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sitcomified · 3 years ago

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we can’t make any promises now, can we, babe?

summary: impromptu peraltiago wedding one-shot set in the b99 season three finale word count: 5.4k rating: general

read below or on AO3

A buzz of chatter spills across the bar. Jake, Amy, and Charles are reunited at last, sharing stories the past few weeks over cheap drinks on a sticky wooden countertop. Amy finally tells Jake she loves him so much and he reciprocates without second thought. Charles offers a knowing glance to Amy, but Jake’s phone buzzes before he can follow up.

“Ooh, I'm gonna get this.” Jake excuses himself from the conversation and answers the call from an unknown number on his phone.

“Jake Peralta? This is Jimmy Figgis.” He feels like his throat has been shoved down his stomach. Cases were never truly solved, and usually the perps harbored resentment, but he had never been singled out like this, on his personal phone number. His first instinct is to try to locate Figgis, but even if he wanted to track the call he couldn’t. The voice on the other end has been altered by a robotic filter, and the background noise is indiscernible.

He hesitates for a moment before responding, “oh, uh, hey, dog.”

“You and Ray Holt took down my operation. Now I'm gonna kill you both.” Jake squints across the room in search of anyone remotely suspicious. Unfortunately, he could read too much into anyone when given the chance. He doesn’t recognize the new bartender, and he’s been less chatty than the others. There’s a lady squeezing her purse against her chest as she looks in his direction. His anxieties boil over in his throat as he tries to stammer out a response, but Figgis ends the conversation before he has time to interject: “later, dog.”

Jake’s hand is still shaking as he lowers his phone. His eyes dart around the room. “Uh, Captain Holt?”

“Peralta,” Holt says from across the bar, approaching the counter after politely excusing himself from an odious conversation with Hitchcock and Scully. His arrival catches the attention of Amy and Charles, who drop their conversation about where to find the best sundaes.

Jake scans the room once more before speaking in a low voice. “I just got a call. From Figgis. He knows that you and I busted his operation and he’s coming for us.” He sighs and his shoulders fall down with defeat. Amy instinctively reaches for Jake’s hand.

“Oh dear,” Holt replies. Even his ever-emotionless expression is disturbed by the news, with raised eyebrows and a slight frown. “Well that is certainly unfortunate.”

“What does this mean?” Amy asks, her voice trembling. Jake squeezes her hand, in a futile attempt to calm the storm of worst-case scenarios she’s piecing together.

“We’re screwed,” Charles says, “don’t worry Jake, I’ll make sure to tell your story.”

“We are not ‘screwed’,” Holt replies, “however, we should discuss proper procedure in a more private place.” He gestures to the couple making out at the table to their left. The group nods in agreement. “Go ahead to the precinct, I will meet you there.” He exits the conversation just as swiftly as he arrived, sparing no second in rallying his—albeit somewhat tipsy—squad.

The walk to the precinct is uncharacteristically somber. Charles doesn’t even comment on the fact that Jake draped his jacket on Amy’s shoulders the second they left the bar. The omnipresent breeze of arguments between neighbors, loud music, and traffic goes still and the only noises they can hear are their own footsteps, and the occasional sigh.

The precinct is at least familiar, but laced with uncertainty as night shift officers occupy the bullpen. The trio make their way to the empty briefing room, which is fortunately unlocked. Amy takes a seat in the back, and Jake hops on the table next to her. Charles heads for the bathroom to face the consequences of the “Authentic Asian-Mexican Fusion” cocktail he tried earlier.

“It’ll be okay,” Amy says, gently stroking Jake’s palm. His blank gaze is fixed at the wall in front of him for minutes that seem like hours, and he still hasn’t said a word. Usually when he was worried, she couldn’t get him to shut up. Seeing him silenced sent an eerie chill across her. “At least for now, Figgis and his guys are way too smart to infiltrate an active precinct.”

He finally replies, “So you want me to live the rest of my life here?” He lets out a meek chuckle. “I think that would be worse than getting shot.”

“Oh, come on, it wouldn’t be that bad. I’d see you every day, you already eat most of your meals out of a vending machine, and the bathrooms are nicer than your apartment.” Amy jokes.

“Hey, one day that will be our apartment, watch your mouth.” He cracks a smile. For just a moment he allows himself to forget about the immediate danger surrounding him and indulges in the idea of a daily life with Amy. They would order takeout and sit on the couch watching an action movie, and she would be curled up with her embroidery and he could smell her eucalyptus shampoo. Or maybe he'd learn to cook, and she'd put on another nature documentary, and he'd get to listen to her laugh at the stupid voices he did for the animals. He runs his fingers absentmindedly through her ponytail. That’s a life he would buy a million mattresses and toss his grey towel thousands of times over for.

His fantasy is, however tragically, cut short by the Captain’s arrival. “Peralta, a word, in my office please.” Jake nods and follows him through the bullpen, without even bothering to greet any of the officers. It's as if he was watching himself enter the room, rather than actually experiencing it.

“Take a seat,” Holt gestures to the chair across from where Jake was standing awkwardly across the desk, and he hadn’t thought about sitting down. To be completely honest, he wasn’t entirely aware of the fact that he had a body. “I have contacted the U.S. Marshall’s office to make arrangements to send the two of us into Witness Protection. I know that this comes as a disappointment, but I believe that this level of security is necessary to avoid the threat.”

The news hits Jake like a punch to the gut. It’s a new type of dread, one that’s crushing him in instead of pulling him apart. He had worked on high stakes cases before, but this was a new level of imminent danger. He’d always been able to talk his way out of any threat; the squad was always there to help him. Even without them, he could fend for himself. Hell, he survived six months undercover in the frickin mob. Jake clenches his fingers against the captain’s desk. “Captain, with all due respect, is that really necessary–”

“–I understand your hesitancy, but it is absolutely critical that we take the utmost caution, but this is non-negotiable. Our Marshall will be here in two hours. Sergeant Jeffords is on his way to brief the squad on necessary protocols right now.”

“How long will we need to stay in WITSEC for?” Jake tried to reason with himself. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. It could be a couple weeks, a month tops. It would hurt like hell, but it’s nothing he couldn’t handle. If it was somewhere cool, then he could also get a killer story out of it.

“Indefinitely,” Holt responds, as if it was obvious and insignificant as the color of the sky. His answer severs the last thread holding Jake’s sanity together. He bangs his fists on the table.

“What the hell? You just assumed I would be okay with all this?” he shouts, “I can handle myself. I don't need to be babysat. I've been a detective for ten years!”

“Precisely, that's why I assumed you would react like an adult, and not like a petulant child.” Holt retorts. His dismissive delivery only fuels Jake’s anger.

“What did you expect me to do? I just got to see Amy for the first time in weeks and now my life is at risk because of some stupid case?” He pauses for a moment, recalling the ridiculous conversation from the briefing room moments ago. “Let me stay here, I’ll take down Figgis. I’ll even live in the precinct.”

Holt manages to convey a magnificent lack of amusement. “I don’t have time to deal with your immaturity right now. There are several arrangements I need to attend to, for your safety, If I may add.”

Jake’s heart is still pounding as he storms out of the captain's office. A pair of officers look up at him with concern before returning to their paperwork. He walks directly to the evidence lock up. As much as he wanted to squeeze out every last moment he could with Amy, he couldn't risk ruining it with some impulsive hot-headed remark.

He paces around the room before eventually landing on a box to rifle through. If he couldn’t address his feelings, he could certainly distract himself from them. It’s an old case—from before Holt became Captain. From what he could remember, the perp was busted for poisoning victims she catfished, and stealing their identities. When he opens the box, a puff of dust fills the air, hitting him with the heavy reality of just how much time had passed. He occupies himself by sifting through the contents of the box: the bracelet she used to store arsenic, the harddrives containing compromised information, and the perfectly crafted report that Amy had spent their whole lunch break editing. He really didn’t know how lucky he was then. He spent every day with the most wonderful woman alive and wasted it by teasing her.

Suddenly, he hears footsteps. He would recognize Amy’s awkward clunking in her “going-out heels” anywhere. Even if he was deep undercover all the way across the country. “I knew I’d find you in here,” she greets him, standing in the door frame with a bunched up tissue in hand.

“It’s like you’re a detective or something,” Jake says. He aims for the light flirtatious tone that the two have grown so accustomed to, but it comes out too aggressive for either of their comfort.

Amy hesitates before clearing her throat and approaching him. She closes the lid and returns the box of evidence to the shelf, and reaches an arm across his back. She notices Jake’s widening eyes, slowing heart rate, and just as he opens his lips she accepts his implicit apology. “This is stressful, I understand.” She pauses and Jake can hear the soft popping of her lips; she's choosing her words very carefully. “I was thinking. Figgis will take a while to track down. I can’t let you go alone for that long.”

Immediately Jake tenses back up. He felt that they were in an awkward stage relationship wise, even before Amy went undercover. He worried she thought that he was moving too fast too soon. That he wasn’t serious or responsible enough. He can’t stop himself from vocalizing his anxieties. “Ames, are you breaking up with me?”

Luckily for him, Amy looks equally horrified at the idea. “No, the opposite, actually—” she takes a deep breath, as Jake violently racks his mind for what that could possibly mean,“—I think we should get married. I know this is all really soon and we haven’t hit all the relationship milestones, but WITSEC only allows contact with immediate family, and after what we just went through I can’t imagine—”

He interrupts without a second thought. “—Duh-doy, of course I’ll marry you.”

Although the proposal was a mere technicality, excitement washes over the room. Amy launches herself at Jake with wide-open arms. He squeezes her tightly and lifts her up. Figgis was still on the loose and his life was still in jeopardy, but it all seemed insignificant when he knew Amy would be by his side. He slowly lowers her down onto a pile of boxes. With their faces pulled back from each other, Jake can actually see Amy’s brilliant smile. He almost feels guilty for dampening it. “Uh, the Captain said the Marshall would be here in two hours, and everything’s closed.”

Her eyes are illuminated by that specific laser-focused excitement that was reserved for completing a crossword puzzle, or, choosing a new notebook, or, someone concerningly, receiving praise from her captain. “Leave that to me,” she says.

Jake can barely muster a response as Amy races to her desk. “You’re my dream girl.”

“I know,” she replies from across the precinct, no doubt doing one of her lovable dork dances from behind the door. The officers must assume that they’re somehow crazier than they already do, but Jake doesn’t care. Amy’s voice is still echoing in his ears when he returns to the captain’s office. His senses return to him, and he’s even grateful for the precinct’s faint smell of metal and burnt-coffee.

Holt seems to have calmed down from earlier, or at the very least, he’s so immersed he can’t be bothered to deal with Jake’s crap right now. He has a pile of binders on his desk and his reading glasses are on the verge of sliding off the tip of his nose. Seeing Holt in serious action almost makes Jake feel guilty for acting out earlier.

He enters the room awkwardly, and Holt looks up from a particularly thick file and clears his throat. “Detective, I noticed you and Santiago were conversing. I trust that you have sufficiently addressed any emotional concerns this process might have, given the romantic nature of your relationship. I understand that the prolonged separation can be quite challenging to navigate. Kevin and I recently had quite an emotional conversation ourselves.”

“Hello Kevin, it is I, your husband Raymond Holt.”

“May I inquire about the occasion? This is a rather unusual time to call.”

“I agree it is quite unorthodox, but this news is urgent. I just completed a very dangerous case and my life is in danger. I am headed into a Witness Protection program indefinitely.”

“I understand. I am quite disappointed by this news.”

“As am I.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Jake replies. In any other circumstance he would declare his eternal love for Amy from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, making sure that the whole city could hear. But, although he would never admit it, he cares just as much about the Captain’s approval as she does. Whenever he imagined proposing to Amy, years down the line, he knew it would be elaborate and tasteful (to the extent he was capable of it) and when both of them were ready. He knew that’s what Amy deserved, and Holt knew it too.

“Pardon?” Holt takes his eyes off the monitor and folds his arms, and Jake feels as if he’s being interrogated. Through the glass, he watches Amy at her desk frantically typing and scribbling down notes.

He purses his lips in anticipation. He doesn’t have time to do a bit or give a fake story to dull the big news like usual, and that makes the ripping off of the bandaid even more painful. “It is possible that Amy and I maybe just decided to get married before the Marshall gets here.”

Holt opens his mouth with a slight indication of confusion, before swallowing a gulp of air. “I see…and you’re sure that you will be able to file the requisite paperwork in time?” An entirely unremarkable—and characteristic—reaction to the situation. No hints of judgement or celebration, just an acknowledgement of simple facts. Jake supposes that he filed any emotional response away to be processed at a later point.

“Don’t worry sir, we have a plan,” Jake assures his still-skeptical Captain. “Well, Amy has a plan,” he clarifies, and Holt indicates marginal relief.

Holt sighs, “I know I am not one to talk you out of your schemes—”

“—It’s not a scheme, it's a plan, and it’s a great one. Amy and I are going to go to whatever craphole state the Marshalls send us to, solve the case in no time and then make out 24/7,” Jake says with a new rush of adrenaline.

“As I was saying, you seem to be quite confident,” Holt continues, “which is why I’m not going to attempt to negotiate with you. You are excellent detectives and you clearly care a lot about each other. Congratulations to you both.” He gestures to Amy, who has her face nearly pressed to the glass behind the shades, as she tries to listen to their conversation. “Santiago, you may enter.”

Amy almost trips on her way into the office, and Jake greets her with a hug, “Did you hear that? The Captain approves!”

Her face floods pink, undermining her already futile efforts to maintain composure. “Thank you sir, it means a lot.”

“Of course. It’s highly enjoyable to see a couple as compatible as yourselves.” Jake has to bite his tongue to avoid mocking his word choice. “Now, given that time is of the utmost essence, I urge you two to go home and gather personal documents. I’ve already spoken to the night shift’s Sergeant, and he has agreed to lend officers to escort each of you.”

“We need to get all the marriage paperwork sorted out, I can just stay here,” Jake adds, turning to his girlfriend, “Amy, all my important stuff is under my beanbag chair.”

“That's why it's so lumpy!”

“I’m sure Detective Boyle would be more than happy to help out with your nuptials,” Holt replies, pushing aside his disgust with his Detective’s living situation. “Here is a list of things that the Marshall will need,” he hands over two slim printouts from one of the many binders on his desk. “You are dismissed.”

“Thanks,” Jake says, flipping through the sheets. He would be so screwed trying to find this all in his apartment.

“See you on the other side, babe,” Amy whispers as she leaves the office.

“See you on the other side,” Jake says, planting a soft kiss on her forehead before heading downstairs.

///////

One hour later.

Amy returns to the precinct with a sleek folder containing every document the Marshall requested. While gathering her necessities, she changed into her old graduation dress. It’s knee length with cap sleeves and a sweetheart neckline, not nearly formal enough for the wedding she had several binders dedicated to, but for all she cared she would marry Jake in sweatpants and grandma glasses.

Her jaw drops as she enters the break room. As it turns out, Charles wasn’t the only one in the squad ecstatic about a Peralta-Santiago wedding, even if it was just a formality. As soon as the rest of the squad found out, they volunteered to help in any way possible. Rosa took her motorcycle to the City Clerk’s office where she obtained a Marriage Certificate and License, though she wouldn’t disclose how she got into the locked rooms. Terry convinced his neighbor who worked in the State Court to begrudgingly sign a letter authorizing the marriage in under 24 hours (“Theirs is a love story for the ages, for the ages Margo!”) Hitchcock and Scully even rearranged the furniture to form a sort of mock-chapel although it didn’t help that Scully was asleep on one of the couches in the back.

Charles himself went full-Boyle. The room is decorated with a beautiful miss-match of flowers from the 24/7 bodega down the street, and soft classical music was playing over the precinct’s sound system. It’s enough to make the holding cell containing a single perp with thirteen charges of public urination seem miles away. “Amy!” he turns around when he sees her, letting the banner of post-it's he’s hanging drop to the floor.

“Charles, this is incredible!” Amy exclaims.

“Thank you, it's not the wedding I dreamed about for you two,—that one has far more exotic birds involved, both for eating and for pleasure,—but I figured it was my job to step up as Jake’s de facto best man,” he says, pulling her into a hug. “If you hurt him I swear to god I will make you suffer for the rest of your life,” he whispers into her ear.

Amy pulls back hesitantly, “yeah, of course I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jake.” She laughs, but no one joins.

“Seriously, we mean it,” Rosa adds, her tone somewhat undercut by the bouquet of roses she’s tying together.

“Everybody, leave Santiago alone, she’s not going to do anything,” Terry says, but his authority is undermined by the mouthful of tape from hanging up decorations.

At that moment Jake walks in, “Leave Santiago Alone, She’s Not Going To Do Anything: title of Amy’s sex tape.” He’s changed into a white button up shirt under his leather jacket and dark jeans. His red tie and scuffed sneakers match the flower petals around them. Charles must’ve coordinated this, Amy thinks. He looks so handsome that she forgives the insult. Besides, they both knew he wasn’t speaking from experience.

“Dude, you’re literally getting married,” Rosa says, as Jake rolls his eyes. He saunters over to Amy and gives her a quick kiss. She takes his arm around her, and they walk to the back of the room for a semblance of privacy, taking a seat on the couch opposite Scully.

“Hello future wife,” Jake greets Amy.

“Hi future Mr. Santiago,” she responds, with a slightly smug smile.

“Wait, what are we going to do about last names? Should we hyphenate?” Jake asks, frazzled. He’s still processing everything that’s happened that day.

“We can work all that out later, but it would make paperwork a nightmare,” Amy says, as she tucks a tiny curl behind his ear. It immediately bounces back. Jake smiles at her. Of course she could still be thinking about paperwork at a time like this.

“I know it’s cliche, but I really do feel like the luckiest man on Earth,” he says.

“Well you are being targeted by one of the countries largest crime families, so I guess it evens out.” Jake looks away in response, and Amy bites her lip. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up, I just thought with everything—”

“—No, it’s fine,” Jake says, and he quickly pulls back his frown. At some point over the past evening (early morning, really) Jake had allowed himself to believe that this marriage was forever. That it was the next step in the infinite journey they would share or whatever. His stomach churned at the nagging idea that this was just a loophole for Amy to work a case with him.

“Babe, is everything alright?” She turns to face him, and he realizes the uncharacteristic length of his silence.

“After all this is over—if it’s all over—are we going to stay married?” he asks, not quite able to make eye contact.

“Is that what you want?” Amy counters.

“Maybe,” Jake responds. He definitely knows what he wants, but he tiptoes around putting Amy in a precarious position. The last thing he wants is for her to feel compelled to stay married to a guy she’s only been dating for a year. Instead, he returns the question, “is that what you want?”

She pauses for a second to think. “I want a proper wedding. With my family and everything—I think my mom would kill me if I didn’t. But I want to marry you. Preferably not in a police precinct though,” she adds. Now it’s her turn to avoid his gaze.

“I want that too,” Jake smiles in agreement, “Although a precinct wedding doesn’t seem that bad. Terry’s kids could be our flower girls.”

“That would be adorable,” Amy says.

“Do you think Sarge could bring them in now?”

“Jake, it’s the middle of the night on a school night,” Amy reminds him. Stupid reality always getting in the way of his great ideas.

“Right,” he pauses, and then lets out a laugh. “I love you, Ames.”

“I love you too, Jake,” she says, with her head on his shoulder. He wishes that they could stay like that forever, but time (or, to be more precise, his captain’s anal scheduling practices) were not on their side.

Amy explains all the different forms they have to sign and Jake watches her carefully scan each line and write her name in font-like handwriting. She feels Jake’s leg shake underneath the table and lays her warm hand against his knee to calm him down. He picks up a pen from the floor and adds his name next to hers. He takes a moment to appreciate the smooth black ink from her favorite fountain pen next to his skipped blue-rollerball scrawl.

“Alright, we’re married,” Jake announces, going in for a high five. Amy looks at him with disbelief, and Charles takes the opportunity to cut in and slaps his palm. The rest of the squad joins them around the table, except Hitchcock has fallen asleep on Scully’s lap.

“I can’t believe it,” Rosa shakes her head, “someone actually agreed to spend the rest of their life with Jake.”

“Hey,” Jake protests, “that’s my wife.” He looks up at Amy with his adoring heart eyes and she feels a flutter in her chest. It was the first time she was referred to like that, and he didn’t even use the Borat voice like she expected.

“Whatever. I’m happy for you dorks,” Rosa says and she’s just drunk enough not to hide her smile. “This is unacceptable,” Charles interrupts, “I mean all this work, all this build up—years of watching your heightening sexual tension—just to sign a few papers? At least give us the vows.” He gestures around at the decorations to emphasize the point.

Jake is about to butt in about how it’s not for him, and if they were able to they would celebrate more, until Terry adds on. “I agree with Charles! Terry loves love.”

“Eh, seems like a good way to kill twenty minutes, babe, you in?” Jake turns towards Amy.

“Why not?” she says.

“Yes!” Charles exclaims, “I can officiate, I’ve had my speech written for years. How familiar are you with the different types of tentacles?” Amy and Jake exchange horrified glances, and Jake gets ready to talk his friend down. “I’m just kidding, about the tentacles,” he clarifies, although Amy isn’t entirely convinced.

“Am I going to be able to stop you?” Jake asks.

Charles is already running to his computer when he replies, “Not in a million years!” Terry soon follows him outside, inviting every officer to come watch the ceremony. Rosa tries to wake up Hitchcock and Scully with a gentle nudge before eventually slapping them awake.

In the meantime, Jake and Amy stay at the table. They’re both exhausted from the events of the day, and Amy tries to stifle a yawn as Jake asks her nonsensical questions about life in WITSEC. “What do you want your undercover name to be? I’m thinking Larry Sherbert.”

Amy rolls her eyes, “I’m not taking the last name Sherbert.”

He smiles, “that’s right, because I took yours, Rainbow.”

“You want my name to be Rainbow Sherbert?” she responds incredulously.

“Yep, you had hippie parents,” he explains. She’s about to tell him to knock it off, when Captain Holt enters the room. Amy instinctively straightens her posture and smooths out the front of her dress.

Holt lays the bottle of champagne he’s holding on the table, “This is from my miniature fridge. I was saving it as a mentor-to-mentee gift for when Santiago passed the Sergeant's exam, but this occasion seems equally appropriate.”

“Thank you sir. This is too kind,” Amy says, in the most formal voice she can muster.

“Of course,” Holt says, “It is a customary gift between workplace associates such as ourselves.” Jake shifts his puzzled gaze between his wife and his Captain. He loved them both, but couldn’t for the life of him decipher their relationship.

Terry and Charles return and a few officers trickle into the chairs in the back. Holt takes a seat in the front row, next to Rosa, and Amy and Jake join Charles in the makeshift archway between the vending machines.

“This is the happiest day of my life,” Charles whispers, putting his arms around Jake and Amy.

“Because you found out you were adopting a child, right?” Jake checks.

Charles blushes, “yep, totally that. I’m going to be such a responsible dad.” He rifles through his papers one last time, “Ok I’m ready whenever you are.”

Amy glances expectantly at Jake who gives her two sharp thumbs up. “I think we’re good!”“Alright let’s get this party started!” Charles announces. His volume catches the attention of the crowd, and the chatter dies down. “We are gathered here to celebrate the union of the two most magnificent people I know: Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago. Many of you have had the privilege of watching Jake and Amy’s relationship blossom from the overly competitive co-workers who drove us crazy with their constant bickering, to the glorious sight it is today.” He continues his speech, skipping over entire pages that have been crossed out, containing metaphors everyone is undoubtedly thankful not to hear. “To Jake and Amy, partners in crime solving, and now also, partners in life!”

The room applauds, and Jake takes the time to dab at the tears he was holding back during the speech. “We come now to the words you’ve all been waiting for. Before you declare your vows to one another, I want to hear you confirm that it is indeed your intention to be married today. Jacob Zachary Peralta, do you come here freely and without reservation to give yourself to Amy Maria Santiago in marriage?”

Jake and Amy share a mischievous glance, realizing he never told Charles his actual middle name. He’s about to bring that up, along with the fact that none of the day’s events were remotely close to his intentions, but he gets the sense that Amy wouldn’t be happy if he derailed the ceremony. Instead, he smooths out his tie and confidently says, “I do.”

“And Amy Maria Santiago, do you come here freely and without reservation to give yourself to Jacob Zachary Peralta in marriage,” Charles continues, oblivious to their antics.

“I do,” Amy smiles.

“Please face each other and hold hands,” Charles says, pulling two silver bands out of his pocket. Amy looks at Jake with confusion and he mouths the words beanbag chair. Charles instructs the two to repeat after him as they place the rings on each other’s fingers. The whole ceremony starts to blur in Amy’s mind as she realizes Jake already had this ring that somehow slid perfectly on her finger.

“And now, by the power invested in me by the state of New York, it is my honor to declare you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride!” Charles declares, tossing his papers on the ground for dramatic effect. Jake reaches his arm around Amy’s back in an attempt to dip her as some grand romantic gesture. She fumbles a little and ends up standing up and pulling her head up to his until their lips meet in a warm, invigorating kiss. Both of them chuckle as they pull apart. A few of the officers take that as a cue to return to the bullpen.

“It’s my grandma’s—the dead one’s,” Jake explains, pointing to Amy’s ring, “—and that’s like the one Peralta marriage that wasn’t a total failure so I thought it would bring good luck or something. Plus, you know the crushing debt.”

“It’s perfect,” Amy says, examining the carefully carved diamonds.

Captain Holt rises from his seat and reaches for the bottle of champagne, announcing a toast. As he starts to open the bottle, the cork goes flying across the room, shattering the vending machine glass. Hitchcock and Scully race towards the rubble to steal some free snacks. It’s at that moment that the Marshall, who unbeknownst to the squad had been waiting outside the Captain's office, decides to examine the break room and investigate the noise.

There’s a moment of silence, interrupted only by the fizzing of the overflowing champagne. Amy feels her stomach churning as if she’s somehow in trouble. Holt is at a complete loss for words. At last, it’s Charles who speaks up, hesitantly saying “Mazel Tov?”

#b99 #brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn 99 #b99 fic #peraltiago #peraltiago fic #jamy #jamy fic #brooklyn nine nine fic #jake peralta #amy santiago #b99 one shot #my fic

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beauty-grace-outer-space · 4 years ago

Note

you mentioned something a little while back about trauma anniversaries? would you be comfortable explaining what it means and what its about?

Sure thing.

So.. trauma anniversaries are complicated, and vary from person to person, but the general idea is that when one experiences a traumatic event (or events, plural, centered around a specific time period), the brain/body stores that information and (as with other PTSD reactions) sometimes has an uncontrollable and unpredictable response to it.

“Many trauma survivors experience challenging “anniversary reactions,” which are defined as ‘unique set[s] of unsettling feelings, thoughts or memories that occur on the anniversary of a significant experience.’ When a survivor finds themselves in the midst of a trauma anniversary, they often are forced to re-live feelings from the traumatic event, causing symptoms like increased anxiety, depression, trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, nightmares, and irritable outbursts.”

Our bodies hold on to trauma in an effort to protect us, but sometimes those signals get mixed and bad feelings get tied to a time period, which is not particularly useful in most cases.

This time of year makes me a bit wonky in general, with the changing of the seasons and the temperature drop, but October is also an anniversary for an event that changed my life and dramatically impacted my mental health... and I didn’t realize that it was affecting me until I was already deep in it this go round.

I hate talking about it like this, because of the age old dichotomy of “it wasn’t that bad” and “it was bad enough and it’s affecting me”. I’m still working on accepting this stuff without falling into the mental trap that I’m “whining about nothing” and that “other people have it worse”. They do. Someone always does. But that doesn’t mean that the stuff that’s happened to me isn’t bad.

I don’t know how much information you’re looking for, or if you’re asking about my experience specifically, but I’m still a bit off so what the hell.

I already have issues with fall and the beginning of the school year for various reasons that I won’t go into. So this time of year is always tricky. But...

For those who don’t already know, five years and fifteen days ago, I called my grandmother and she told me she was going to kill herself. I was the only one home, I had just turned 23 years old two weeks beforehand, she had told me she was having a hard time affording some things, and I had offered to make her an appointment with a therapist and with a new primary care physician and to pay for it all so she could keep taking her medication.

I called to ask her what day might work for an appointment so I could take the time off work, pick her up, take her to lunch, and then drive her to the appointment, and she told me she was going to kill herself. She told me she had been saving up her pills, and that’s why she hadn’t been taking them. She told me she had discussed it with my grandfather, and that he knew and was ok with it, and they were going through their belongings so there would be “less for him to deal with” once she was gone and that she was “surprised I hadn’t caught on sooner”.

I kept her on the phone, kept her talking on my cell, and grabbed the home phone to start calling anyone I could think of. My mom, my dad, my aunt (with whom I had only reconciled five days before-- big misunderstanding, but still a lot), my mom’s cousin... no one would answer.

By the time my mom got home, I had been on the phone with my grandmother for over an hour, mid panic attack, and I was hyperventilating so hard I couldn’t see and I couldn’t stand. Your limbs go all tingly when you don’t retain enough carbon dioxide, and I remember trying to walk to her and collapsing. I gasped out an explanation, my mom took the reins, and we were able to get in touch with my aunt and get the necessary medical professionals on hand to give my grandmother a psychiatric evaluation and put her on a 72 hour hold.

We were at the hospital until nearly 4 in the morning before a nurse told us that they legally couldn’t release my grandmother because the doctor had mandated a three day safety hold, and that we should go home and get some rest. By the time we made it home, there was a message on our answering machine that a county examiner had released her and there was nothing more they could do.

I found out later, much later, that she had never stopped taking her meds. She’d never said a word to my grandfather. She had no intention of killing herself. She wanted a reaction from me, and she got one. She called my cousins and told them I was a liar. She called family members who have never even met me and told them how awful I am, and that I make things up for attention.

I waited a little over a week to call her. I recorded the call, so that I’d have proof if I needed it. It’s still on my harddrive somewhere. Two plus hours of her calling me a liar, telling me that conversation never happened, telling me that she’s ashamed of me, that she hopes no one in their right mind ever loves me because I’m a monster, that she pities my friends and anyone who has the misfortune of knowing me because I’ll stab them in the back too as soon as I want some attention. The list goes on and on.

That continued for a while. Whether or not it’s true, when someone you love tells you things over and over again, you can’t help but wonder.

I started having dreams that she was hitting me, and that people were letting her do it. I started having dreams that I was in a loving, committed relationship but came home one day to a seething partner who had just gotten off the phone with her and realized I was a worthless liar, and of them, too, turning abusive. I started having dreams that I was alone at the bottom of a deep, dark hole, and no one could hear me or try to get me out.

She decided one day that we were going to pretend nothing had ever happened, and I was forced to play along. All the while she’d still call and say awful things to me, then show up at family gathering like nothing was wrong. She’d say one thing to me, another to my family, and call me a liar to my face and behind my back. She kept telling friends and family that I was being abusive and manipulative to her.

It hit the point that I truly, genuinely couldn’t remember what she had said in that initial call, and I worried I had made it all up. Gaslighting at it’s finest.

It’s taken years to realize it, but every interaction I had with her following that date has been either abuse or manipulation. She spent months and months refusing to speak to me unless it was to tell me how horrible I am, then like flipping a switch one day I came home and there was a gift on my front porch from her. She’d ease up for a while, then suddenly be awful again. My entire life, she had always been the epitome of a perfect grandma... she’d take me on outings, buy me little gifts, bake with me at the holidays, sing songs with the grandkids, loved playing with us, we’d talk for hours on the phone, they came to dinner frequently. And now... it’s like a veil has been lifted and she’s unrecognizable.

I tried to maintain a relationship with her. She screamed at everyone at Easter a few years back that her silverware was more important to her than a relationship with me. I kept trying. She told a lawyer that my mom and I had “stolen her medical records” and were “forcing her to have medical procedures against her will”. I kept trying. She threatened to send a police officer to our house, accusing me of stealing. I kept trying.

And finally, last fall, I called to wish her a happy birthday, she began a tangent, and I realized I was so tired. I asked her outright if she wanted a relationship with me. She told me she couldn’t be bothered to think about it. I haven’t spoken to her since.

That one phone call cost me so, so much. I lost my relationship with my grandmother and my grandfather, by extension. Other family members have questioned if I’m lying to them, or if I made things up. I’ve questioned if I made things up.

In the midst of all of this, my father also completely shifted and I don’t know why. He started picking fights with me, almost constantly. If I tried to change the subject, I was too stupid to have a discussion. If I stayed silent, I clearly knew I was wrong. If I said anything in reply, I was lying. He throws things, when he’s mad. He kicks things. He used to punch walls. My mom has since said to me that if she had any idea that he would turn into this person, she wouldn’t have married him. Sometimes he’s great, sometimes he’s awful. I never know which version I’ll be dealing with.

I’ve spent nearly five straight years in therapy trying to deal with this. My original goal was not to hate my grandmother, or my father. It had to adapt to not hating myself because of what they said to me.

So October is hard. Because October is when my mind and body unconsciously remember things changing. Relationships I’d always counted on turned abusive. Nothing I said or did was safe. It’s dangerous.

I blew past the actual anniversary just feeling sort of... jittery. I’ve spent a few weeks feeling withdrawn and anxious and not knowing why. I had a noticeable uptick in old thought patterns and intrusive thoughts about self worth, self harm, etc.

Whether or not it’s logical, whether or not it makes sense... my self preservation has locked onto this time of year as unsafe, and it falls into old patterns in an attempt at protection. Old patterns include anxiety, difficulty eating regularly, issues with self worth, withdrawing from others, emotions very close to the surface, and a few other things.

And that’s where I’m at.

I’m ok, and I’ll be ok. I’ve got some experience dealing with this under my belt now, and I still see my therapist regularly. I’m talking to her next week. At the moment, I’m just trying to take care of me however it makes sense, and not doing anything dangerous or dumb.

So... that’s what I mean by trauma anniversary.

#trigger warnings #abuse #self harm mentioned but vaguely #trauma anniversary #I... really cannot control my words right now #I'm sorry for the word vomit #this is probably not at all what you were asking for

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dawnwave16 · 5 years ago

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Legal Bug

Hey there, this is a one-shot I wrote today as it refused to leave me alone! I’m not too happy with the end of it but my sleep deprived brain wanted me to post it before it got lost on my harddrive! Hope you enjoy it!

Marinette knew that her classmate's thought that her only interest was in fashion. She also knew that they didn't think she was very smart. What they didn't know was that she was the youngest student in the class, having skipped two years. While it was true that her primary passion lay in fashion, over the years she had developed a passion for the law as well. It had started when she had seen how Adrian was treated by his father and had been nurtured by sheer necessity after becoming Ladybug.

After seeing one too many people becoming Akumatized due to fear while being trapped in Abusive relationships, Marinette knew that she needed to be able to help them. As Marinette, she couldn't do anything. As ladybug, she was able to find out where they lived and was able to guide them to the right lawyers that would happily take on pro-bono cases. When Lila had joined her class she knew that she wasn't looking at a girl who wanted attention, she was looking at an undiagnosed psychopath with a heavy dose of narcissism thrown in. She also knew that Lila was a pathological liar and that despite what Adrian had to say, taking the high road would not help them in the long run. Marinette knew that with so many enablers in her class she would have to work hard to get out as soon as she could. With this in mind, she threw herself into her studies. She was still Ladybug and she still did her duties as class president to the best of her abilities but she stopped doing all the extra things she had done for the class. Seeing how Adrian had refused to stand up for himself against Lila had made her realise that he would never stand up to his father either and had killed her crush on him faster than anything else could have. When Lila had pushed for her to be ousted as class president, Marinette had simply cancelled any plans she had made for the class, withdrew the money she had set aside out of her own pocket for any outings and dumped all the paperwork on Alya as Lila had said she couldn't run as president. She had then approached the student council and joined that instead as she knew that, while it was unlikely any prospective employer would care about it being on her resume, she wanted the experience. Her duties on the council were slightly less time consuming than the class president duties and she had used that time to push ahead in her studies. By the end of the year, she was a grade and a half ahead of the rest of her class. To hide how far ahead she was, she had asked Mr Damocles not to change her class but to rather let her teachers know that she was much further ahead than the rest of her class and to assign her work appropriately. He had readily agreed however it seemed Ms Bustier didn't read the memo. As a result, she handed all her work into Ms Mendeleiev instead. Ms Bustier got handed copies of her older assignments and any marks received from her were ignored by the school board. Ironically it was having to do this that brought Ms Bustier up in front of the school board for incompetence shortly after Marinette had graduated when Ms Bustier had tried to report Marinette for truancy. It was then that Lila's lies started to unravel but the grip she had on Marinette's old class was so tight that they didn't even notice when things were going wrong anymore. Less then a month after she had officially graduated from high school she had figured out who Hawkmoth was. She knew after the first time Chat had reacted negatively to the idea that Gabriel Agreste could be Hawkmoth, that he wouldn't be able to help her in the upcoming fight against him. So she went to master Fu with an idea. Make her parents temporary holders of the fox and turtle. Her father's build would provide the intimidation factor that they needed to scare Hawkmoth, while her mother could create decoys to distract Mayura. The key part of the plan would be to wait for Hawkmoth to Akumatize someone, then while chat distracts the Akuma, Ladybug, Tartaruga and Hú bù wǔ (Foxtrot) would head to the Agreste mansion to deal with Hawkmoth and Mayura. The took Master Fu as Serpens with them to collect and important documents that pertained to the miraculous as they didn't want to leave those in Gabriel's possession any longer than they had to. It didn't take long to convince her parents to be temporary holders, though neither Fu nor Marinette revealed that it was Marinette asking them for the favour and not Ladybug. They didn't have to wait too long to act on their plan either. Thankfully the Akuma that was sent out was a rather benign one that simply made anyone it hit speak what they were really thinking and while Chat had to work hard not to get hit, it wasn't causing any true damage. Hawkmoth went down relatively fast, to Ladybug's relief but Chat was still hissing angrily when she arrived a full hour later to the Akuma. One lucky charm later and the Akuma was defeated, however, Chat decided to let her know exactly how angry he was at being left to deal with it alone for so long. Marinette, as Ladybug, looked at Chat the whole time he was berating her, not giving her a chance to talk. Eventually, he seemed to run out of steam when Alya showed up for an interview and started to ask questions of her own. Ladybug had put a hand on her hip in annoyance by this stage and when she answered her voice was sharp. “Well, Chat if you had let me speak earlier you wouldn't be left looking like a fool now! To answer your question, the reason I was late is I had a lead on who Hawkmoth and Mayura were and I was acting on it.” Alya was the one to pick up on her word choice. “Were?” She asked. “Yes. Were. While Chat was keeping the Akuma occupied Tartaruga, Hú bù wǔ, Serpens and I were dealing with Hawkmoth and Mayura. They have been defeated and will no longer be attacking Paris. This is the last Akuma Paris will ever see.” Alya and Chat's jaws dropped. “But-” Chat didn't get the chance to continue as Serpens slipped behind him and removed his ring. Soon Adrian was standing where Chat had been just moments before. Alya instantly rounded on him asking questions by the dozen and Ladybug and Serpens slipped away unnoticed. They both dropped their transformation then she looked at Master Fu for a moment. “Master” he held up a hand then removed the snake miraculous and placed it in the box. “I am old Marinette,” he said sadly. “It's time I passed on the duties of Guardian as I will no longer be able to fulfil them. You may be young but you are wise and more importantly, you are ready. I hereby name you as Guardian of the miraculous.” As soon as he finished speaking a soft glow covered both of them. Master Fu smiled at her. “I have ten minutes before the memory erasure takes hold. Please stay safe Marinette, you have been a blessing to teach and I love you like a grandchild.” With that Marinette was left alone in the ally with the bag that held what felt like the weight of the world. When the news reached her a week later that he had died she insisted on being the one to arrange his funeral, getting help from Wayzz on what he'd have wanted. It was as Marinette was trying to decide what she wanted to study that she came across her first big stumbling block. What did she want to study more? Fashion or Law? She debated with herself for almost a week before Tikki, in a fit of frustration, had asked her why she didn't just study both. To Marinette, it was as though her path was suddenly clear. So she submitted her application to ESMOD with the plan to finish her fashion major there before heading to Harvard in the USA. To make sure she could get into Harvard when she finished at ESMOD, Marinette sent her application in at the same time as she sent her applications in at the same time, though she sent a letter with the one that went off to Harvard and was surprised to see she had been accepted into both. The committee at Harvard had been so impressed that she had planned so far ahead that they were holding a spot for her and she wouldn't have to re-apply when she had finished her other degree. Her time at ESMOD flew by with several of her teachers trying to get her to agree to go to work in a fashion house as soon as she graduated but Marinette stuck to her plan. She was using the money from her commissions to pay her way through her courses and for her transfer to America so she had taken to working at a coffee shop whenever she could, in order to have a little extra, just in case! She had also taken up dancing in her spare time, though she knew that that would always only be a hobby. Her time in Harvard got off to a rocky start. So rocky in fact that she reminded a number of the staff of Elle Woods. Marinette didn't let the rest of the student body know that they were getting to her however the staff saw it and decided to intervene. They contacted Elle and got her to come in for a guest lecture. They told her about Marinette and when Elle saw how similar they were she knew she had to help. It was then that a case dropped in her lap that she knew she would need help with. So she went to the Harvard board with an idea, let her take 4 students on to help her with the research and they would get to see how it really was in court as well as gain some real-world experience. The board loved her idea and soon the other lecturers had managed to get all of their first years students to apply. Marinette hadn't placed much hope in getting a position but had read up on the case anyway and she had several questions about what she had read. Soon the shortlist was posted on the announcements board and the news quickly spread around the campus. Marinette had been in a dance class so when she hears that she had been one of the ones chosen, she quickly went to double-check. She didn't want to show up only to find out it wasn't true after all. She was thrilled to see that she had been chosen and

ran to her dorm to make sure all of her notes where in order. The Kwami's all danced around her in celebration and helped get everything ready. Duusu went through Marinette's wardrobe to make sure she had the perfect outfit ready for her which had Marinette smiling happily. When she arrived at the meeting room she was nervous, but she relaxed slightly when given the brief. They were defending a man accused of killing his boyfriend when he had left him for someone else. Marinette had frowned when she heard that, something Elle noticed straight away. “What's wrong, Marinette?” Elle asked. “I'm not sure,” she answered, which made the other three laugh at her. “Probably doesn't understand the case as it doesn't involve fashion.” One said derisively. “It's not the case I don't understand. There's just something that doesn't fit with the police reports.” Marinette's voice was thoughtful and she had yet to look up from the file in front of her to judge any of their reactions. Her classmates were scoffing at Marinette's logic but Elle had a small smile on her face. Marinette had good instincts and Elle couldn't wait to see how Marinette would prove that their client was innocent. “Right Marinette seems to have a lead she would want to follow, what about you three? What's your take on this? If this was your case what would you want to know?” Elle asked. They didn't answer, how could they answer when they hadn't even looked at the case, they thought that they would just be watching the process not that they would be participating. “Ms Woods?” Marinette's timid voice startled them. “Yes, Ms Dupain-Cheng?” “Just Marinette, please. Anyway if our client was going to kill his boyfriend why was there no history of violence? Something doesn't add up here. From cases I saw in France if one partner was going to kill the other, there was generally several warning signs. I mean sure they could have come home one day and snapped but from our client's statement, it was an amicable break up with no hard feelings. Sure our client still loved the deceased but there is nothing that would indicate he could go into a murderous rage. In fact, if I look at his company log here our client was still at work when the crime happened. This company is infamous for having cameras everywhere because they have several high profile people that work with them, was any video footage pulled at any stage?” “Good! That is the type of thinking one would need when taking this case. Did you notice anything else?” Marinette frowned, there was something else but she just couldn't place it. It was only as she was sitting in court behind Elle that the thing that had been bugging her for weeks hit her. She waited for a recess before she said anything. “Ms Woods?” She started hesitantly. “Yes, Marinette?” “The shirt that was found that had the blood splatter on it was polyester, right? The type the new boyfriend wears.” “Yes, the prosecution said it was left behind by our client. Why?” “Well, I've noticed that our client only ever wears silk, linin or cotton designer shirts. Never polyester, so why would he have been wearing a polyester shirt that day? Is it possible that our client is allergic to polyester?” Elle looked at Marinette and smiled. “Why didn't I see that? They're not even the same size! Our client is at least 10 pounds heavier than the new boyfriend!” Marinette nodded then added, “Even if he had been wearing the shirt, it would sit differently on him causing the blood splatter pattern to be different. I know he doesn't have an alibi that can be proven and that this is a long shot but can we please check?” Elle agreed quickly and soon it was proven to have been impossible for their client to have done it. Something more caught Marinette's attention when the man, the new boyfriend, muttered something in French while still on the stand. The judge noticed Marinette's head shoot up with wide eye's and saw Marinette frantically write something down on her notepad and hand it to Elle. “Councillor Woods, your student seems to have something to add would you let her do so?” The Judge asked. Elle nodded and brought Marinette forward. The judge looked at Marinette and motioned for Marinette to speak. Marinette took a deep breath, “I'm sure you didn't mean for the mike to pick up what you just muttered in French but would you please repeat it so that the court can hear it?” The man narrowed his eyes but repeated his sentence quite calmly, he was relaxed as he thought that no-one in the room could French. His confidence took a hit however when Marinette smiled. “If it may please the court, what he just said translates to: 'This worked before, why did it fail this time?' I know you might not believe me but as everything is being recorded I beg of you to confirm my translation with other people who speak french.” The judge looked at her thoughtfully, then spoke: “How do you understand French?” Marinette was confused, “I thought my accent would have given that away, your honour. I am French. I grew up in France speaking French.” At her innocent statement, the witness exploded. “Why the hell he even come home that day the ex was meant to fetching some stupid MDC brand clothes that would never have suited me but that my boyfriend insisted we give back. He wasn't even meant to be home!” The court fell silent, then everyone started speaking all at once. The case got thrown out in much the same way Elle's first case had been and the other three students were stunned. “How did you know?” They demanded, rounding on Marinette as soon as they entered the room that they had all been using. Even Elle was a little curious she had to admit.” “What do you mean? If you talking about the allergy to polyester it was in one of the courses I took for my fashion degree that designers have to be careful to take textile allergies into account when designing.” Elle looked at her. “I knew you studied fashion, but so did I before I attended Harvard and that wasn't in any of my classes.” “I studied to be a fashion designer at ESMOD before I came here. I aim to be able to represent people in abusive relationships to help them get out of those situations. If I want to do that pro-bono I needed to have something else that I could do in order to support myself financially.” Her voice was innocent and honest but they could see the passion in her eyes as she spoke. “Why that area?” Marinette smiled again but this time it was a sad smile. “I grew up in Paris while a man called Hawkmoth was terrorising everyone to the point that people were locking away their feeling simply to stay safe. I saw several people get targetted simply because they were afraid of their partner for one reason or another. Sometimes they were able to get help to get out, but sometimes they weren't. Some of those that weren't couldn't get out because of not being able to afford a lawyer and I want to be able to help those that fall into that category.” For the first time since they met her, her classmates were quiet. They had thought she was there to get the attention of a rich guy who would support her. Elle smiled at Marinette's reason for studying law too then a thought hit her. “Wait, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, MDC, you're MDC aren't you?” Marinette laughed and nodded before answering. “Yes, I am but I wanted to be treated like an equal so I didn't advertise that fact.” Again her three classmates were stunned. This clumsy girl was a world-famous designer? How had they missed that? Elle seemed to get a little more flustered with each moment that passed. “But that means... And you know...” “Ms Woods, are you alright?” Marinette said quietly. “I'm still the same person you thought I was a moment ago. I'm still clumsy and prone to having anxiety attacks if I'm not careful. I'm human just like everyone else.” Technically she wasn't 100% human anymore due to being a miraculous wielder but no-one needed to know that. Eventually, Elle calmed down and thanked them for their help during the case. Their professors would be getting a copy of her reports on how they did as soon as she was finished them. She also promised that she would leave what she know knew about Marinette out of her report. She also wouldn't let that knowledge influence her report in any way. Eventually, Marinette graduated from Harvard, however before going back to France to set up her practice she decided to visit her long term pen-pal in Achu. Ali had been delighted when she arrived and soon Marinette had changed her mind about where she would set up her practice, deciding to stay in Achu full time. Her practice soon flourished as did her design business. However, the thing that flourished most of all was her relationship with Ali. What had started as a friendship and continued when they had agreed to email each other had grown into love without either of them noticing it. They kept their growing relationship out of the news and when they had decided to get married they made sure that news was kept silent too. It was on a rather warm Friday morning that Marinette got an email that she wasn't sure she wanted to answer. She had been invited to her 15-year school reunion. She spoke to Ali and they decided she would schedule a photo shoot in France that week and he would deal with several appointments there too and they would attend. She knew that she would be able to leave at any time so she wasn't too worried about that, however, she was 4 months pregnant, and she wanted to be careful. The photoshoots went well and it was finally the day of the reunion. Marinette decided to wear one of her designs, a simple navy-blue jumpsuit with a mandarin collar, embroidered with a geometric design in shades of blue that made the suit shimmer beautifully as she walked. She paired it with kitten heels, glad that her pregnancy wasn't showing

or affecting her balance in any way yet. Tikki had said that that was normal for all miraculous holders but Marinette still tended to err on the side of caution. When she arrived she saw that it wasn't just her old class that was there, which she was happy about. She had instantly gone to talk to Marc as she didn't want to deal with Alya or any of the others. This strategy had worked until Lila spotted her and decided to make a big scene about her being there. “I was invited Lila, I can pull up the email if you want me to and I can show you a printed copy if you still doubt me.” Marinette's voice was calm as she spoke. “Why would we want you here?” Alya spat. “She's allowed to go where ever she likes Alya, she's an adult.” Marinette turned to the sound of the male voice that had spoken. “Adrian,” she said calmly, giving him a nod of greeting. He was about to say more but Marinette's phone suddenly went off. She frowned then answered it appearing confused. She kept her conversation brief however in the time she was of the phone Lila had spun yet more lies about her. “It looks like somethings never change,” she said with a sigh. “What would a whore like you know?” Alya demanded. “Firstly, my wife isn't a whore. Secondly, as a major name in the fashion industry you'd think you would know better as any time she is seen out and about her name ends up plastered all over the papers.” Marinette leaned back into Ali's arms as he spoke, having felt him come to stand behind her earlier. “Ali,” she heard Rose gasp “But, Lila said...” “I do not know any Lila.” Ali interrupted sternly. “I don't know what she told you but I'd never even heard of her before you emailed me full of stories about her. Stories that a simple google search would and did disprove. It is due to those that I cut contact with you and blocked any further attempts you made to contact me.” Having said his bit, he looked down at Marinette who nodded. They ignored the shouting match that erupted behind them, opting to simply go back to their hotel room. Life would carry on either way and they knew they had a life with their growing family to look forward to.

#legally blonde #miraculous ladybug #smart marinette #hard worker marinette

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welshdragonrawr · 5 years ago

Text

Think About It (or just a piece of pointless domestic fluff)

This was probably originally meant to be part of some fic somewhere but I don’t even know now. It’s been sitting on my harddrive for months and I fleshed it out a bit last month when I was making/going through little ficlets/one shots. It’s probably terrible. But it’s not going anywhere else so you may as well have this pointless conversation piece. Can be found on A03 here; https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163646/chapters/51045748

“Delia?”

The sweet Cajun tone shook the Supreme from her reverie. Those deep dark eyes gave a slow blink, like a cat, Misty thought, caught in the soft shaft of sunlight filtering through the tall window.

“Hm? Sorry?” Cordelia’s voice was barely more than a gentle whisper, distant, lost in a haze of quiet contemplation.

“Is everything okay?” The swamp witch almost wished she had also been blessed with the gift of mind-reading, if only to know what occupied that crowded mind so much of the time. She could read the small signs and signals in a touch or a look, well-versed in reading Cordelia’s subtleties by now, but sometimes, some days, she seemed a little too far from the shore for Misty to follow. Depths she still swam down to on the off occasion, that even the swamp witch still could not fathom. “You just seem a little spaced out there...”

“It’s fine...” came another quiet sigh, accompanied by the gentlest clink of a long polished nail against the rim of the Supreme’s half-empty coffee cup. Fine was a word they mutually agreed to disbelieve whenever one of them tried to use it to avoid conversation, but Cordelia seemed to have forgotten that in the moment, which only furrowed Misty’s brow further.

“What’re you thinking about?” Misty asked, as she set her own half-emptied mug aside and leaned further forward in her chair. She never could sit straight, always tangling her long limbs as if she was never quite sure where to put them or whether she should still be ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. The years of instinctual swamp living never quite left her, even now after all this time. It always made Cordelia seem so patient and still by comparison, sitting so poised as the Supreme often did.

“What makes you think I’m thinking about something?” Cordelia asked, finally drawing her eyes away from the window, a quirk of a miniscule smile twitching at the corners of her lip.

“I just figured that was why you’re so quiet lately,” Misty replied with barely a pause, a casual shrug of her shoulder, “I know ya. Always got something on your mind or worrying about something else. Or someone else. Not that that’s always a bad thing, but, ya sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah...” The quiet response didn’t sound half as convincing as Misty would have liked it to have been.

“You’d talk to me if you weren’t?” She wanted to push further, but past experience had told her that although Cordelia would be unlikely to push back, that didn’t mean she would open up. If anything, it would push her closer back in to herself, drawing up old walls.

“Of course.” A Supreme in complete calm control almost always on the outside, all the inevitable turmoil too often got trapped within. Until someone like Misty, oftentimes only Misty, could help it all come tumbling out safely in the private confines of their own shared quarters.

A hum, a pause, the furrow of a concerned brow; “Seriously, you’d tell me, right?”

“Yes, Misty, you know that,” Cordelia said with a small, sweet scoff, finally turning that deep coffee-coloured gaze back toward her endearing yet insistent wife; “where is this coming from all of a sudden?”

“Well you spend so much time worrying about us,” Misty replied matter-of-factly, her oceanic gaze never leaving the other witch for a moment, “someone’s gotta worry about you too, right?”

“Don’t worry.” The light chuckle from the Supreme witch’s lips as she emphasised and insisted the retort made the phrase almost compelling. “My mind was just wandering elsewhere for a little bit, that’s all.”

Still unwilling to take dismissal for an answer, Misty released a huff of breath as she leaned back in her chair again, wrapped her hands around the knee currently curled up on the seat, still fidgeting even as her expression perked up. “Anywhere nice?”

“You’re really not going to stop, are you?”

“And you’re not really gonna give me a straight answer are you?” Misty cut just as quick, as she watched Cordelia pick up her mug again, lift it to those pristine lips. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with concern, she would have been so tempted to lean forward once more to kiss them.

“I was just daydreaming,” Cordelia insisted, taking another sip. “Nothing else to it.” The snort that she got in response made her pause.

“Since when do you ever daydream?” the swamp witch shot back with a dubious look crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

“Ha ha. I’m serious,” glancing over the rim of her mug, Cordelia shot Misty a small smirk despite herself.

“I am too.”

To her credit, it was actually difficult to tell for once whether Misty was joking or not. Her fidgeting fingers were still tapping away along the top of the table. Anyone else might have found such a habit annoying or irritating but Cordelia seemed to merely find the anxious acoustics endearing. She rolled her eyes though and shook her head, motioning to the cup almost rattling in front of Misty with the ferocity of her tapping.

“Just drink your tea.”

“You really not gonna tell me?” Misty’s head cocked to the side, like a cautious puppy with those big eyes, the edge of her lips perpetually twitching, unsure whether to turn to smile or dip into seriousness.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Cordelia insisted, setting her own mug back down on the table.

“You promise?”

“Mm-hmm,” the Supreme nodded as she folded her hands back together over the table top, leaning on her forearms as she watched the swamp witch dubiously. She lifted a fine brow, the gentle slope of a small smirk lifting the edge of her lip also, “and just for the record I do daydream.”

The retort from the taller blonde was instantaneous. “Could have fooled me,” Misty scoffed, pausing her tapping of the table wood for a second to spare the Supreme an obviously disbelieving glance. “You barely sleep long enough to have a normal dream.”

“Yes well, some of us have a lot to take care of.” Despite her words, Cordelia couldn’t help chuckling at the pronounced pout on Misty’s face.

“And some of us need to learn to relax a little more so she can sleep at night instead of at the kitchen taaable.” It made her look years younger, that childish expression, the singsong tone as she playfully swiped at her hands.

“Alright, alright, I get your point.”

“Do you though?” In a gesture of feigned surrender, Cordelia lifted her hands from the table, out of Misty’s swiping reach.

“Shush.” Misty’s intended target lifted out of the way, her hand had accidentally knocked into the mug in front of Cordelia instead, toppling it toward the edge of the table. With a flick of the wrist In record time though and a delicate touch of telekinesis, the mug was righted before any harm could be done to clothes, ceramic or the hardwood floor.

“Sorry-,” Misty winced for but a second – grateful for the magic that had caught the mug so quickly, avoiding the inevitable mess - nevertheless she continued her tirade barely a breath later, “But if I find you working later at stupid o clock again instead of coming to bed...”

“You won’t,” the Supreme shook her head dismissively as she daintily picked up both mugs from the table. She eyed Misty’s, double checking it was empty before taking them back to the sink.

“Is that a truth or a dare?” the swamp witch’s voice and vision followed her, even whilst Misty remained at the table, an undoubtably teasing tone.

“I promise, alright?” Cordelia called back, accompanied by the clink of cleaning the cups. “No more dozing off at the table.”

Suddenly there were long arms wrapping around her midriff, the familiar scents of flowers and rain-washed earth drifting past her senses as a chin touched her shoulder.

“We’ll see...” came Misty’s dubious purr at her ear, squeezing an arm at Cordelia’s waist, eliciting a quiet chuckle. She set the mugs aside with a nod, and spun herself around in Misty’s embrace until they were facing one another. She pressed her lips to hers, to quiet any more protest, kissing lightly. Just as Misty expected it to go deeper, her arms tightening around Cordelia’s frame, itching to lift her higher, the Supreme pulled back, breaking the kiss midbreath with a smug smile.

“Yes. We will.” Misty paused, then pouted as the tip of Cordelia’s finger lightly tapped the tip of Misty’s nose, undoubtedly teasing as she wriggled her way free from the taller witch’s grasp “Later.”

She had to withhold a semi-disappointed whine as Cordelia slipped away, back towards whatever other commitments she had to make of the day that Misty had conveniently managed to draw her away from. One of these days she would be able to figure out how to help filter all the stresses that whirled around that wonderful brain of hers so the Supreme could worry a little less and they could relish free time a little more. They had yet to work out whether glowing radiant health worked for resisting worry lines, but either way that much constant worry couldn’t be a good thing for anyone. Top witch-bitch or not.

“Mmhmm…” Misty pondered as she pushed the chairs back under the table, made her way tapping along the counters and walls, humming distractedly, towards the garden to check on her other immediate cares. “She still didn’t tell me what she was thinking about...” If words were no good to glean from, perhaps a massage later would persuade her wife to be a little more talkative under her touch...

#foxxay #foxxay fanfic #cordelia x misty #cordelia goode #misty day #ahs fanfic #goodeday #sarah paulson #lily rabe #domestic fluff #tea

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fisherfurbearer · 5 years ago

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I would absolutely live to hear about Future Plans and heritage fruits! My partners and I are looking at buying a house by the end of the year and I'm so excited at the prospect of a back yard to fill with food plants and gardening and everything! So I'd love to know more about someone else's plans!!

mmMMMMMMMMMMMMMM YOU OPENED THE CAN OF WORMS THE WORMS ARE OPEN THEY ARE EVERYWHERE NOW!!!! OHHHHHHH JEEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOTHING CAN STOP THIS!!!!

MMMMMM. I LOVE. DOMESTIC CROPS AND ANIMALS. SO MUCH.

SPECIFICALLY “heritage” varieties. The pre-industrial/commercial varieties that people lived on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, or even the stuff younger than that, it’s just...so!! Good!!!

You didn’t QUITE ask for this but this is where I’m going with it. I LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. The HISTORY of our domesticated crops (specifically fruits and vegetables, but mostly Tree Fruits!!!! But I’m also suuuuper partial to heirloom sweet potatoes/normal potatoes even though I don’t like the taste of sweet potatoes, they’re just SO FRICKING COOL and I want to learn more about other vegetables too) and animals is just....HOOOOO!!!!

Locally adapted,, perfect little....NUGGETS that just...perfectly fit their own SPECIFIC LITTLE NICHES...no matter WHERE you live, no matter HOW much space you have, no matter HOW good or bad your soil, NO MATTER WHAT, there is ALWAYS something to grow or raise, and we can thank so, so much of that to the incredible variety of heritage crops/animals (and methods of agriculture) out there. Mild, cold, hot! Lots of space, little space, no space!! Fertile, barren!! Every condition in every color and shape and flavor and size and ahhhhhhh!!!!! AHHHH!!!!

Hold onto your butts because this is one Hell of a Mega Ramble okay, there is so much to talk about here, oh man.

Some background, which you can skip if you want...!!! It’s a LOT and it get’s VERY NEGATIVE but also VERY GOOD AND HOPEFUL, it’s a real big story and it’s My Story and gives a lot of insight into Why I’m Like This but it’s okay to skip for sure!! Anyway:

I’ve been researching (i.e. writing literally 1.5-2k+ words nearly every single day) for literally 7 years now about all of my various Passions and Plans in life. Obviously breaks were taken due to Sad Times but no matter what I did, no matter what happened, I’d always come back to my dumb awful stupid notes. I have notes on my current laptop, my old harddrive, my SO’s laptop, my stepdad’s laptop, my SO’s OLD gaming laptop, my old netbook, my OLD OLD netbook, every phone I’ve had in the past 7 years (which has been like uhh...five? I have bad luck with phones..) and COUNTLESS pieces of paper and cheap composition books.

To call it research, it seems to silly. Writing these words here, to you strangers on the internet, I CANNOT EXPRESS TO YOU how VITAL these notes are to my VERY EXISTANCE.

I have been researching and writing and talking to folks and asking questions and LIVING AND BREATHING this stuff for LITERALLY, LITERALLY HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS if not ALMOST A THOUSAND OR MORE HOURS at this point!!!! If we were to actually SOMEHOW backtrack all the way to late 8th grade/freshman year when I first started dipping my toes into reptiles and fell in love with my first jumping spider that landed on my arm after I read Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak, after being so fascinated by the intelligent giant magic tarantula in the first book, and gathered ALL of my notes from then to NOW (I’m 21 now, if I was in college, I’d be graduating next May) it would EASILY surpass that. For YEARS in high school my family thought I was always playing games on my laptop, but really from the moment I got home to the moment I went to bed, I was watching lets plays with one side of the screen and reading, reading, reading, and writing, writing, writing with the other. For HOURS. Every. Single. Day.

Hell, this has been my most recent “Renaissance” of writing, after The Big Realization of earlier this year (I’ll get to that), and this is AFTER I went on a horrible depressed/manic rampage and deleted like 80% of my notes (that would have been from...hmm. This is what I didn’t delete, what Jessie recovered, and what I’ve added...so March to Early September, when Jessie switched my notes to a new program (I lost a lot of notes from lack of autosaving so now they’re on our nextcloud so I can’t lose them...but I’m too stubborn to use it still) and this is still like. A lot.

Keep in mind the average 10-11 kb file is 1500-1700 words for me. My biggest files (only of the ones I still have, on this laptop) are 40-60 kb. (Also these are Big Secrets that I don’t ever show anyone but Jessie, who I’ve been with now for almost 7 years, so this is pretty dang important to me and a big thing to be revealing.)

Current folder I’m usually saving to:

Nextcloud I don’t bother to use usually but probably should use:

Again, this is ONLY on my newest laptop, and this DOESN’T include the files I deleted a few months ago, nor the files I lost from February-early April after Jessie updated my computer and wiped my files, and I still have a BUTTLOAD left on my old harddrive from last year, but we never moved it up and I don’t feel a need to. (I’ve learned so much. So. Much. In the past year. I think I’ve matured a lot and really become more...Me. But I’ll get to that.)

Also doesn’t include the SEVERAL notebooks I’ve filled front to back this year (cheap $0.50 ones from work...I’ve blown through a couple biggish ones and I think 2-3 little quarter-size memo books) and all the receipt papers I have crammed into my work uniform...

But anyway why is this important? It really helps iron in just how HUGE this is to me. My future “Plans” aren’t just...it’s really important to me. Okay? I am but a humble stranger on the internet and my life and everyone elses’ respective lives are infinitely more complex than we can ever dare imagine one anothers’ existences to be, but just trust me when I say that I’m not pulling this from nowhere, this shit isn’t some sort of “fad” to me, this has been a long, long series of events and realizations and heartbreaks and so, so much pain that have finally led to everything kinda falling into place sometime this year where it hit me.

You see...all of my research topics followed a pattern. It went, in my rough memory, something like this.

It started with reptiles. Lots of reptiles. So many reptiles. I was so naive and young then and my sources sucked and I was very much a novice who dreamed of owning all sorts of cool reptiles when I got older, and of getting a gecko when I went to college. That was how it started and it went downhill from there. I branched off into gardening (I wanted and still want a blue tongue skink and had thoughts about how I’d grow a garden for vegetables and squashes and stuff for the skink and feeder insects) and THAT grew into this whole THING about raised bed gardening, square foot gardening, then into permaculture, which planted the seed for many things to come...and now I’ve ALWAYS LOVED BIRDS,, but when I learned that keeping CHICKENS was a thing (thank you Jennifer (Nambroth)!!!!!!!!!! Our emails back and forth are still saved forever, our talks about chickens changed my life and way of thinking Forever!!!) and I researched that, then I’d jump back to reptiles again, and back to chickens, then more reptiles, then chickens and QUAIL, or OTHER poultry,, and so on and so on. This beautiful fluid branching path that would always rebound on itself and I’d drop some topics, gain new ones, revisit old ones, learn what I liked, what I didn’t like, what were brief interests, and what were there to stay.

Some topics (chickens, new caledonian geckos, antaresia pythons, tarantulas, gardening...) would always come back. No matter what I did...they came back. As I grew as a person, I started to figure out what was important to me (CONSERVATION, animal welfare, reptile/invertebrate enrichment, vivarium design, combining art with animals, and did I mention CONSERVATION? and combating climate change/The World but that came later.) and while some of those points didn’t show up in my research until later...like my obsession with native wildlife/plants and domestic species...it never went away.

And as I grew older, outside of my research life went on, and I really went through A Lot in these seven years. Undiagnosed anxiety/depression all through high school, practically living in the guidance office junior/senior year, dealing with an emotionally abusive and animal abuser teacher for many years, living with my emotionally abusive/narcissistic mother, and eventually going to an amazing art college and having both the best and worst time of my life (Hahah!! Almost straight As and skipped a writing class with my amazing scores and was top of my class, Dean’s list first semester, in the Visionary Women’s Honors society, worked in the admissions office and did lots of cool things, but hahaha also really wanted to die and was Destroying Myself) and trying to get help while keeping it a secret from my mom...lo and behold of course she eventually found out about the Depression when I had to go inpatient near the end of my second semester, and she. HA, I can’t even cry about this anymore. She literally disowned me (took all my money, sold my car, cut me off of health insurance, made me pay my own hospital bills, refused to do my FAFSA for college anymore, dropped all support, and later when I had to come home because I relapsed again and the college made me go on a medical leave of absense, she threatened to kick me out and call the police [hilariously enough though the house was owned by my stepdad, not her, so she couldn’t do anything. Also I never did anything to her and she was just crazy and made up excuses. But yeah not fun trying to walk to work and being threatened over the phone that she was going to have me dragged out of work by the cops and not to come home, hahaha!!!!!! But then also when I did live with my neighbor for a few days she was apparently so distraught?? Haha what a weird person!!!! I haven’t seen her for three years now and it’s been the best thing that ever happened to me. Don’t mourn for me, it’s SO Much better now. Speaking of, she was a PETA-hugging ARA nutjob and if she knew what I was planning on doing she would’ve disowned me either way!!!!!!), and of course fighting to be able to move out and rent an apartment with my SO (I hate the word boyfriend. It’s been 7 years come January 11th, and we’ve been through so fucking much. And she [my mom...] and other people always made fun of him being my BOYFRIEND that that word is tainted for me...so Significant Other it is) and then being forced to live alone there for a couple months,, and then even after that, the fights with his family, the car accident in November, my mom ruining all chances of me going to college (keep in mind I had after leaving college, spent the next TWO AND A HALF FUCKING YEARS OF MY LIFE trying to make it so I COULD go back, spent all of my time, energy, hope, eVERY OUNCE OF MY BEING trying to do so,,, and she manipulated me and then lied to me and made it so I couldn’t), my rebounding depression, my Intensifying Aggression (terrifying. Developed when I was in college...I guess it’s some kind of rapid bipolar disorder, maybe triggered by me going on antidepressants in college, they said. But it was so long ago and they never knew the full story for a proper diagnosis anyway. But it’s gotten manageable and We’re Coping), the housefire on Christmas, moving Once Again to the new place and being told I can’t bring my 15 year old cat (he’s with my stepdad still now but it’s not okay.), the rats have to be in the basement, and oh yeah if you want to attend college again loans will be nearly 13% interest hahaha!!! and then finally just straight up breaking down in February and not leaving bed for DAYS and nearly committing suicide, just the real worst time ever, and my former therapist/psychiatrist place weren’t responding (turns out they discharged me!! haha kinda hard to make appointments WHEN YOU DON’T PICK UP THE PHONE and we DIDN’T GET THE NOTICE IN THE MAIL because our HOUSE WAS CONDEMNED and my mail was being sent to my STEPDADS an hour away!!!!!!!! Also really hard to talk to you when you BLOCK OUR FUCKING NUMBER and HANG UP ever time we fucking call haha!!!!!! Literally on the verge of suicide and not on my anxiety meds for MONTHS but hey sure that works too guys!!!!) which really didn’t help, and yeah it was really just the pits! Just the absolute pits, the Very Worst.

Now at this point I don’t remember exactly when/what changed, but SOMETHING did.

Leading up to February, I wanna say it was about October that I started getting kinda weirdly depressed, and I started REALLY tanking after the fire. After the fire, I had to move back to my stepdads within the night, and had to live without Jessie again and commute really far and keep the tarantulas a secret and in general be very alone and very sad. I started wearing down and it was getting so hard to just...enjoy. Anything. Even just taking care of the pets became difficult, and doing art or researching was impossible. I just...didn’t care anymore. I stopped caring.

On top of that, my climate grief and general feelings of Despair were at an all time high, and I just didn’t. Fucking. CARE. What happened next.

I spent YEARS of my life WEARING MYSELF TO THE BONE trying to get into college, the get back into college, to just try to do this thing that I was supposed to do, my ONE hope of having a career and a future that I probably wouldn’t even be happy with (I was an illustration major. I liked drawing. It’s what I was best at. But looking back, I wouldn’t have been happy doing it for a living. And Moore [no that’s not what my blog is named for, it just also happens to be my last name] was a great college but it just...wasn’t worth $30k a year with no cosigner for loans, even AFTER my scholarships) and my body and mind were wearing down and no matter what I did I didn’t care about myself, my animals, my partner, my life, nothing. I can’t explain how terrifying that is. Of all the time in my life, I think this was the worst. On top of my life problems, it must be said again that my climate grief and Misery regarding the state of our country and the world was also at an all-time-high, and I just felt...POWERLESS. Powerless and empty and uncaring and dead inside. I really wanted to just...drive off a bridge or eat a ton of pills (which I did do a couple times, don’t do that. Please. It’s NOT worth it.) and just stop Existing.

But then something just...changed.

I don’t know what it was, exactly. But I got SOMETHING back. SOMETHING “clicked”.

I’m crying a bit now. It’s so stupid to say, but I truly believe this is what saved my life. Realizing my purpose in life. That everything fell into place and finally made sense.

I’m going to be a bit more concise here but...basically...many of my passions and smaller aspects of myself all fell into place, so PERFECTLY.

It hit me that...ah jeez.

I will digress one more second. For those of you who don’t know, I have two Eurydactylodes geckos, named Vladimir (E. vieiliardi) and Estragon (E. agricolae). They are named for my favorite drama that we read in AP English, Waiting for Godot. It’s an aburdist theater play about two men who wait under a tree for someone (we don’t know who, just that his name is Godot) and that’s about it. Everyone had a lot of different things to say about that weird little book, but my take on it was that it’s supposed to be what happens to two men when they lack a “purpose�� in life. Existentialism, and all that. They sit there and sit there and completely lose themselves just WAITING for this guy that they don’t even remember, they don’t even know why they’re there, and they do nothing to try and change that. The difference between existentialism and absurdism, however, is that absurdism specifically discusses this idea of a Chaotic Universe, this Lack of Meaning, this pointless quest of humanity to seek value and meaning in a universe without reason. It’s a fruitless effort, it’s Absurd! But the beauty of absurdism, this tiny idea that stayed with me in the goofy names of my geckos (I chose the names because I thought the play was amusing and I loved the characters’ relationship, which is Quite Gay and so Loving and Charming it warms my heart, and I loved that they called each other “Didi” and “Gogo”) and really held true to my own life. I DO NOT believe that THIS is why this change happened for me, but it’s ironic, no?

Back to Absurdism, Absurdism says... “here is this meaningless, Chaotic, RIDICULOUS universe. There is NO reason for ANYTHING, there NEVER will be, you DO NOT MATTER, you DO NOT HAVE A PLACE HERE. There is NO POINT to anything. So fuck it, and try to find one anyway.”

My original therapist did not understand why I found this so wonderful and inspiring. It’s so rebellious and selfish, I LOVE IT. To embrace the Absurd is to take the bull by the horns and flip it upside down! It’s to stare all of this dreadful pointlessness in the Void, and when it says “Why bother? Why care about these insignificant invertebrates? These ridiculous reptiles? These ABSURD apples???” and flip the bird both hands and say “BECAUSE I WANT TO, BECAUSE I SAID SO, BECAUSE I AM HUMAN, AND I CAN!!!” It’s...also more than that, it’s this long, defiant lifelong journey, this stupid, ridiculous journey of fumbling about trying to find one’s place in a cruel, vast world, and finding oneself in that journey.

I love people. I love the ABSURDITY of humanity, of people, of myself, of others. A Huge part of my Future Plans has to do with People, and Community, and Changing my little patch of the world. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but I know it can make a difference to someone and myself and that’s what matters.

Anyway back to the Clickening.

Around that time I had a moment like that. It was as if something in my mind was screaming at me, listen. You are here, and you have always been here to love animals, to love life, to make art, to tell stories with your art, to raise little sheeps.

And like that, it started Something.

I agreed to go to a local doctor, and was put on antidepressants. I’ve been on them since late February. I also got accommodations for work, so I have two excused absenses due to mental illness each month, which was good, because they tried to fire me 4 times now and they haven’t succeeded yet. (I’m DAMN GOOD at what I do, I’m just Sad and Unlucky and Dumb, but I’m doing a lot better now!!) I started taking all of the things I learned in the past many years and what I’ve learned about myself as a person (I won’t talk about it here but I’ve always struggled with my Identity [not gender wise, just...with my mental health and my mood disorder, it’s really hard to know What is ME and What’s The Illness) and it all started falling into place. My needle felting, my love for animals, conserving native wildlife AND heritage breeds with restoration grazing and positive impact forestry, utilizing my Overwhelming Charisma (in person I swear I’m quite a good talker! Way better than my typing here!) for education, outreach, and farmers market sales, my love for life and my fellow human beings and my plans to work hard to help feed my local communities and encourage sustainable agriculture and the dismantlemant of capitalism Love of our native wilds and backyards alike (I also have Big Thoughts about getting native peoples input as well, but I need to research that more and actually talk to people, but that would be in future years!!), and so, so many things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That started in late February/early March now, and since then I’ve still had Really bad times, but I’d say in the past mmmmm...probably since late July? I think yeah since about then things have really taken great turns. I’ve Matured a lot, really embraced who I am and what I want to do, and while I KNOW my plans are going to keep changing over time (tentative goal is to look for/buy our property in 2025!! That gives us 5 years post-graduation to settle down and see how things go, where Jessie will be working, where we’ll be living, how my mind changes, all of that!!) but I KNOW in my BONES in my SOUL that this is what I have always been meant to do. To raise things, grow things, and to Care.

ANYWAY WOW HAHAHA YOU SURE DIDN’T ASK FOR ALL THAT BUT THERE YA GO THERE’S THE BACKSTORY, THE FIRST HALF OF THE WORMS!!!!!!

TL;DR: I’m a sad sap who is now slightly less sad and has Big Plans that were 7 years+ in the making and I want to take all my Big Thoughts about exotic welfare (well, reptiles and spiders mostly, but sure) and also apply it to DOMESTIC welfare and Make a Dang Difference!!!!

Okay now I’ve become very burnt out, I’ve been writing for like two hours now? So this part will sadly be shorter, but I will definitely write more about it again if you or anyone else has questions or actually wants to hear about it.

Basically...the amount of These Plans that I am willing to let you folks know, is uhh...oh jeez where do I even begin, haha...

Well it started small plans (early years of research, when I used to think a small greenhouse was Super Wild and Crazy) but nah bruh we goin’ full hog, literally. My plans are to get a decent sized property, still in my state, and have a HUGE focus on Sustainability and Positive Grazing/Management! That means rotational grazing to IMPROVE soils!!! Thinning the woodlot and clearing brush for the HEALTH of the forest!!! Reintroducing blight-resistant american chestnuts to restore our forests and support a healthy wildlife population!!!! Using both honeybees AND cultivated native bees [did you know that’s a thing???? You can buy native bee cocoons, like raised humanely, and raise them for pollinating plants!! Like Orchards!!] and grazing pastured pigs and chickens under orchard trees, while also providing BUTTLOADS of native flowers and domestic tree blossoms for native pollinators!! All that great stuff.

My biggest focuses would be raising practical heritage livestock for sustainable agriculture and conserving heritage fruit trees, with a focus on apples and pears. I also want to grow a lot of mutually beneficial/low-impact perennial resources...think honey, maple syrup, nut trees, stuff like that! And I want to graze on pastures with native grasses and locality-specific wildflowers (check out Ernst Seeds, especially if you live in/near PA like I do!! Wow it’s so frickin’ cool) and focus on northern european short-tailed sheep (finnsheep, gotland, icelandic, leader, shetland, and soay) and small landrace American hogs (american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and the more recent but so full of potential idaho pasture pig. I also want to raise icelandic landrace chickens for utility (parasite/pest management, composting), conservation, and eggs. I also want to raise rabbits (silver fox crosses for meat, and french angora crosses for fiber! I have a dream of producing high quality tri color angora for spinners...three colors on one animal, and I want them to be especially great for fiber artists who want to raise their own fiber animals but don’t have a ton of space) and I have BIG orchard plans...SO MANY ORCHARD PLANS, HHHHHOOO YES....SO GOOD...also COPPICE WITH STANDARDS and FORESTRY and HOO YES!!!!! I LOVE SOME GOOD OL FORESTRY!!!

I think the best way to describe my current plans standings is that it seperates into a couple different “zones”, for my Current Ideas. This has taken months and so many countless hours of thinking, researching, and ironing out, and I’ve made so much headway in just this past week, but basically imagine this...

It’s mostly split into two pastures, the orchard, and the woodlot.

PASTURE 1

Pasture 1 would be the largest, where we would rotationally graze two primary groups of ruminants. Polled NES-T sheep (finnsheep/gotland) and horned sheep (icelandic/leader) with dairy cows (dutch belted) as well. Dutch belted for milk and specifically cheese production, and they would be grazed in front with the icelandics to help take care of the taller grasses that the sheep would avoid, and help keep the sheep a bit safer. All would be guarded by livestock guardian dogs. Group #1 of the icelandic chickens would be grazed behind them, to help break up manure and disrupt parasite cycles.

Pasture itself would be mostly a big bluestem/little bluestem/indian grass/switchgrass mix, with a good variety of livestock-safe wildflowers (small portion being nitrogen-fixers like tick trefoils and pasture pea) and seed-producing flowers for birds (wild birds and our birds!). Would be rotationally grazed 1-2 days at a time (avg. 3-4 days total) with a 21-35+ day rest period. Polled NES-T sheep would be moved to “silvopasture” (copse with standards, a portion of the woodlot, with coppiced trees for fuelwood/timber interspersed with standard-sized mast producting trees [would double as nut and persimmon orchard, and hog foraging in fall/winter!!!]) in the summer to help them deal with the heat. Summer would be the best time, as it’s after the spring predator pressure and before the acorns fall, which could be bad for them if they ingest too many. Rams and hogs would otherwise graze this land with much longer rest periods otherwise (more like 30-45 days or so).

PASTURE 2

Smaller pasture with similar planting, arranged ‘paddock paradise’ style for a small group of icelandic horses (SO GOOD, and useful!! Little horse hooves are much kinder to the forest than a UTV, and herding on horseback is less stressful for the livestock) and rotationally grazed shetland and soay sheep. Pretty simple, but important. Would also contain Icelandic chicken group #2.

ORCHARD

Worthy of a novel all on it’s own. I want to grow semi-dwarf heritage fruit trees with the fruit drop type synced to the rotation of pastured hogs (idaho pasture pig, american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and group #3 of icelandic chickens. Hogs would be in orchard spring-fall, and in the copse with standards fall-early winter. Hogs and chickens would be moved to a holding area during rainy times to help preserve the orchard floor and during winter, where we would also have a large waste management/composting set up for them to root and turn to their hearts content. Should be a lot warmer than the outside in the winter too, and I plan on it being in a high tunnel/hoop house so its covered.

I am ALL ABOUT pairing livestock with crops and encouraging multi-purpose acreage in general, so this is definitely one of my FAVORITE plans so far, and every time I revisit it, it gets better. I also want to raise BEES (honeybees, mason bees, leafcutter bees!!!) for honey and pollination. I also want to plant BUTT-TONS of native flowers and goodies for pollinators, as well as lots of seed producing plants and sunflowers for the chickens to forage for by themselves. These would be some happy livestock, for sure.

WOODLOT

Another huge part of the plan is that I want at LEAST 1/3-1/2 of the property to be Woods. Only a small fraction of the Woods would be managed for livestock foraging and more frequent harvesting (still looking at a good 7-10 year coppice cycle though for trees) and the rest would still be tended to, with the help of the local forestry folks, but it would be preserved for wildlife and low-impact timber and nut/fruit/sap collection.

The VAST MAJORITY of the farm would be multi-purpose acreage for both livestock AND wildlife benefit (and people too of course) and I truly, truly believe and KNOW it can be done. In fact it HAS been done, IS being done, in so many different ways by so many different people in different times, and I know that I want to be a part of it and I can make a difference and use my weird passions for Good and make a dang difference.

Ohhh jeez I’m real sorry I didn’t quite answer your question though but I hope this gives a little insight into what I mean?? And if anyone has Specific questions after reading this (if you make it to the bottom, bless your cotton socks, I’m so proud and also distressed) I can definitely answer them a bit better than this. And hopefully much less...whatever this is, haha!!

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corvid-knight · 7 years ago

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Demon Eyes - chapter 8

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740258/chapters/31885545

The "something" that Jake was working on turns out to be a full-out tarot spread, you find as you follow Dirk into the kitchen, Karkat and John a few steps behind. Most of the kitchen table is covered in carefully-laid-out cards, an arrangement that's more complicated than any of the ones you know. Then again, the subset of tarot spreads that you know only includes one or two; Bro stopped trying to get you to learn when he figured out that your predictions lacked the weird clarity that Jake's have always had.

When you come in, Jake's perched on a stool that's too high for the table, a thoughtful look on his face as he examines the complicated patterns he's created. He only looks up when Dirk puts a hand on his shoulder, glancing between Karkat and you for a second before a grin spreads across his face.

"There we are." He slides off the stool, tapping the card at the center before stepping over to give you a quick, much-less-stressful half-hug. "You've certainly gone through the wringer, haven't you Davey? You and your demon both."

"He's not exactly my demon." Jake's still half a head shorter than you, you realize as he steps away to take one more look at his tarot spread. Nice—you're not totally surrounded by guys who're taller than you. "His name's Karkat, by the way. I'm shit at intros, sorry."

"You're absolutely fine, don't worry!" He aims that bright smile at Karkat, who looks completely disconcerted at the hand that Jake holds out. "Jake English, at your service."

You seriously wonder if Karkat's going to accept the handshake or if you're going to end up privately prompting him. After a second, though, the demon grins (no sharp teeth, thankfully) and shakes Jake's hand, letting go as quickly as he can while still being polite. "I really fucking hope you don't say that to just any demon you work with."

"Oh gods no, I'm not as much of an idiot as this one—" a shove at Dirk's shoulder than pushes him a step closer to John and makes you want to tense up at the prospect of upcoming violence— "would have you believe. That'd be John."

"I'll kick your ass, English," John immediately offers. He slips behind Dirk as he says it, but the grin on his face reminds you that the probability of actual fighting here and now is really fucking low. "C'mon, come and get me—"

"Don't you dare start a fight in the kitchen." Okay, that voice is new. It's a lot like Dirk's (and a little like Bro's) but it's from behind you, where there shouldn't fucking be anyone—

You don't register your own movements until Karkat steps up next to you and slides a hand under your arm, pulling you out of the defensive crouch you've already fallen into. Shit, you're running your hands across your waistband, too, looking for a fucking weapon. One that's not there, thank god.

You're okay, Dave. Anyone who'd hurt you goes through me, and that's a lot fucking harder than it looks.

Without his steady voice in your mind, you probably wouldn't be able to just straighten up again, take a deep breath, and glance over at Dirk like you do.

Dirk just looks irritated and resigned. "Hal," he says with a calm that's probably deceptive, "get off the fucking fridge."

"Hmm...no."

You look up.

The guy perched on top of the refrigerator looks kind of like Dirk. The facial structure is the same, but this guy's as pale as you are, other than red tracery that looks like tattooed circuit lines running from his temples down the sides of his face. His hair's white instead of warm gold, shorter and spiky, exactly how Dirk wore his a couple years ago, and his eyes are the same red you're used to seeing in the mirror.

Karkat tilts his head to one side, considering the guy on the fridge. "Okay, I'll bite. What the fuck are you?"

"Hal Strider." He shifts slightly, still grinning down at you. You don't think you've ever seen someone look so pleased with themself in your life. "I'd offer to trade information, but I already know that you're Karkat and you're a demon, and the one that has a certain family resemblance to Dirk and I would be Dave, right?"

You realize that that was kind of directed at you, and nod. "Uh...dude, I have no fucking clue who you are, okay?"

"It'd be amazing if you did." Hal shrugs and shifts his weight, just jumping off the top of the fridge and landing on his feet with all the weightless grace of a cat. Standing, he somehow manages to look more and less like Dirk at the same time. "I didn't exist last time you were around."

"Still don't really understand here." You have to look over at Dirk for help. Before he can do more than open his mouth, Karkat reaches out to poke Hal's shoulder experimentally, which Hal allows with the same faint smile that seems to be his resting expression.

"It's a golem," he announces.

"He's a shikigami," Dirk corrects with a sigh, rubbing at his forehead. "Sort of."

You have no fucking clue what a shiki-whatever is. Karkat, however, evidently does, because he immediately points out, "Shikigami don't have self-awareness or willpower, and this thing obviously does, so..."

"Pronouns would be nice instead of just 'this thing.' I'll answer to any of them, although I rather like the sound of 'he' and 'they.'" Hal smiles sweetly at Karkat, tapping one finger against the circuit-marks along the sides of his face. "Also, you're absolutely right; shikigami don't have free will. Not when they're created from inert material and a driving force, anyway. However. If you add a harddrive containing a sentient AI—that would be me—"

The look of confused horror spreading across Karkat's face is actually a little comical. "You can't fucking do that."

Dirk groans and shakes his head, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Dude, you have no idea how much I wish that was an accurate statement sometimes."

"Anyway," Hal continues, just slightly louder, "if you add a sentient AI to the mix, as per said AI's instructions—"

"We all know you came up with forty percent of the plan, give it a rest already." Dirk's grumble and eye-roll suggest that they've been over this territory already.

"Dave doesn't know, so shut the hell up. You add the AI, as per said AI's instructions so you don't fuck it up like the incompetent meatbag you are, and a few steps later you have me." Hal spreads his hands in a gesture you recognize as an echo of one of Dirk's, smiling wider. "One superbeing."

"One freak of nature," Dirk corrects.

Jake laughs and shoves very gently at your cousin, wrapping an arm around him. "You love him."

"You might love him. I certainly don't."

"He doesn't exactly have to love me if he doesn't want to." Hal shrugs, eyes fixed on you with an unblinking intensity that's more than a little disconcerting. "Brothers fight, don't they? Unless it gets to be a little more than scuffling, you don't need to worry about us, English. And it won't get that far, now will it?"

"Not unless you do something especially asinine."

"Oh, I don't intend to." He's speaking to Dirk, isn't he? So why the fuck does he have to look at you like that?

Stop. I'm being fucking paranoid.

Except you look away from Hal and Dirk's watching you too. Jake's more focused on Dirk, but his eyes slide towards you when you glance at him, and away again as soon as he meets your eyes. Doesn't want to stare at me. Fuck. John's talking to Karkat, but there's a pair of excited blue eyes fixed on you too, flicking back to the demon every few seconds—of course John wouldn't care about staring, he was always honest about shit even when we were kids—so upon that further examination, everyone's looking at you, and that's...

That's not how shit's supposed to be. This isn't supposed to happen to me, you think, and hate the panicked edge the thought has.

Dirk's saying something and you have zero ability to focus enough to listen to it. Which is just as fucking wrong as you being the center of attention, you're supposed to fucking listen to him, fucking listen to Bro—

"Dave." And, maybe because he can tell you're a little past verbal responses, Karkat switches to words that go straight into your head, private and silent and weirdly safe. Dave, you know you're safe right now, right? That fucker's not here. It's Dirk, not your Bro.

Fuck. Yeah. You know that. Can't fucking think, man. And you make a deliberate effort to let him feel what you're overwhelmed by—like you're the only one worth looking at in a crowd, because you fucked up—

Karkat growls, loud and startled and deep, and Jake lets go of Dirk, and now everybody—other than Hal, who's still watching you thoughtfully—is staring at the demon. Which is just as fucking bad because they're hunters and you know what hunters do—

"Jesus fuck," Karkat growls, shaking his head. "John, right? And Jake? You both want to ask me shit, right?" When he gets a definite nod from the former and a slightly less emphatic one from the latter, he continues, "Open season on questions, as in I'll answer anything you come up with for the next—" Dave, how long?

Fifteen minutes. It's a number you pull out of nowhere, but it feels right, and Karkat slots it into his sentence without any discernable pause.

"—fifteen minutes, so long as you ask it in a different fucking room." He crosses his arms and scowls at John. "Fair enough?"

John's expression suggests that the deal is more than fair, but he just nods, grabbing Jake's wrist and all but dragging him into the other room after Karkat. The door shuts, and you're left with just Dirk and Hal.

Where the fuck is Hal?

"Calm down." Dirk sighs when he sees you glancing around, pulling out one of the kitchen chairs and sitting down. "He's on the fucking fridge again."

"Oh." The shikigami grins at you when you look up at him. When did he even get back up there? "Is it even worth it to ask you why?"

"It's an excellent vantage point." Hal shrugs.

"Try, 'I'm an asshole,'" Dirk suggests.

"Well, I can't argue with that, but we all know who I'm modeled on, don't we?"

"You guys are always like this, aren't you." You don't make it a question, and you don't look at either of them to see if they nod. If they're still staring at you, you don't fucking want to know. Instead, you sit on Jake's stool—which feels wrong; it's too tall and too isolated, too obvious—but you made the choice to sit on it and now you're stuck with that choice—and look over his tarot spread, mentally naming the cards you recognize as a way of calming down a little.

This spread is a mess, really. He's using the major arcana and (you think) the four royalty cards from each suit, but you don't see numbered cards from anysuit. Despite that, you're pretty sure there's more than thirty cards on the table, and you see the Tower at least twice. Which means more than one deck.

What the hell.

Of the layout itself, you can tell that it's centered on three cards: Knight of Swords and Knight of Cups side by side, with the Lovers card laid over and half-obscuring both of them. Beyond that, you don't know enough about the order or layout to read, but those three cards make a hell of a lot of sense to you.

"Jake's been drawing those two when he tries to read for you, the past few days." Dirk leans over to tap first Cups, then Swords. "You, and Karkat."

That feels backwards, but going by the meanings of the cards it really isn't. "So he's been reading for me."

"I asked him to, yes." When you glance up at him you meet honey-orange eyes that're too fucking familiar for you to not wince. "Why, do you count that as spying?"

"Depends on what you learned from it." You don't count it as spying, not really, but you need to know what Dirk already knows so you don't reveal more than you have to.

What the hell am I even thinking? I don't have to hide shit, there's no consequences if he finds out things Bro didn't want known... Well, other than your discomfort, maybe. Not that that matters.

Dirk sits back, watching you. "Jake didn't finish telling me about this one, obviously. But when he went over your past he got abuse, willpower put to bad use, increasing domination—"

You know which cards he's talking about. Out of the corner of your eye, you can almost see them light up out of the spread on the table. "Strength and the Magician, both reversed. The Emperor." It makes you shiver. You know exactly what Jake read as the sum your past—or, more accurately, who. "Bro."

"I didn't know you knew the meanings so well."

"Yeah. Can't get an accurate read on anything, but I know the cards."

"Ah. The Moon came up in most of the spreads—"

"Deception." There's other meanings, but that's the one you fix on. It's hard to keep your hands from folding into fists again. "He was a fucking liar, so that's accurate."

Dirk tilts his head and you think of Karkat. Stupid. "You're angry at him."

More than you're ever going to know. "He's dead. So no, I'm not."

"...fair enough, I guess. I might be pissed enough for both of us."

He keeps his tone calm, and you still want to flinch at the words. You don't do that, but you do look down at the cards instead of at Dirk. "Not really a reason for that."

"Bullshit there isn't." The twist of emphasis he puts in that is savage enough that you look up at him, hoping he doesn't see the unpleasant jolt of fear he just sent through you. There's no anger on his face, at least. "I knew him. I hunted with him—not alone, D never let Bro take me out unless he was coming along, thank god—but I knew how he was, we all did."

"Yeah, no. You didn't." He was worse, trust me. The cards are interesting, maybe if you look at the layout just a little longer you can figure out how it works, and if you look at it you don't have to look at Dirk...

"Dave," he says quietly, and when you still don't look up at him he keeps talking. "You know why we didn't cut him off after he killed that girl?"

"She was a fucking were. She killed—"

"It wasn't about her. Him killing her was fucked up, both how he did it and that he did it at all—she was a kid, she killed a couple fucking horses in her first change and we should've paid for the damages and gotten her settled with a pack, not let him get his hands on her and torture her to death."

Shit. "He told me she killed someone. Not some fucking horses..."

"Lying bastard."

"Yeah." The fact that you just believed him is worse.

"You know why we didn't cut him off?"

"No."

"D wanted you back." When you look up in surprise, Dirk nods. "Yeah. The whole reason he never ran Bro down and made him answer for that shit was because they made a deal—that bastard got to leave, go wherever the fuck he wanted, so long as he left you with us. Except when I finally got ahold of him after that last fight, he said you took the money he'd had on hand and took off. He said he didn't know where you went."

"I—" You almost did that, but not until a full year after when Dirk's talking about. The first time you woke up with Bro in bed with you, with your head fuzzy from the alcohol he'd bullied you into drinking the night before and your shoulder aching where his teeth had drawn blood, feeling more disgusting than you ever had in your life, you almost left him. Almost. But in the end? "I'd never. I couldn't."

"Yeah. I was an idiot to believe him, I know. I'm sorry, Dave—"

"Don't!" Fuck. That was louder than you should've let it be, and you can sense rather than see Hal shift slightly on top of the fridge—getting ready to attack you if he has to, to protect Dirk? You don't know. "Don't apologize for that shit, don't fucking do it, it doesn't help, it makes things worse—"

You look at him again and you can't fucking see him clearly—no, tears, not that, I can't fucking cry, I can't, I—

Karkat, please—

Something shifts. Something twists. Something in the center of your mind changes, and it's been changing for a while, hasn't it? Since the first time you felt the tingle of wards as you passed through them, before everything started. But this time you feel it adjust itself to what you need, just a little more, and it's terrifying to feel that but it's so, so relieving, because you feel him. You feel Karkat, and when you blink your eyes are clear again.

Unfortunately, it's John that you're looking at. Not Dirk. Holy shit, you try to say, but instead of that you feel your mouth shape the words, "Dave, what—" and it's his deeper voice that you feel in your throat.

No. His throat.

Too much, you think, or maybe he thinks it, but it's true either way. Too fucking much, go back, make it stop—

You're not sure whether it's you or Karkat who triggers the flip back. It doesn't really matter. You blink again and you're staring at the kitchen tile, which is a hell of a lot closer than before because you're on your hands and knees on the floor. The stool's overturned, knocked halfway across the room, and Dirk's kneeling next to you with one hand on your shoulder.

"Dave?" he asks, then, more hesitantly, "...Karkat?"

"Right the first time." Sitting up is hard, but you instinctively push Dirk away when he tries to support you. "Don't—don't touch me. For a sec. I need—" Karkat.

"Your eyes—"

"What?" Because you need Dirk to see that you're you, your eyes aren't the changing red of the demon's, you force yourself to look at him. Just for a second. Long enough to catalogue the confused concern on his face. Then you just close your eyes, cut off sensory input from that quarter.

"Did he possess you?"

"No! I—" I'm so fucked. Hunters don't do this shit. I'm a hunter, I can't do—whatever that was. "I. I possessed him? Dirk, I don't know—"

You bite down on your lip, hard enough to taste blood, before that last word can turn into the panicked wail it really wants to be.

"Dave, it's okay—" Dirk begins, and abruptly stops as the door slams open again. "Karkat, what the hell—"

"Don't you fucking block me from him," Karkat snarls, and you think you cringe.

Please don't hurt him, don't fucking hurt him, please—

"No one's getting hurt, Dave. I swear to you." Dirk's hand leaves your shoulder, and Karkat's replace it, one resting on each shoulder and giving you a comforting sensation of presence, for a moment, before he moves them up to press against your temples. "Open your eyes."

"No—"

"Just for a second, okay? You just did something that should be really fucking difficult for a human, I need to make sure you're okay. Just a second and then you can do whatever you want." Karkat's voice is gentle and coaxing again, nothing like how he snarled at Dirk a moment ago. It's all right, Dave, I swear. Just look at me.

I'll cry, you warn him.

"Yeah. I know. That's okay."

You open your eyes. Thankfully—and somewhat surprisingly—your vision's only a little blurry; you can see Karkat's face fine. Dirk's sitting just being him, arms crossed and expression purposefully blank and unreadable.

"I'm okay," you say to both of them. That's not even kind of true.

"Shush." Karkat's thumb strokes across your cheek. It's a stupidly reassuring sensation. "You can close your eyes if you need to now. Nothing's fucked up structurally..."

You shut your eyes immediately when he says that, trying not to shake as you start thinking about how this looks. I did something. Something magic, the kind hunters don't use. With a demon. I'm so fucking screwed, this isn't—

"Dave. Dave, shush. Come here." His hands leave your face and you nearly panic enough to open your eyes. Then he slips an arm around your shoulders, pulls gently enough that you could definitely get away if you wanted.

Instead, you lean into him. We're fucked.

"We're not fucked. Dirk, tell him."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be telling him," Dirk protests.

There's a very soft noise that you can't quite identity from behind you, and someone else's hand brushes against your hair. "Want me to do the talking, brother dearest?" Hal asks calmly. "I actually have some kind of handle on the situation here, which you don't."

"If you upset him more I'm kicking your ass."

"Fair enough. Dave?"

Words. Gotta have words. "Yeah."

"The talented are welcome here. Do you understand that? I can't tell what sort you are, but I can see the empath link between you and Karkat, and I'm assuming there's more—"

"No."

"Ah. There might be later, or maybe not. But that's an asset, do you understand?"

"It's not a fucking hunter thing—"

"Dirk's something between an artificer and a technomancer. Jake's a diviner, possibly one of the best alive. Rose—you remember Rose, don't you?—she's a witch, engaged to a vampire." Hal's hand rests against your shoulder again and just as quickly withdraws. "And you already heard what I am."

"We're not like him." This from Dirk again; when you cautiously open your eyes, he's sitting back on his heels in front of you. "Maybe he told you hunters were fucking bigots, but that's not fucking true."

"...yeah." Karkat?

"Yes?"

Tell 'em I believe them. Can't talk. Mostly because you really are crying now.

"You don't have to, don't worry."

He starts relaying not what you thought at him, but what you mean, and you relax against him, close your eyes again, and really start to calm down.

#demon eyes

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rufeepeach · 7 years ago

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Fic: All That Remains

Title: All That Remains Rating: G Word Count: 10,479 Summary: In the aftermath of Baelfire's death, Emma and Rumpelstiltskin form an unlikely bond through being the only people in town who really knew him, and are now mourning him. AU post-season 3.

A/N: Okay, so I originally wrote this post-season 3, then real life got in the way and it never got finished. I found it on my harddrive recently and given how much I hated 90% of what came after season 3, I thought I'd finish it and post it as my alternative ending.

In this 'verse there was no Frozen arc, Zelena was really dead, and Marion is really Marion. Basically imagine this is set in a world where the show ended after season 3. Also, this fic is generally both Swanfire and Captain Swan-positive (kind of). It's mostly a Golden Swan friendship fic.

On AO3

“You did the right thing.”

It’s not a phrase Rumpelstiltskin hears often, at least not aimed at him and with full knowledge of the facts.

Belle isn’t speaking to him. She’s moved her things into the spare room, and he swears he wasn’t following her when he caught sight of her down by the docks, throwing the fake dagger he’d tricked her into accepting into the water. She has more friends in town than he ever has, and she’s not finding it difficult to hide from him. Belle may never speak to him again, and Rumpelstiltskin still can’t find a bone of remorse in his whole body.

Emma Swan takes a seat beside him, and gestures to Ruby for another round. “You’d be the first to think so,” he says, mildly, finishing his drink and nodding in thanks to the wolf girl when she passes him another, wordlessly.

“Yeah well, everyone else seems to have their heads up their asses,” Emma sighs, and takes a long sip of her own scotch. He’s always wondered how the product of Snow White and Prince Charming learned to hold her whiskey, but now’s hardly the time to ask.

“Big talk coming from Regina’s number one fan,” he says, because he’s never been anyone’s ally or friend and he’s hardly starting now. “Wasn’t it you I saw supporting her when she forced me to stay my hand? And standing beside her, when she found out the truth and denounced my apparent crimes to the whole town, including my wife?”

“I thought… I don’t know, I thought they had a better plan to be rid of her than just locking her magical gem of power up in the least secure place in town and putting her in the jail cell,” Emma shakes her head. “I was trying to reason with her, when she decided to shout about it. Zelena's better off dead. We’re all better off.”

“It seems I shall have to dig once again through your genetic history,” he says, impressed for once by the mind the Saviour has on her when she decides to actually use it, “there must be a shred of intelligence lost somewhere in that mix.”

She frowns, but there’s the inkling of a smile on her lips, and he can tell she’s somewhere between flattered on her own account and insulted for her parents. “I know you’d have managed it somehow. I mean, you were pretty dead-set on the curse getting cast, but I don’t think Mar- mom understands that if she’d just killed Regina all those years ago none of this might have happened. Second chances have to be earned, and Zelena got what was coming to her.”

“Thank you,” Rumpelstiltskin says, honesty coming out where his smooth words fail, and they clink their glasses, all but conspirators in a murder that has already been committed.

“Don’t mention it,” Emma says, with a smile that’s trying to be reassuring and actually succeeds, strangely enough, by virtue of its own uncertainty. Rumpelstiltskin lived three hundred years in the Enchanted Forest, but never once did he get a taste of the good and pure world of heroes and dragons that Snow and Charming remember. His world, the lot he was given and the dye he was cast, was far closer to Emma Swan’s, and it’s comforting to have one voice in this whole sanctimonious town that understands pragmatism and justice, rather than infantile good and evil.

“I heard tell,” he says, slowly, cautiously, because he doesn’t know if he needs the answer to this question but he’ll ask it anyway, masochistic to the last, “that the time spell actually worked.”

“It did,” Emma confirms, shifting uncomfortably, and Rumpelstiltskin feels a familiar and ancient stab of anxiety in his gut: whatever she has to say, it won’t be good. “Hook and I… we were sent back to the day my parents first met. You helped us to get home.”

“I helped you?” Rumpelstiltskin raises an eyebrow in surprise, remembering who he had been in those old days, how cold and how cruel. He’s never lost his capacity for cruelty, of course, but he’s surprised she’s still in possession of all her valuables if his past self had anything to do with it. And, of course, he doesn’t remember her. “I think I’d remember seeing the pirate a few decades too soon, at the very least.”

“You drank a memory potion,” Emma says, which of course makes perfect sense. The man he’d been would never have endangered the curse and his plans with inconvenient knowledge of the future. “And you only choked Hook a little.”

“You must have been very, very persuasive, dearie,” he says, taking another long drink, because he’d only have helped her with knowledge of Bae, and he’s another horrid question brewing on his lips, ready to be spoken and to shatter the air.

“I was,” she agrees, with an unhappy smile. “And you locked me in a vault, in the end. With a magic wand, of course.”

“Are you seeking an apology?” he questions, “Because I’m not sure how much of one you’ll get.”

“I’m offering you one, actually,” Emma says, knocking him off guard entirely, throwing him back. “You asked me about Neal, and I told you the truth. I’m sorry that I made you make that choice, I…. I know how much you loved him. I would have done anything to save him, and I’d have cut the bitch to ribbons without a second thought if she’d so much as scratched Henry. I’m sorry I made you forget, and I’m sorry I couldn’t let you save him.”

“I believe that Regina has made the value of consequences more than clear,” he replies, stiffly, unable of thinking of a better response than that. He wants to weep, yet again, for his poor departed boy, the son he couldn’t save even after all this time. The unfairness and raw cruelty of it still makes him want to burn the sky to ashes and rip chasms through the earth, but he will not show that to Emma Swan. Not because it would make him vulnerable, for he thinks she likely understands both the strength and weakness of him now, but because of the burden it would place on her. Emma is the closest thing he has to family now, and the only person in the world who can even comprehend the magnitude of what he has lost. He won’t force her to endure the pain he is in. He’s not been a father for hundreds of years, not really, but he remembers how it is to shelter a child from the worst of the damage.

“I don’t think she’ll ever speak to me again,” she says, with a sadness Rumpelstiltskin understands and an anger he does not.

“You don’t sound altogether regretful,” he notes.

“I saved that woman’s life. Marion’s child has a mother again, her husband has his wife back, and somehow I’m the bad guy?”

“The mind boggles,” he murmurs, dryly. “I don’t suppose you bumped into our resident Evil Queen on your jaunt into the past?”

Emma grimaces, “I kinda got locked up in her dungeons for helping my mother?” she says, with the tone of a child who accidentally smashed a window. “You’d put some kind of a… a glamor on me, so she doesn’t know it was me at all. But I was in the cell next to Marion, and Regina was going to kill us both.”

“The plot thickens,” he says, and all he does is raise two fingers and more scotch appears, courtesy of Granny’s stores. Ruby is chattering to Whale at the end of the bar, and truly he doesn’t wish for her interruption. This doesn’t sound like a moment for which Emma Swan needs an audience. It surprises him how much he actually cares about her feelings: Emma is surely the last person who’d ask for help in that category, for all that she so clearly needs it.

“There was something else,” Emma admits. “I… I saw her burn my mother at the stake. I mean, Snow turned herself into a bug or something and came back, she wasn’t dead dead, but…”

“It can’t be easy to sympathise with Regina now, having seen her murder your mother not two days ago,” Rumpelstiltskin nods.

“Yeah!” Emma cries, “Like, I’ve been hearing stories of the big bad Evil Queen since I got here, but I’d never seen her in action. I know actions have consequences, but God, I’d still have saved everyone in those cells if I’d had the chance. I know she’s changed, but the look in her eyes… she’s still not sorry. She’d not do it again, but she’d not take it back either.”

“Regina is a very complicated person,” Rumpelstiltskin agrees, with a sly smile. “Remorse isn’t in her nature. She gets it from her mother.”

“I’d have been all for her letting you kill Zelena,” Emma tells him. “I’d have strangled her with my bare hands. But Zelena she allows to live, because she’s her sister, and Marion can die because, what, she’s Regina’s boyfriend’s wife?”

“Self interest is a powerful motivator, dear,” Rumpelstiltskin says with an ironic smile, “Regina’s a good person when it suits her, much like the rest of us.”

“It’s bullshit,” Emma spits, and downs her whiskey. She’s swaying a little, lips looser and eyes bleary, but she’s had three in quick succession and still seems in full possession of her faculties, which is impressive. “She’s mad at you too, you know, for killing Zelena.”

“I’m not surprised,” he says, because he’d noticed as much when Regina had missed his eyes on the street that morning, and elected to speak to Belle right in front of him. Belle hates the woman, and with good reason, but somehow their disdain for him seems to have united them. “She saw herself in Zelena and wanted to prove to everyone how well she’d changed by helping someone else.”

“Never mind how much damage Zelena had done, or what anyone else thought,” Emma shakes her head, “it wasn’t her call! It just… it wasn’t, and her attitude is getting really old.”

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of such talk,” he notes.

“My mother is right now trying to talk Regina out of murdering Robin Hood’s wife,” Emma tells him, bluntly. “And her husband and children are alive and well. It wasn’t her call either.”

“There’s a reason justice in this world isn’t done by the families,” Rumpelstiltskin points out.

“Yeah cause every crime would warrant the death penalty, I know,” Emma nods, as if she’s heard this song before. “But see, this world, my world, doesn’t have psychopathic witches using mind-control and dark magic to kill innocent people and delete whole families from history.” She closes her eyes in thought and when she opens them she’s looking right at him, “Look, I’ve been in jail, out there in the real world. I’ve also worked for law enforcement, or at least with them. In the real world, there’s law, and it mostly works. People do bad stuff, they get hunted down, they suffer for it, and hopefully they don’t do it again. At least that’s the theory. But in this world? In the world that’s now apparently my home? There is no law. There’s no punishment, no due process, there’s just who’s more powerful and who doesn’t get caught in the crossfire, and even if she’d never hurt anyone else again Neal would still be dead and someone has to suffer for that.”

“Well, someone needed to get that off her chest,” he raises his eyebrows, impressed, and she nods and takes a deep breath, as if surprised by her own outburst.

“Yeah, well, you did the right thing, Gold,” she tells him, again. “In a world of monsters and witches and no law at all, you did the right thing.”

“Thank you,” he says, and her hand closes over his on the bar and squeezes it, and they’re silent for a long time, camaraderie leaving them silent as they drink and mourn together, truly united for the first time in their grief.

---

Rumpelstiltskin appreciates the memory of Emma Swan’s support, but he doesn’t expect anything more than a conversation over scotch and the occasional smile in the street. He certainly doesn’t expect her to show up in his shop a week later bearing coffee and doughnuts, smiling like a friend.

“If I spend another hour in that apartment with that baby and my parents I’m going to scream,” she says, by way of hello, and sets the food down on the counter. Then she registers his look of surprise. “What?”

“If you hadn’t noticed, dear, I think you’ve got the wrong shop,” he says, dryly. “There are many other establishments on this block with far friendlier owners than I, perhaps you’re lost?”

“Okay, so Granny and Ruby are fighting again cause Ruby’s dating Whale and Granny doesn’t approve. Meanwhile the library is… well, there’s reasons I’m not going there, and Regina’s not talking to me.”

“And the pirate?” he raises an eyebrow, “Surely your new beau has more than enough time for a coffee or five, it’s hardly as if he’s gainfully employed.”

“Hook is with Henry,” Emma says.

“Ah,” Rumpelstiltskin nods around the knife once again in his back, and wishes he had his cane to brace himself on, anything to do to increase his physical defence.

“What?” she cries, indignantly, apparently reading his entirely disapproving look.

“I’d just expect you to be with your darling new family, dear,” he says, coldly. “The pirate is calling with his - I’m sure considerable if right now entirely unimaginable - charms. Perhaps today he can teach you how to apply eyeliner so as to blend with the local raccoon population.”

“I came in peace!” Emma objects, “I brought coffee and doughnuts!”

“Indeed, and one can only imagine what you meant to accomplish.”

“You’re the only man in town who spends his whole day alone,” Emma says, and Rumpelstiltskin is brought up short, because he’d only three weeks ago married the love of his life, and somehow yes, Emma’s right, he’s still on his own. “Okay? And you don’t seem to have the balls to go apologise to Belle, or she won’t forgive you, and in either case you’re not in a position to push people away right now.”

“And what if I told you, dearie,” he sneers, “That the idea of you leaving my grandson with his step-grandfather makes me physically sick?”

She stops, stock still, and gapes at him. “What?” she stammers, weakly, and Rumpelstiltskin smirks because of course Hook never told her that, never told her the details of Milah and Bae and all that had happened, and, likely as not, had assumed that with Bae cold in the ground the truth would die with him.

The idea of Killian Jones profiting from Bae’s death makes Rumpelstiltskin homicidally angry and sick to his stomach, and he’s not kind or good enough of a man to let the past lie. If it must always come back to haunt and ruin his present, then surely Killian Jones should receive the same treatment.

“He’s told you of the poor, innocent lover of his whom I killed, yes?” he asks, through gritted, bared teeth, and Emma nods, suddenly wide-eyed and scared as a little girl and for all that Rumpelstiltskin wants to stop, wants to allow Henry’s mother and Bae’s love her peace of mind, she must know the truth. Emma Swan is strong to her fingertips and kind of heart, and she’s the only person in town right now who seems to understand how he feels. If she wants to reach under his skin and find his heart, then this time he will not start based on lies and omissions. He’s learned his lesson with that, at last, however long it might have taken him. “She was my wife.”

“What?” Emma gasps, and takes a step back, her hands at last leaving the counter. She’s all but begging for him to stop now, to take it back, but Rumpelstiltskin is a cruel man with a broken heart and so he continues, inexorable and terrible.

“Milah was Baelfire’s mother, Henry’s grandmother,” he tells her, softly. “One day, when Bae was only six years old, Bae was poisoned by a snake in the back garden. While I was convincing a local warlock to save our dying son, Milah met a charming pirate in the village tavern. After what I had to promise to save him… she couldn’t even look me in the eye anymore. A week later, a friend of hers came to tell me that pirates had kidnapped my wife. Naturally, I went to beg for her release. I was a poor man, Miss Swan, I was limp and crippled and poor, and I had no way of duelling your dashing pirate for my wife’s safety. He promised to do terrible things to her if I didn’t risk my life in a pointless duel. He would have killed me, and orphaned Bae. I walked away.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you fight?”

“Miss Swan, imagine I went into the back and fetched my largest hammer, and used it to crush your left leg. I then subjected you to five years of malnourishment, during which time everyone else who could look after Henry abandoned you, and spat at you while they did. The only other person Henry had in the world was then kidnapped, and held at ransom, and you untrained in combat. Would you risk Henry’s living parent for the sake of a duel you couldn’t win? For honour?”

“Killian wouldn’t have hurt her,” she argues, stubbornly.

“Perhaps not now,” Rumpelstiltskin agrees, “but what of the man you first met? The man who locked you in my jail cell and left you to die? Who stabbed me in the chest and shot Belle over the town line? Would he have done it?”

She cannot deny that. The victory sickens him.

“But… he said you killed her. You said you killed her!”

“I did,” he agrees, easily, long since having made peace with what had happened between himself and his wife. “It was many years later. Baelfire had fallen through the portal, I had started seeking a way to find him, and I heard of a pirate with a magic bean. It was then that I was reunited with my estranged wife, and learned the truth: that she’d never been in any danger, and that I’d felt wracked with guilt for a decade over nothing. She’d run away with him while Bae was still recovering from his illness, and she never looked back. She didn’t care about Bae or where he’d gone, she didn’t…” his mouth is choked with bitterness, with ashes, and he swallows hard before he continues. The image of that long-dead woman learning at last of her son’s fate, impossible though it might be, is still almost too much for him. “She said terrible things, unforgivable things, that day. I ripped her heart from her chest, and crushed it, and I regretted it the moment I had, but a monster cannot show mercy.”

“That’s why he wanted to kill you,” she says, her tone numb with shock.

“Indeed,” he confirms, with a sociopathic smile. “I do wonder why he never told you.”

“I… I have to go,” she gathers her coat and her coffee, but leaves his and the doughnuts as she leaves, and even in her misery and her shock she still doesn’t look like she hates him.

Rumpelstiltskin is aware that he’s a self-sabotaging old bastard, but he alone seems to feel that Emma Swan, of all the people in this town, deserves the truth.

---

He doesn’t expect to see Emma on friendly terms again.

Her new baby brother is apparently growing more every day, and he sees them all in Granny’s sometimes, the full Charming family all together. Regina is skulking, pining for her apparently lost lover – Rumpelstiltskin sees Robin Hood and his family around sometimes too, and he gathers Belle had a word at some point for his former captive extends a wary smile of greeting when he does – and no one else seems to be creating trouble, at least not yet.

He sees Belle, too, his absent wife. She has dinner in the oven for him in the evenings as a pointed reminder that she still exists in his home and that he isn’t welcome to speak to her, and he no longer attempts to disturb her when her nose is stuck in a book. It appears that she no longer believes simply leaving is her best option, when he has betrayed her so completely; now she exists as a permanent source of guilt, haunting his home like her ghost before her, refusing to be touched.

It gives him hope, truth be told, when all is said and done, that she remains. She’s angry, yes, and hurt too, but she made vows and she intends to keep them, apparently. This suffering is almost wholesome: he deserves it, he supposes, and she’s not a cruel woman, she does not enjoy his pain. She will not extend it overmuch.

Belle will speak to him eventually, and they can have a resumption of their blazing row from the night she discovered the truth about Zelena’s death and the false dagger. When she’s ready to listen, and he’s ready to apologise, for neither of those was true three weeks ago.

Emma and Hook are secretive in their movements, and he supposes her father might not approve. Rumpelstiltskin tries not to see the woman who loved his son once again in the arms of Killian Jones, for all that Emma is not Milah and her love for Bae was something quite different. In an odd way Rumpelstiltskin feels déjà vu, in these opening weeks after Zelena’s defeat: Belle is there but not there, his but not his; Snow and Charming are disgustingly happy together; Regina plots revenge for a lost lover; Baelfire, lost forever now though he is, has lost yet another important woman to Killian Jones.

Rumpelstiltskin feels he’s lost her too, of course, but he had been a fool to think that Emma Swan could have valued his company, his understanding, in any real way. To think of her as family. But then, he’d driven her away with a cruel, cold truth, and isn’t that what he’s always done to those who could care for him?

He doesn’t expect to see her on a bright morning in June, suddenly appearing at his side with yet another cup of coffee, out of breath from running. “Jesus, Gold, you move fast for someone your age.”

Were he the age he appears, he thinks he’d take offence, but she knows of his centuries of life and so the joke passes unremarked upon. “Are you lost again, dear?” he snaps, and she rolls her eyes.

“No, I saw you walking and thought we could talk. Is something wrong?”

“Do you want to hear the objections of your father or your lover first?” he asks, solicitously.

“Neither,” she replies, steel in her voice he recognises and accepts. He doesn’t want to talk to Princess Emma, daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, the lover of a pirate. If he must speak, he’d have it be to Emma Swan, the orphan who grew up hard in the real world and fell in love with his son. The woman he supposes her whole family now wishes were lost forever, for she’s harder to deal with and will never quite fit with this strange little world of theirs. “I can talk to whoever I want.”

“Your choices must be limited to wind up with me,” he notes, and she looks like she’s about to smack him.

“God, no wonder it took you so long to hook up with Belle!” she cries, “Is this what you do to everyone who tries to get to know you?”

He considers, “It depends, how do you feel about eternity as a toad?”

She stares at him, then snorts a laugh and shakes her head. He stares at her, and she looks at him through a thick curtain of blonde hair, “You said that to Belle too,” she explains, with a laugh. “When I was trapped in the past, she said you could be more polite to her and you threatened to turn her into a frog or something. How do you have any friends?”

“Simple,” he smirked, “I spend a lot of time down at the pond.”

She stares at him for a moment, speechless, and he rolls his eyes. “That was a joke, Miss Swan,” he says, after a moment. “I do hope you recognise it.”

She laughs, then, a startled but genuine sound. “C’mon Gold, I’ve spent enough time in this town by now that I’m allowed to be suspicious.”

“It must be rather nice living somewhere without such suspicions,” he muses, “where a snail is really a snail and not the man down the road fallen afoul of a sorcerer.”

Emma nods and it’s amusingly heartfelt, “Those were the days.”

“And yet you remain,” he says, as they start to walk once more. “I’m sure your parents are thrilled.”

“It seemed to be everyone’s choice, yeah,” she nods. “New York was… awesome, really awesome, but home is home, you know?”

“I suppose,” he murmurs, noncommittally, as he looks up at the slate-grey sky and doesn’t think about the word itself. Home. The word has little meaning these days, wife or no wife, house or no house. Someday he hopes that Belle will be all the home he needs, but therein lies the fault in their marriage that runs far deeper than his lies or her expectations: his home was with Bae, and Bae is gone, and nothing and no one could ever replace him.

And in that, Rumpelstiltskin thinks with a sidelong glance to the woman at his side, Emma Swan is the only person in this world or any other who could possibly understand.

“I’m sorry,” she says, again, as she seems to in every glance his way and every word she’s said since that awful, fateful day. “I… I know you must hate me.”

He frowns at her, although in all honesty he cannot tell her for sure. “Hate you, dear?” he asks, sliding his emotion once more beneath the calm mask of Mr Gold, the man she knows and recognises. “Whatever for?”

“For everything,” she shakes her head, “For not saving him, for not… not letting you save him? For letting my parents name their kid after him, when they barely knew him? For Hook? Pick a reason, Gold!”

“And why in the world would you care if I hated you or not?” he asks, mildly, although every word she said had rung true and he’s not sure at all how he is to respond. “I’m hardly of any import to you now.”

“You’re the only person in this goddamn town who’s not all wrapped up in some Disney movie version of reality,” she says, “and Neal loved you till the end. You’re Henry’s grandfather… you’re family. I care, so answer the goddamn question.”

“Your mother’s getting to you, dearie,” he says, to push her off the scent of his confusion. “Emotional outbursts, caring, whatever next?”

“Birds will be lining up to pick my clothes out in the morning,” she growls, and he laughs at the image presented.

“You’d have made an interesting princess, I’m sure,” he agrees, but she’s eyeing him closely, and he knows she’s noticed how he’s evaded her question. He does wonder how thoughtfulness and cunning found its way into the progeny of Snow White and Prince Charming, but he supposes a long, hard life will breed such traits into almost anyone.

“Will you let me apologise?” she asks, again, “Or do you want me gone? Decide now, Gold, or I’ll annoy you forever.”

“There’s…” he takes a deep breath, and exhales it slowly, trying to let go of the anger before it takes root, to make what he says true because Emma deserves that at least. “No, I do not hate you, Miss Swan,” he says, at last. “You of all people need not apologise to me.”

“No one’s apologised to me either,” she admits, “Ever. I just felt like someone ought to.”

“You may court whomever you choose to,” he says, “and I am sure that you fought as hard as I did to… to save him. Of all people in this world, I’d not doubt that of you.”

“I loved him,” she admits, softly, as if it’s a crime or a confession of guilt. “I really did… I loved him right until the end, and I was so angry with him for so long but it didn’t matter. He was home for me, you know? And maybe we’d never have been, you know, my parents. Maybe we couldn’t have had the house and the fence and the dog running around but we had something. We had the back of a car and he made me laugh and he understood me, you know? We had everything. I just didn’t know it until he was gone.”

“You knew my son in a very different time and place,” Rumpelstiltskin remarks, somewhat wistfully. “I lost him when he was still only a young boy, only just fourteen. And then when I found him again, my boy was all grown up, a grown man ready to be a father himself. I missed all those stages in between.”

“Would you like me to tell you?” she offers, hesitantly.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want to rehash old memories,” he says, quickly, brushing off an offer that’s too tempting to contemplate. “Especially with a sentimental old monster like me.”

“No, I would,” she objects, quick as her mother with a bow, “I… Henry listens sometimes, but I don’t want to put it on him unless he asks, you know? It’s too painful, he lost him so fast…”

“We all did,” Rumpelstiltskin murmurs, and Emma’s quick nod is all the solidarity he needs. That someone else still sheds real, genuine tears over his poor slain son is all the comfort in the world.

“Yeah… and you know, Killian’s great, but he hardly wants to hear about me grieving for my ex boyfriend, you know? He and Neal had their own history and I know he’s grieving in his own way… I don’t know, I just feel like everyone is aggressively moving forward, you know? He wants to talk about our future, and my parents are all about the new baby, and Henry’s thinking about high school and how that’s going to work with us here. And I’m just…”

“Drifting?” he supplies, and she looks at him with surprise, and nods.

“Exactly. I thought with Zelena dead and Killian and I together, and our choice to stay here, everything would feel fresh and new. Like we could just start over and do it right this time.”

“The world is smiling and you can’t smile with it,” Rumpelstiltskin says, slowly, because good lord he knows the feeling: he laughed maniacally for three centuries to hide it, after all.

“Not the same way,” she agrees. “Not the way they want.”

“People always seem to seek me out in the dark, when the light gets too much for them,” he muses.

“That’s not what this is about.” She shakes her head, sighing, “Wow, I think you might be even more messed up than I am.”

“I’ve had three hundred years more experience, dearie,” he notes, dryly, “I’d be very impressed, if worried, if you managed to have worse problems in your meagre twenty-eight.” He stops, as they’re outside his house, and regards her. “Why did you seek me out, then, if not simply because misery loves company?”

“Because I need family who aren’t Disney characters on acid,” she sighs, after a long pause, and for his little chuckle at the apt description he even earns a smile, “And because I need to share him with someone. Someone who doesn’t just want to pretend it was some great and noble sacrifice, and we should all be grateful and brave and happy to be alive. It was noble, and he died a hero, but that doesn’t stop me from being really, terrifyingly angry that he died at all, or from missing him every goddamn day.”

“Maybe someday I’ll share your ability to notice the nobility,” he says. “But you knew a grown man, Miss Swan, capable of making that choice. I couldn’t look at that man he became and not see the fourteen-year-old boy who slipped from my grasp and fell out of the world.”

“I know,” she nods, “I know and I’m so sorry. When I saw Henry about to give his heart to Pan, making that choice, I my own heart nearly stopped. I’d have happily died to save him then, and he could have been a grown man and I’d have felt the exact same way. I can’t imagine how you feel now. I can’t imagine how it’d ever stop.”

He nods, shortly, because he won’t cry here and now, not even in front of Emma Swan, and turns to leave, to enter his gate and return to his cold house and his all but absent wife. “Thank you,” he says, softly, his hand on the latch. “But you’re wrong at the end there, Miss Swan. You’re possibly the only person in this town who can imagine how I feel every day and night.”

He starts up the path, toward the door, and he’s on his steps when he hears her call out. “Gold, wait!”

He turns around, and she’s stood at the gate, watching him with an expression he recognises: she’s also trying not to cry in front of him. “I… I have some photos. And some old things. I never took them out of the Bug, and… I have some things. I could bring them by sometime. I could… I could share him with you.”

“As could I, Miss Swan,” he replies, around the growing lump in his throat. “Tomorrow, then?”

She stares at him for a moment, and then nods, tightly. “Tomorrow. I’ll come by the shop.”

She vanishes around the corner, away from him, and Rumpelstiltskin into his home. Belle looks at him, up from her book, when he passes the living room, and for the first time he notices she reads by the open window, and her book is upside down.

“Hey,” she says, a little timidly, when he does not immediately pass her by. She hasn’t greeted him in so long the word sounds rusty. “How’s Emma?”

“She’s… about as well as can be expected,” he replies, slowly, for she has not willingly spoken to him in days, weeks, since their fight. It’s an uneasy air that gathers around them here, but at least she is speaking, and the ice perhaps has begun to crack if not thaw. “I believe her family keeps her occupied.”

The lingering note, that her family lives and loves her while she is all he has left, and she has all but left him these past weeks, hangs in the air.

“That’s good,” Belle nods, at last. “Everyone needs their family.”

“Indeed they do,” he agrees, and vanishes to his room without a word, to break apart once again in peace. She doesn’t follow, but she talks to him a little at dinner, and that night she even lets him kiss her cheek goodnight.

---

Emma comes by the shop the next day with a box of old things and photographs, just as promised. He takes them to the bed in the back, where they can rifle through in peace, and turns the front door to closed.

“He had an old polaroid camera,” she explains, when she opens the box and he sees the mass of small white pictures. “He liked to take photos of everything he saw… until we ran out of film.”

“Drinking in the world around him,” Rumpelstiltskin smiles, fondly, holding a picture his son must have taken of the grand canyon, “that sounds like him. His mother was quite the artist, you know, and he always had her talent.”

Emma nodded, “He was always saying that, that if he had the money he’d go to art school and make something of himself. But we didn’t always have enough for food, so school was a bit out of reach.”

“So he took photographs,” Rumpelstiltskin nods, “to make up for the loss.”

“And because he…” Emma trails off, and Rumpelstiltskin is afraid of the look on her face, her sudden silence.

“What, dear?” he asks, blandly, “Cat got your tongue?”

“No, I just… he said he was happy. With me, I mean, when we found the instants for the camera and he started taking pictures. He said he was happy, and he wanted to remember, because happiness doesn’t last forever but it’s damn worth it while it lasts.”

“He was… he was happy, with you?” Rumpelstiltskin checks, his voice crumbling, his throat aching with the growing lump but the question so very, very important.

“Yes,” Emma nods, and she’s crying too, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, tears he’s certain she hasn’t shed since the funeral he couldn’t attend. “He was happy. I know he was. We were going to be so happy and then all of this bullshit got in the way.”

“I wish you had been,” Rumpelstiltskin admits, his own voice choked but his hand coming to rest awkwardly, fatherly, on Emma’s shoulder. “I’d so much rather he’d have been happy with you, away from me, than come back here to be miserable and to die.”

“He’d call that self-pitying horseshit,” Emma objects, shaking her head. “He missed you every day. He taught me what home was long before we made one of our own: he always said he was running from the only thing he ever wanted.”

Rumpelstiltskin’s whole body breaks in front of her, and all of a sudden he’s drawing Emma in close and she’s got her arms around his ribs, and they’re both crying, both weak and leaning on one another, both unable to keep from sobbing. It’s like a body blow, to know that his son loved him even while he was angry and betrayed and lost in the word; to know that he had been happy, once, with Emma Swan and the back of their car, and that the curse – his curse – had ripped that all away.

And yet, there is solace in this, and healing, and comfort. To know that someone else is hurting this deeply, and to know that for all that the grief and the anger and the bone-deep ache of loss will never go away, Bae’s life had been happy for a time.

They cry themselves out on one another’s shoulders, and then set to choosing the best of Bae’s photographs to display somewhere in the back room, with his ball and his cloak and the few little things Emma still has of his. She keeps the swan pendant around her throat; Rumpelstiltskin’s heart swells three sizes for her when she refuses to part with it.

His boy had known love, more than once. And there is some peace to be found in knowing that.

---

When he gets home that night, he thinks he sees Emma Swan walking away down the sidewalk, and Belle confirms it: she was there to drop of some last minute items she found, and to talk. She will not explain further, but at dinner there is a bunch of red carnations in the centre of the table, and Belle joins him once again.

For just a moment they talk like they used to, and her hand rests over his on the table.

“I’m glad you have Emma, now,” she tells him, when the dishes are at last empty and they’re trying to forestall the inevitable, cold and quiet goodnight. “I think she understands better than I do. You need someone, don’t you?”

“I could explain, Belle,” he sighs. “If only you would listen.”

“I’m right here Rumple,” she says. “And I want to be able to listen, and maybe even forget that you lied to me, betrayed me, and humiliated me for your revenge! You took advantage of my faith in you. I had to hear what you'd done from Regina, I had to stand there and hear her tell me you'd murdered her sister, and tricked me with a fake dagger, and that I'd been a fool to believe you on either count. Can you imagine how it felt to hear that, coming from her? You should have told me the truth, up front. Instead you treated me like a naive little girl and tried to keep me in the dark!”

“You were kept in a cage for so long, Belle,” he sighs, praying she can see the parallel, that she can empathise and understand. "Please, you have to understand why I did it."

“I never wanted Regina dead.”

“No, but she didn’t kill the person you loved more than anyone in the world. I know you’ve been hurt, Belle. I know I was the cause of most of it. But you’ve been good and beautiful and loved your whole life. You’ve never been in a corner and had to do terrible things to save your loved ones.”

“It’s not an excuse,” she says, stiffly, trying to muster the anger she’d had before, the righteousness and the strength of her convictions. “Murder is never the solution.”

“I spent three hundred years polluting my soul to find my son, Belle,” he tells her, bluntly, because if it’s truth she wants then truth she shall receive. “I even sacrificed your love for me to find him, and I love you more than I ever thought I’d love anyone who wasn’t Bae. Can you possibly imagine that? Imagine having everything taken from you, your reason for living and your only victory and even the control of your own mind and body? Did Regina’s torments come close to that?”

She swallows, hard, and stares at him. “No,” she admits, at last. “You were safe and alive, and so was my father, and I could scream all I liked.”

“So could I,” he scoffs, bitterly. “She enjoyed my screams.”

“Gods, Rumple,” she whimpers, and her hand is once more on his, squeezing hard. “I want to trust you so badly. But you lied to me, the moment you had the chance. Why couldn’t you have just proposed? Why did you have to build our future on a lie?”

“I could barely think for weeks after her defeat,” he admits, “that day… I saw you in the light, and I knew she had to die and I knew I couldn’t ever let anyone, even you, hold the dagger, but what more could I offer you? A broken heart and soul wrapped in an old, battered body, which could be forced to kill you at any moment? The dagger is at least worth something. I can’t even offer you my whole heart. I love you more than life itself, but I lost the most important part of me and he’ll never come back. Why would you want to settle for that?”

“I’ve never settled for you, Rumple,” she tells him, softly, with such heart-breaking sincerity that he almost believes it. “Even now, even a week ago when I wanted so badly to hate you, I love you.”

“What a terrible fate you were handed, my dear,” he murmurs, his thumb playing with the back of her hand and his eyes there and not on hers. “To be enslaved in love to a man who will never be worthy of it.”

Belle sighs, and brushes her skirt with her free hand, but she doesn’t leave. “That’s always been our problem,” she says at last. “Not that I will always share your heart with Baelfire, because I knew that before we even kissed and it only made me love you more. There’s a ridiculous notion that one must be worthy of love in order to receive it, and it’s not true. I love you, even if sometimes I can’t stand you, and that won’t change.”

“You’ve been a ghost in this house for weeks,” he points out, a masochist to the last, even now disputing the very words he’s longed to hear for so long. “You thought me unworthy then.”

“No, I thought you untrustworthy,” she corrects him. “And my heart is forever yours but sometimes I still have to protect it, and gods above, Rumple, it still hurts to look at you.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, shortly.

“For what?”

“For making you suffer,” he says, “I never intended to cause you pain. I didn’t want to lie to you.”

“But you’d do it again,” she says, trembling but firm, his strong little Belle. “You’d lie to me again to kill her.”

“You had no right to ask that of me,” he tells her. “I would do anything for you, my love, but I couldn’t let her live while Bae lay cold in the ground. What claim did you have on her fate that I did not?”

“I lost you!” she cries, throwing her hands up, breaking their contact at last and he winces at the loss. “I lost you, and then you came back and I couldn’t believe we’d done it, and then you were mad and trapped and lost again and she might have killed you, and I’d have been powerless to stop her. I lost you twice, Rumple. How did I know I’d not lose you again, if you killed her like you did Pan? I couldn’t stand frozen and watch as I lost you again.”

“And instead, you come into my shop, and tell me I’m above killing her? We could have talked about this. I could have explained. But once again you made it into a black and white question that I couldn’t answer.”

“And once again you lied to me, and went behind my back!”

“She couldn’t live a second longer!” he hurls back, and now they’re both on their feet, screaming once again but now it feels so much better, because it’s all out in the open and so now, at last, they can end this.

“Is that what we are, then?” she demands, “When all is said and done, you’re a liar and a killer, and I’m a naive girl in love who wants life to be black and white?”

“You’re too good for me, Belle,” he begs. “Too good and too pure.”

“And you’re as dark as you ever were,” she replies, softly. “As dark as when I met you. I’ve done nothing to make anything better, have I?”

“I willingly died to save the town,” he reminds her, “before Zelena broke every part of me worth loving, I was strong because of you. Zelena was as bad as he was, and she’d have done as much damage given the chance. What’s so different this time?”

“I…” she takes a deep breath, and shakes her head, “Gods, I don’t know. You lied to me. That’s what’s different.”

“I’m trying, Belle,” he promises, “but she set me back a long, long way.”

“I know,” she nods, “I… I’m sorry, Rumple.”

The world stands still. He cannot breathe.

“For what?”

“For not listening,” she says, “and not speaking in return. Perhaps you’re not the only one who needs to change.”

“Not change,” he shakes his head, and cups her face in his hand. “Please, don’t change, my Belle. Just… learn, with me. We all have to learn.”

“I love you,” she bites her lip, and then smiles, the barest hint of a smile but it feels like the dawn breaking. “Someday you might even learn that well enough to remember it.”

“And I love you too,” he replies. “More every day.”

He leans in to kiss her, and, when their lips touch and she moans and holds him close and deepens their kiss, for the first time in over a year everything feels the world might not have ended after all.

---

The next night, they go to Granny’s for dinner, tentatively hand-in-hand. The dagger – the real one – is locked safely away in a safe in their home. Belle has vowed never to touch it, never to use it, and the vault is blood sealed anyhow. She won’t get the chance. Rumplestiltskin hates that he thinks that way, hates that his boundless, eternal suspicion extends even to Belle, but when he told her that she didn’t flinch or turn away.

Trust has to be earned, she’d said. She was referring to them both.

After everything that has happened since she watched him die in the centre of Main Street, Rumplestiltskin doesn’t know how to trust at all anymore. He’s going to learn, though; just like she is.

It’s a process of picking up the pieces, all that remains of what came before, and trying to build something new from them.

Belle smiles up at him as they reach the diner, and squeezes his hand. She hasn’t moved her things from her room – he will kiss her goodnight, tonight, and they will sleep apart and close their distance slowly. They’ve agreed he will call her cell phone, one room apart, if his nightmares wake him and he needs her voice. It’s new, and awkward, and difficult, but it’s better than silence, better than coldness, better than distrust and deceit. It gives him time to make space for her in his heart again. It gives her time to come to terms with how greatly her husband has changed in their time apart.

They are planning a honeymoon, for when that chasm finally closes. It’s time to get out of Storybrooke; it’s time for Belle to see the world.

She’s agreed he can take the dagger, when the time comes. He couldn’t leave without it, even though the thought of having it near him makes his skin crawl. He knows she’s hoping he’ll change his mind by the time it does; he hopes so, too.

The diner is busy when they enter. Regina sits at the bar, alone, resolutely not looking at either of the happy families occupying booths. She does not see how Robin stares at her, even while he laughs and talks with his wife and son; she does not see the regret on Emma’s face whenever she looks across the room. She doesn’t see, so she doesn’t react, and maybe it’s better that way. For all their regrets, neither Robin nor Emma can give Regina what she wants: they cannot regret bringing Marion back from the dead.

Belle leads Rumpelstiltskin to the far booth, away from the crowds. Emma is with her parents, her baby brother, her boyfriend, and her son, but she smiles at Rumpelstiltskin as they pass. He nods in return, and then looks away before the pirate can glare too strongly. For a moment he can feel the ghost that stands between them like a physical thing. Hook should be sat with Regina, outcast and glowering into his whiskey. Bae should be sat with Emma and their son.

Belle and Rumpelstiltskin take their seats. Ruby bounces over with their menus, and Rumpelstiltskin pretends not to notice while she and Belle have a somewhat hushed conversation, and the wolf-girl continuously glances in his direction.

“Miss Lucas,” he says, at last, “Would you prefer to take my seat to converse with my wife? I’m sure I can make myself scarce for long enough for her to fill you in.”

“Rumple, I-“ Belle starts, but he holds up a hand and slips out of the booth.

“You should have a moment with your friend,” he says, gently. He knows how vital Ruby’s friendship was to Belle, that long year while he was enslaved to Zelena. He can only imagine it has continued while they have been together but not speaking. He’d rather he and Belle were alone all of the time, with no interruptions or interlopers, but he has tried to isolate her before and lost her as a result. Belle needs her friends, and so Rumpelstiltskin squeezes her hand to reassure her, and goes to the bar until the waitress is finished gossiping.

Regina rolls her eyes when he sits down. “I’m done here,” she mutters to Granny, and slams down a twenty-dollar bill for her drinks.

“Perhaps when you’re finished sulking, we can have an overdue talk, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin returns, his eyes on the bar and not on her. He can’t look her in the eye. Whenever he does, he sees her holding the dagger, forcing him to spare Zelena’s miserable life and dishonour his son’s sacrifice out of cheap sentimentality. He acknowledges the hand he has played in making her what she is: a woman so desperate for family that she will grasp at any connection with both hands, ruthless enough to trample anyone who gets in her way.

Rumpelstiltskin knows how that feels. How many lives did he ruin to find Bae? How many friends and family members must have mourned Belle when he ripped her away from them?

He’d understand, if she bothered to speak to him. But it’s always been easier for Regina to turn to anger and hate, than to address what’s really hurting. He had a hand in that too. The most important lesson he ever taught her was to never show weakness.

“Go to hell, Rumple,” she snarls, and stalks out without another word. The bell jangles as she slams the door. She doesn’t see the eyes watching her leave: Robin, heartbroken and unable to express it; Marion, wary and watchful; Henry, sympathetic and determined; Emma, helpless and so very, very sorry.

Henry gets out of the booth, scrambling over Hook and Snow in the process, and for a moment he looks as if he’s going to follow after Regina. Emma’s hand on his arm stops him. “Let her go, kid.”

Henry stops, and has a moment of indecision. Then he sits back down. Hook tries to distract him with something or other; Rumpelstiltskin looks away, and tries not to see Milah’s husband with Bae’s son. He tries: he doesn’t really succeed.

He’s focusing so hard on the drink Granny shoved in front of him that he doesn’t notice another body take the space beside him. “Mysteries of the universe in that glass?” Emma asks. She gestures for Granny to bring her the same. He shrugs. “How come you’re not sitting with Belle? You seemed pretty tight when you came in together.”

“Ruby wants to hear all about our reunion,” Rumpelstiltskin sighs. “It happened last night, if you were wondering.”

“You talked about things?” Rumpelstiltskin shrugs.

“It’s a start,” he says. “There’s a world of difference between my wife and I.”

“I get that,” Emma nods. “You know… that was something that was always easy with me and Neal. We were very similar people. There wasn’t a lot about me that needed a tonne of explaining.”

“There’s nobody like me, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin murmurs, and takes a sip of his scotch. He heard Emma snort.

“I guess not,” she agrees. “You know, Killian…”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Miss Swan,” Rumpelstiltskin warns. “Belle and I have our differences but your pirate is another species.”

Emma gives him a long look, and for a moment he sees it, the reason they’ve been getting along so well these past few weeks: she’s looking at him, but she’s trying to see Bae. And, he supposes, he’s doing much the same.

“He’s… yeah,” Emma swallows, and nods. She glances over her shoulder; Hook is watching them with hard eyes despite his easy smile. “We’re very different people too.”

“Something the matter?” Rumpelstiltskin asks. He’s about to add a snide remark about trouble in paradise, but he bites his tongue. He’s one to talk.

“You said a while back… I don’t know, something about Belle not filling the space inside you where Neal should be.”

“Nothing can fill it,” he says. “And I doubt it will ever heal.”

“Right,” Emma nods. “I just… it’s a bit different I guess. He was your son, and you’re not… I mean you’re not trying to work out how to feel about another kid, you know? You and Belle are totally different.”

“But you’re trying to have the same sort of relationship with the pirate that you had with my son,” Rumpelstiltskin finishes her thought when she trails off. Emma doesn’t nod, or do anything to indicate her agreement. She doesn’t correct him either. They drink in silence for a long moment, and Rumpelstiltskin wonders how much longer he should give his wife before returning to her side.

“He’s got a lot of feelings,” Emma says, at last. “About me.”

“Yes, he’s made that very clear.”

Emma snorts. “He chased me for months, even before… and then he came to New York. I mean, he sold his ship to get a magic bean to make it to me. And he keeps saying he loves me, he keeps wanting to spend time together and go for walks and dinner and I…”

“You’re still grieving a heavy loss,” Rumpelstiltskin says. “It’s hard to feel free with that weight on your back.”

“He deserves better than that,” Emma says.

“Debatable,” Rumpelstiltskin replies. She scowls and shoves him, hard.

“I don’t care about you guys and your feud,” she says. “And I’m sure as hell not refereeing.”

“So long as the two of you don’t become attached at the hip, surely any regard for you doesn’t entail suffering him?”

Emma looks at him, sidelong, her eyes gleaming. “Careful, Gold, someone might overhear and think you have a heart.”

Rumpelstiltskin glances behind him, and sees that Ruby was standing up, finishing their conversation. He meets Belle’s gaze, and saw them soften, an ocean of love in her deep blue eyes. He doesn’t think he’d ever understand what he’s done to deserve it, but Belle thinks that’s part of their problem. Until he learns to believe she can love him, to trust in her love, he’ll always have one foot out the door.

He’s working to change that. Maybe someday he’d even succeed.

“Lack of heart has never been my issue, Emma,” he said. He didn’t think he’d ever called her by her forename before, but it seemed about time, and if she didn’t comment on it neither would he.

“I guess not,” she concedes. “At least you don’t have to worry about that. You’re… you’re hurting, but you know you’re still capable of loving someone, and you know you love Belle. You don’t lie awake at night worrying that a dead guy would hate you if you fell for someone else.”

“There are many other reasons I lie awake,” Rumpelstiltskin tells her. “Most of them bright green.”

“I guess,” Emma keeps chewing on her lip.

“It can be difficult, to be with someone who is better at expressing their feelings than you are,” he said. “It requires an ability to be vulnerable, and neither of us has any facility with that.”

“Yeah,” Emma nods. She looks so small, so young and sad, that for a moment Rumpelstiltskin thinks he catches a glimpse of the young woman Bae fell in love with. That strange paternal feeling rises in him again. For the first time in a while, he feels the urge to be just a little selfless.

Rumpelstiltskin catches Belle’s eye, and held up one finger, to stall her coming over. There is something that needs saying, and he can’t understand why he’s doing it, why he’s even considering posthumously giving Emma Baelfire’s blessing to love the man who stole Bae’s mother away, but here he is. Perhaps this is part of the learning he’s committed to: Emma’s happiness matters, even if by proxy it means that Killian Jones might be happy too.

“Do you know how your pirate knew to come fetch you?” Rumpelstiltskin asks. Emma shakes her head, confused.

“I assumed my parents told him,” she replies. “I mean, they were all fighting Zelena, right?”

Rumpelstiltskin purses his lips, and shakes his head. “Zelena couldn’t control us, when… when I wasn’t in control of our body,” he swallows hard, and tries to not balk at even talking about it. He has to learn to talk about it. Belle needs him to talk about it. “She never locked the cell. She didn’t know he could get out, sometimes. He sent a note via dove, when we knew the curse was coming. My son believed in your pirate’s regard for you, at least. He believed that for you, even Killian Jones might do the right thing.”

“Oh.” Emma is silent, chewing her bottom lip, processing the information.

“And for what it’s worth, he trusted the pirate to save you. Whether Killian Jones is able to make good on that faith is another matter, but you would know better than I.”

Emma looked at him, and behind her “He… he’d want me to be happy, right? To move on?”

“I know he would,” Rumpelstiltskin says. “With whomever that may be.

“For you too,” she tells him. “He loved you.”

“I know he did,” Rumpelstiltskin nods. He slides off the bar stool, and Emma follows. “He would want both of us to try and find some peace.”

He meets Hook’s eye over Emma’s shoulder, and holds it for a long moment. He hopes the feeling is communicated: if Hook proves himself unworthy of the blessing he doesn’t know he’s been handed, he will find out there are worse things to lose than a hand.

“Thanks, Gold,” Emma smiles, a real smile, and then he is stunned when she leans forward and kisses his cheek. He nods, swallowing around an odd lump in his throat. She’s a sweet girl, Emma Swan, for all her hard pragmatism. He can see why Bae loved her so much.

He makes his way back to Belle, and Emma sits back with her family, and when Belle takes his hand over the table he squeezes it hard. She’s alive, and here with him, and she knows everything and still loves him, and maybe it’s almost enough. Maybe this time he can take hold of this chance at happiness, and not push it away.

He clings to Belle like a lifeline, and finds hope in her eyes. Bae would want him to be happy. It’s a long way off, but for the first time in months, Rumpelstiltskin thinks he might just be able to try.

#ouat fic #rumpelstiltskin #rumplestiltskin #emma swan #rumbelle fic #rumbelle #swanfire #ouat #once upon a time #fanfiction #fanfic #fic: all that remains

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obsessedwithereri-nz · 8 years ago

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Almost at 1,000 followers!!

Holy crap, I just realised that I am almost at 1,000 followers and that is insane!! When I hit 1,000 I’m going to film a video dedicated to anime, but until then I want my followers to get to know me outside of my anime obsession :) no one tagged me but I want to answer these so meh

1: What’s the most annoying thing about your best friend/s? That they live in another country now :’( makes conversing a little challenging to say the least 2: Least favorite TV shows? I don’t have a least favorite show mainly because when I don’t like a show I typically don’t get further than the first 3-4 episodes. I have a very long list of shows to watch so I don’t bother if it doesn’t grasp my attention by a certain point. 3: Favorite moment with your best friend/s? There are too many shinnanigans we got up to to only pick one! 4: What’s one quality you would like to have? Patience. I am not a patient human being 5: Name three people of your same sex you would: marry, kiss and fuck Marry: Rebel Wilson Kiss: Nina Dobrev Fuck: Margot Robbie 6: Do you like your full name? Not particularly... I’ve always associated myself with my nickname and usually only my mum uses my full name 7: Tell me your most embarrasing memory Jesus Christ.... okay the only one the pops into mind is in my first year at my new (and last) school, we went on our annual ‘Education Outside the Classroom’ week and we were staying in a Marae (traditional and sacred Maori buildings). One morning I went to the bathroom (as humans do) and when I looked down BAM I had periodness all the way down the back of my PJs... I has just walked through a Marae FULL of about 50-60 13 year olds with blood all the way down past my knees. And I still had to go back out. You can guess school wasn’t a fun time for me. 8: Favorite color to wear? I would say black but it’s not a colour! So either Red or Blue. 9: Favorite restaurant? Anything Italian with decent vegetarian options :) 10: What would be a good first date for you? Anything where we actually get to spend our time together (so no movies or anything). A simple coffee date would be nice (because I looooove me some coffee) 11: Are you a good wrestler? Is this even a question? .................... NEIN. 12: Are you allergic to something? Not that I’m aware of. 13: Would you be a good singer? Absolutely! If you consider an over-enthusiastic tone deaf seal good 14: Who’s the last person you told “I love you” to? My computer screen when I saw an amazing picture of Levi from AoT... That’s not weird..... Right? 15: What car would you buy if you had enough money? A Chevrolet. If possible an Impala from the 1960s or 1970s. 16: Favorite cover of a song? My favourite one at the moment is a slow cover of Reluctant Heroes, it’s so good!!!!! 17: What was your last conversation about? Mandarins. My boyfriend asked if I wanted a Mandarin. I don’t like Mandarins. You can guess where that conversation went. 18: Where were you born? NEW ZEALAND BABY! Born and raised 19: Least favorite app? Those stupid apps that we can’t delete no matter how much we don’t and never will use 20: Tell me two facts about your country of birth It’s small and everyone thinks it’s part of Australia..... IT’S NOT 21: Do you like wearing sunglasses? Not really. Only on really sunny days cause otherwise whenever the sun gets in my eyes I just constantly curse at it 22: When is it a good moment for a first kiss? When they’re not on the toilet. What? It’s true. That’s a baaaaaaaad moment. 23: What are your nationalities? Born and raised in New Zealand but the grandparents are from Europe mainly: Scotland, Denmark and Norway. Explains why I love winter. 24: What would make you drop college/university? Everything I am currently experiencing ^.^ 25: A crossover between two shows (any shows) you would like to see? I would like to see what would happen if the Attack on Titan characters would do if they were stuck in a High School drama. 26: Long or short hair? Short. It’s so much easier to manage, holy crap 27:A character from a book/TV show/movie that shouldn’t have died? SNAPE. FORGIVE BUT NEVER FORGET 28: Favorite movie scene? I’ll quote it for you..... *clears throat* ..... “It........ can’t be. THE PHARAOH HAS RETURNED!” 29: Do you ship more fiction people or more real people? Ficiton. My entire life revolves around the fictional. Real people always disappoint me. 30: Favorite country song? It’s a classic but meh. Life is a Highway by Rascal Flatts (I also don’t listen to country music) 31: Favorite John Green book? No. 32: Least favorite Ed Sheeran song? Nope. 33: Favorite ship? The Black Pearl ;) 34: How do you deal with sexual tension? The same way anyone else deals with it ;) by reading some intesnes fanfiction 35: Name a celebrity who died that you miss Michael Jackson and Paul Walker :’( 36: Favorite Harry Potter spell? Alohomora 37: Something you are scared of losing? My harddrive. All my anime is on that thing! 38: Someone you regret meeting? (okay getting real her) No one because everyone I’ve met has made me who I am and I actually like who I am :) 39: Have you ever been hurt by someone you thought he/she was your friend? Hell-to-the-freaking-yes, and my brain literally suffers from their selfishness every day because of it 40: Do you easily open up to people? Yeah cause I don’t care what I tell people anymore. Either way I find out whether they’re meant to be in my life or not. 41: What is a gift you love receiving? People’s time. Yes. Yes my life is that depressing, thanks for asking 42: What is something you could leave easily? My lectures. 43: Rant about that’s eating you up I’M REALLY UNHAPPY WITH WHAT THEY INCLUDED IN THE LATEST ATTACK ON TITAN EPISODE (EP 10 SEASON 2) PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ THE MANGA KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT (HOPEFULLY) BUT THEY BROUGHT SOMETHING FORWARD BY ABOUT A WHOLE SEASON (AND MAYBE 1 1/2 SEASONS) AND IT’S RUINED THE PERFECT TIMING FOR THE REVEAL LATER ON AND IT WAS TOTALLY UNNECESSARY TO USE SO SOON AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THIS SHOW HAS DISAPPOINTED ME AND I DON’T LIKE IT WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY YOU DIDN’T NEED TO INCLUDE IT YOU JUST GAVE AWAY A HUGE PLOT POINT ............. okay... I think I’m good? 44: If you could make one phone call to anyone right now, who would it be and what would you say? Dominos to order a cheesy garlic pizza with creme fraiche, 2 lava cakes and a chunky chocolate chip cookie for delivery. 45: Are you easy to love? Not at all.

#personal #questions #attack on titan rant #tried not to give spoilers #anime #manga #pizza #yugioh #attack on titan #new zealand pride #1000 followers #almost

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dumpsterthot · 8 years ago

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So after putting up the rest of the drabble I realized that I just have never shared ANY of my Nappa and Raditz fics (Two of which are Teen!AUs). I had a lot more pre-2005 but they went with my 2005 Harddrive Crash. So here’s 3 Raditz/Nappa fics. (One finished and two unfinished) for anyone who likes the pairing. There’s probably typos and grammar errors. I’m too lazy to finish them.

Most of the are PG..13ish at best but the last one starts to get a little smutty.

FATE Rated: PG "Take this," Son Goku growled as he hurled the defeated saiyan warrior at Vegeta's feet, "and go back to where you came from." There was a groan of agony from the large saiyan as he laid sprawled before the prince. His ego crushed; his pride devastated -- and his back broken. He would never fight again. Let alone stand. "V-vegeta.. Vegeta. H-help me, Vegeta.... please..." Nappa had blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth. His black eyes flustered with pain as he gazed up helplessly at his prince. He raised a bruised and bloodied hand achingly toward the standing saiyan; the effort making his whole arm shake. "V-vegeta; give me your h-hand ..I-I can't get up...." The Saiyan Prince stood motionlessly; staring down at his life long battle companion. Those cold black eyes seemed so bored. Yet -- after a moment; Vegeta stretched his white glove down and grasped the bigger saiyan's hand in his own. Nappa gasped for breath several times before his mouth managed a small smile of relief. "T-thank you." Vegeta only smirked down at the fallen saiyan --- and gripped his hand tighter. ------ "Raditz -- the fool." Nappa blanky stated as he gazed into the campfire. "Humph," Vegeta tore off a chunk of the alien he was consuming; spitting out the inedible part; "Imagine killed by beings with such insignificant power levels." "Should we go and destroy all the Earthlings now?" Nappa asked looking over at the prince. "No, I don't think so," Vegeta replied - but then appeared to have a change of oppinion, "But then again - did you hear that one thing about the Dragonballs? Perhaps we'll go and make a wish of our own." Nappa raised his head a bit, "We'll go and wish Raditz back to li-" "No," Vegeta cut him off, smirking, "That would be a waste of a wish -- I have something so much better in mind, tell me, my friend...." -------- "Raditz -- you fool." Nappa chuckle from where he was sprawled out along the floor of his sleeping chambers aboard the icejin's ship. Upon his back with his arms behind his head - he looked past his own short black bangs up to the ceiling and grinned. "If Vegeta catches you in here -- he's going to have your head." He glanced over to the long haired saiyan who was stretched belly down along the floor beside him -- hands picking at the taller saiyan's tail idly. "I am hardly concerned with the wraith of an eight year old child, Nappa," Raditz wrinkled his nose with a smirk, "So he'll yell at me - there's not enough of us left to outright kill me because I'm laying about where I shouldn't be." "You do that a lot," Nappa gave another laugh, this one sounding slightly dirty and pulled his tail out of the other's hands so he could run it across the low level's face, "Trespassing. All the time, Raditz. Shame on you." "Like you've put up any warning signs," Raditz snorted and grabbed Nappa's tail again. He coiled it around his wrist and brought it to his mouth to snag teeth playfully against it. "If I hadn't known any better you'd been inviting me in since we first got stranded on this miserably ship." "Pffft - don't flatter yourself, low level," Nappa smirked across his chest at the other saiyan - the nibbling making his tail fluff and twitch in those brawny hands, "It wasn't like I got a lot to choose from on this ship. Besides.." Nappa narrowed his eyes and gave Raditz his warning he was teasing about, "I could easily kill you - Vegeta wouldn't have to lift a finger. You're right. You're only here because I've allowed it." Raditz wasn't intimidated by the taller saiyan's threatening eyes one bit -- he let go of Nappa's tail and bunched his muscles tightly. Growling, he gave a little pounce and tackled the other saiyan on the ground to worm his way to laying on top of him. Burly arms went about that thick neck and Raditz gripped his fingers into the short crop of hair Nappa had on top of his head. "Oh really? I suppose that may be the case -- but we all know if I didn't go sneaking around at YOUR approval you'd come chasing after me begging like the royal lap dog you are!" The elite saiyan refused to give Raditz the pleasure of fighting about it -- instead Nappa rumbled a deep laugh in his thick chest and snapped his teeth at the audacious low-level's nose, "You've got a lot of gull, Raditz." "You love it -- big stupid pet." The lower level licked at that brawny throat and then sunk his teeth into Nappa's flesh with a purr -- his knee's pushing at the other's legs to get them apart, "Do you want me to show you why you keep me around?" "I guess," Nappa grinned - the low pleased growl in his throat barely masked by his sarcasm, "Better than dying of boredom." "Oh go to hell, Nappa!" Raditz snorted with playful annoyance and began tugging that those ridiculous shorts the other saiyan wore. "I'll see you there, Raditz," the elite purred. "That better be a promise," Raditz smirked. He grabbed Nappa by his oversized ears and pulled him into a kiss. --- "...How would you like to live and fight forever?" Vegeta said with an evil grin as he climbed into his pod and crossed his arms over his chest. "That's something I could live with for the rest of my life," Nappa replied as he dropped into his own pod. As the door closed, the big saiyan sighed and rested his head against the back of his seat for the flight. Raditz ... that fool. --- Vegeta continued to squeeze his fallen comrade's hand for a moment longer -- then without warning; the grip tightened into a crushing one. Nappa screamed in pain as the saiyan prince suddenly flung him high into the air. "V-Vegeta what are you doing?!" His cry of utter betrayal only seemed to fuel the other saiyan's enjoyment more. As the prince powered up his attack -- his smile never faded from his face, "You've outlived your usefulness Nappa! Maybe you'll be less of a disappointment in the afterlife -- I'll see you in hell!" The blast made short work of the injured saiyan. Nappa would see someone in hell no doubt. But it wouldn't be the prince. He'd keep his promise after all.

Trash (Teen!AU)

Rated:

Having proven himself worthy enough in the sparring ring to be tested to see if he was any good at the art of command; Nappa had been assigned a small practice squadron. It was -- by no means, of the same caliber and training that he would face when he was finally ready to be a true Saiyan commanding officer like his father, but it would help school him. Still -- given the chance for such a rank at barely 16 was pretty impressive. (Or just lucky because of his good breeding and blood) and Nappa wanted to prove to his father and the rest of the elites that he COULD be a general one day. So on the first day of his new practice position - the elite stepped out onto the training field to greet his assembled squadron. They were a jumbled bunch of young saiyan men; mostly teens. Sons of top warriors who hadn't quite cut it close enough to be considered high class. They would never be the finest -- but on this particular day; they would make do to give Nappa the training he needed. The elite stopped in front of his 'men' and put his hands on his hips to address them, "I am Nappa. Son of Tamagi -- for the next three months; you are to follow my orders to the tee. Now..." Nappa was cut off by a whistle and he snapped his head toward the culprit who'd made it. "You bring enough TALL for the rest of us there?" Standing midway through the lineup with more hair then Nappa had ever seen on anyone was the sharp smirked face of the young man who'd dared to speak to an elite in such a manner. Snorting low, the elite stepped over to this loud mouth and bend down to get into his face -- lip dotted with the beginnings of a mustache twitched in irritation. Truth be told, Nappa was VERY tall for his age. Very lean and tightly muscled -- broad shoulders promising that he'd grow in bulk to match that height one day no doubt. "What was that, recruit? I dare you to say that again least I smear your smart mouth across the training grounds." "OOoo touchy." The recruit was about a foot shorter and stocky; already showing signs of being pretty bulky. He didn't balk from the elite's intimidating sneer. There was a tilt of that sharp smiled face, "I said you were TALL! I didn't know you were DEAF too! S'matter - getting space interference way up there?" Nappa snarled -- his eyes pinpoint with rage at the GALL of this stranger. The tail around his waist bristled and he drew back one of his fists, "I'll SEND you into SPACE for your disresp --- !!!!" The elite's fist unclenched in surprise. It had happened very fast. How he did not know -- but the recruit had reached down and snatched the puffed tail from around his very waist. He now held it tightly in his hands threatening to squeeze. "Psssst," the lower level tossed that heavily haired head at the taller youth in a 'come here' motion. And the elite obeyed in curiosity -- leaning his face closer -- not BELIEVING this saiyan's audacity. Their noses nearly touched when the other flashed a grin at him. "Got your tail." the recruit mused -- and then he snapped his fangs at Nappa's nose. The rest of the squadron gasped. In flustered -- rageful -- humiliation -- the elite gritted his teeth. "Tell me your name, dead man.." "Raditz - Son of Bardok." the other purred. "Raditz," Nappa growled, "You and I are going to have problems.." "Good, I like a challenge," Raditz smirked, tightening his hand on the grip he had for a second in utter defiance, "Just remember the first time we meet I had you JUST where I wanted you and there was NOTHING you could do about it -- elite." With that -- he let go of his 'commanding officer' and stood back with his arms crossed over his chest. "Fool," Nappa snarled, "and now YOU'RE going where *I* want you!" He then grabbed the lower level by all that hair and flung him across the training grounds. "Nobody says ANYTHING about THIS, EVER!" Nappa warned his squadron, "Now pair off for sparring! If that low level manages to get back up he's on clean up detail." The elite reached up and wiped at his face -- however; embarrassment didn't not rub away very easy. ".... I bet he'll never do that again." He hoped.

Ride (Au!Teen and this one is from 2003 be gentle)

Rated PG-13

"What is that?" Raditz, seventeen, stocky and with too much hair asked.

A finger was shot at the taller Saiyan's face.

Nappa, Nineteen and still growing, cocked an eyebrow in his normal confused manner at Raditz. He looked at the finger that was inches from his mouth. " What is what?"

Raditz smirked rolling his eyes. This time that finger pressed forward. Trailing along the soft fuzz that dotted Nappa's upper lip. " This, idiot. What the hell is this?"

It was Nappa's turn to roll his eyes. He bit at the finger that was poking at him. " Moron, it's a mustache."

The long haired Saiyan made a face and then smacked the Nappa upside his short messly-haired head with that offended hand. " I was being sarcastic, idiot, I know it's a mustache. I just want to know why the fuck you are growing it."

The elite Saiyan Sneered. Reaching out his flicked the low-level's nose. " Cause I wanted to. Cause I can. I don't need your permission, low-level." He smirked, cause he knew Raditz hated being called that.

The other Saiyan snorted and then grabbed out with both gloved hands and tugged that long skinny frame against his own in a possessive hug. " Fuck that.. Yes you do. You need my permission to do anything. " And he pressed a hard kill to the fuzz dotted mouth. Mmm. Interesting feeling.

Nappa rolled his eyes before he gave into the kiss. Their lips played hungrily for a few moments, before Nappa pulled back. " Fine Fine. I let you know when I have to scratch my nuts too."

Gloved fingers were curled around the skinnier Saiyan ass, kneading playful. " You do that Cause I want to scratch them for you."

The elite growled a bit. Arching forward. Clothed groins pressed together. " Y-you would." But another kiss was given. Tongues matched.

"And you'd like it." The long haired Saiyan growled back, kneading harder.

Even tho there really was no time for this. They had to leave for a mission in five minutes.

It was Nappa who finally pulled away. Ignoring the ache the other had placed in his groin. A last kiss before he shoved Raditz into the nearest wall and he moved off; snapping the armor around his form.

Raditz grumbled, pulled himself from the dent in the wall and did the same. He didn't really feel like going. But they had to. It was an important job. A Scouter was fitted around his eye and then he turned to look at his mate who was ready. Standing with his arms crossed over his chest plate. A smile etched the sneaker ones lips. Nappa looked hilarious in armor. It was always too short for him.

Raditz walked a few steps behind the elite as social standards required. Not that the low-level minded. He was able to watch the idiot's ass, and playfully pull on Nappa's tail as the made their way to the pod base.

"The trip to Fadimerk will take sixteen hours. It's a big job so they are sending a hundred of us." The elite said as he sighed, before swatting at the other's hand. "Stop that.. you know what touching my tail does. I don't want to show up to the base with a fucking boner."

"Fuck that long?" Raditz scowled as he gave one more tug to the other's tail. " I hate being in pods for more than a couple of hours. It boring."

Nappa shook his head and wrapped his tail around his waist. " You can always talk to me over the com link. I'll try to keep you amused."

" It's not the same. I don't like talking to you if I can't touch you." A perverted smile played havoc on the long haired Saiyan's mouth.

" You don't have to always touch me." Nappa rolled his eyes. But that was a losing battle.

"Oh yes I do."

They entered the pod base. Other Saiyan were already boarding the little round spheres and were being launched off into space. A low-level saluted Nappa as he entered and the elite nodded; coming to a halt as the pod was prepared for him.

Raditz came to a stop right next to the elite. Nappa smiled and reached a gloved finger over to poke Raditz rudely in the nose. " I guess I'll see you on Fadimerk." He leaned over to place another kiss on the low-level's mouth.

Raditz once more grappled him into a tight embrace. A few other Saiyans gasped, but none said anything. Nappa felt his cheeks going hot and he fought off the urget to yell at everyone to mind their own business.

"Raditz." The elite snorted and locked eyes on the other. " You're not suppose to do this on the job."

"Ride with me." The long haired SiayaJin smirked a dirty lil grin. " I won't be so bored."

"Idiot." Nappa's eyes narrowed. "Both of us won't fit in a pod. Where the fuck would I sit?"

It was a stupid question. And the elite already formed the answer before the other opened his mouth.

"On my lap, of course. Where else would I want your ass?" Raditz snickered and he leaned forward and snapped at Nappa's nose.

"I don't like lumpy seats." Nappa hissed, feeling gloved fingers toy on his tail. Fuck. They really had to get going. And Raditz was still playing with his labido. " And my seat would have a big lump."

Now those fingers were cupped and kneading on Nappa's ass; digging hard. Raditz growled softly. Eyes lusted over. " Yah, But I know just where to move that lump so that you'd be comfortable. Whadya Say? Comon.. it'll be fun. Huh?" A lick to that fuzz dotted lip.

" F-fine fine. But just this once."

The lower level pressed a hard kiss to the other mouth and then tugged him into the awaiting pod with a wanton growl. The door closed with a hiss.

Raditz tumbled into the seat and tugged the elite onto his lap backwards; muscled pressed to his chest as the pod powered up.

"Once were in space," A lick was given to the other's ear. " We're going for a little ride of our own."

"Not that I have much of a choice. I don't even have a seatbelt." Nappa chuckled as surveyed his situation. Head touched the ceiling, Knees bend, feet against the door. If he was any older or bigger this would not have worked at all. It barely worked. It was sure tight fit.

But Raditz liked tight fits. He curled his arms around the other's waist. " There's your fucking seatbelt, baby. You ready?"

"I guess," the elite answered as the pod shook and was launched. He knew Raditz was ready. That was evident by the dick he could feel pressing just under his tail. This was going to be interesting.

They were going to have their own little adventure before the real mission even began.

There you go. Three Raditz/Nappa fics. Not the best but might as well share them with the world.

#fanfiction #dbz #RaditzxNappa #OTP: top class ass for low level trash #Raditz #Nappa #the last one is so old #it's from 2003 #the only survivor of all the fics I wrote of them pre 2009 #be gentle

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