddie insists, and wills himself to shut up about it after that, but now that he’s started he can’t stop, "That’s the problem." Goddammit. "It was the same as it always was and I started getting scared that it was getting too good to last … that she was gonna wake up one day and realize everybody’s right about me.” 

The silence the follows is deafening with Eddie's confession hanging in the air between them. He braces himself for a tirade of teasing and razzing and all the other kinds of verbal abuse he can expect from anyone else in this town, but instead Steve just nods sagely.

“So you pushed her away – hurt her before she could hurt you and inadvertently proved that everybody is right about you? That sound about right?”

It's the kind of observation he might have expected Wayne to make, if he'd actually had to stones to open up to him about what happened with you like this, and it leaves Eddie reeling.

Well… what do you know, turns out Steve Harrington is actually pretty goddamn insightful.  

For lack of anything better to do and more than just a little bit indignant at being so easily read, Eddie stuffs his hands into his pockets and pushes his shoulders up toward his ears.  

“Pretty much.” He sniffs.

“You fucked up,” Steve says matter-of-factly.

“Sure did.”    

“...And what about that makes it so unforgivable that things are never going to be okay again? How come she's never gonna forgive you?”    

Eddie shrugs and wonders idly how getting trapped in another dimension had turned into receiving a lecture about love.

“Because I broke her heart.”

Steve scoffs.  

“Nah, that’s bullshit.” He says, dismissing the notion with a flippant wave, “It’s a speed bump."

Eddie realizes too late he's staring at Steve when he quirks one of those thick eyebrows at him.

"What, you’ve never gone over a speed bump? No way, I've seen the way you drive." He says, and then all the teasing goes out of him and he becomes the one things Eddie never expected to see, sincere.

"Listen," Steve starts, "I know for whatever reason you can’t see it, but ask anyone here – she’s crazy about you, Man. Trust me. Apologize for whatever you said, or whatever you didn’t say – don’t roll your eyes, that goes a long way with girls – and let her know how you feel.”

Eddie shakes his head, more than a little frustrated that he could think it’s as simple as that, like he hasn’t tried apologizing again and again and blanketing you in his affection – smothering you, more like. 

“I’ve told her, Man,” He sighs, "Over and over again..." 

“So you tell her again. Keep trying until something sticks. It’s all you can do.” 

He supposes if he really sat down to think about it, it's as good advice as any.

Still, he can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s standing there getting unsolicited relationship advice from Steve Harrington, who’d once spectacularly thrown him into a dumpster behind the movie theatre.

He reaches out and claps him on the shoulder, and Eddie fails to suppress a flinch.

“You guys are gonna be fine – hey, who’s the expert here?” 

“I’m sorry …Expert?” Eddie snorts. 

Steve shrugs like it wasn’t the dorkiest thing anyone has ever said in the history of mankind. 

“Yeah, they don’t call me the Love Doctor for nothing.”

Nevermind, that’s the dorkiest thing anyone has ever said or will ever say in the history of mankind and the world forever. 

Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk Not so bad, I guess. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is. Total fucking cheeseball.

Eddie cannot wait to tell you about this. 

“Nobody calls you that.” He’s almost giddy as he says it.   

Steve dismisses the notion with a flippant wave of his hand. 

“That’s not the point, the point is trust me. I’ve been around the block — I know crazy when I see it, and that girl? Totally crazy about you, and I mean certifiably bat shit…”

Eddie shrugs.

“You aren’t wrong – she’s pretty much nuts.”  

“Hey, crazy’s not always a bad thing…” Steve says, and Eddie follows his gaze up the path to where the girls walk far ahead of them, blazing the trail.

He can't help but notice the faintest hint of longing pass across Steve's face, and Eddie feels his face begin to split in a wry smile.

“You know, Nancy’s pretty fucking crazy, diving in after you like that?" Eddie starts, "I mean, you wanna talk about what’s real? That’s as unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen.”

He forces himself to swallow the bitter lump swelling in his throat and along with it the silent wish that he could somehow be different, be better, be a version of himself worth going after that like that.

Eddie clears his throat to banish the notion.

"You sure this isn’t some elaborate scheme to win her back?”

“No.” Steve says firmly, “Absolutely not.”

Eddie is not convinced - he gives a lopsided shrug.

“Well, I sure hope it isn’t Buckley you’re trying to impress, because I think you’ll find you’re barking up the wrong tree with that one.”

Steve's head snaps around so quickly that he's half surprised it didn't twist all the way around to the other side.

“What?" He yelps, "No, I mean – no. Look, let’s get one thing straight, Robin and I are completely – we’re just friends and I would never… h-how do you know about–? I mean… what do you mean?”

Eddie can’t help but roll his eyes at Steve’s fumbling attempt to stop himself from what he can only assume is outing Robin.

It’s noble, to be sure, and he’s got to give him credit for that, but Eddie’s no fool. Even if she hadn’t outright told him, he’s lived long enough in Wayne’s company to recognize the signs of a closeted person living in a conservative midwestern town, faint as they may be.  

"What do you mean?" Eddie counters.  

The question seems enough to stagger Steve, though not for the obvious reasons, it would seem.

“Nothing." He says quickly.

"You sure about that?"

"This isn’t about Robin, okay? It’s about Nancy – I mean – no, it’s not! But even if it was… look, it doesn’t matter because she’s with Jonathan now, and they seem… fine…” 

Eddie stops short and reels on Steve, causing him to stagger a step in an attempt to keep from crashing into him. 

In the distance, Robin and Nancy continue on none the wiser.

Eddie drops his tone and leans in to invade Steve's personal space. Steve inches back ever so slightly, out of impulse, he imagines, and Eddie smirks.

“And yet, you will notice that Jonathan is conspicuously absent from this endeavor.” He says slowly, quiet enough that Steve is hanging on his every word.  

He lets the notion hang between them, breathe a little, and waits to see if Steve will catch on.

He doesn’t, he just gives him another one of those quizzical looks as the yawning chasm of Jonathan Byers's absence grows louder and louder, and Nancy disappears further up the path. 

Eddie tilts his head toward Steve and raises his brows, willing him to understand.

He only knows Jonathan in passing, and from one social pariah with a mean daddy to another, he typically commiserates with him to a degree. He might feel bad about failing to discourage such behavior, but some opportunities are not worth passing up.

If Jonathan is the type of guy to stay out in California and leave his girlfriend to spend spring break swimming in Steve Harrington-infested waters, that’s his poor decision to make.

If it were you, and you had some stupid new boyfriend off in another state, Eddie would not hesitate. He'd go and bang down your door.

Steve shakes his head, still failing to see what Eddie is practically spelling out for him, and he wonders with a brief astonishment whether he could really be that dense. 

“What do you –” He starts, then stops as it dawns on him, and his eyes go wide, “Wait… did she say something?” 

Eddie shrugs and stalks off. 

“Not to me,” he calls over his shoulder, casually lengthening his stride in order to catch up to Nancy and Robin. 

It leaves Steve standing dumbfounded at the revelation, and in an instant, he’s scrambling to catch up. 

“Do you think Nance is into me?” He asks, and then when Eddie doesn’t respond, “Hey… Eddie–!”

Eddie laughs.

“You tell me. You’re the Love Doctor.” 

[mybworlds]

Chapter 6: Something there

Pairing: The Hound x Sansa Stark

Summary: As their journey continues, they will discover that slowly their relationship is beginning to change -- perhaps.

Chapter Warnings: language, use of pet names, influence of alcohol

Masterlist

Before to start... thank you to follow me, if you want to be tagged in the next chapters, please let me know! if you want to ask me smt, you can write down here or you can inbox me. Please remember English is not my first language.

Thanks @vase-of-lilies for the banner

Sansa and the Hound departed a few hours later, silence had fallen between them, only Stranger - Sandor's mighty horse - could be heard trampling on the grass or rocks under its hooves, she was annoyed by the man's foul-mouthed language so unpleasant, yet a sincere thanks for saving her life and healing her wounds came out of her heart, having said these words she turned her head toward the man behind her who immediately returned her gaze "You're welcome." he said simply in a serious tone.

Sansa then asked, "Who were those men? Do you know which house they belonged to?"

The Hound twisted his mouth before answering, "They are from the Land of the Aryas."

"Land of the Aryas?" asked Sansa "I have never heard of them."

"Because it should no longer exist, little bird. What you know as the Chief of the Octopus had the name Land of the Aryas, the Aryas were a people of savages mostly skilled in the use of the sword, violent. They were a rival house to the Clegane's that's why I know about their existence. My father faced their leader at the time, a certain Ga-rarg or Ga-nang I don't remember, however defeated him and remaining only women there, I thought their lineage - if you can call it that - was extinct, but today -- when I saw their coat of arms, I realized that I was wrong and that someone else is back in power of that scum!" he finished explaining and then spat.

"And your father died…?" Sansa was about to ask him if he died fighting honorably to protect his home and children, but he stopped her laughing "He didn't die fighting, little bird, if that's what you were about to ask me. He died on a hunting trip, like King Robert. Assuming he really died that way." that thought escaped him.

Sandor had never quite believed the story of his brother having gone hunting with his father that day; part of him believed that his father had died at Gregor's hand or otherwise.

"Did you weep for his death?" asked Sansa, barely turning her face away from him.

"What an idiotic question! No! There is nothing to mourn, the dead are dead. What is the point of wasting tears on someone who can no longer see or hear you?" he answered her abruptly.

Sansa just leaned her back against Sandor's armor-covered chest; she would have liked to tell him that she was sorry for his loss even though it had now happened many years before and that she would pray for him, but she was sure the Hound would not like the thought or give thanks.

"Why did you go into the service of the Lannisters?" asked Sansa after a few moments.

Sandor sighed and stopped his horse for a moment, looked around "What's going on?" asked Sansa noticing the man's inquiring gaze.

"Be quiet!" he admonished her "Soldiers coming. " he added and then set Stranger off at a gallop and fast forward into a forest, Sansa clinging with one hand to the horse's mane and with the other to the Hound's armor, which prompted Stranger to run even faster, Sansa was afraid of falling when the horse jumped over a small river, she begged the gods to allow her to live, to help her and then prayed that the Hound would also find some peace, he was a good man - deep in his heart - who must have suffered so much to become like that!

Stranger continued his gallop until Sandor pulled slightly on the reins and the horse slowed its gait, they crossed a small stream always in silence, then returned to the main road; Sandor stopped the horse and looked back, Sansa did the same, but she saw no one, she then observed the man asking him a mute question, "Danger past, little bird." he reassured her "We are almost at Harrenhal. But we will not stop there."

"Why?"

"It's not safe and then there's Tywin Lannister, you don't want him to recognize you and take you back to King's Landing!" at the very thought Sansa shuddered "Besides, I'm not going to go there, to that cursed fortress!"

"Are you superstitious then?"

"No, but if I can avoid death a little longer it's better!" he replied without looking away from the horizon, Sansa smiled imperceptibly "In what do you believe?" she asked him.

"In nothing but brute force!" he replied confidently "Nothing protects you more than the sword and your strength."

"Yet you must have believed in something as a child!" insisted Sansa, the man replied with a snort.

The two came to a miserable village, its houses were built half of stone and half of wood, its inhabitants populated the muddy streets, dogs ran free and others fought for a piece of meat, there were many children and parents with hollowed-out faces and pleading eyes for help. Stark felt pity for them "Dare to say a word and I'll tear your tongue out." the Hound admonished her brutally "Better if no one recognizes us: pull up your hood, hide your hair and look down." he continued in a less aggressive tone.

Sansa could have shouted for help and said that she was the Lady of Winterfell, perhaps someone would have recognized her and taken her home and snatched her from the clutches of the Hound who could do nothing but speak rancorous and frightening words to her, or perhaps they would have simply handed her over to the Lannisters in exchange for a loaf of bread.

No, Sansa could trust no one but the Hound, he - even if brutally - was protecting her.

Sandor set the girl down "Come." he told her simply and Sansa obeyed, they entered with their heads down into a place she recognized from the din to be an inn, there were few people there and so Sansa dared to barely raise her face to that of the man behind the counter "Welcome to the Moor Inn, how can I help you?"

"Give me some wine and chicken." replied Clegane handing the man some coins that Sansa imagined had been taken from someone else, the man cast a quick glance first at the Hound and then at Sansa "It will be cold tonight, why don't you stay here? There is a room upstairs, plus you can count on my discretion, ser."

The Hound looked at the man and replied, saying, "How much do you want?"

"Ten silver coins for the room and my silence."

Sansa looked up at the Hound, he was about to draw his sword, but Sansa laid a hand on his and then Sandor looked at her, what did the little girl intend to do?

"All right, ser." she replied, "Here you go." having said these words she slipped off a bracelet worth at least 30 gold pieces, Clegane thought.

The man looked first at the girl and then at the very precious bracelet without adding anything else.

Rather he made them have plenty of food and wine and the largest room in the inn, "Why didn't you tell me you had jewelry with you?" asked the Hound, looking at Sansa as she disgorged her leg of mutton. Sansa looked at him with those clear eyes that Sandor was slowly beginning to appreciate and replied, "I was afraid that if I told you, you would rob me and abandon me somewhere."

The Hound snorted and then downed another glass of wine "Doesn't it bother you to drink so much?" she asked as she saw him gobble down that red liquid.

"No, there is one thing that bothers me and that is stupid questions to which you can only give stupid answers. Do you want to know why I served the Lannisters? Because my father was one of their bannermen many, many years ago and because I only had a desire to kill and with them I could do it often." she fell silent "Here, drink." he invited her.

Sansa looked at the glass containing wine and then Sandor "If you don't do it, I'll drink it. Come on, try it, bad luck you'll have a headache tomorrow!" he reassured her in his own way, Sansa took the goblet and brought it to her lips and slowly drank some, it tasted decidedly strange so much so that she barely curled her lips causing the man to laugh.

"One more sip," he encouraged her.

"Tomorrow I'll make you pay for it," she threatened him.

"I tremble at the very thought." sneered Sandor at her.

She drank two more, four more, six more sips, finished a first, a second and a third glass.Sansa was definitely beside herself, laughing and joking with the Hound as if he were her friend rather than a man who was bringing her home.

"You are the bravest man I know, Sandor," she told him as he carried her into the room and laid her on the bed. Sansa under normal circumstances would never have called him by his name or referred to him as such. Her upbringing required her to maintain a certain detachment and superiority from others; after all, she was a Lady, not a commoner!

Sandor knew she was not herself, but nevertheless he felt flattered by the young girl's words, moved her hair and asked, "How are the scratches?"

"Better, they don't burn anymore. Thank you, thank you for what you did." she said, laying her hand on his cheek, on that cheek that the fire had irreparably ruined: he shuddered like a gasp, not because he felt pain, but because no one had ever touched him with that gentleness again, the last woman who had done so had been his mother when he was a child of about eight.

Sandor did not answer, he looked her straight in the eyes and she did not lower her gaze, the battered face of the Hound did not seem as frightening to her as it did a few weeks ago, it was almost comforting, it made her feel strangely safe, was it the wine?

He smiled, "Aren't you afraid of me? Until yesterday morning you were horrified by my face."

"I wasn't looking at you in horror, you're wrong. I was just thinking … that if you are like this it is because of something that has made you suffer so much that it has driven you to no longer believe in anyone except in hurting others whether by sword or words."

He smiled and then replied, "Bullshit!"

And instead, the little fucking bird was right, and how right she was: Sandor Clegane had not shed a tear or addressed any prayers since he was eleven years old, since his beloved mother had gone, he recalled that he had prayed for some god to take pity on her, to bring down her fever, to make those wounds heal, but no god had taken pity on her, nor had they heeded his prayers.

From then on the child never cried again, what was the use of crying?

The Hound made to get up and let her rest there on that bed that smelled of mold, but she grabbed his hand and asked, "Will you stay with me?"

Sandor looked at her surprised for a moment, then remembered that she spoke like that only because of the wine she had drunk, not because she really wanted to; nevertheless, he could not say no to her, on the contrary.

"Turn the other way." he ordered her, and Sansa rolled onto her side, leaving him plenty of room to stretch out. He took off his armor and leaned his belt with his dagger and sword against the wall, then lay down behind her.

She was already asleep, but he could not close his eyes: this was not the first time he had lain with a woman, he had had many for a night and for a fee, but never did one of them have the effect on him that that pure little girl had on him. He felt-some strange form of tenderness toward her. He felt something that was still not quite clear to him. He barely held onto her and smelled the scent of her hair, wanted to caress it, wanted to caress that face that was so sweet and proud, wanted to … he didn't quite know himself.

The next day Sandor woke up with the sun illuminating the room, Sansa was practically clinging to him asleep, and he was … in an indecent state … if only the little one had seen the effect she had on him, she would have blushed and hid.

It was not the first time it happened to him when someone slept near him, but for the first time he felt uncomfortable. He even found himself thinking about her and how she would never give herself to him, the Hound, the broken and disfigured-faced Man, ever. Sandor loosened the embrace that held him bound to her and, after making himself presentable, walked out of the room, he had to drink.

The Hound came down and sat down on a stool, asked for wine, but the woman behind the counter - who must have been the wife of the man Sansa and Sandor had met before - reminded him that they never served wine before the Sun went down, Sandor got up from there using a series of epithets and profanities that would have made the people of Flea Bottom blush. What he found around was only water, water and more damn water.

He returned to the inn and ascended without giving the woman a glance; he could screw her and her rules!

He would find what he was looking for elsewhere.

When he opened the door to their room, Sandor saw Sansa standing intent on observing her little body: it was full of bruises and scratches; she touched the scratches in the cleft between her breasts slowly and then touched her inner thigh. Sandor almost felt the instinct to walk into the room and kiss that once nubile and perfect little body of hers, now full of cuts.

He did not do this, however. Sandor just stared at his young companion and felt … helpless, wished he could do more, be able to say the right things, to tell her what she wanted to hear, felt a strange and somewhat disturbing sweetness make its way into him.

Where did it come from?

Sandor had never experienced such a feeling; what was happening to him?

He decided to regain control over himself and remember who he was, he was Sandor Clegane, the terrible, violent and aggressive Hound, he had taken Stark with him only to make a profit, then he would leave and abandon Stark there, what was warming his heart was only a momentary thing and surely due to sobriety!

Yes, he was there with her only for money, nothing else.

Sandor opened the door and in doing so heard her reach for something, when he saw her, she was wearing her cloak, "Please, I have not yet finished dressing. Wait for me outside." she almost begged him, and he, obedient as a dog, backed away without saying anything to her. He waited outside.

Clegane remained in total silence feeling his heart oddly beating in his chest.

He decided to regain control of the situation with one of his usual stinging phrases that would make things go back to the way they were, opened the door again and saw that Sansa was fixing her hair with her hands and he had the desire to run a hand through her red hair himself, who knows how soft it must have been!

Sansa noticed his presence and so turned around smiling innocently at him, "I'm ready."

"Good, I don't have all fucking day to lose!" he blurted out causing her to lose her smile.

Why did it hurt him so much now to make her lose her smile?

"Fine." she replied in a cold tone "Anytime." she added reaching out to him and returning his cloak. Sandor felt small, small despite being much taller than her and much stronger than Stark, he felt as if he had just received a punch that took his breath away. He followed her a few steps away, Sansa politely greeted the woman using what to him seemed to be a bunch of bullshit made to dazzle the idiots on duty, then walked out.

Sandor, on the other hand, taking advantage of the girl's distance, approached the woman and demanded that she return the bracelet they had appropriated a few hours earlier; the woman, frightened by the man's dagger and surely also by his appearance, returned what Sansa had previously given to pay for her lodging.

Sansa watched as Sandor mounted on Stranger behind her, then rammed him and they quickly left the inn behind them. Sansa could not understand the man who went to such great lengths for her but did everything he could to keep her away.

What was he trying to prove?

That he was tough? He was.

That he was above everything and everyone? Maybe.

Sansa strove not to make remarks that might irritate the man and also tried to be as less talkative as possible, to use the Hound's terms, strove not to chirp in order to avoid phrases pregnant with irritation from her companion.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

i use my sex as a weapon and the drinks are for free, i’m as cold as ice on the floor of the desert, i burn with the blood of water to find the sea, i use my wounded sex as a weapon and the drinks are for free

Victorialand __ a region in eastern Antarctica which fronts the western side of the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf, extending southward from 70°30’S to 78°00’S, and westward from the Ross Sea to the edge of the Antarctic Plateau. It was discovered by Captain James Clark Ross in January 1841 and named after Queen Victoria.

In 1981, lichens found at Victoria Land attracted the attention of NASA because lichens may give clues about where to look for the existence of extraterrestrial life on Mars or elsewhere. Dr. George Denton, a glaciologist at the University of New Hampshire, looked for microorganisms on Mount Lister, one of the highest in Antarctica; it has the same kind of sandstone in which lichens grow.

2. Victorialand is the fourth studio album by Scottish alternative rock band Cocteau Twins, released by 4AD in 1986. Working without bassist Simon Raymonde, vocalist Elizabeth Fraser and guitarist/producer Robin Guthrie opted for a subtler sound on the album. […]

The album title refers to the part of Antarctica known as Victoria Land, after Queen Victoria (and forming the British claim to the continent, currently dormant under international treaty). Some of the track titles were borrowed from passages on the Arctic and Antarctic in David Attenborough's The Living Planet, A Portrait of the Earth, the accompanying book to his 1984 BBC nature documentary series The Living Planet; an example is "Throughout the dark months of April and May, the birds display to one another and finally mate" on page 54.

the fics i’ve penned so far with the actual victorialand collection are anonymous so i’ll leave the links out until further notice 😉

the title refers to tequila sunrise and Tijuana sunset as well as “Tijuana bible” because at this point in time, you need to have brains and balls to do erotic fic.

you must donate exactly one (1) fuck to me for every 500 words i write. two fucks = 1000 words, three fucks = 1500 words, so on so forth. i have a tendency to get wordy with my erotic writing so a 10k beastie is a whopping 20 fucks given. no need to give up your anonymity if you like! there’s no dodgy behavior here so i’ll not only respect your privacy but i promise you, my hand on my grandparents’ ashes, there won’t be any potentially dirty money going around making the fbi give you the side eye as time goes on. money’s tight, anyways, go spend it on flour or tissues.

anything goes with me, but since this is kinktober we’re talking, i should tell you that i’m not comfortable with anything pregnancy/breeding kink related, anything daddy kink-related, or anything having to do with virginity. i am also completely bored with standard penetration. i like it weird, much to everyone’s chagrin.

i’m currently on hiatus/summer vacation on main and i’m working on my other wips right now, but i’ll be off from vacay the day after labor day, september 3rd, 2024. kinktober 2024 fics won’t be dropping until 9pm pacific time on september 30th, so mark your calendars! i have my own prompts and i’m going to leave them as a little surprise for spooky season.

also: september 29th is alex’s birthday. Rosh Hashanah this year is on october 2nd at sunset. the 16th is the start date of Sukkoth. the 11th is Yom Kippur. who knows, i might pour out a little extra shot of whiskey instead of tequila for him. make a really gorgeous, really sexy jewish libra boy a nice manhattan 🍹

fic titles:

”Treacle”

”And You Will Know Me”

”Cactus Jack’s”

”Cardamom Kisses”

”Bluebonnets”

”Wandering, Wandering”

”Hai-Bar”

”Espresso”

”Songkran Drought”

”Tierra Del Fuego”

”Jack of Hearts”

”Areias do Tempo”

”Red”

“Lily Munster Has Got Nothin’ On You”

”Ugly Truth”

”’Til Tel Aviv”

“Sandstone”

”Playa La Ropa”

”Bastards and Boozehounds”

“Pulmonaria”

”Prayer Hands”

”Spiderwebs on the Heart”

“Olives”

”Don the Beachcomber”

”Lady Godiva’s House”

“Devil’s Tea Time”

”Ten Miles High”

”Amorsolo”

“Lilac Treehouse”

”Painted Roses”

”Lunatic Kibbitz”

shabbat shalom, by the way ✡️

[ds9-polycule-tales]

3 - 2375

Elim looked up as Julian came through the doorway, the faint blue flash of the antiseptic field momentarily creating a sketch of his thin shape, stooped with exhaustion, as an afterimage on the back of the Cardassian’s retina.

“How is he?”

“He’ll live. And keep the leg, even, though that was touch and go a few times before I managed to modify the chemical composition of the antibiotic a little. If his grandmother had waited a few more hours before managing to sneak him out to us…”

Some of the sag of the doctor’s shoulders was relief as well as crushing fatigue, Elim realised. He held out his arms to Julian; drew him down into his lap and folded his arms around him. The younger man’s hands were rock-steady as ever, but his shoulders shook a little as he slowly relaxed against him.

“I still can’t believe his parents didn’t bring him to us sooner. I know sepsis can come on suddenly, but the original cut itself was deep enough. If we can’t get people to trust Federation doctors, even…”

“The medical profession on Cardassia may not…quite have always lived up to your particular ideals, my dear,” Elim replied, savage irony heavy in his voice despite its softness. “And given the Founders’ fondness for biochemical control of populations under their figurative thumb, I rather doubt that has changed for the better in the last two years.”

Julian’s body sagged a little more as he considered the implications. Elim tightened his arms around him, but resisted the sudden, still-surprising urge to say something to comfort him. The kindest thing I can do here is tell him the bald truth of the situation, he thought. Letting him discover it for himself – and potentially make costly mistakes in doing so – will hurt him more in the long run.

He could almost smile at the realisation that he, Elim Garak, was genuinely weighing his options for kindness, of all things; might have laughed, quietly, to himself, at the sheer absurdity of it. Except that Julian had never had to learn the many tricks of irony and distance that he, Elim, had carefully cultivated since he was younger than the boy whose blood still speckled the doctor’s uniform; Julian’s empathy and compassion was genuinely as raw and authentic as an open wound, and, somehow, that seemed to be bleeding back to Elim too.

“We can’t even supply shoes to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Julian said tightly into his shoulder; almost as much a raw vibration of pain and frustration in his flesh as sound. “We have adult footwear in Supplies, but they’d all be much too big for him, and the whole reason he cut his foot on the rubble in the first place was that he’s already grown out of his existing shoes. I’ve already checked; all the replicators we have are flat out keeping supplies coming to keep everyone fed and housed and the time to work out a replicator pattern for shoes that will be outgrown again in another two months would mean other children going hungry. It’s awful, and I can’t stop it being awful without making it more awful.”

Elim drew him closer; held him silently, and eventually lay down with him. A cot in an infirmary cupboard had its drawbacks, but Julian was only going to sleep at all within earshot of his patients, and it was worth it, every bit of it, to share those snatched moments with him.

*****

A couple of days later, as the boy’s grandmother came to bring him home, accompanied by a somewhat stiff younger couple who had probably looked very much younger six months ago, Elim slipped through to intercept Julian as he went to bring him out.

“One moment, please, my dear. Child – Arabrus, isn’t it?”

The boy turned large dark eyes in a too-thin face up to Elim. Children all had eyes like old women, these days. “Yes, sir.”

“Try this on, Arabrus. Just your good foot will be fine for now.”

He held out a shoe to the boy. It wasn’t his finest creation by a long shot, but he was strangely gratified that his guess had been close enough that it required surprisingly little adjustment. He had the child wiggle his toes and push his heel back against his hand just to make sure, but he was satisfied.

“When your toes start feeling pushed against the front, Arabrus, just unscrew this little bit here a little and loosen them until you have room to move them again, just like this. I think your grandmother will know what to do, but if you have any trouble, you can ask back here. My name is Mr Garak.”

After Julian had seen the family off with medication and instructions, he came back to Elim with the first smile in days splitting his face.

“However did you manage that?!”

“Oh, never ask me to explain all my tricks, my dear. You must allow me to keep a little mystery, after all.”

Elim smiled his most untrustworthy smile, spreading his hands wide. But as Julian embraced him, he looked over his shoulder. It was hidden in the ever-present clouds of dust, but he knew the direction of Mila’s small marker stone like he knew his own heartbeat.

She had been an incredibly thrifty woman, always managing to keep things running smoothly even when sudden dips in Tain’s political fortunes had meant he was unable to send resources for months or even years at a time. It had been more common in those early days than the pride of the Head of the Obsidian Order had later allowed any of them to remember.

But Mila would have been proud, he thought, that her old working-class mother’s trick for making shoes that always kept her unspoken son shod no matter how little money they had or how fast his feet grew was still keeping children safer now, even after the end of the world. She would have been prouder of that, he thought, than of any monument he could build for her.

[jinjinranran]

Byeol x Yoosung 💚

Bi Yoosung is canon /j no but what else could I hc him as, with his big ass crush on Saeran 😭 and I believe it wasn't the only one - tho I think most of the times he'd be oblivious and confuse his boy crushes with simple admiration, because he likes girls after all! But boy. Sweetie. My dude. You're fruity and it shows.

With Byeol being nonbinary, Yoosung's a bit confused at first. He doesn't live under a rock, he heard about nonbinary genders, just hasn't really done any research about the topic. He has no problem with accepting them in any way regardless if he fully gets it or not. He just needs some explanations and learning to do so he could understand their identity better.

Other characters: 💛 💜 🧡 💗 ❤️ 💚 💙 🤍 🤎

Byeol's story under the cut:

💚 Eunbyeol Kim (Byeol) ♡ she/they/he ♡ 20 yo ♡ nonbinary, pansexual

Byeol likes both feminine and masculine clothes and interests, but has always been praised only for presenting feminine ("You're such a pretty lady!", "you look like a little princess in this dress" "you look much prettier with some makeup on") and it felt wrong so she started to resent these and dress as androgynously as possible, rejecting everything that was considered feminine.

Dislikes how feminine their face and body is, always admired androgynous people, and wishes breasts were an accessory you can put on and off depending on the outfit. Related those feelings to just wishing to look good in both male and female cosplays, only much later realized there is a deeper reason for that.

Bought her first binder for cosplay purposes and oh boy the happiness it brought!!

Generally wearing masculine outfits always brought that little, unexplainable spark of excitement.

Once when gaming someone referred to her as "he" and it felt cool so she never corrected them. Now goes by mostly he/they online and she/they irl (but honestly is fine with any).

As a teenager started to be more active online, and finding lgbt communities, she discovered the existence of nonbinary genders and started to put the pieces if her life together. Rotated between different identities (demigirl, demiboy, genderfluid, agender, etc.) but at the end decided to just stick to nonbinary as it felt the most comfortable.

Cut their hair at the end of high school, out of impulse and spite for her family pushing the idea that a woman must have long hair. It felt so freeing, even tho she ended up looking like a disaster lol

Their family is conservative and not very accepting to anything outside of the "norm" so they're not out to anyone except one of her older sisters who does everything to support them, even if she didn't fully understand at first.

While doesn't mind she/her pronouns, other gendered words (like miss, sister, girlfriend etc.) makes her uncomfortable so prefers to use gender-neutral alternatives when possible.

Definitely prefer to be referred using their shortened name - Byeol - since it's gender neutral, than the feminine full name - Eunbyeol.

Now - after learning that the way they're presenting nor interests do not invalidate their identity - embraces their feminine features (still thanks gods for the invention of a binder but doesn't always feel the need to wear), actually likes wearing makeup and dresses sometimes, loves to play with fashion and mix both feminine and masculine pieces of clothing, and is obsessed with accessories.

Regarding the romantic/sexual attraction, he has 0 experience, but never put much importance to it, "if I fall in love then I fall in love, the only thing that matters if we get along well".

Since they're going to the same college as Yoosung, they saw him in the halls, a few days into 1st semester, and immediately got a big ass crush on him. Felt way too shy to approach him though, and everytime they ran into each other, only managed to mumble something incomprehensible (and that was very new and out of character for her, and also very embarassing). Later, slowly they started bonding over the same interests, though Yoosung was very oblivious of Byeol's feelings towards him. Until many months later when she confessed to him - or in his route, when he realized that the party coordinator he fell in love with is actually his college and gaming friend. 💚

[tokiro07]

Undead Unluck ch.198 thoughts

[Alright, Keep Your Secrets]

(Contents: speculation - Sun/Luna/Soul)

After last week's chapter, I imagine most of us were expecting this week's chapter to be about Top discovering his soul and pushing Unstoppable further than ever before. I at least thought we'd see a bit of a capstone of his story with Haruka and his mother's illness, his reconciliation with the fact that he needed the help of others to win the day and that he can't survive alone like he thought, and the determination to reach greater speeds because he knows that Haruka's armor will be there to catch him just like she did when they met

All of those would have made a great finale to this arc and Top's re-introductory storyline, but for whatever reason, that's not what Tozuka decided to do. There will likely be time for Top to wrestle with his demons next chapter, and Top worrying about going all out only to be reassured by a friend who can stop him at his fastest could end up feeling like a rehash of the Creed fight, so instead Tozuka chose to give us just a little teaser for what's to come now that souls have been officially introduced into the game

Soul's discussion with Luna is both extremely cryptic and illuminating. While we now know that there's a greater gap between Sun and Luna's goals than just a difference of opinion, we are somehow less clear on her goals in the first place than we ever were before

Once again, I think we may be operating under some kind of misconception. Beast told us that the world began with only Man and Earth, that human souls were placed on Earth by God. This tells us that after the Earth was (presumably) created by Sun and Luna, they created human souls to inhabit it, and that these souls came into existence with the birth of UMA Soul

However, Soul is now telling us that his creation granted people potential. This sounds like something that would have been a subsection of UMA Change's powerset, but no, it's Soul's purview. This suggests that souls themselves may have already existed prior to the Earth's creation, but Luna introduced UMA Soul to create rules and stipulations surrounding the soul that would encourage growth

"There isn't a single Rule in this world designed to aid your survival." That's what Beast said, but Soul is making it very clear that Beast isn't as in the know as he thinks he is. It seems like Soul himself is the Rule designed to aid humanity, the Rule that allows humanity to become more than a collection of disparate spirits floating around a molten dead rock. Whether Luna always planned for humanity to overthrow Sun or she just wanted to see something more interesting, I think there's a good chance that Sun wasn't pleased with this decision

This is likely where their goals split; Sun may have decided that the world was as it should be after introducing the souls to Earth, but Luna saw no meaningful future in that state, so she created a new lifeform, the UMA, to drive an ever-evolving, more lively planet. It was then that Sun retaliated - if Luna can make Rules, so can Sun. And so he did; Death, Change, Luck, Justice, War, all were created to torment and hold back the coming advancements of the world that threatened Sun's vision of perfection. Like children playing in the schoolyard, Sun just kept making up new Rules that continuously put Luna at a disadvantage. Whether they made a formal agreement after this on how to proceed with their wager or if they already had it and Luna broke it first, we won't know for some time, but I'm getting the impression that Sun isn't as petty towards humanity as we initially thought, rather he's petty towards Luna and using them as a proxy

Also, Soul's more amenable attitude towards Fuuko suddenly makes a lot more sense when you know that he was made by Luna - ostensibly, Sun is the one who told all of the UMA he created to make humanity suffer, but if Luna created Soul, he most likely never received that order. Soul doesn't seem to be rooting for the Negators or anything, but he also doesn't seem too invested in being their enemy. What part of Sun's agenda he plays, again I don't know, but his allegiances seem pretty different from everyone else's. He's not fighting so Sun can win, but he's also clearly not giving up any ground to Luna. Perhaps it's the fact that he doesn't know Luna's plot, so he doesn't trust her or Sun and is instead fighting for the sake of his UMA brethren?

I'm really hoping we don't have to wait too long to get more info here, because Soul and Luna are suddenly waaay deeper characters than they seemed to be in the beginning

Until next time, let's enjoy life!

...

Wait, is that why he's Sun and not Sol?? So we wouldn't get Sol and Soul confused???

[kiskivmiske]

It is kinda sad that there are dragons in WoF , but no dragon-related species, if you know what I mean. Dragons are the only creatures in their clade. They have a completely different body plan from all known creatures, and there were new creatures introduced in the series, like dragon flame cacti or dragonbite viper, but no mention of six-limbed lizards or anything that could be dragon's ancestor. I mean, they could originate from another planet, or their own species were wiped out by invasive Earth species, but still. I probably should make one speculative evolution tree for dragons when I finish requests, but here is what I think.

Coelacanth's or its relative's descendant walks out on land just like tiktaalik did. It keeps all of its 8 limbs, but 4 of them are more fit for swimming, while the rest is used to walk on land.

Time passes, legs become stronger, the fish grows claws to get a better grip on the surface. Fins also progressively become stronger, propelling the body underwater, while claws and teeth are used to snatch prey.

Soon, fins become more complex, develop anatomy similar to front limbs, with a shoulder and an elbow joint. The ancestor starts to spend more time, going further and further into the continent, climbing trees and rocks. This dragon's ancestor, let's call it a Swampglider, looks like a deformed hybrid between a MudWing, a HiveWing and a newt: brown or greenish in color, with four short limbs and four fins. It hunts in swamps and rivers, coming to lay eggs on land, in warm mud or in piles of decomposing leaves. Eventually, its hunting territories grow bigger, as the creature starts to use claws to climb trees. It discovers that fins allow to glide from one tree to another. It gains a new method of defense: venom glands under their teeth rebuild themselves to spray venom towards the attacker. Its legs become longer allowing it to run without dragging belly on sharp rocks. It now has a built closer to modern day dragons, although it's the size of a large house cat, but steadily growing in size from generation to generation.

Now, as it rules water, land, and air, Swampglider goes even further, leaving the swamp behind. The West of Pyrrhia is still a lush jungle, connected on the other side with Pantala, Ice Kingdom does not exist yet, but it will soon change.

As Swampglider's habitat becomes more diverse, it starts to split into different species. All species but one, start to lose one pair of wings, while the other pair becomes more flexible and strong. East of Pyrrhia, all the way to mountains, is inhabited by woodland dragons, not much different from original Swampgliders. They are also brown or green, sometimes with hints of blue, yellow or red. The ones who live near the ocean are mostly blue-ish or brown, rainforest dragons are mostly green, while dragons of the southern shores have more distinct yellow and orange hues to blend with autumn foliage. In all of those species, scales host photosynthetic bacteria. Ocean dwelling dragons and swamp dragons still have their gills, while the others lost them. The wings became stronger, the dragons now achieved powered flight.

Dragons of the mountains have slimmer build and bigger wings. Their venom spit has changed to ignite upon release.

An ice age is coming, and ocean on the north starts to freeze, spreading on the Tail islands and the head of the continent. And, on the North of the mountains, a new species rises: these dragons have copper in their blood instead of iron, and their venom spit has a very effective coolant in it. Warm blooded mountain dragons move towards the center and the Southern Ocean, as it is not as cold as the other one. Other species also move, pushing southern woodland tribe to spread all the way across the shore of the supercontinent. Swamp dragons, being forced to move to the northeastern volcanic islands, acquired a new defence mechanism: immunity to fire. That allowed them to live on those islands, which are too dangerous for the others because of their volcanic activity. They don't need sensitive gills anymore, as they do more harm than good. They don't use photosynthesis anymore and are becoming stronger and more effective hunters, always sticking in packs, they increase their kill rate. To hide from the cold, they spend free time and sleep in heated spring pools. Crossbreeding with mountain dragons gave them fire breathing ability, too, but it's not as strong as in other species, because they are not warmblooded.

In the western jungle, bug dragons emerge from those who retained all four wings for hovering flight, rather than gliding. They have more diverse methods of venom attacks. Some of them have poisonous glands under their claws and on the tip of the tail. To make the process of hatching easier, bug dragons have a much shorter egg phase, dragonets hatch undeveloped, with rudimentary wings. They actively eat for several months getting fatter, and then hide into a small burrow, coat themselves with air-drying slimy coat and hibernate. After the winter, they emerge fully developed. That way small dragonets have a bigger chance of survival during winter months, when there is not enough food and significantly more rivalry, to wake up when the food is in abundance

Meanwhile, woodland dragons have developed an unique ability to sence brain signals of other creatures. After a period of time, the had split into three subspecies: mountain dragons hybrids, who can breathe fire and read minds, forest dragons who use psychic abilities to trick others into thinking they are invisible by affecting photographic memory centers, and woodland dragons who can only read chemical signals from plants and translate them into coherent data about the plant to avoid eating diseased and inedible fruits. The first species had lost its photosynthetic bacteria and become fully nocturnal.

Sea dragons are forced to move from shallow waters deeper down from cold icy surface to heated derpwater vents rich with life, their photosynthetic bacteria changes to bioluminescent algae.

And then the continent started to crack. Eastern islands drifted to the North, western half of the continent separated and started to drift further away. Volcaolnoes erupted one after another, and methane filled the air. The ice age is gone and a global warming takes place. Ice cap is melting. Water currents change. Now, lush jungle on the west dries up, becoming a desert. At this point we can call dragons by their names, even though they aren't all pureblood.

MudWings and IceWings move back to the continent, pushing SkyWings and RainWings further to the South, while they, in their own turn, chase away NightWings and LeafWings, who, unable to defend themselves from venom spit, had to flee into the desert. NightWings, due to being nocturnal, aren't affected much by the change of temperature and are fine with desert climate. They kidneys can handle high salinity, so, instead of searching for oasis, they remain in a small wooded peninsula, closer to the ocean. LeafWings, having much more competition, are unable to fight back and forced to stay on separating Pantala. BeetleWings separate, one half stays in Pantala's grasslands, the other stays in Pyrrhian desert.

After separation, grasslands become more humid due to being near the ocean, and new rainforests emerge, food becomes abundant, and BeetleWings and LeafWings don't have to fight for supplies anymore.

Overtime, Pyrrhian BeetleWings lose their larval stage and one pair of wings, and, by breeding with SkyWings, become separate tribe, SandWings. Their hearts developed four separate chambers instead of three, which prevents blood from mixing and loosing heat. This mechanism helps them keep their bodies warm in the night, when the temperature drops.

The other part of BettleWings has retained their "larval" stage through neoteny, and it has become increasingly longer. The dragonet grows at a normal pace now, instead of turning into a fat potato worm thing, it's metabolism isn't much different from a normal dragonet, but they don't pupate and get wings until sexual maturity.

IceWing s have lost their natural habitat and have to move to Pyrrhia, suffering from heat in the northern desert, their number dropped to several thousands. Because of inbreeding, many dragons with deformities were born, one of them could bend laws of physics itself to his own will. This ability will later be known as "animus". Unusual IceWing, later named The Great Ice Dragon, being born with an unique magic ability, has sacrificed himself to preserve the cold on the head of the continent. Although IceWings have come through a bottleneck (drastic decrease in their number), they have survived.

[etherfabric]

Stream of Consciousness - Tarot Reading for the Collective

This is about the time you were meant to have uplifting winds under your wings, but instead were met with rocks thrown at you.

Hermetic Tarot, Cards: 7 of Pentacles, The Emperor, 4 of Pentacles

As others flew over your head towards the actualization of their aspirations, you laid there wondering why you still didn't lift. The adrenaline was numbing you, the pain set in much later. You didn't even consciously conceive of the rocks at first, and when you did, you still didn't know where they were coming from - or from who. All the while they said: "What's taking you so long? Why aren't you flying? You are an embarrassment. You are disgusting. I bet you want to hurt me by not flying." And you quote them every day, to yourself. It became your mantra, and like a water drop hitting a stone for centuries, the shape of its continuous impact left an indent that will stay there long after the water stops.

How to proceed from this? How to build something for yourself, now that you have seen the reasons for your missed departure?

Well, you don't see everything yet… the way those others were going, those that made you feel like you were left behind, wasn't where you were supposed to go. The place they went is a place for people who don't stop to check who might need help. They are solely focused on getting somewhere, always forward, preferably faster than anyone else, no matter the cost.

Yes, you wanted to follow them. Because you thought that would spare you from the cruelty that followed once it was discovered you couldn't fly like the others. But you have to face that you were helpless, and nothing you could have done would've prevented the cruelty. Because the perpetrators wanted to hurt you, no matter what. It was their deeply misguided goal. They thought it would make their lives better. They would've twisted Jesus himself into a person deserving of the pain they wanted to inflict.

Why did it happen? I don't know if you are open for my perspective, I barely am open to it myself most days - but the only story that makes me feel better is this one: It was the only way to keep us on track.

With all the misguided currents flowing around us everyday, not knowing or caring about the impact a single motivation has on the collective, and your deep desire to make people happy, you had to be forced to stay behind. Because you always think the best of people, and weren't willing to see how deep and dark their motivations truly were. You wanted to shine a better light on them by joining them, assuming everyone had noble goals for what they were doing. You wanted to believe that everyone was like you, and if they made a mistake, it was an honest one, and they just needed to be told better to do better.

But this isn't the case yet. You are so ahead in so many ways, we can't let you go to waste in the current status quo, the current way of life that is being called normal and desirable.

You have to be at the sidelines, as untainted as possible, to find your own voice, unlearn the misguided teachings, and see your perceived lack as the treasure it actually is. Seeing the darkness in others does not make you mean. It makes you informed. It adds to your connection to reality. A scary, haunting reality. But the light you need to transmute this is inside of you. You carry so much power in areas we don't even have names for yet, because you are so far ahead of your time. Don't wait for others to get it until you start leaning into it.

You are keeping track of your "mistakes" (judged by the standards of current society) so closely, that you almost forgot everything has two sides. You do too. Yin and Yang. The eternal balance. You can't exist without just as much light as you see darkness. But you are so used to your light, you stopped perceiving it. Like our brains tune out the image of our nose when we have both eyes open. If we switch from our "common" perspective (both eyes) to "uncommon" (one eye closed), it suddenly reappears.

What is the "eye" you have to close to look at you from a completely different angle? To suddenly see what has been there all along, you just tuned it out because of its permanent presence? You are spoiled by being in contact with you every second of your life, that you forgot what a blessing you are. Like smelling vanilla everyday, it fades eventually. Reappear to yourself, and see how magnificent of a creation you are! How stable you are in your You-ness, no matter the circumstances! The Universe brought you here for a reason. The same reason it brought the flowers, the sun, the mushroom, the bird, the rain. You are made from the same stuff. Your structure is as divine as the next best thing. You can only perceive beauty through your inherent beauty. You are the receptor and the molecule alike.

From outside, it might look like stagnancy, your life - but only to the common eye.

[viaravt]

Meowdy, y'all! I know I haven't been around for anything other than posting going live messages recently, but that's because I'm currently going through it... TW: sick and dying pet, loss, grief/grieving, terminal illness (cancer)

... I'm sure you can tell where this is going, and I doubt anyone will even read this, but my soul needs it to exist in the universe even so. I'll try to be brief, but I've always been a verbose bitch.

This is Copernicus. I named him after the ancient astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, who discovered that the earth is *NOT* the center of the universe. And of course MY Copernicus knows this because HE is the center of the universe.

Copernicus quickly took on the nickname of "Pooka" because he was such a mischievous little brat

My ex and I got Pooka my first year of college, in 2005. The Humane Society said that he was roughly 1-3 years old at the time. Fast forward to about 4 yrs later and we adopted a kitten together, only to break up about a year after that

When that relationship ended, my ex took Pooka and I kept the kitten (who was named Arcturus, after one of the first stars to appear at night)

Fast forward another few years and that ex is going into the military. A mutual friend asked if I would like Pooka back, and I OBVIOUSLY said "YES!!!!" That was about 2014

Since then, Pooka has moved with my current boyfriend and I into about 5 different apartments. He has been my rock, my one constant in the sea of changing friends and partners (we're poly) and professions. Through all my mental and physical illnesses, Pooka has been my rock. My current partner, of course, has been as well.

July 28th, they started renovations on the apartment upstairs. This included using some chemicals to reglaze their tub. They didn't set up proper ventilation, so Copernicus, my partner, and our other cat Nugget went to stay with my partner's Dad.

When Pooka came home 3 days later, his eye was a little crusty and winky. We just thought it was him having gotten into something at Pops's place. When it persisted into the next day, we called the vet.

Many vet visits, uncomfortable tests, and anxiety later, we had a small answer - there is a mass in his face causing that eye to be unopenable. We get it punch biopsied - inconclusive, but there are some bad cells in there - squamous cell carcinoma.

We've started him on chemo, but the vet informed us under no uncertain circumstances that this is The End. Our goal now is to just keep him comfortable. The eye will never open again, and this aggressive cancer is what will take him out of my life.

There's so much more, of course, but a Tumblr post will never do a life justice.

If the Humane Society was right when we adopted him, that makes Pooka about 19-21 years old. I'm 37. That means he's been in my life for over half of it. I'm not sure what I'll do without him.

I don't want to know.

But I'm going to have to find out.

If you've read this far then you're either a hero or doom scrolling. Either way, here's an embarrassing clip of me poorly signing Hadestown and ugly-crying on Pooka. He always loves it when I sing.

[darraghoconnors]

[ paul mescal | 27 | cis male | he/him ] Hey, look! It’s [DARRAGH O'CONNOR] at [MYSTERY QUEST ESCAPE ROOMS]. Did you know they [WORK] there as a [CHARACTER ACTOR]? I guess they’re from [DUBLIN, IRELAND] and have been in town for [FIVE], living in [SUTHERLAND PARK]. I also heard they’re a little [HOTHEADED], but also very [SOCIABLE] which definitely makes sense. 

tw teen pregnancy, death, abandonment

RAPID FIRE.

Full Name: Darragh O'Connor.

Nicknames: D, Dar.

Pronouns and Gender: He/Him, Cis Male.

Birthday: March 19th, 1996.

Birth place: Dublin, Ireland

How long have they been in Vermont: 5 years, as of Nov 2023.

Sexuality: Bisexual.

Neighborhood: Sutherland Park.

Occupation: Character Actor @ Mystery Quest Escape Rooms / Amateur Boxer.

Family: Aishling O'Connor (Mother, deceased), Murphy Doyle (estranged birth father), Cormac Doyle (half-brother), Cian Doyle (half-brother), Caoimhe Doyle (half-sister).

OVERVIEW.

-- Darragh was the only son of a single mother who struggled for most of her life. Aishling O'Connor became a mother for the first and only time at seventeen years old, and was ill-equipped to handle it after being cut off by her family for deciding to go through with the pregnancy.

-- Despite growing up in uncertainty, for the most part Darragh had a happy childhood. They didn't have much, but they had each other.

-- As far as schooling went, he never displayed much of a natural apt for it. He found classroom settings too restrictive and there was no specific academic subject that held his interest. The only days he would definitively be guaranteed to show up at school was when he had P.E. or football.

-- After a number of calls from his principal and run ins with other mothers on their council estate over fights and scrapes Darragh found himself involved in, his mother enrolled him in a local boxing club when he was ten, and it fostered an interest in the sport that has stayed with him through adulthood.

-- He found something of a father figure there in his coach and trainer, Tom. The discipline of the sport kept him on the straight and narrow, even though there were some run ins in his teenage years with the Garda for being present in robbed cars and where drug deals were occurring.

-- Darragh's whole world shifted on it's axis at his mother's death when he was seventeen years old, and then again a few days later at her funeral when he discovered that his biological father was both alive and well and a man that had three other children who were all older than him and a wife to boot.

-- This news rocked the foundation of everything he thought he knew about himself and his ma, and made him question every word she had ever spoken to him. As soon as he turned eighteen, after a few months of staying with the family of his best friend, he set off travelling rather than having to share a city with a man who knew of his existence and chose to ignore it entirely instead.

-- He initially moved to Australia with two school friends who aspired to do the same and lived/worked there for just under a year and a half before deciding it wasn't for him. Leon and Karl stayed on, while he set his sights on the next continent he would search for some semblance of a new start.

-- The United States were next and after spending a few months on the west coast, Darragh eventually found himself in East Haven, Vermont and decided to settle down there a while after deciding he liked the vibe and the people there .

-- To this day, he still keeps a pretty rigid training regime when it comes to boxing and devotes most of his free time to training / improving his skills in the ring as well as taking on amateur fights.

-- To make ends meet, he works as a character actor at Mystery Quest Escape Rooms. He loves to scare the shit out of people where possible and has been known to be a little generous with hints if he watches a group particularly struggle.

SORTA FUN FACTS.

Has heard every variation of his name pronounced incorrectly. His favorite is Darg. "And what's a Darg when he's at home?"

His official boxing stats as of Nov '23 are 9 matches and 9 wins (4 of which are by KO).

Was supposed to be due on St, Patrick's Day but was born 2 days after his due date, which he's grateful for because he likes his birthday being just about him.

Of his half-siblings, he's only met his half-sister and that was just once. It did not go well and there's been no contact since.

Has been known to lie when asked can he speak Irish if he thinks it can benefit him to pretend to.

CURRENT CONNECTIONS.

roomate of @sasika-lg

cheated on his ex with @scottienolan, semi-complicated

fan of @pruexcassidy's radio show

frequent flyer to the ER @norasinclair works at

friend of @thesarahruiz

friend of / thinks @samxbradford is the best dj in the bizz

SPECIFIC WANTED CONNECTIONS.

former roommate/maybe someone who let him crash with them when he first moved to EH.

recent ex-gf that he cheated on.

a current roommate would be fun.

an older male that he lowkey idolizes / wants to be like.

weed buds. 🍁

would dig someone he was formerly super tight with that now hate each other (reason can be plotted!)

a best friend. probs the only person he would make a sincere effort to make time for.

co-workers! get litty at the escape room lmao

former co-workers?? pretty open ended, i imagine he did some bar work to get by when he first got here but then made the switch because the hours didn't suit his training

gym-buddies. he practically lives there.

exes. he's def a difficult person to be in a relo with so could have ended on varying terms from good to bad. feel free to come hurt my feelings.

hookups, fwb, usual jazz.

GENERIC WANTED CONNECTIONS.

connections wise he’s pretty much an open book right now, but some baseline ideas that can be springboarded off are:

friendly.

a best friend / ride or dies / close friends / childhood friends from ireland / pseudo-siblings / friends / drunk friends / new friends / former roommate / people he knew from london / people he met on his travels / people who were in aus at the same time as him / people who he only gets along with and vice versa when drinking is involved.

romantic

flirtationship / friends with benefits / one time hook ups / tinder matches / unrequited crush (can be either way) / exes on good terms.

antagonistic.

enemies / former (best) friends / exes on bad terms / frenemies / rivals / negative influence / people who don’t fuck with him.

[littleragondin]

On Repeat Tag Game

I was tagged by @bengiyo and @troubled-mind to put my repeat playlist on Spotify on shuffle and list the first 10 songs. Thank you both! ⸜( *ˊᵕˋ* )⸝

As always it's a little bit all over the place, but here are my 10!

aeseaes - Carrion Comfort

I have liked all aeseaes songs I have heard so far. This one I heard for the first time as I was re-reading Abarat by Clive Barker, where the villain (who fascinated me as a teen) is called Christopher Carrion, and the song has been haunting me since. Also I can't resist some cannibalism imagery.

Luther Vandross - Your Secret Love

Haha okay, so maybe I listened to this one on loop while I was working on my Love in Translation's gifset. I just really, really like this song - I am a sucker for love songs, and he is so, so good at it. Plus, what a voice...

안예은 Ahn Ye Eun - 홍련 (紅蓮) HONGRYEON

Alright, I discovered Ahn Ye Eun (kinda) literally two days ago thanks to @petrichoraline and I already have three songs of hers in the on repeat (the other 2 are Trumpet Creeper and Changgwi). She has an incredible voice, her instrumentals are so rich, and I adore how she plays around with horror themes and traditional myths. I am a little obsessed. (I'd recommend going down the comms a little, someone translated the lyrics and gave a few notes)

Debout sur le zinc - La déclaration

That's my favorite song of theirs and one of my favorite love song period. It's very sweet, but my favorite is the ending verse where he says. "It's a bit of a declaration [of love] even if I know that you're not/ the remedy nor the solution, just a splint on my arm/that small thing linking us to others when we don't do well/an ultimate language of survival that put the world back on its axis" - recognizing that love won't heal him entirely but is still necessary for him to survive.

Jonathan Hultén - Where Devils Weep

I cannot for the life of me remember how I found this one, but the sorrowful music with those, in the end, hopeful lyrics have been a pick me up the past week.

Déportivo - Les Bières Aujourd'hui S'ouvrent Manuellement

Deportivo is a french rock band from my teen years, so this cover is a bit of a throwback. This is a quietly sad song about a man realizing that his long term relationship has run its course - "It will always be a mystery to me/how the body get used to it/when love dies slowly". It talk about the very mundane things (his partner turning their back at him when they go to bed, the clicking of their spoon the only sound between them as they dine) that made him realize they are not in love anymore.

The Real Zebos – Puttin' On the Ritz

Tons of covers of this song exist (I do love Taco's version from like 1982 I think). This one came up in the spotify recs and it clicked for me. Love the singer's voice, and it feels fresh without losing it's original vibe.

Simon & Garfunkel - America

I have slowly been working my way through Simon & Garfunkel's discography over the last few months -because all their songs I grew up with I love. But since I discovered this one, it's a go to when I feel down and I need something for comfort (there is something that makes me feel heard in "Katie I'm lost I said though I knew she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why").

เงา (SHADOW) - LAZYLOXY

Guess what show I'm excited for!!!!! Joke aside, I put Lazyloxy's opening for Rakdiao on loop for weeks when I watched that show, so the moment this came out spotify stuffed it under my nose and I really like it!

Elisabeth (2005) - Marktplatz in Wien (Milch)

Like last year, October somehow means I start putting the 2005 live recording in Vienna of Elisabeth on repeat. I love musicals, and I have a special relationship to this one (it's the musical that got me into Takarazuka and my first German musical). This song always scratches the itch perfectly so I listen to it even more than the rest of the album (all songs with Lucheni are top tiers for me)

If you feel like doing it, I will tag @petrichoraline, @sparklyeyedhimbo, @scienceoftheidiot, @howdydowdy, and @iguessitsjustme !

[forthesanityofstorytellers]

Footsteps of a Stranger

Written in 2019 to be part of an anthology that I don't think ever quite got off the ground. Spawned a good character, tho. Short story that I broke up into chunks for Tumblr. Inspired by the Noir Princesses art by Ástor Alexander.

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WC Total: 6289 -Part 1, 628 -Part 2, 1276 -Part 3, 1163 -Part 4, 686 -Part 5, 1851 -Part 6, 685

Warnings: Guns

Summary: A PI is on the case to discover who has been setting forest fires. And causes some reflections in the rain.

Rain. It always seemed to soothe me in one way or another−little drops of starlight falling, glistening in the dull glow of the moonlight like tiny angels, plummeting towards the earth.

I stood under a sheltering cluster of branches, in a tiny bit of nature away from the city. It was far enough away, the light in the distance like a foggy memory of hope. Hope for anything new. But nothing was really new these days, was it? Memories haunted the foggy rain as I stared at the ground, where a small ring of rocks marked the grave of the tortured earth sprite. The gunshot still pounded my ears, the echo of a decision I made daily to exist in one world over the other.

The exceptions were on slow days like today. Today I was forced into a corner. Forced to reconsider my efforts. To live as a human knowing it might come at the expense of the sprites. To live as a sprite knowing my world was constantly shrinking...and one day may be gone.

I stood in the small corner of nature, standing long enough to grow roots. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Only listened and thought of my mother.

Something in the trees moved. I tensed, shifting my stance enough to look over my shoulder. Thomas emerged with a small smile and an umbrella. He stood next to me and extended the plastic shelter, letting the downpour fill our silence.

“Ratcliffe,” I finally said, hands in pockets and staring at the grave. “Did he confess?”

Thomas shook his head. “Of course not. But the evidence did enough talking for the police.”

I glanced at his shoulder, captured against his body by a white sling. “Sorry.”

He shook his head again, droplets flicking out of the brown mess of his hair. “Don’t worry about it, Miss Becka. It was a one-in-a-million shot you tried to pull, and this,” he shuffled his arm, “helps tell the story that Ratcliffe shot me.”

“True. But I wish for her sake we could snag him for dumping poison in the forests.”

Thomas smiled. “Don’t count me out yet, Miss.” I shot him a suspicious look, to which he smiled wider. “I may or may not have found out who he’s been hiring to dump the waste for him. And I bet once we link his assaulting farmers to the land-buying and dumping, he’ll be sorry he ever set his sights on this forest.”

“It won’t change the damage he’s already done,” I sighed. “Or bring any peace back to the sprite he shot.”

“Maybe not, Miss Becka,” Thomas answered, looking back to the grave. “Maybe not. But maybe these events will get ripple beyond what we can see. Death isn’t always the end, not when it can bring about change for the better.”

I nodded, glancing up at him. “I suppose that’s true. As long as we make sure it's a change for the better.”

“I have every confidence in you, Miss Becka.”

We stood there a moment longer, listening to the rain, watching as it struck the ground. The strong smell of fresh earth wafted into the air. As we watched, a small piece of earth twitched in the center of the grave. My hand went to my pistol, but there was no need. In the very center of the sprite’s resting spot, something began to emerge. A single twig poked its head from the ground, unfolding in the damp of the night into a strong sapling.

I let out a small laugh. “The last of her magic,” I muttered.

“What?”

“An old myth my father told me once: ‘Bury an earth sprite in the ground, respectfully mark it with rocks around, the last of their magic is new life found.’ He used to tell me every time we visited my mother’s grave. I never knew what to make of it, but…” I shook my head. Looked up at my assistant. “Nevermind. Let’s go, Mr. Bayle; we’ve got work to do.” Turning towards the distant halo of street lamps, I walked out into the night fog.