#i should’ve woken up earlier so that i could have time to run errands AND look cute AND write

[peachcitt]

heads up greatest hits chapter is coming late today

[kithalstead]

Blush, and the Sea

The first-person Lyla called was Mai, sitting in the to-capacity, fluorescently-lit waiting room of Maple Ridge Memorial Hospital between a mother with a screaming toddler and a middle-aged man who was trying to convince his partner that he had Alice in Wonderland syndrome; the partner did not seem convinced. Lyla had been staring at her shoes, trying to memorize the way the laces looped together. She didn’t understand how a knot actually worked, even though she was an actual adult with car insurance and an apartment. The phone call was an accident, honestly. She hadn’t done it on purpose; the contact was just one up from her mother’s, and before she knew it, she could hear the dialing coming through the speaker.

Mai didn’t answer, because Lyla hung up the phone, and then turned it off, before she could. She tucked the phone away in her bag, and waited. Her mother, Louisa, was still in surgery after sustaining serious injuries in a hit and run. She’d been on her way to the bank with that day’s deposit from Blush Boutique, the store Louisa owned and ran by herself, when a car had blown through a stop sign. The surgeons had promised Lyla that they’d do everything in their power to save her mother, but Lyla suspected it wasn’t up to them.

Sitting in the waiting room, alone, sandwiched between Alice in Wonderland and the Nightmare Rugrat, staring at her shoes whose laces didn’t make logical sense, she prayed for the first time in fifteen years.

 Her father had been tall, that’s what she remembered most about him even now. Travis used to lift her up onto his shoulders, and she could see forever.

“If you look close enough, dumplin’, you’ll see the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans from here,” he used to tell her. She’d strain her eyes, trying to see the rippling waves of each ocean. She had borrowed every book on the ocean from her primary school’s library and fallen in love, especially with the life underneath the waves.

He used to take her to the aquarium for her birthday, since they lived in the middle of Montana. It was the closest he could get her to the sea for a day trip. The day that she’d decided to become a marine biologist, she was six years old. He’d woken her up before the sun had risen with kisses peppered all over her face and whispered to her that it was time. She’d sprung out of bed and dressed in her nicest clothes, although she’d put on her shoes on the wrong feet at first. They ate breakfast at a 24-hour diner on the way, where she could eat anything she wanted. She got chocolate chip waffles with strawberries and whipped cream on top, and hot chocolate with whipped cream as well. He got black coffee, and a stack of pancakes.

Then, he loaded her back up into his truck and drove them to the aquarium. She wasn’t sure how the tradition started, but he’d always taken her to the aquarium on her birthday. It wasn’t crowded at open, so they went early and spent the day there. At some point, he’d lift her up onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowds. His shoulders were the best place, the safest, and she always felt like she was flying without ever being afraid of falling. Her daddy was there, and he’d never let anything happen to her.

“Daddy,” she said towards the end of the day. They were alone in one of the tunnels, glass domed over them so they were surrounded with fish. “I’m going to swim in every ocean! And! I’m going to discover Atlantis.”

“Yes, you will, dumplin’. You will be the Jane Goodall of the sea.”

Lyla didn’t know who or what Jane Goodall was, but she liked the way her daddy said it.

“Yeah,” she whispered to herself. She looked into the crystalline water, and found an octopus staring intently at her. She stared back. “I’ll be of the sea.”

 Lyla couldn’t tell you how she got home, even though it was an hour and a half drive from campus to her hometown. All she remembered was the silence at the end of the voicemail before the person on the other end had hung up, that deafening silence that rattled incessantly like the loose exhaust pipe on her pick-up. All she remembered was stumbling through the front doors of the hospital and asking for the intensive care unit.

Then she was at her mother’s side, holding her hand while she slept.

Louisa Webb was a pretty woman in her early forties, rail thin with glossy dark hair that she took meticulous care of. She was a hurricane of a woman, determination driving her towards whatever she wanted and then beyond. She had opened Blush Boutique in the dying town Lyla had grown up in, a place where it was certainly destined to fail, and had managed to make it thrive. She had created the most popular clothing store in town, and she had done it with little to no help. Lyla had always admired her mother, even if she hadn’t always liked her.

A blur of doctors passed through, telling Lyla that her mother was strong and healthy and should wake up any time. Nurses checked her mother's vitals, and made sure Lyla was comfortable, but no number of cushions or adjusted thermostats were going to make her comfortable. She wanted to see her mother’s eyes again, the sometimes cold and calculating deep brown irises that watched Lyla carefully as if she were a stranger that needed observation.

She fell asleep at some point, slumped over awkwardly with her head resting at her mother’s shoulder. She had learned to sleep anywhere years before when sleeping anywhere didn’t ache so much. She dreamt uneasily, the ache of loss revived in her chest while she stood in a room ten times too big for her. She looked up at the furniture made for giants, her parents towering over her. She tried to see their faces from where she stood, but they were too tall, and she was too small. She climbed the rungs on the bed’s frame until she could see where their faces should’ve been, but instead there was only a flat expanse of flesh. No eyes. No noses. No freckles or beauty marks. No smiles.

She jerked awake to the feeling of a hand stroking her hair. She panicked for a moment, feeling six years old again at her father’s bedside. Now, Louisa’s eyes looked at Lyla with a kindness and love that Lyla wasn’t sure she’d seen in years. The death of Travis had destroyed them both, but just for a second, Lyla saw the unaffected, unadulterated love her mother once held for her.

“Hey baby,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Mom,” Lyla breathed, and leaned into her mother to wrap her in a hug. It was awkward, the edge of the bed digging unforgivingly into her stomach the entire time, but it felt nice to hold her mother, to know she was safe. Her mother shuffled over in the bed, and pat it before Lyla could move too far away. Lyla smiled and climbed into the bed with her. She didn’t fit the way she had when she was a child. She was taller now, and she had hips that got in the way more often than not. An older relative on her mom’s side once told her that she had “child-bearing hips” and had winked. It had made her uncomfortable.

She let Louisa lean into her, the weight of her mother resting against her.

“I should call the doctor,” Lyla said, looking at her mother’s sleek brunette hair crash around her slender, freckled shoulders in never-ending waves.

“Wait,” Louisa said in a whisper. “Let’s just wait.”

Lyla waited.

 Lyla used to have a dad. He died when she was six years old, and he died in this same ICU. She remembered sitting beside him while he slept in the hospital bed, reading the best she could to him because the nurses said that would help him wake up. He had saved someone, she remembered that, too. The nurse, the pretty one with big green eyes and square glasses, had told her that her daddy was very brave for what he’d done. He was a hero.

It seemed silly that the nurse was telling her this like she didn’t already know.

Of course, her daddy was a hero.

She’d hear later exactly what it was that he’d done, even though she had been just a few feet from him in the car. She’d been playing with the squid and manatee plushies her father had gotten her. He had protected a young girl, no older than 15 or so, from getting taken. The girl came to visit him in the hospital once, Lyla staring at this girl the entire time from the other side of the bed. Louisa had excused herself, unable to look at this girl, but Lyla couldn't take her eyes off of her. The girl, she never introduced herself, was extraordinarily pretty. Even glassed over with tears, her eyes held multitudes of greens and browns, and even though her cheeks were splotchy and her dirty blonde hair was pulled up into a messy bun away from her face, Lyla was enamored with her. She didn't understand why this girl was visiting then; she'd never seen the girl, and she was sure her daddy didn't have friends that were this pretty, but she was glad that she visited.

No one really ever told her what happened to leave her father in the hospital, though. She'd had to piece together the story when she was older, because her father used to be a soldier; he was tall, and muscular. He was the kind of guy that most people didn't fuck with, and yet he'd been bested. He'd laid in that bed in the hospital for weeks, looking so small.

Here's what Lyla was able to figure out: Travis was running a couple of errands after dinner, and Lyla had been driving her mother crazy that day so he'd taken his small daughter along with him. She'd played in the car with the radio playing while he ran inside the store for a few minutes. It had gotten dark quickly, fall and winter draining the sun earlier and earlier those days. When Travis had left the store, he'd seen a girl with dirty blonde hair being dragged into an alley by a figure in a dark hoodie and a bandana tied around their face, and had sprung into action. His purchases had fallen to the ground, and rolled underneath the car. Travis had grabbed the girl and pulled her back from the figure and told her to run. She had, but Travis hadn't. He had tried to capture the figure, who had friends in the shadows waiting for the figure to bring back the girl. Travis was overtaken by a group of shadowy figures who had no names, and were never identified. They'd smashed his head against the exposed brick in the alley, and escaped as he fell to the ground.

She didn't remember this, but she was the one who found him. She'd been playing for a while, and Travis had said he'd be right back, before the end of the CD he'd put on for her. When the music stopped playing, she had gotten worried. Unbuckling herself from her booster seat, she set aside her manatee and octopus, and gotten out of the car. Because her parents had insisted on child safety locks, even though she knew better than to get out of the car while it was moving, she'd had to crawl into the front seat. She wasn't supposed to get out of the car without her daddy or mommy, either, but he'd been gone a long time, and he'd promised only a couple of minutes. Staring up at the store's front doors, doors she'd never gone through along, she plucked up her nerve and strode up to the automatic doors. An employee at the counter greeted her, asking her if she was lost.

"My daddy hasn't come back yet," she'd said. "And I want to go home."

The employee had taken her by the hand and they'd walked the aisles, looking for Travis.

"What's your daddy's name?" the employee had asked, and she answered. Travis and Louisa had made sure that she knew their names in case anything happened to them. "Can you tell me what he looks like?"

"He's really tall!" she had answered. "Really tall! And he's got a beard, it's kind of scratchy."

"Oh," the employee had said, and taken her by the hand to walk her outside to do a quick look in the area. He was a nice man, quiet as he listened to her. They checked the sidewalk, and then the car, and finally, they checked the alley. She recognized her daddy immediately and had walked towards him without the employee, and knelt beside him. She had shaken his arm, telling him that she'd found him, and it was time to go home, it wasn't playtime. He didn't respond. She didn't notice the blood on the cement, or the bruise swelling around his eye, or the crack in his lip. She just knelt by her father, trying to shake him awake, unaware of the employee running to get to a phone, or the far-away sirens that were rushing towards them. She stayed by his side, confused and scared, tears dripping down her chubby cheeks while her daddy laid still on the pavement.

 Lyla had sat at her father's bedside in the hospital every day, and every night. Louisa told her that they had to stay in case he woke up. They didn't want to leave him to wake up alone, did they? The way she said it meant that she was right, and Lyla's whines to go home were wrong. But she really wanted to go home. She didn't understand. Her daddy was just sleeping, that's what everyone had told her, that he was hurt and the best way for him to heal was to sleep, and it was weird to watch someone sleep. There was only so much to do at the hospital, and she'd gotten yelled at for doing half of it. What she wanted was to go home, to stop sitting next to her father who did nothing but sleep, and to go to school. She missed her friends, and she missed learning, and she missed doing something. She really missed being able to do stuff.

Her daddy was asleep all the time, and she couldn't look at him any longer. He used to be a giant, tall and broad, like he could touch the sky. He looked so weak, fragile, small laying in that bed, impossibly small. There was something about him, something she couldn't lay her finger on, that just wasn't right anymore. It was like the hospital had replaced her daddy with a copy, a version of himself that just wasn't right.

She wanted to go back to school. Maybe learning something new would replace the image of her father looking so defenseless out of her head. It never really left, but she tried every day.

 Mai had been a TA in one of Lyla's classes and, after the class was over, her girlfriend. They'd been unbelievably, and almost grossly, in love with one another. Lyla spent more time with Mai than she did alone. They were drawn to each other, unable to keep their hands off of one another, to the point where studying in the library almost always ended in at least one of them getting off in the stacks.

"You know," Mai muttered one afternoon in Lyla's ear, "I love you so much."

Lyla leaned away and brushed Mai's sleek dark hair away from her face, and smiled. The late afternoon sunshine streamed into the bed, blanketing their bare bodies in warmth. Lyla dragged her fingers over Mai's skin, touching every perfect inch and lovingly stroking every imperfection.

"Is this the part where you tell me that you're leaving? Because I already know that," Lyla replied quietly. They spoke in whispered voices, afraid that the world would hear them and break this moment apart.

"I just want you to know that. It's a fact, and you like facts."

Lyla kissed her gently, afraid that she would shatter this last precious thing she had.

"Well, if that's the case, then, it's also a fact that you are the love of my life, Mai Chen, and nothing will change that. Not even the ocean."

The moment had ended, though, shattered by reality. Mai was leaving, she'd gotten a job in Japan at a research center. She was leaving at the end of the month, and Lyla couldn't go with her. She had to finish her degree, and she couldn't leave her mother. It was that simple, and that hard.

"I love you," Mai whispered the night that they packed up Mai's apartment. "I love you so much."

Lyla held Mai's face in her hands.

"Don't be sad, Mai. You're going to Japan! You're going to the sea, and you're going to get paid to learn. You are going, and you will not be sad that I am not with you."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"The sea," Lyla said softly. "You'll be of the sea, Mai."

Lyla had driven her to the airport in the morning, and they'd sat in the car for a while, breathing in each other's breaths. Mai wouldn't let her come in, insisted that she leave as soon as Mai was in the airport.

"I won't let you pine after me, waiting for my flight to take off. Go home and go out, have fun with our friends, okay? I love you."

Lyla held Mai's face in her hands, stroking her thumb along the soft skin of her cheek. She didn't want to let go. She didn't want to see Mai step out of this truck, and disappear into the airport. They weren't sure when they would see each other, so they had agreed to break up. It was easier this way, even if it hurt the most.

"You know," Mai said then, muttering into Lyla's ear, "you're the best thing that that school ever gave to me. And out of everything I'm leaving behind, I am going to think about you the most. I'm going to miss you the most."

 Lyla tried not to think about Mai every day, and she tried not to think about Travis every day, but when she wasn't learning anything new, the thoughts of what she'd lost, the reminders of what had left her behind crept back in. Sitting in Blush's office, going over mindless paperwork, the thoughts crawled in and made itself at home inside of her.

 Louisa was weak after the hospital had released her, unable to take any more than a couple steps at a time. She kept her store, Blush Boutique, open with Lyla’s help, but she couldn’t even walk across it without leaning on her daughter. She went to physical therapy a few times a week, but it was clear that she wasn’t getting any stronger. Her hair greyed, losing its glossy sheen, and her eyes muted, the sparkle of confidence fading. Lyla stayed with her, making sure she was taking her medication and eating, but nothing was helping. She was watching her mother waste away in real time, and it was breaking her heart.

The day it came apparent that Lyla would have to move back into her childhood home, she’d called each office she needed to in order to leave school. It had been humiliating. There were a thousand offices for each part of being a student, and you had to verify and reverify with each one. Everyone was unerringly kind about it, wishing her mother a speedy recovery, and Lyla the best of luck, but all of their kindness just made her feel like shit. She was in her senior year, less than a year from graduating, and she was one of those people who had to drop out with less than a year to go. She used to mock those people.

“Lyla, Blush is my life,” Louisa had said the afternoon that she was released. Lyla was wheeling her out of the hospital towards the car. This is how Louisa started serious conversations, with her back turned. “I can’t lose it. I can’t let that dream be ripped from me, too, because of an accident. Please, Lyla, you’ve got to help me. I know it’s a lot to ask, but it won’t be for long. Just until I get on my feet. Will you take care of the store?”

Lyla thought of the lab that she was missing that day, the third in a row. She’d emailed her professors to explain the situation, but there was only so much they could do before her absences stacked too high. She thought of all the information she was missing, and how long it would take to make up all of that work. She thought of the first grade when her father had died, and she’d missed a month of school straight because her mom wouldn’t take her. She thought of standing in front of her teacher, asking how she could make up her work and not be held back.

She had worked it out with Miss Mayhew that she would skip recess and after school activities to catch up. She doubted her professors would let her skip recess to make up missed lectures and lab assignments.

“I have to get back to school soon, Mom.”

“Lyla, please. You can always go back to school. I can’t re-open Blush.”

Lyla put the brakes on the wheelchair, and looked down at where Louisa had wrapped her hand around her daughter’s on the handles, eyes widening to get that prime amount of pout.

“I’ve worked so hard for this.”

Lyla didn’t point out the hours of hard work that she had put in at school, the internship hours combined with homework and holding down a job on campus as well. She didn’t mention the papers she stayed up all night researching and perfecting. She didn’t mention the extracurriculars she’d been taking on since freshman year; the tutoring center hours she put in as a volunteer, the clubs she was a part of, or the leadership positions she’d taken over the past four years. She didn’t mention them, because her mother wouldn’t hear them anyway.

“Okay, but only until you’re back on your feet.”

 Louisa never got back on her feet, not entirely. At some point while Lyla was keeping the boutique open, her mother started to neglect physical therapy. She didn’t take her medicine, and she didn’t return for her follow-up appointments with Doctor Potter or any of the specialists. She refused to even listen to Lyla when she brought up going back to get a checkup. She could stand, and walk across the room, but it exhausted her. Lyla could see it in the way her shoulders hunched forward as she braced herself on the plush backs of couches and chairs, in the shake of her knees, and the heaviness of her breathing. Lyla didn’t point out that physical therapy would’ve helped her relearn how to walk on her new coltish legs, but she wanted to.

So, while Louisa was sitting at home, not taking care of herself, Lyla drove every morning to Blush Boutique. She researched inventory and how to get a better deal on retail, and the hottest trends of the season, and how to draw customers to your store. She created a Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for Blush Boutique, and held sales to entice customers to stop in when they might have overlooked the store. She took out advertisements in the local Pennysaver, newspaper, radio, and at the old-fashioned movie theater downtown. She even hired a second employee for the dayshift in order to get paperwork done in the afternoon.

She grew Blush, her mother’s store. She put in the hours. She did the research. She learned about management, and tax forms, and how to run a business, from Google searches and YouTube videos. She taught herself how to run a store while Louisa sat home and pitied herself in her wheelchair that she didn’t even need. But every time Lyla tried to bring up going back to school, Louisa would turn mean.

“I’ve supported you through everything,” her mother sneered once, “even after what you did to your father, and you can’t even keep my life’s work going for a few months.”

It stung to hear her father thrown back at her like this.

Once a year she would visit her father's grave, kneeling before the sturdy headstone. She would bow her head and press a kiss to the cold stone.

"I love you, Daddy. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I should've been there."

She watched her mother struggle every day without asking for help. Lyla could go back to school, finish her studies, and then get a job somewhere outside of Montana. She would love the California coast, or the Gulf of Mexico. Sometimes, she even thought about finding a job out of the country.

Lyla thought of Mai in those times, sitting with a cup of tea, green with a hint of honey stirred in, at the research center in Japan, looking out over the sea. Mai sent letters to Lyla every couple of months, filled with information about her job and the things she studied. She sometimes sent small Japanese trinkets, or pictures of her with sea creatures. Lyla wasn't jealous of Mai, and she didn't wish her to lose her job, but she wished that that was her, that she would wake up the next morning and go to work at some place on a coast. Without fail, though, she would wake up in her childhood home, get ready for work, and drive to her mother's landlocked boutique. Instead, she was now sitting under a mountain of debt for a degree that she didn’t even have, and the sea was drifting farther and farther away from her.

[shianhygge-imagines]

Fable [An Overwatch/Reader Story] Video Diary #1

I’m so fucking angry right now. I’m sorry that I couldn’t keep to my word. I’m just so mad that I had to write. I’m late to the Overwatch party… but I’ve been playing since the start! :) THought I should contribute

|Masterlist Link|

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Captain… If I die… I have a final wish… Please…. even if I don’t deserve it… Take me home?

Watchpoint Gibraltar buzzed with energy as various Overwatch agents rushed to and fro, coming back from missions, going out on missions, running errands, doing training, running late for meetings… it was a scene that would have struck you with excitement had you not been you. No, you didn’t belong here, not by a long shot, and for all intents and purposes, you should’ve been a frail elder nearing death. But you weren’t. You stood in line with the rest of the young recruits, still in your young 18 year old body.

“L/N! Stop daydreaming!” the stern voice of your commanding officer snapped you out of your thoughts, and you jolted, eyes meeting murderous glares from the higher ups in front of you and sneers from the other recruits. No. You didn’t belong here at all… not around people that wanted you dead.

“YES, SIR!” You yelped, trying your best to compose yourself, straightening yourself up. You’d suck it up because-

“-that’s the one who started the Omnic Crisis?” two Overwatch agents muttered, not-so subtly as they walked past.

-because it was your punishment.

You inwardly cursed at how fast the news spread. There was no doubt the guilt that built up in the pit of your stomach. Yes, you’d been the cause of all the death, the violence, the need for Overwatch to be assembled. When you’d woken up from your twenty five year nap, you’d been scared. Fifty years ago, you’d been kidnapped… plucked away from your college campus by men and women clad in black… drugged… you didn’t remember what else… then forced into a glass chamber… and you slept. When you closed your scared eyes fifty years ago… it had been 2017… when you next opened your eyes… it had been 2042, pulled out of your small glass box by gentle robotic hands.

It had been an Omnic that had rescued you from your frozen prison… and he’d been called Zen-13, one of the earlier models of humanoid Omnics. At first, you’d been terrified, your body recovering from the change in temperature, and shocked at the robot speaking to you in soft tones, coaxing you to be silent or the two of you would be discovered by his masters. Once you were calmed, it was explained that you’d been help in cryostasis for 25 years, that Zen-13 planned to rescue you from his cruel masters. That their plans for you were inhumane, to use your abilities to communicate with machines, your technopathy, to seize control of all the Omnics in the world in order to achieve world domination.

It was strange, to suddenly have another species living amongst humans, but not as equal beings. And it angered you. The Omnics were slaves to mankind. Coming from a point in time where equality was sought after, it angered you that after achieve equality among mankind, that humans would turn around and create machines of sentient mind, only to enslave them. And in your anger, while in the middle of sneaking out of your prison of 25 years, you’d used your ability to speak to the Omnics incapable of human speech. To help them understand that humans had no right to use them in such cruel ways. To help them understand that because they were all sentient in their own way, that they should be equal to mankind.

Your escape had been cut short before you could direct the Omnics to the proper way of achieving equality. Zen-13 hadn’t been as sneaky as he’d thought and his masters discovered what he’d been planning. Only a hundred feet away from the exit, you and your companion were seized and hauled away. As the guards shoved you back into your cold prison, you were forced to watch as Zen-13 was beaten and torn apart in front of your eyes, forced to sleep whilst hearing his pained screams in distorted static.

Within that very month, the Omnic Crisis began. It took four years to found Overwatch. And it took six years after Overwatch was founded to end the Crisis. And once the Crisis was over, it took Overwatch four years to track down the source of the Crisis. To find you, still frozen in the basement of an old building, long since abandoned when the Omnics attacked so long ago. It had been Gabriel Reyes and his team of Blackwatch members who were sent to retrieve you from your prison, although none too gently.

At first they had all been confused as they watched you thaw after deactivating the cryostasis pod. After all, you were barely an adult, what harm were you? And then, the realization when the terminal file revealed your ability. The anger and rage on all the agents’ faces when they hauled your form out of the pod not caring when you’d simply fallen to the floor from your limbs’ disuse. Then and there, the unyielding and unforgiving eyes of Reyes drilled into your soul as he explained that you were under arrest for acts of terrorism against mankind. You’d opened your mouth to deny the accusation, but had merely received a blow to your face for your troubles.

Even after all your explanations in front of the UN, in front of every type of higher up in the world, it became apparent that no one was interested in what you had to say. You were a traitor to mankind, a hero to Omnics, a terrorist for trying to do the right thing. And now, you were sentenced to serve Overwatch for the rest of your life.

Sometimes, you wonder, wiping all expression off your face as training began with your commanding officer making you the target for the other recruits to shoot at, if it would have been better if you were just executed.

But deep down, you knew that you deserved it. The blood was all over your hands. Omnic and Human. You owed the world for your mistake.

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