#i’ve worn them for five years and i replace them when i wear holes in the bottom

[agrossofworms]

on sentimentality — a ramble about a beloved pair of shoes.

today i got a new pair of shoes. now, this is not to say i don’t own many pairs of shoes, all equally loved and worn. the doc martens, one black and one white. the converse, one black and one red. the vans, one orange, one brown, one blue, and one white.

this white pair of vans is special. i got them in the early months of 2019, so they’re nearly 5 years old. they’re discontinued, and the only other pair i ever found was a size too small. cream suede sk8-hi with white and black checkered flames on the sides. ive never seen anyone else wearing them. they’re my shoe and always have been since i got them.

when i got them, they were brand new, because the friend i saved the shoes from hadn’t once worn them. i hate tying shoes over and over, so i tied them both loosely, once, and double knotted them. they haven’t come untied once in all five years. since then, the shoes practically molded to my feet.

the problem with this uniqueness is that i can’t replace them. so i wore them to the bone. i still am, i just can’t let go of them. im hoping that this will help me retire these poor shoes. i never cleaned them, i think it’s the purpose of a daily shoe to be worn in until they have to be replaced. the right shoe has been falling apart since fall of 2021, when i went back to school. when i say these shoes have seen it all, i mean it.

i wore these vans to my high school graduation. when i got my first car, which i still drive. i wore them when i met my long-distance partners for the first time. when i went back to school. i brought them with me when my great grandmother died. theyve seen the rise and fall of at least six relationships. they came to my cousin’s bar mitzvah. these shoes were part of one of my first cosplays. theyve seen every fight with my parents in the last five years. i wore those shoes when my “best friend” sat me in the park and told me how much she hated me as a cover for her real feelings. i wore these shoes to see my favorite band in concert. i wore those shoes when i saw my long-distance best friends for the first time. i wore those shoes to meet parents, grandparents, cousins. i wore those shoes through many mistakes and many bad choices. i wore them every day through a move that took me 400 miles further from the people holding hostage my racing heart. i transitioned in these shoes. i’ve spilled bong water on them, i’ve spilled cocktails and dropped lit joints on them. i learned how to skateboard in these shoes. i picked up my first prescription of hormones in these shoes. i finished and presented my high school portfolio in those shoes. i went camping, hiking, running with those shoes because no matter what, they never failed me.

these shoes are part of my soul. i’ll keep them , and probably still wear them. the laces are frayed at the ends to the point that i cant lace them through the top two holes — which remain empty on all my high-top shoes. i need the ankle movement. the left one has a bloodstain on the laces from where i got a nosebleed. i walk heavier on my right foot, and it shows with how torn up the heel is on that shoe. its about to wear all the way through. the red bumper is completely gone. they were once a cream-white, now theyre nearly parchment paper brown— ive traipsed through the rain, mud, sand, dirt, dust and snow in them. the white soles are grey from wear. the sizing label on the tongue is practically gone, similar to the logo on the sole of the shoe. worn smooth by the rigor of daily use.

i like having unique shoes, which is why i got another sort of odd pair. im trying to wear less white shoes, so i got a blue-grey pair.

i hope these ones last me another five years.

[hws-prussia]

On the Iron Cross

I’ve noticed there’s been a decent amount of discourse in the Hetalia fandom about the German Iron Cross and it’s usages/contemporary associations as a (neo-)Nazi dog-whistle. I do not speak on behalf of all Jews, nor on the behalf of all Germans, but I would like to take the opportunity to voice my opinion on the issue, from the perspective of a German Jew. I’m also not trying to speak on behalf of all German Jews either. I don’t speak on behalf of all Jews, I’m not trying to speak on behalf of all Jews, and this is just my opinion on the matter. Feel free to disagree, because it’s also completely understandable to bar the usage of Iron Crosses period, to a certain extent. 

This is a very, very long post, so more under the cut. 

Also: Trigger warning, for the discussion of Nazism and some depictions of common Nazi symbolism. If such images will upset you or cause you any stress, please take precautions accordingly. 

THE HISTORY OF THE IRON CROSS

The Iron Cross (in German, we call it the Schwarzes Kreuz, among other things) is the emblem used by the Prussian Army and the German Armed Forces from 1871 to the present day. Designed during the German campaign of 1813, and commissioned by Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia on his late wife’s birthday (to honour her for her bravery in standing up to Napoleon) as the first military decoration open to all personnel of any rank, including enlisted man, it quickly became a popular symbol for Prussians (and later Germans) as a whole, regardless of rank and and social class. It was put alongside the Black Eagle on the Prussian war flag. Derived from the Black Cross of the Teutonic Order, it’s been important to Prussian symbolism for centuries, and continued to be significant for centuries afterward. 

(Iron Cross 1st Class of the Original Napoleonic Wars)

After the fall of Napoleon, the Iron Cross became a symbol of both peace and victory. It was inserted into the Peace’s laurel wreath, making her the Goddess of Victory in the early 19th century. In 1821 it was a major design element of the National Monument for the Liberation Wars on Kreuzberg, which still stands a hundred years later. 

The Black Cross was used in the naval and combat flags of the German Empire, until 1915, when the simpler Balkenkreuz replaced it. The Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany and the Bundeswehr also inherited the use of the emblem in various forms. It’s still used, post-unification, to designate German military vehicles and aircraft, though a new blue and silver version of the cross is used for other official contexts. 

The first person to receive the Iron Cross was Karl August Ferdinand von Borcke on 21 April 1813. He was an officer of lower rank, with very few distinguishments before then. This marked a new era in German military history, and by 1817, a told of 670 chevaliers had received the Iron Cross 1st Class. 

(Different varieties of the Iron Cross throughout history.)

King Wilhelm I of Prussia authorized further awards on 19 July 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Recipients of the 1870 Iron Cross were still in service in 1895 were authorized to purchase and wear above the cross a Jubilaeumsspange, celebrating twenty-five years since German Unification. 

In WWI, Emperor Wilhelm II reauthorized the production of the Iron Cross on 5 August 1914. It was seen as a generic German decoration, and all classes of the Cross appeared the same, and were worn differently to distinguish them from each other. The Iron Cross 1st Class was pinned onto the left side of the owner’s uniform. The 2nd Class, and the larger Grand Cross, would be displayed using different ribbons; the Grand Cross around the neck, and the 2nd Class on the chest, through the a button hole on the tunic. 

(The Grand Cross of WWI. This is also the version of the Iron Cross that Gilbert and Ludwig are commonly depicted in.)

The Grand Cross was only awarded to the most senior officers of the German military. The Star of the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross, was awarded only twice, to Generalfeldmarschall Gebhard Leberecht von Bluecher in 1813, and then Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg in 1918. A third was planned for the most successful officer during WWII, but was scrapped after Germany’s defeat. 

In WWII, Adolf Hitler would again reauthorize the production of the Iron Cross (though he would call it “restoring the German tradition” of the Cross) through the Enactment for the re-introduction of the Iron Cross of 1 September 1939. The WWII variety was divided into three main series of decorations, the Iron Cross being the lowest and the Knight’s Cross (an usurpation of the traditionally Prussian Pour le Merite, created by Frederick the Great). 

(The Nazi version of the Iron Cross.)

ALLIED PROPAGANDA VERSIONS

In 1914, the Allies sold very crude anti-German versions of the Iron Cross in order to raise money for the War effort and provide relief for Belgian refugees. One was inscribed FOR KULTUR in raised letters, another with FOR BRUTALITY. Another listed the names of French and Belgian towns attacked or destroyed during the retreat from Mons on the ends of the upper arms of the Cross. 

POST-WWII 

As modern German law prohibits the production of items containing Nazi insignia, the West German government authorized replacement Iron Crosses in 1957, with an Oak Leaf Cluster in place of the swastika, similar to the Iron Crosses of 1813, 1870, and 1914. This Cross would be gifted to WWII recipients of the Iron Cross as a replacement for their old ones. 

(The Balkenkreuz, used by the modern German Armed Forces.)

A modern campaign for the German Armed Forces to reinstate the Iron Cross would begin after Germany began taking part in active wars, first in Kosovo, and then in Afghanistan. In 2007, a petition to the German parliament to revive the Iron Cross decoration was initiated, a received over 5,000 signatures. 0n 13 December, the Ministry of Defence was allowed to decide on the matter by Parliament. On 6 March 2008, President Horst Koehler approved a proposal by Minister of Defense Franz Josef Jung to institute a new award for bravery. Thus the Ehrenzeichen der Bundeswehr series was instituted on 10 October 2008. However, it has very little in common with the traditional Iron Cross, and more closely resembles the Prussian Military Merit Cross.

(The de-Nazified version of the Iron Cross of WWII, which is the one I’d actually recommend you use. Don’t worry; it’s German government approved.)

In the United States, the Iron Cross was also adopted by outlaw bikers more o signify rebellion and to shock than to signify any nationalist ideology. For reference, the way the swastika had been used during the punk scene in the ‘70s-’80s. Anyways, by the early 2000s, the Iron Cross had spread from bikers, to skateboarders and many extreme sports enthusiasts. It quickly was adopted into the logo of several different clothing companies. 

THE IRON CROSS AS A HATE SYMBOL

According to the German Criminal Code Section 86a, any “use of symbols of unconstitutional organisations” outside the contexts of “art or science, research or teaching” is strictly prohibited. Though it specifies no specific criminal organization, it’s commonly used to outlaw symbols associated with the Nazi Party, the Communist Party and Islamic extremism. There is no specific symbols associated with these laws, and because of this, outlawed groups will often use modified versions of these symbols, or other, more historical symbols. Because the Hakenkreuz swastika is illegal, this has lead many far-right groups in Germany to co-opt the Iron Cross as a part of their symbology. 

(Another photo of the WWII version of the Iron Cross.)

According to German law, the symbols will be taken up in a case by case basis. A far-right protest using the Iron Cross on a poster displaying voelkish ideology will be taken to court. Someone who collects war memorabilia that happens to display swastikas will not be taken to court. 

The Anti-Defamation League in the United States classifies the Iron Cross as a potential nationalist dog-whistle. And while I don’t mean to discredit the ADL at all, because they do a lot of good work in combating anti-semitism and racism, they also classify pit bulls, bowl cuts, Mjoelnir and the acronym ACAB as potential Nazi dog-whistles, so I’d take everything they say with a grain of salt. 

Or do as the Germans do, and look at the context of the situation at hand, before forming your final judgement on the situation (whatever it might end up being). 

The Iron Cross is, however, undoubtedly used by neo-Nazis and skinheads. Due to its complicated history, it’s understandable to be wary of it’s usages, especially when by people you don’t know very well. 

USING THE IRON CROSS IN MY HETALIA STUFF

Onto the reason I made this post, which is the discourse surrounding using the Iron Cross in Hetalia fan-art and cosplay. Is it disrespectful, is it racist, is it a Nazi dog-whistle, and should it be avoided?

And, in my opinion, the answer is: it depends. 

It depends on the context of where you are using it, and why. But, I’m going to be honest with you guys: whatever you’re doing, it’s probably fine. Avoid using the varieties with the swastika in them, and there’s really no problem with it. If you’re really worried about potentially upsetting anyone with it, I’d recommend tagging your work with such, so anyone who would be upset by seeing it can filter it out, or skip past it. 

(Obviously, if you’re doing other things to glorify fascism in your works, aside from putting your character in an Iron Cross, there’s a problem, but the simple act of using an Iron Cross is in no way racist.)

Honestly, as a someone who’s family hails from Prussia, my only real complaint about using an Iron Cross would be wearing it in cosplay, and it’s only that it just seems a bit weird to me. It would be like buying a Medal of Honor and wearing it for an America cosplay. There’s nothing technically wrong with it, but it feels strange to wear something you didn’t earn. 

But also, it’s a costume and I don’t really care that much. Like I said: context matters. 

Honestly, that’s the whole take away here. Context matters. 

But, for anyone who doesn’t want to use the Iron Cross at all, but still keep the general character design, here are two option I’d recommend: 

The Pour le Merite, which was reserved for the highest officers of the Prussian Army, commissioned by Frederick the Great, would be fitting for Gilbert. There’s other variants of the Pour le Merite (the Blue Max) that continue to be used throughout German history. All are acceptable, but I’d still recommend the Old Fritz one. 

The modern Badge of Honour for the German Armed Forces would work for Ludwig. That, ot the Oak Leaves variant commissioned in 1956 (image has already been previously used) if you want it to be less historically anachronistic. I wouldn’t recommend using the Pour le Merite for Ludwig though; there’s no historical way he would’ve earned it, and Prussia was a meritocracy. It would’ve looked very disrespectful for him to wear it, even if Gilbert gives it to him. (He can display one though, if you would like). He can wear the other variants of it though, if you want. 

(He could also earn it as a civilian award, which I actually think would be really cool. However, the use of the Pour le Merite for civilians is post-WWII.)

In that case, I’d recommend the Order of the Red Eagle. 

Thanks for reading, and if you’re opinion differs from mine, I’d love to hear it. Like, genuinely. Just be respectful and courteous to each other (and to myself). Respect each other’s opinions (unless they’re truly a bigot, in which case, ignore them). 

Anyways, you may go back to your regularly scheduled browsing. 

[13yearslater]

Waiting

This is a vent and will contain graphic descriptions of dysphoria and anatomical terms.

I’m struggling with the wait for the second stage of my metoidioplasty. It was always going to be a considerable wait but then the goal posts moved, the light at the end of the tunnel was pushed from view and I am struggling with it all. 

I had the first stage of metoidioplasty around a year and a half a go after almost two years of appointments, referrals and consults along with years prior to that researching and deciding between metoidioplasty and phalloplasty and waiting until my life was in a position that I could even begin to pursue lower surgery. I was lucky that my time on the waiting list for surgery was almost halved as I was offered a short notice cancellation slot.

This first surgery was hard from an emotional perspective. The urethral graft is taken and left to heal until the next stage and that’s basically it; nothing really changes in the appearance. I had spent a long time waiting and preparing for this so I knew what to expect; I knew I was about to put myself through a major surgery for little to no return other than the knowledge that this put the pieces in place for stage two. Everything went well, I had no complications and was put back onto the waiting list early last year.

Practically as soon as I was back on the waiting list, Covid hit. Surgeries were suspended entirely and have remained as such since then, save for a small handful of surgeries done last Summer during a brief test phase. My place at the beginning of the 12-18 month waiting list was suspended indefinitely as the hospitals, equipment and staff were used to fight Covid.

We’re now around the time that my stage two would be taking place and I’m expecting in excess of a two year wait from the time that surgeries resume for which we still have no timeframe for either. I feel like I can’t really express this frustration to those around me. I understand that Covid is a priority and I don’t resent that; it is absolutely the right thing to do and I wouldn’t want my surgery to take place if it meant putting others at risk. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still shit, it doesn’t mean I’m not struggling with it despite knowing it’s for the best right now. Patience they tell me. My life has been over thirteen years of patience, of waiting for appointments, referrals, hormones and surgeries. It has been a long time, especially waiting for metoidioplasty, and I am tired.

Thirteen years. I just want it to be over. I want to live without always waiting for the next stage. I want to look down and see what my brain expects to be there - I need the phantom penis I feel to actually be there, for that constantly jarring cycle of sensation and realisation to be gone. I want to be able to buy trousers without having to spend hours trying pairs on to find the one magical kind that don’t touch my genitals in the wrong way and cause me constant distress and then only wearing the same five pairs of those trousers for years until they’re completely worn out. I want to replace all the identical pairs of boxers that I’ve been wearing for the past seven years that are now more holes than underwear - something that I was waiting to do after stage two. I just want to be able to wear what I want. I want to be able to pursue a relationship - something that I can’t even think about when I don’t feel ready, when I can’t bear to interact with parts of my body, let alone allowing anyone else to see or touch them. I want to be able to do yoga which is something I can’t also bear to do due to the physical sensations it causes. I want the hole to be gone so I can sit down without its mere existence bothering me, without any amount of sensation from that area causing pangs of frustration and upset. I want the ‘moistness’ to be gone, something that causes me the most distress and I really struggle to tolerate. I want to be able to take a bath without spending hours working myself up to it and then dealing with the way I feel afterwards. I want to be able to just be without the distress, without the constant workarounds to deal with parts of my body that feel so wrong. 

I can feel and sense it so vividly. I know what it should feel like, what it looks like, the way it sits in my underwear and how that feels, I feel my erection in the morning knowing full well it’s not really there. For my body to be giving constant conflicting feedback and sensations against the way I expect it to feel is exhausting. It has always been like this but knowing I was so close to the surgery that would alleviate many of these very specific issues and having it snatched away at the last moment only makes it worse. 

I am tired. They don’t understand what it’s like to live like this, they don’t understand how long I’ve been waiting, they don’t understand what it means.

No one can do anything to change it so I don’t know what I want. Maybe just to be heard, to be allowed to be sad, to feel sorry for myself a little, a little comfort, to not have any expression of my sadness or frustration to be disregarded by “but Covid is more important”, because I know it is.

[one-boring-person]

Just A Babysitter.(Part Seven.)

The Lost Boys x reader

Warnings: major character death, blood imagery, alcohol use

Context: (Y/n) is left alone at the cave whilst the boys go to avenge Marko's death, but she has a horrible surprise coming her way.

A/N: I changed my mind about this being the last part as it is just too long to be left as it is, so there is another part which will most likely come out later today.

Part One , Part Two , Part Three , Part Four , Part Five , Part Six , Part Eight

Masterlist.

My joints have finally gone numb by the time the sun has set, the ache of sitting on the cold hard floor for hours on end eventually fading away as I continue to ignore it, my mind still preoccupied with more serious matters, like the dead vampire lying with his lifeless head in my lap. Dried blood crusts my clothes and skin, the sensation uncomfortable but also unnoticed as I smooth my fingers over the mess of blonde curls atop Marko's limp head, my eyes never leaving his glassy, blank ones, my tears having dried some time ago, one hand holding onto the patched jacket he's always worn, the fabric stained and grimy now from the crimson liquid gathering around the hole in his chest. At some point, I'd taken the stake out of his chest, the crude piece of wood sliding out of the cold flesh with ease, another rush of blood accompanying it as I threw the makeshift weapon across the room, barely registering as it clatters to the ground a little way away. Since then, I've barely moved, my back muscles cramping from the crooked position I've settled into, the pain seeping away as time goes on, the chill of the cave stiffening my joints considerably.

It takes a hand placed on my shoulder to finally shake me from my trance, the appendage belonging to a concerned and grief stricken Dwayne, the tall vampire giving me a reassuring look as he crouches to my level, moving to pull my body into his, wrapping his arms around my rigid form briefly before he joins David and Paul, flying from the dark cave with incredible speed, all three of them riled up and ready to do anything to avenge their fallen friend. If I could, I'd join them.

After they've left, I stay where I am, my energy dwindling as I fight to stay awake, having done so all day, my body finally forcing itself to rest. Grudgingly, I decide to give in to the urge, knowing there's nothing I can do but wait for them to return, laying myself down beside the body of my friend,  ignoring the icy chill that seeps into me from the hard ground beneath me, the rock not making a particularly comfortable surface to sleep on. Resting my head on my hands, I tuck my knees into my chest and curl up into myself as best as I can, closing my eyes with the intention of falling asleep.

Nightmares plague my fitful sleep, visions of the rest of the boys, as well as Marko, all bloodied and wounded harassing my subconscious as it tries to rest, my eyes unable to open and tear themselves away from the horrifying scenes in my head as I writhe about. In each dream, I try to help them, to save them from the same fate that Marko has received, but each time I am unsuccessful, my mind conjuring up vivid images of David, Dwayne and Paul as they gasp for life, blood spilling from their lips, eyes flashing as they slowly fade into a deathly blankness, skin paling from the lack of life coursing underneath it. Fear soaks into my conscience, rooting itself into my very being as it tries to grasp the idea of living without the family who has cared for me for so long, protecting me when my biological family could (would) not, providing me with the best life I could ever have hoped for. Somehow, tears manage to force themselves out of my eyes, wetting my cheeks once more, though I don't realise this until I come to again a long while later.

My eyes crack open, eyelashes sticking together from the salty tears that have dampened my skin, a deep chill settling into my muscles from the air around me, reawakening the pain in my joints from before. I move to get up, stretching out my limbs and back as I go, wincing as I hear several audible cracks as my bones realign themselves, my movements stiff and slightly uncoordinated from the lack of change in my position, a pounding headache starting to set in from how dehydrated I've become. In my head, I know I should get up and get something to drink, or to eat, or I'll really suffer later, my body already protesting against my abstinence. Groaning, I force myself to my feet, giving Marko one last look as I go, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he's gone and won't wake up in a minute to take me for a ride on his motorcycle, or have a race to the Chinese takeaway shop, where we'd undoubtedly steal the food we've been given.

Another wave of grief washes over me, but I choke it down before I fall back to my knees, instead going to the entrance of the room, aiming to get to my room where I know there is food and drink, something I've made sure to keep in the cave just in case. It takes me longer than normal to emerge back into the darkened expanse of the sunken hotel, no light coming in from the outside, proving to me that it is still night, even if it is early in the morning, the icy air surrounding me feeling unwelcoming for the first time in four years, making me shiver uncomfortably as I duck into my own room, my clothes too thin to be a suitable covering. As I enter, I make the decision to change my clothes completely, needing to part with the bloodied shirt and jeans I was wearing the night before.

Changing into another band shirt and dark grey jeans, I pull on my leather jacket before grabbing the bottle of water and tin of cookies from under my bed, taking the remaining whiskey from five nights ago as well after a second, craving the strong burning alcohol to reawaken my numbed mind. Sitting on the bed, I open the water and take a deep drink from it, relishing the sensation of the liquid flowing down my dry, raw throat, my body relieved to finally receive hydration. I follow this with a good few cookies, not really enjoying them too much but needing the food desperately, as well as a swig of whiskey to wash it down, wincing as the fiery drink burns the insides of my throat, feeling warmer a minute or so after it's settled into my stomach. I repeat these motions a few times before I become aware of something: voices floating in from the front of the cave, and not friendly ones, either.

A low growl leaves my lips as I make out Michael's voice amongst them, anger and fury igniting inside me alongside the confusion; what the hell is he doing back here, alive? Putting aside the alcohol, water and cookies, I edge closer to the doorway, staying out of sight as much as possible, straining to hear what is being said, yet more confusion rising in me as I hear sounds that I'd associate with dragging heavy objects across the floor.

"...should we leave them here? In the middle? Or should we move them back into one of the inside rooms?" Michael asks his companion, or companions, voice breaking off every few seconds from the strain of carrying a heavy weight.

"Let's just leave them here. They won't mind." A gruff voice I recognise from the day before answers, an agreement rising from another who sounds very similar. The two kids with stakes.

"What about (Y/n)? What should we do about her?" This time it's Star's voice, the sound cutting deeper than the others, a stronger sense of betrayal flaring up in me as I try to keep myself quiet, not quite believing what I'm hearing.

"I hadn't thought about that. Should we find her?" Michael muses, the sound of something dropping echoing around the room, three others joining the first.

The others are silent, the two kids obviously having no idea who I am, Star seemingly considering what to say.

"No, I don't think that'll be entirely safe. She has a tendency to react rashly to things like this. I'm surprised she didn't do anything earlier." The girl responds, voice decisive, "I really do feel bad for her, though."

"You do? Why?" One of the kids asks sounding disgusted by the idea.

"Because they were her only family, and she was close with all of them. She'll really suffer."

What does she mean, they were my only family? They are my only family. A small voice in my head starts to tell me something, but I refuse to listen to it, unwilling to even consider what she is implying.

"I know, I feel bad, too. Maybe we can come again tomorrow night and speak to her? She could come live with us." Michael suggests, drawing a silent scoff from me at his stupidity. What makes him think I'd live with someone like him?

"I really don't think she'd accept the offer, but we can only try." Star responds, sounding unsure of herself, her voice getting quieter as they seem to leave the room, eventually cutting out completely when they get far away enough. I wait another five minutes before venturing out again, finding the braziers lit, the flickering flames throwing shadows and light everywhere. What I see in the centre of the room, beside the fountain, makes me stop, my heart nearly seizing as I catch sight of them. I can barely move, my eyes remaining fixed on the object of my horror, disbelief initially filling me until grief replaces it, my mind drowning in it once more as I finally find the ability to move, my legs taking me over to them. Lying on the floor are four bodies.

One is horribly familiar, two barely recognisable, the fourth unfamiliar to me.

A strangled sob leaves my lips as I collapse to the floor beside David's corpse, the blonde vampire's features pale and drawn in their deathly state, his muscles limp and lifeless under my hands as I grasp at his chest, unwilling to believe that what I'm seeing is real.

"No, no, no! This can't be happening, please tell me this isn't real! No, please, wake up, David, please, wake up! You can't be dead! You can't all be dead! No, no, no!" I all but scream out, tears exploding out onto my cheeks as I frantically look for signs of life, taking in the two other bodies to his right. One is nothing but a skeleton, and the other is a mangled mess of blood and torn flesh, but they are still known to me: the skeleton is still wearing the bracelet I gave him the night before, and the leather jacket under all the gore is unmistakable. Paul and Dwayne, both dead.

"Please wake up, David! Tell me this is fake, that this isn't happening! I can't be alone, not again! Please, don't leave me alone!" I cry out to them, eyesight blurry from the tears pouring out of them, my body heaving as sobs rip themselves from me, my head falling to David's chest, ignoring the dried blood coating his shirt, as well as the rigidity that his death has brought to him. Grief and despair once again assault my mind, tearing me from the numbed state I was in before, my throat quickly becoming raw as I continue to plead with no one in particular, wishing the vampires would just sit up as they were before and reassure me. As it is, I'm left with the dead members of my family with no one to comfort me, my body nearly wrung dry from all the tears I've cried in the past twelve hours, my only companions the corpses lying around me.

I remain there for what feels like hours, but what is in fact only one, until I notice something: the first rays of sunlight coming in from the entrance. Slowly but surely, they edge closer to the corpese on the floor, the unfamiliar one remaining in shadow as it is protected by the water fountain. As the first ray reaches the skeletal remains of Paul, the discouloured bones immediately catch fire, orange flames engulfing the body of my friend in seconds, my eyes fixed on them with horror, until I jump into action, wrapping my arms around David's torso as I start to drag him towards the shadows, my body weak from the lack of movement it has done, guilt and anguish racing through me as I watch the rays catch Dwayne's mangled remains, too, greedy flames instantly bursting into life as they do so, the sunlight only continuing on in its destructive path, creeping ever closer to David's feet. My muscles scream at me as I fight to pull the heavy body out of harms way, my strength nearly failing me multiple times, my feet slipping on the floor slightly.

Thankfully, I manage to drag David into the darkness of my room in time, the corpse remaining untouched by the sun even as the other two are consumed by the fires it has produced. I can only watch as they burn, tears streaming down my face at the sight, the overwhelming grief pushing me to my knees as I finally give up, a strangled, agonized scream ripping from my throat as I curl up into a ball, consumed by sorrow and despair, the loneliness I haven't felt in years crashing over me once again, reminding me of the night they found me, my body beaten and broken by the side of the road, my parents having finally kicked me out, a thirteen year old with no where to go. They'd taken me in, caring for me as much as they can, giving me a better life than I could ever have hoped for, replacing the hole in my heart where a family should've been. Old wounds have been reopened, bleeding grief back into my system as they once had when they were new, the pain just as crippling as before, if not, more so.

Eventually, I feel black spots start to appear at the edges of my vision, slowly advancing until I can't see any more, my body relaxing into unconsciousness, the emotions finally becoming too much for my mind to handle. Almost in relief, I allow myself to give in to the urge, falling deeply into a state of unconsciousness as I collapse beside the corpse of David, the truly dead leader of a murdered coven of vampires.

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 29

The FBI agent reclines the front seat in the big black Tahoe and gives me a look like I’m a little girl being stubborn. My nose is still a little stuffy from all the crying I’ve been doing, and my leg feels swollen and crooked and wrong, but the time for all that is past now. I take a deep breath and let it out and refuse to meet his gaze, glare out the tinted window at the fading afternoon.

Outside there are two more FBI men in big baggy blue windbreakers, chatting casually. One of them is smoking a cigarette, and as I watch him bring it to his mouth I feel a little gnarled pang of want, for it really has been so long since I last had one, and after everything I’ve gone through –

“How’s your leg?” the agent in the SUV with me asks, and I look round at him but don’t answer. He’s a big, broad man, probably somewhere in his forties or maybe his late thirties. His tone is calm and mild but his voice is deep enough that it feels like it ought to be accompanied by a rumbling vibrato I can pick up in my bones.

My leg is okay. Makado knew exactly where and how to kick me, it seems; after the FBI agents picked me up and carried me out of the gondola Makado got them to take me straight to the infirmary where a small, stone-faced woman looked it over and tutted at how they were treating me, saying that it probably won’t heal right, but they got her to just shoot me full of painkillers and throw a boot on it. After that I was able to walk, at least a little bit; I found to my immense surprise that with the boot I was actually able to put some weight on my right leg without it folding under me or my calf snapping in half. I examined it as best as I was able on the walk over to the parking lot and discovered that instead of the mangled wreck I was half-expecting there was just a rough scrape from the cleats on the bottom of Makado’s boot and only the slightest misalignment of the broad flat bone there. I could feel, I discovered, the part where my bone melded into the synthetic replacement the autodoctor had put in, a little ridged scoriation dividing the two.

“I have some ibuprofen,” he says, reaching into the pocket of his windbreaker, “if you need it.”

“I’m fine.”

My voice is dry from lack of use. I lick my lips, make a little cough in the back of my throat. He shrugs, puts the bottle away. “Suit yourself,” he says.

Another five minutes or so go by. I pointedly ignore him. Eventually he clears his throat. “It’s going to be a lot easier on you,” he tells me, “if you talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Oh, I disagree,” he says. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. Ever since Miss Veret gave us a call and told us what you were up to, we’ve had a lot of questions for you. I think you’ll find that you’d prefer me to be the one asking them.”

“Is that a threat?” I ask him, and he laughs.

“It is whatever you make of it, Miss Dzilenski.” He stumbles over the frontloaded jumble of consonants, overemphasizes the ‘e’ sound in the middle. Duh-zil-een-ski. Almost makes me wince.

“Alright,” I say. “What did Makado say I had been up to, then?”

It would probably be smarter not to talk at all, but sitting here in the blasting a/c in the back of the Tahoe is making me sleepy. It feels like I haven’t had a chance to actually sit and rest for what feels like ages, even though just earlier today I was just waking up from a day-and-a-half nap after surgery. I’d gone through the pumped-full-of-energy phase and then the ballast had worn off and I’d gone through the splitting-migraine phase on the way up and now at this point I just feel hollow and brittle and empty. Even though it’s cowardly I try not to think of Elena and how I’ve abandoned her, I try not to think of Makado and what she’s done, but it’s futile. Rage and despair course over me in alternating waves and I haven’t a clue as to how to adequately deal with either.

The FBI man offers me a tissue and I realize with a start that I’ve nearly begun crying again. I wipe at my eyes as best I can with my cuffed hands and leave him there, hand outstretched, until he sighs and takes his hand back, tosses the wadded tissue on the floor. “How’d you end up here?” he asks me. I stare back at him. He reaches over, takes a slim manila folder from the center console, leafs through it. “Not a lot on you in here,” he says. “Except for that whole thing with your father.”

I stiffen.

“Must have been hard,” he says, neutrally.

I know I’m being baited and I ought to stay quiet but I can’t stop myself. “You don’t know the first thing about it,” I tell him, “so you should just shut up –“

“On the contrary,” he says smoothly, turning a stapled, glossy page and squinting at the next. The first page hangs over the edge of the folder and I can see through it to the other side, see the painfully familiar mugshot that’s been etched into my brain, little fourteen-year-old me, her eyes red from crying, trying hard to keep a stiff upper lip, staring defiantly into the camera, still wearing the lumberjack shirt she’d begged her dad buy for her as soon as they made it to Illinois and the nights started to get cold. “I know a lot about it,” the FBI man continues. “I’ve got the entire report right here.”

“If you read the report,” I say, trying to keep my voice level, “you know that by now it’s ancient history. It happened twelve years ago.”

“Yes,” he says, “and now twelve years later you’re in another mess. I suppose you’re going to blame somebody else this time as well?”

The words strike me with about the subtlety of a sledgehammer but I still stiffen in the backseat, my fists clenching so hard that my nails dig into my palms. “Fuck you,” I blurt. He continues on as though he didn’t hear me.

“I don’t know what exactly they’re planning on charging you with, but I know it’s at least a few dozen counts of manslaughter, and possibly a couple of murder charges. Then there’s all the human trafficking you and your partner Peter Caum were doing. Did you really think you’d be able to get away with that?”

My mouth dropped open about halfway through. “So that���s how it is,” I say. I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning; my heart is going about a million miles an hour and all the hair is standing up on my arms. I feel claustrophobic suddenly, here in the back of the SUV, my hands cuffed together, my leg throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

The FBI man’s eyes flash beneath his glasses. “That’s how what is?”

“Makado is trying to blame all this on me,” I tell him, knowing that it’s futile, that maybe it’s even actively detrimental to say anything, but I – I can’t just say nothing, I can’t just –

“Are you saying that she’s the one responsible for this?”

I swallow and nod.

“That Makado Veret,” he says, tossing the folder to the side and fixing me with his full attention, “the Chief of Security for the Permian Basin Recovery and Superorganism Containment Corporation, that Makado, has really been trying to smuggle people inside the Pit, with the help of a disgruntled ex-Park Ranger and mental patient, for…no real apparent purpose other than to fleece desperate people of their money?”

“Yes,” I say softly. It’s pointless. He isn’t going to believe me.

“And you are,” he continues, “the same Roan Dzilenski who has a documented history of lying to law enforcement authorities?”

“I was fourteen!”

“So you aren’t denying it? That you have lied to the police before?”

“I –“

“I mean,” he says, speading his hands, “it was a juvenile offense. And it was overturned. You got off scot free.”

“I did not get off scot free,” I tell him. “I’m tired of this. You’ve got the fucking report, you can read it. Either arrest me or don’t.”

“Fine,” he says. “If that’s what you’d like me to do.”

I lick my lips. “Look,” I say, trying to think of how to phrase it, how possibly I can tell him and get him to believe me. He gives me an expectant look. “Look,” I say, a little more softly, “this is all fine, but right now there’s someone down there inside the Pit who’s hurt. Someone who might die if I can’t get to her. And if you arrest me –“

The FBI man laughs, cutting me off, and rolls the window down to signal to the other two men in windbreakers. The tall, thin one with the cigarette tosses it on the black asphalt and grinds it out with his foot, and then he gets in next to me. I can still smell it on him. And then the other gets in the front seat and, after a quiet, murmured conversation with the man who’d just been grilling me, pulls us out of the parking lot and onto the curving road that reaches around the back of the ranger barracks and over to the main road back to Gumption. I feel as though I’m going to be sick.

The sky is terribly blue and for a long while I have a hard time recognizing it, I stare at the clouds passing by outside the window and wonder at them. The world feels strange when it isn’t pitch-dark and smelling of meat.

And, god, Elena –

I’m done crying. I can’t do anything for her now. I – I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t see it coming, I didn’t see that Makado was just using me.

I suppose I will process all of this later, in a jail cell somewhere. Right now I don’t have the ability to handle any more. I lean my forehead against the cool glass next to me and shut my eyes. I’d rather think about something else.

 * * *

 “Now remember,” my father is telling me, “it’s going to be hard to pull that trigger, but if you just squeeze it steadily it’ll be okay.”

“But daddy,” I start, but he just ruffles my hair like he always does and adjusts the revolver so that the two little legs stuck to the barrel sink a little deeper into the berm we’re both laying on.

“Now go ahead,” he tells me, his voice gentle, “and line up those two little bits there with this one in the front.”

I close my left eye and peer down the ridged metal spine of the thing. Just holding it makes me nervous, it’s like holding a power tool, like holding the big reciprocating saw he keeps down in the garage for his woodworking. It’s heavy and weighty and purposeful. “Okay,” I murmur.

“You’ve got them lined up? The one in the front should be in the middle of the rear two, and it shouldn’t be higher than the rear two.”

“Yes.”

“Alright, now, line the whole thing up with that beer bottle over there.”

“Which one?”

“The Blue Moon bottle over there on the left.”

I shift the gun over a little and then line it up again. “Okay,” I mutter. The little green bead in the front rests just above the label, but now it’s up too high, it’s poking above the line made by the back two bits.

“Remember to focus on the sights, not on the target. If you focus on the target you won’t be able to tell whether the sights aren’t aligned. Keep your eyes right here,” my dad tells me, pointing to the front of the pistol. I nod.

“Got it.”

“Okay. I’m going to move the cylinder now so that the hammer is over the chamber with the live bullet in it. When you pull that trigger the gun will fire. Got it?”

I swallow hard. I can see the back of the cartridge in the little cutout for it on the left side of the gun. My dad told me it was so you can see whether it had already been fired but I don’t know how that works. As I watch he reaches down and moves it so that it’s in line with the barrel. “Daddy,” I say, “I don’t know if –“

“Hey, it’s going to be fine. Now, it’s going to have a hard kick, but I’m going to be right here holding it with you, okay?”

“Okay,” I say again. Down there, maybe about fifty feet away or so, the sunlight is glinting off the darkened glass of the Blue Moon bottle. My father places his hands loosely over mine; his skin is calloused and rough. He is a carpenter but only during the day, at night he writes, holed up in the den with the door cracked open so if I want to I can sneak up and peek in, see him tapping away at the enormous computer with the cathode-ray screen, the big stuffed buck’s head on the wall just behind him, angled just like his, echoing his. I want to write like he does when I get older.

His hands are just over mine. They’re very warm, and so big compared to mine. I still have a band-aid on the ring finger of my left hand from where I tripped and cut it open on the ground outside the motel yesterday. Dad was proud of me for not crying about it but I wouldn’t have cried about something like that for a long time. Even this young I’m serious, more serious than either of my parents. Right now my father is being very serious and it isn’t something I’m used to. It makes me feel nervous, like I’ll do something wrong.

“Whenever you’re ready, keep the sights lined up and pull the trigger back slowly. It’s got a bit of a weight to it so you’ll have to squeeze hard, but it’ll shoot.”

And so I pull the trigger back slowly. My hand is shaking a little but that’s just from how hard I’m holding the gun. As the trigger moves the little metal lever on the back of the gun moves too, and I glance over at my dad. “Is that supposed to –“ I start, but he’s already nodding at me.

“That’s the hammer, that’s what actually hits the cartridge to make it fire. It has to drop down onto it to do that, so when you pull the trigger what you’re doing is bringing the hammer back and then dropping it. Go ahead and shoot, baby.”

I keep pulling and the hammer keeps going back and back and back and what I realize is going to happen is that there will be a point where it’s all the way back and then it’ll fall and the gun will go off and scare me half to death, and I keep anticipating it and it doesn’t come and eventually it’s too much and I ease off of the trigger. My dad stares down at me wondering if something’s wrong, takes his hands off of my hands and starts to lean over, and the thought of having to explain all this to him is far too unpalatable for me, so instead I squeeze my eyes shut and jerk the trigger back as far as it will go, and the gun roars so loud that for a moment I wonder whether I’m even wearing the big bulky earmuffs my dad handed to me.

The pistol leaps out of my hands and then something slams into my face and I cry out and clap my hands to my nose. The revolver is lying there on the berm, kicked over onto one of its little legs, and my nose is bleeding. My dad looks like he doesn’t know whether he wants to yell at me or cheer for me. Instead he just hugs me to him before I can start crying and points down at the beer bottles. “You did it,” is all he tells me, and when I look I see that the Blue Moon bottle, amber-hued and glossy, has disappeared, and even though I’ve gotten blood all down the front of my new plaid lumberjack shirt, I can’t stop staring at the place it would have been, can’t stop grinning at the knowledge that I did that.

 * * *

 The glass jostles against my forehead and my eyes flick open. I’d drifted away for a second there. Then the noise begins and the man driving slams on the brakes, sending us screeching to a halt. “What the fuck was that?” he cries.

I know what it is, of course – it’s the Pit. What else would it be? What else can open its gaping mouth and scream like that, scream from its belly, miles and miles and miles deep, channel the sound out into a pinprick-tiny orifice and make it shriek for kilometers? The noise is throbbingly deep, rattling into our bones and setting my teeth vibrating unpleasantly, but also somehow manages to screech upwards into a high keening wail that drags on and on and on…

The FBI men look shaken, at least. I’d heard groans and moans and shrieks like this down in the Pit, but none quite so angry, and definitely none as loud. It makes me wonder if there’s something different about this or if the sound is muffled, down there in the Pit, muffled by the flesh everywhere. Maybe it carries differently.

There is another low resounding thump and again the ground shakes. I freeze. If we can feel it here on the surface –

The FBI men glance at each other, and the one in the passenger seat, the one who’d been interrogating me, nods. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he tells the driver, who puts the SUV back in gear and starts off again down the road, moving at a faster clip than before. He isn’t quite gunning it but he’s getting close. The one in back sitting next to me leans forward.

“Did they say anything about this?” he asks. “Is it like a test or something? I heard –“

I never hear what he heard, though, before the ground erupts like a bomb maybe two hundred yards to our left and a vast stream of – of something hurls upwards into the sky. The driver cries out in shock and for a moment all of us are just staring out the left side of the SUV, watching as a nauseatingly pale pillar of flesh hovers there, sticking out of the ground at an obtuse angle, quivering in the waning sunlight. It must reach a couple hundred feet into the air at least, and it’s as thick as a redwood, or maybe even a couple of redwoods, it’s hard to tell from this distance. It curls inwards on itself and slams into the ground and begins scrabbling around on the ground, splintering trees and bushes and rocks, crushing them beneath itself.

“Makado was right,” I breathe, watching the tentacle writhe like a blind, pale worm. “She was right, it is waking up.”

“What did you say?” the man in the passenger seat asks, but before I can repeat myself there is another echoing roar and another tentacle, a smaller one this time, bursts out of the ground just before us. The driver screams a profanity and tries to turn but the big fat SUV is too damn slow. We strike it at an angle instead and it is just enough to flip the car.

It all happens incredibly quickly. I’m very lucky that the man who got in next to me buckled me in; he neglected to do the same for himself and got tossed around the cabin like a ragdoll, slamming into the ceiling and then falling through into the back and rattling around back there like a roulette ball. The two in front are a little luckier; they both had buckled up but I see the one in the passenger seat strike his head hard against the window next to him, hard enough that the window cracks, and when his head reels back I see a flash of bright red blood mottled in his hair and dripping down his forehead. The driver is still tugging desperately at the wheel, his instincts screaming at him to do something at least, but it’s useless – we flip end over end three times before the car settles onto its side and comes to a halt.

Aside from nearly being strangled by my seatbelt, I come out of it okay. I knocked my leg against the front seat a few times but with the boot on it isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, and then when the front windscreen burst inwards I did end up with a few cuts on my face, I think, and the same bruised spot on my cheek where Klaus struck me is aching like hell.

I think I screamed, that’s all; it’s like my brain shut down as soon as we flipped and I was simply running on automatic, no conscious thought required. I remember bringing my hands, still cuffed together, up to protect my face, and I remember clenching just about every muscle in my body tight enough to leave me with a lingering ache in my abs once we rolled to a stop, but somehow I haven’t done myself any lasting damage.

It takes me only a couple seconds to realize that this might be my big break, and then I spring into action, slamming my fingers down on the release for the seat belt and rocketing out of the SUV as quickly as I can. The driver yells at me, apparently still conscious as well, and I snap a terrified glance back at him, but he’s trapped – I can see now standing on the outside that his door is crumpled inwards and jammed into the frame, and what’s more it doesn’t look like he’s able to undo his seat belt, although I can’t tell whether it’s because it’s jammed too or because the man is injured.

Behind me the roars continue unabated. There is the faint ratcheting wail of a siren coming from the facility, over the lip of the hill, just there to my right.

The man with the glasses who cracked his head on the window, he has the key to my cuffs. I sprint around the back of the truck, tear the passenger door open as quickly as I can. He falls out, lands on his belly in the dirt, and then I am rummaging through his pockets; not here in the jacket, not on the other side of the jacket, not in the left back pocket…

I can feel my panic mounting as I rifle through his things, trying to ignore the angry cries of the man in the driver’s seat, telling me to stop, telling me that I’m going to be in really fucking big trouble if I don’t come around and help him get out of the damn truck. I shut him out, I don’t even look at him. Where is the fucking key? If I can’t find it, if it’s fallen out of his pocket somewhere when the SUV flipped –

There is a raw, wet noise next to me and I glance over. The tip of the tentacle, glossy with slime and bleeding from a dozen skin-deep cuts, from rocks and sticks and just abrasion with the ground, is nuzzling at the deflated rear tire of the SUV. It’s insane how normal it seems to me. A month ago I would have figured I was going insane if I had seen something like this grubbing around on the ground like someone trying to reach a potato chip they’ve dropped on the floor. Where is that fucking key? Goddam it –

I take a step, dragging the FBI man with me, or at least trying to, because the fucker is heavy, and immediately the tentacle jolts in my direction. I feel a scream catch in my throat but I manage to clap a hand to my mouth and stop it. The sound? No, that doesn’t make any sense, the thing’s skin is smooth and clear and bereft of anything close to being an ear. Vibrations then, that must be it.

I eye the thing. The end is blunt and about as narrow as a baseball bat but it widens out to about as wide around as a tree trunk a little further down. It’s obviously very strong; rippling bands of muscle shift beneath its thin skin. If it got wrapped around my leg –

“You fucking bitch!” the driver curses at me. He’s still yanking fruitlessly at the seat belt. I see the tentacle’s skin twitch with each word, and then it snakes its way under the SUV. “You bitch! I swear to god, if you don’t come over here - !”

I have one last pocket to search. Rear right. Wallet, what feels like a package of breath mints or chewing gum, a piece of paper…no keys. I shove my hand in deeper, all the way to the bottom, and then I find it, the tiny metal key brushing against my fingers. My heart jolts in my chest and I pull it out as quickly as I can and then try to unlock them myself, but it’s no use, I can’t reach it. “Fuck,” I murmur, out loud, and then glance carefully at the tentacle. It’s wrapped itself all the way around the SUV. At this point the man inside has seen it. It sounds like he’s having a panic attack.

I start to back away slowly, just as the tentacle flexes and lifts the SUV into the air. “Holy shit,” I murmur before I get a grip and shut up. The tentacle seems satisfied with its prize, though – it doesn’t pay any attention to me. There’s more commotion inside the SUV and then – I jump – a few gunshots. I see them slap into the tentacle’s flesh, puffing out sprays of blood, but it’s entirely futile. The tentacle flexes and crushes the SUV with the ease of someone crushing a can of Coke and then it whips back down into the dirt, still clutching the SUV, and then they both are gone.

My heartbeat is very loud in my ears. The enormous tentacle off in the distance is still scrabbling around someplace else, pointed off in the other direction from me. My hand have gotten very sweaty and I’m scared I might drop the key someplace, but I haven’t got anywhere else to carry it. I take a step tentatively, cringing in anticipation, waiting for another tentacle to burst out of the ground and scoop me up, but when none are forthcoming, I break into a hobbling sprint and make for the facility. I have to find someone who’ll be willing to uncuff me, who might be willing to help me get back down into the Pit so that I can find Elena –

The thoughts die in midstride. I crest the ridge and stare down at the wreckage below me. There are three more tentacles of roughly the same size as the first rooting around the wreckage of the administration building, which looks as though it’s been peeled open like a tin of sardines. Before me, down on the road, a Humvee speeds by, and then another. There are people rushing all about the sedative plant, and I wonder if they’ve done anything, if there even is anything they can do. Can they turn it up to 11, pump even more sedative into the thing? Would that even work, does it have a tolerance for it?

The exclusion plate, at least what I can see of it from this vantage, is cracked into three pieces, and beneath is just pale skin basking in the orangey sunset.

As I watch, one of the tentacles shudders and flops to the ground. I can feel the impact throb through my soles all the way from here. A dust cloud rises from beneath it.

I scan the line of intact buildings nearest me and then slowly, unwillingly, I grin and start to make my way down the slope.

For there, just down the hill and across the road, is the ranger barracks. And there, in the third window from the left, a light shines, and I can see Fumi’s unmistakable shaggy silhouette outlined in it.

 * * *

 When he opens the door after about five minutes of knocking I push in past him and scan the room. “Roan!” he blurts. “What the fuck are you doing here – “

“Fumi, there’s no time. Are we alone?”

“Well, yeah, but –“ he says, and then he breaks off. He’s glimpsed the cuffs around my wrists and I give him a little sheepish grin. “What’s going on?”

“I should be asking you that,” I tell him. “Why’s the Pit freaking out? And why are you in here and not -”

He blows his breath out, and glowers. “Firstly, Makado’s taken a Tunneler down to get that crystal. Those always piss off the Pit and I guess after 2007 it decided to grow some extra appendages near here that we weren’t aware of and now it’s putting them to good use. And secondly,” he shrugs, “I think they just forgot about me. I’ve had my radio on and I’ve been waiting to respond but I never got a call. Not really complaining.”

I hold up my hands. “Sorry – Tunneler?”

“It’s what they used to make a lot of the bigger tunnels in the Pit. You ever seen those big digging machines they use to dig train tunnels and stuff through solid rock? Think that but bigger and grindier. It’s got vacuums to suck away the dead flesh, cauterizes as it goes, the works. Pisses the Pit off like crazy, though, and now that it’s hungrier these days I guess it got mad enough to pitch a fit about it. They still have two or three of them in a hangar, sitting around from the old Anodyne days just in case they ever need them.”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmur. “And they – Admin or whoever – they let her do that?”

Fumi laughs. “I guess,” he says. “I heard she stormed into Admin and raised a huge stink about the crystal, told them this was their last chance before the Leechman vanishes with it, and they signed off.”

“Fuck her,” I growl. Fumi looks a little taken aback at how bitter I sound. He starts to ask something but I shake my head. “There isn’t time. Help me out of these. Please.”

Fumi mutters a curse under his breath and takes the key. The cuffs fall away from my wrists and clatter on the floor and I am so relieved I don’t know what else to do but hug him. He smells of sweat and cigarette smoke but at the moment I don’t care. His hands flutter, startled, before they close around me and he holds me gently. He pats me on the back after a moment, and I draw away from him. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “I was just –“

“I get it,” he says. “Look, why don’t you just get out of here? With all this chaos it’d be easy to –“

“No,” I tell him. “I can’t, I can’t just leave. I have to get back down there.”

“Roan,” he starts. Something about his tone puts pressure on some place in me that’s been bending and bending and finally I snap.

“Fumi,” I say, my voice harsh, “Elena is down there. Maybe she’s already dead, but if she isn’t, she needs me. Nobody else is going down to get her, especially not now.” As if to punctuate my argument, there is another crash from nearby as a tentacle slams into the ground. Fumi nods, explaining that they’ve probably upped the sedative dosage and it’s finally taking effect. His face grows more serious.

“Do you know if she’s still alive down there?”

“No,” I admit. “But if she’s dead I – I have to know. I just have to. Now you can either help me or not, but if you don’t, I’m probably going to end up dead,” I tell him. I marvel at the perfect calmness in my voice. “One way or another, because I’m not experienced enough, because I don’t know the landscape, whatever. But I’m going down there, and that’s final.”

I stand there staring up at him, my hands balled into fists on my hips, and am relieved when his shaggy face breaks open in an unwilling smile. “Alright,” he says after a moment. “But I hope you know a way down, cause there’s no way we can get in through the main orifice now. When the Pit bucked it cracked the plate and wrecked the gantry up here.”

I bite my lip. “Couldn’t we use whatever hole Makado made with the Tunneler?” I ask. Fumi shakes his head.

“No, it’ll be practically vertical. You could maybe rappel down it if you had a whole team to support you but we won’t.”

I utter a mumbled curse. I feel like punching something. If I’ve come all this way and I can’t go back down and get Elena because Makado bored a hole into the Pit and it threw a fit about it –

I stop. Fumi raises his eyebrows. I look over at him and grin. “Fumi, I know how we can get in.”

“Okay, but how - ?”

“There’s no time,” I tell him. I grab his hand and drag him over to the equipment locker in the corner. “Get a suit on and then help me with mine,” I tell him, crouching down to take the boot off. “We’re going to save Elena.”

Continue with Part 30

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[helloteeceeblog]

I wrote this pastiche years ago based on the first issue of Grant Morrison’s comic ANNIHILATOR and like, might as well post it?

ANNIHILATOR

Fitz Kreiner pulled another cigarette from his pocket. It was in his mouth and lit before he realized he hadn't finished the last one. Or the one before that.

FADE IN:

SPACE. THE VAST PANORAMA OF THE GALAXY.

Stars wheel through the spiral of the Milky Way as the camera moves toward the centre, the supermassive black hole at the nexus of space and time.

A blue box spins through the void. Behind it, a grey cylinder, menacing, spikey. They crash together, spikes piercing the blue-painted wood of the first box.

INT. THE TARDIS.

Reimagined from the classic series. It's like a gothic cathedral rebuilt by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

THE DOCTOR as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy. His question mark cardigan has been replaced with a more formal suit. His hair is longer, he looks worn and haunted. He runs through the corridors of the TARDIS, pursued by COMMANDER MAXIL. This is a new regeneration, no longer performed by Colin Baker. Maxil's features are obscured beneath the shadows of his helm. He carries a Time Lord gun, a STASER.

MAXIL Doctor! You have been tried and found guilty! This time justice WILL be properly executed in the name of the Time Lords!

DOCTOR Stuff and nonsense! The Time Lords are corrupt and decadent. The Time War has turned them into monsters.

The Doctor stops. They wrestle, and the Doctor gains control of the staser. Coldly, he fires it directly at Maxil's head. Maxil's head jerks back. He grunts in pain and falls backwards into an end table decorated with a vase full of flowers. Blossoms and petals erupt into the air.

DOCTOR I am the Doctor. I am Ka Faraq Gatri. I am the one who stops monsters.

FADE OUT.

"Are you listening, Fitz?" Fitz's agent, Anji Kapoor, was looking impatient. Better nod.

Fitz nodded.

"You promised me a screenplay. This is fifty pages of act one," said Anji. "I need more than this. If you don't deliver, Fitz, Michael Brookhaven gives the gig to someone else. Someone younger."

"I've almost got it," said Fitz, adding another cigarette to the burning mess. "I just need a little more time."

"It's been two years since your last movie," said Anji. "Five years since The Taint. You're not Hollywood's enfant terrible anymore. Brookhaven wants to turn this Doctor Who pilot into a series. You nail this, you still have a career."

"I'll get it for you," said Fitz, lighting another cig.

"When?"

"Monday," said Fitz. "I'll have it for you by Monday."

****

Fitz dropped a cigarette down the sinkhole. It continued to glow as it spiralled down into the darkness, growing smaller and smaller. There was no sign of it hitting bottom.

"Are you sure about this?" asked the realtor. "We can look at other houses in your price range."

"I like this one," said Fitz. He dropped another cigarette into the hole, just in case the laws of physics had changed. "It fits my mood."

"There's a literal sinkhole in the living room," said the realtor, as if this wasn't obvious. "The whole place might collapse at any moment."

"Like I said," said Fitz. "I'm a writer. I'm looking for inspiration."

"Well! That does explain why you'd want to live in a crumbling deathtrap. Writers are eccentric." The realtor nodded sagely. "I write a little myself. Would I know any of your work?"

"Have you seen a film called Interference? Or The Taint?"

"The Taint? With Tom Cruise, right?"

"That's the one," said Fitz.

"That was out a long time ago."

"A long time," said Fitz. "Yeah."

"What's your new film about?"

"It's a reboot of the classic British science fiction series, Doctor Who."

"Never heard of it," said the realtor.

****

Naked bodies writhed on the floor around the sinkhole. This was a *proper* orgy. Boys, girls. Fitz didn't care. They were there for atmosphere.

"Stop talking to me," Fitz said to one of them. "I'm trying to write."

FADE IN:

SHADA. THE PRISON OF THE TIME LORDS.

Darkness. Only the centre of the room is lit. The DOCTOR, as portrayed by Paul McGann, is strapped to a table surrounded by Time Lords in dark, chitinous armor.

INQUISITOR DARKEL Confess, Doctor! Confess your crimes!

DOCTOR I confess! I'm criminally handsome. And brilliant.

INQUISITOR DARKEL Tell us about the girl, Doctor. Tell us about Peri Brown.

DOCTOR That didn't happen! That was a lie! Your lie!

DARKEL It did happen, Doctor. Now you will be imprisoned here with her, as a reminder of what you've done. Forever.

The background darkness is lifted. A coffin-like structure behind the Doctor is revealed. Within it is the frozen body of PERI BROWN, played by Nicola Bryant.

DARKEL She was your companion, Doctor. You killed her. You removed her brain. How do you sleep?

DOCTOR As seldom as possible. I usually wait for a Cyberman or one of you lot to knock me out. But I didn't do this.

DARKEL You did. Confess!

DOCTOR You really think you've caught me? I'm insulted.

DARKEL What do you mean?

DOCTOR The flowers in the TARDIS. You'll find they contain a rare pollen dangerous even to a Time Lord metabolism. I've been immune, of course, since my fourth regeneration, but you lot should find yourselves falling into a coma very soon.

The TIME LORDS begin groaning and falling to your knees.

DOCTOR And I slipped out of my bonds forty minutes ago.

He stands up.

DOCTOR Now that the monsters are dealt with, it's time for my real work. I, the Doctor, vow to reverse the order of creation. And find a cure for death!

Fitz blinked slowly at his scene. The orgy was still going on in a desultory sort of way. He groped for another cigarette, finding only empty packs.

"A cure for death," said Fitz. "I'm a genius."

He banged his head against the screen.

"This is rubbish. Absolute rubbish."

****

"This is rubbish," said Anji.

"I know," said Fitz.

"You said you'd get me something by Monday."

"This is something," said Fitz.

"This is incoherent at best. How stoned were you when you wrote this?"

"Ran out of cigarettes," said Fitz.

"You look a mess. When was the last time you slept?"

"As seldom as possible."  

"You look like someone punched you in the face for being an asshole," said Anji. "Is your nose bleeding?"

Fitz slowly tumbled from his chair, landing on his face.

"Fitz? Fitz?"

****

Fitz woke in a hospital bed.

"You don't remember how you got here?" asked the doctor. A doctor. Not the fictional character Fitz was writing about. That would be stupid.

"I don't remember anything," said Fitz. Senselessly, he groped automatically for a cigarette, knowing full well there wouldn't be one in a hospital.

"You have an inoperable brain tumor, Mr Kreiner," said the doctor. A doctor.

"It's Fortune," said Fitz. "Call me Fitz Fortune."

****

The police pulled him over on the way home.

"Have you been drinking, Mr Kreiner?"

"I have a bloody brain tumor," said Fitz. "Just give me a ticket. Give me all the tickets."

"We'll take care of this, officers," said a new voice. "FBI."

Bright light shone in Fitz's car window. Men in suits and dark glasses. "Does the name 'the Doctor' mean anything to you, Mr Kreiner?"

"I've just been to the doctor," said Fitz. "I have a brain tumor."

"You've been to a doctor. Have you been in contact with an individual answering only to the name 'the Doctor?'"

"Is this a joke? The Doctor is the lead character in my screenplay."

"He's a fugitive. If he tries to make contact with you, let us know. My fiance loved 'Interference," by the way."

Fitz grunted. He'd had enough of this nonsense. He'd had enough of everything.

When he got home, he took a long drink. Whiskey. Still out of cigarettes. Fuck. He found a gun in his desk drawer and raised it to his chin.

"Fitz Kreiner." A stranger's voice. Plummy, amused.  Fitz had never heard it before, except in his head. When he was writing his screenplay.

Fitz opened his eyes. The stranger was wearing a green velvet jacket. A cravat. His hair was long, auburn. His eyes were blue. His face was handsome, aristocratic. Somehow not human.

"You called me, Fitz. So here I am. I'm the Doctor, Fitz. How can we help each other?"

[descendantofthesparrow]

Remember your past life - Prince! Harry Hook x Chosen knight! Reader - part 14 - the King, the past, the future

thank you @musicarose​ for commissioning 8 MORE PARTS OF THIS STORY!

=

You remembered the shrine you woke up in, a voice calling out to you, calling for you to wake up. You now recognized that voice as harry, but it must have been the version in the picture, and the one you saw the night before you traveled to the plateau.

Everything was piling up, and there seemed to be only one answer…but it was impossible.

So you looked for the old man, he had always had an odd knowledge of Saorsa and could be of use to you.

“(y/n)? where are yeh goin’?” you turned to Harry, unclipping the tablet and opening it to the photo, and shoving it in his face.

“wha-….is-is tha’ us? But I've-you, how?” you just shook your head, motioning for him to follow you, you rushed off, first looking for the old man in his cottage in the glades behind the mountain.

“(y/n) wait up!” harry called after you, his chest was tight, seeing that photo brought an odd feeling to him, he hated it.

Something was missing, and now the pieces were falling in place.

=

You huffed, the old man wasn’t here, and there was nothing truly helpful in his journal. “(y/n) wha’ the hell is goin’ on?!” harry panted, finally catching up with you. “wha’ was with tha’ picture and why were we in it? Why did we look like tha’? I've never worn those-“ you silenced him, shaking your head.

“I’ll explain later” you muttered, running back out of the cottage and heading towards the temple of time.

You didn’t bother to go through the front doors, climbing through one of the holes in the side and looking around.

You locked eyes with the tall goddess statue, sighing as harry landed next to you, stumbling as he stood up.

“looking for answers young ones?” you looked up, squinting as you looked up at the old man, he was on the roof and…was he glowing? “come up here! I'll reveal all” he turned and walked off.

You rushed out, harry close behind, finding a ladder you quickly climbed it and looked around as you reached the top, you saw the old man in the destroyed bell tower, and you were right, he was glowing.

You hopped over a gap in the ceiling, looking behind you and holding out your hand for Harry, he grabbed your hand and carefully jumped over the gap, continuing to grip your hand as you came closer to the old man.

“is he glowin’ or is it jus’ me” he whispered to you, a tremor in his voice. You nodded, and Harry sighed in relief. “okay, then im not goin’ crazy”

You climbed the last set of rocks blocking you from the old man, standing tall in front of him, blocking harry slightly from him.

The old man laughed, a proud smile on his face “well done there young ones, now then….the time has come to show you who I truly am”

You and Harry glanced at each other, the old man was acting if he had known you two for years, staring at harry was if he was a lost treasure, the old man spoke again.

“I was king Killian Jones….the last ruler of Saorsa…the kingdom which no longer exists” A bright flash of blue blinded you, you quickly shielded your eyes, slowly lowering your hand as the light died down. You blinked the spots away, hearing Harry gasp and grabbing onto your jacket, you looked, eyes widening as the old man no longer stood before you.

Now there stood a middle aged man, his greying hair now a striking black, icy ocean blue eyes staring back at you, the old rags he was wearing replaced by flowing black coat, a red vest, shining black boots, a silver crown on his head....and a hook where his left hand should be.

“The Dark one was merciless... It devastated everything in its path, 500 years ago. It was then that my life was taken away from me. And since that time, here I have remained in spirit form. Your memory was still faint when I first met you (y/n), so I did not wish to overwhelm you with all this information. So rather than that, I thought it best to assume a temporary form. Forgive me. I think you are now ready. Ready to hear what happened 500 years ago. I think it would be best for you two to sit down”

You and Harry glanced at each other again, slowly sitting down on the floor, hands intertwined tightly. Killian nodded, turning to gaze at the castle, the dark energy still swirling around it. “to know the dark ones true form, one must know the story from millennia ago. The demon king was born long ago, but his transformation into malice has created the horrors you see know” he gestured to the castle, the black and red energy pulsating around it.

“stories of the dark one were passed from generation to generation in the form of legends and fairy tales. But there was also...a prophecy. "The signs of a resurrection of the dark one are clear. And the power to oppose it lies dormant beneath the ground."

a memory flashed through your mind, a slightly younger you watching as Sheikah and Saoran’s moved about, wielding mining materials.  you shook the memory away, continuing to listen to the kings story. "We also found the Guardians, an army of mechanical soldiers who fought autonomously. This coincided with ancient legends, oft-repeated throughout our land." He gestured to the decayed remains of the guardians, resting along the walls of the temple.

"We also learned of a prince with a sacred power and his appointed knight, chosen by the sword that seals the darkness. It was they who sealed dark one away using the power of these ancient relics. Five hundred years ago, there was a prince set to inherit a sacred power, and a skilled knight at his side." Harry winced as a flash of somebody, you, kneeling in front of him came to his mind, you glanced to him and squeezed his hand, he sighed and squeezed back. Killian glanced to you both, smiling slightly.

"It was clear that we must follow our ancestors' path. We selected four skilled individuals from across Saorsa and tasked them with the duty of piloting the Divine Beasts. With the prince as their commander, we dubbed these pilots Champions—a name that would solidify their unique bond." The shadows of the champions flew across your eyes, you felt like you knew them.

"The prince, his appointed knight, and the rest of the Champions were on the brink of sealing away the dark one... But nay... he was cunning, and he responded with a plan beyond our imagining. He appeared from deep below my Castle, seized control of the Guardians and the Divine Beasts, and turned them against us." Screams echoed in your minds, Harry biting the inside of his lip to stop himself from kneeling over from how loud they were. You took a deep breath, rolling your shoulders as you forced down the noise.

"The champions lost their lives. Those residing in the castle as well. The appointed knight, gravely wounded, collapsed while defending the prince... And thus, the kingdom of Saorsa was devastated absolutely by the dark one. However... The prince survived...to face the dark one alone." The king turned away from the window, gazing into Harry's eyes…that matched his own. "That prince was my own son... My only son…Harry.”

You and Harry looked to each other, piece by piece, the flashes of memory like dreams, the blackouts, the echo's of voices. “And the courageous knight who protected him right up to the very end... That knight was none other than you, (y/n). You fought valiantly when your fate took an unfortunate turn. And then, you were taken to the Shrine of Resurrection. Here you now stand revitalized, 500 years later."

The puzzle was coming together.

"The words of guidance you have been hearing since your awakening are from prince Harry himself. Even now, as he works to restrain the dark one from within the Castle, as he calls out for your help. However, my son's power will soon be exhausted. Once that happens, the dark one will freely regenerate himself and nothing will stop him from consuming our land.”

You furrowed your brows, standing up slowly “but if Harry’s in there…” you pointed at the castle, before pointing back at your Harry, who was looking down at the ground in shock “how is he…right here?”

“I am not sure” Killian spoke softly “I believe his soul may have split at some point in the last 500 years, reincarnating into who he is today, without his magic, while my son still resides in the castle”

“so i’m” harry stood slowly, stumbling slightly as he did so, you reached out for him, taking his shoulder and letting him lean on you “im yer son, but….a reincarnated version of ‘im?”

“yes, that would be the basics, and (y/n) is the same knight from 500 years ago, she simply never aged within the shrine” so…you were a knight…whom, 500 years ago, was the personal knight of Harry…who was a prince…this was a lot to take in.

“I might sound crazy but” Harry took a shaky breath, turning to face you “it makes sense, all those weird-ass memory like dreams, the headaches whenever we saw something from back then, my freak out when I saw the shrine? It all goes together”

You nodded “I agree” Harry wound his arm tightly around you, hugging you into his side.

“(y/n)…I have no right to ask this of you….but I am powerless here…” Killian looked into your eyes, defeat clear in his ocean blue eyes. “you must save him…my son” he locked eyes with Harry, the spirit king feeling a burning in his chest and he looked away, eyes down-turned “…and do whatever it takes to annihilate the dark one” he sighed, turning to look out on the lands. “somehow, the dark one was maintained control over the divine beasts, as well as those Guardians swarming around the Castle. I believe it would be quite reckless for you to head directly to the castle at this point. I suggest...that you make your way east, out to one of the villages in the wilderness." You separated from Harry, following the king's hand, which was pointing out from beyond the spilt mountains.

"Follow the road out to storybrooke Village. There you will find the elder, Regina. She will tell you more about the path that lies ahead. Consult the map on your Sheikah Slate for the precise location of the Village. Make your way past the twin summits of the Dueling Peaks. From there, follow the road as it proceeds north..." He lowered his hand, turning to you and smiling. “I believe that is all I can tell you, now it's up to you if you wish to take on this task, as it is a heavy one, and as you are now no longer the knight that I knew, you have no personal reasons to do this, but please…save Saorsa…save my son” Killian disappeared in a flash of blue flames.

You stood there for a moment, looking out to the castle, a small light shining from the highest point. “ugg” you spun around, watching as Harry collapsed to the ground, holding his head, you slid down next to him, wrapping your arms around him, gasping lightly as he sobbed, tears dripping from his chin and onto the dusty floor of the bell tower.

“Harry” you whispered, running a hand through his hair “are you-no stupid question, what's wrong?”

“I hate that it all makes sense” he panted, turning and burying his head into your shoulder “I hate that what he said makes sense!”

You nodded slowly “it does” you snorted “it makes a stupid amount of sense…especially since I woke up in that shrine 2 years ago” harry sniffed, turning his head slightly to look at you, a curious look in his eyes.

“yeh did?” he sniffed, flinching slightly as you brushed away a tear.

“yeah, I woke up alone, in a glowing room…and I heard a voice…your voice, telling me to wake up, and that I was needed” you sat back slightly, letting harry lean more of his body on you. “then I picked up the sheikah slate and left the shrine of resurrection, I met the old man and then….everything's a blur after that, but I felt a pull to Auradon…you must have been the pull” you brushed a lock of hair out of Harry’s eyes, smiling down at him.

Harry coughed, standing up and rubbing the back of his neck, looking to where his “father” was only moments ago “we should probably tell beasty boy and the others” he muttered, you shook your head, standing with him.

“not yet, we don’t have proof, and it could end the trip early, I need to stay longer” Harry looked down at you, furrowing his brows,

“yer….yer gonna try to save Saorsa?”

You looked back down at the ground, the king's request echoing through your mind.

‘save him…save my son’

“yes” you looked into Harry's ocean eyes, a fire set in your soul “I will save Saorsa, no matter what it takes”

---end of part 14--

taglist (srry for not tagging yall the last couple parts!)

@the-walking-daryl​

@dpaccione​

@redryderdesigns​

@forever1313​

@itsmysticalmystery​

@adamsbubblegumbitch​

permtaglist

@queer-cosette​

@lunanight2012​

@sephiralorange​

@daughter-of-the-stars11​

@amorathegamingkitsune​

@random-thoughts-003​

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Everything Money Can Buy (4/12)

Summary: The Greatest Store in the World AU. When misfortune strikes and leaves Emma Swan and her son homeless just before Christmas, the ever-resourceful Emma has a ready solution. They’ll move into Mills Department Store, a place they can only dream of affording to buy from. It’s not easy, having to deal with a perpetually grumpy doorman, a nasty assistant manager, and an extremely suspect Santa, but Emma and Henry soon learn that the kindness of strangers is something money can’t buy.

Swan Believer centric, with eventual Swan Queen and background Rumbelle and Dwarf Star.

Rated: G

=====

[One] [Two] [Three] [AO3]

=====

Four

Henry wasn’t really sure what to make of Mum’s plan to camp in Mills until the holidays were over. On the face of it, it seemed like a brilliant idea. There was more than enough space for them, after all, and even if they had to keep dodging Zelena and Gold and various security guards, it wasn’t like there was nowhere to hide. Mum had already proved very good at blending in and getting by with sheer audacity.

Henry couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong, though. Living out of a department store that they couldn’t afford to buy from seemed fraught with danger. What if they broke something that, unlike the microwave, was actually for sale? What if they ran out of sell-by scones to eat? He didn’t want to confide his fears to Mum, because he knew that they really didn’t have any alternative, and he wanted to go back to the homeless shelter as little as she did.

They had ended up back in the toy section as they waited for the shop to close, and as good a time as Henry had been having with the display models, there was only so much he could do with them whilst the department was still full of other kids and parents frantically searching for the one gift that their child was clamouring for in time for Christmas. The adults were behaving even more badly than the children were, and nowhere was this more embodied than in Santa Claus himself.

Mills had a new Santa this year. For all the previous years that Henry had visited the store during the Christmas period, whilst Santa’s grotto was in residence, their Santa had always been played by the same man, one who had a genuine beard and merry twinkling eyes.

This year’s Santa was a much younger man with a fake beard that kept falling off his chin to show scrappy black stubble underneath. He was also accompanied by a new elf. The previous Santa’s elf had been a jolly little old lady whom Henry was fairly sure was actually Mrs Santa. The new elf was a small, fat man, trailing after Santa as he made his way around the toy department advertising the grotto. They passed Henry and the elf thrust several flyers into his hands. Henry discreetly got rid of them by shoving them under a display of action figures.

There was something very off about this Santa, and it wasn’t the way that he was swaying slightly and smelled rather strongly of rum. In fact, his sack was making a distinct sloshing noise as he swung it around haphazardly, and the elf kept having to duck to avoid being brained with contraband liquor. No, Henry didn’t trust him an inch, and his mistrust was rewarded when Santa came across Mum, who was back sitting in one of the tiny chairs in the corner playing with a Rubik’s cube. It was good to know that Mum was still a kid at heart as well.

“Hey, gorgeous. Fancy a ride on my sleigh?”

He waggled his eyebrows and Mum just gave him a disgusted look.

“I think you might be the worst department store Santa I’ve ever met,” she said conversationally.

“Yeah, well, it’s only a seasonal job,” Santa muttered. “I get much better gigs in the summer.”

“Don’t let the children hear you say that. You’ll be ruining the magic of Christmas for them, and I don’t think that the management would take too kindly to that. I’d be careful if I were you. You don’t want to lose this gig in the winter, however much better your summer ones might be.”

Santa just glowered at her, and moved away, his ho ho hos having lost what little merriness they’d had to start with.

Henry went over to Mum, sitting down on the chair beside her and wondering what to say. He couldn’t really tell her that he was bored, it would be ungrateful. He was in the greatest toy department in the country, probably, surrounded by every toy his heart could possibly desire, but the problem was that he didn’t actually own any of them and at the end of the day, they would all have to go back on their shelves. He wanted his own things, even if they were shabby and worn from years of love. He wanted his own space, his own home. The store was great, but it was nothing like a home. If only they could just go down to their tent and hole up against the world with all their own stuff.

Mum successfully completed the Rubik’s cube and looked over at him.

“You ok?”

“Yep.”

Mum raised an eyebrow and Henry sighed. She was always able to tell when he was lying. Well, she could generally always tell when anyone was lying, which was a useful superpower to have in most situations, but not when she was using it against him.

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s downright depressing here,” she said. “Let’s go downstairs to books. I reckon that as long as we don’t dog-ear them and we put them back on the shelves when we’re done, they wouldn’t notice us taking a couple for personal use for a while.”

Henry could get behind that idea whole-heartedly, and they made their way down to the books section. Just like toys, it was stupidly busy, but at least there were a lot fewer screaming babies and toddlers throwing tantrums in this department. There were even armchairs. Henry made a beeline for the children’s section and was soon wrapped up in the world of fairy tales. Maybe there were some upsides to living in the store after all.

X

Behind the customer service desk, Belle eased one foot out of her stiletto heel and wriggled her toes before replacing it and doing the same on the other side. Whilst she was used to wearing sky-scraping heels on a regular basis, standing up in them for ten hours a day was not something that she would wish on anyone. Christmas was always the worst time for anyone working in retail, be it the cashiers in the food hall or her at the customer service desk. Everyone was always in a bad mood, everyone was always ready to throw down and fight over the slightest perceived annoyance, and no one spared a thought for the poor staff for whom it was also Christmastime, and most of whom didn’t have the cash to splash on anything from the store that they worked at.

Still, however much her feet were hurting her, Belle knew that Alistair had it worse, standing outside in the cold all day, in all weathers. The man must have an immune system made of iron, the elements that he was exposed to. If she’d been in that position she was sure that she’d never be in work due to catching colds and chills and flu all the time. Since everyone’s first impression of Mills was the doorman, it really wouldn’t do for him to be standing there sneezing every five minutes.

She hoped that the handwarmers would help him. She found them to be a godsend herself when she was walking home after work. Belle sighed. She probably shouldn’t be thinking about Alistair quite so much. People would start to talk. In fact, people were already talking. Her friend Leroy from maintenance had been complaining that she should just ask Gold out already before they both died from mutual pining, to which Belle had promptly responded that if she was going to make a move on her crush then Leroy also had to ask out Astrid in the tearoom.

Leroy had somewhat grudgingly stopped mentioning it after that, but Belle did have to admit that he had a point. She was hardly going to get anywhere if she kept dancing around her feelings like this. She’d hoped that giving him the handwarmers earlier would have shown him how she felt, and maybe elicited some kind of reciprocation from him. Leroy maintained that the feelings Belle had were requited, but Belle wasn’t so sure. Alistair had always been closed off and reticent with everyone, and Belle considered it an honour that his usual cool demeanour thawed out a little with her. She knew that he considered her to be a friend, but she couldn’t help wondering if it meant that he considered her slightly more than a friend.

Presently, the man himself came into the shop, rubbing his arms through his coat.

“It’s brass monkeys out there,” he grumbled, stamping his feet to try and get the circulation flowing again and grimacing when the motion jarred his bad ankle. Belle’s heart went out to him; if she’d had a chair she would have offered it to him, but apparently senior management did not approve of chairs. “Thanks for the handwarmers, though.” He took off his gloves and pulled out the sachets. “I’d be losing fingers to frostbite if it wasn’t for them.”

Belle took one; it was still warm and her own hands weren’t exactly scorching after spending all day in the foyer with people constantly coming in and out; letting the central heating out and bringing the cold air in. She was looking forward to a long hot bath when she got home. Maybe by the time she went to bed she’d have thawed out enough to get some sleep.

She looked over at Alistair, and found that he was also looking at her, and they both looked away, embarrassed at being caught. Belle straightened up. This was the perfect moment to ask him, really. There weren’t any customers coming in or out; there was no-one queuing up to complain at her. All she had to do was ask him out. Ask him if he’d like to go for a drink after work.

“Alistair, I…”

“Ah, Mr Gold. Miss French. As much as I hate to break up the party, I do believe that the doorman is supposed to be on the outside of the building?”

Alistair rolled his eyes, grabbing his gloves and the handwarmers off Belle’s desk. Belle just glowered at Zelena. Trust her to come and break up their moment. She had a knack for that. No matter if she had been nowhere near them five minutes before, she had the uncanny ability to know when Belle and Alistair were ‘fraternising on the clock’ so to speak, and she would appear in the nick of time to prevent Belle from ever managing to get the words out.

“You know, Miss West, I’d like to see you stand outside for ten hours and see how you get on with it,” Alistair said.

“Well, unlike you, Mr Gold, that’s not what I’m being paid to do.” She made little shooing motions towards the door and Alistair moved away, back towards the bleak December streets. He made a rude gesture at Zelena’s back as he left, and Belle couldn’t help but giggle.

“There’s really nothing funny about it, Miss French,” Zelena said. “You shouldn’t be distracting your colleagues. It sets an extremely bad example, and as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s almost Christmas. What does Christmas mean, Miss French?”

“Christmas means customers,” Belle intoned. It was the mantra that Zelena drilled into them every day at the staff briefing. Christmas means customers, and the customers are always right. Customers pay your wages, so they must be treated as if they’re God’s gift to humanity.

Sometimes, Belle thought that senior management might well be worse than the customers themselves. She often got the impression that Zelena would stake out the shop looking for potentially unhappy customers and then persuade them to complain, just so that she could get her money’s worth out of Belle.

Every Christmas, Belle swore that it would be the last one that she worked in retail for. Every Christmas found her living a lie. At least at Mills the money was much better than in the previous places she’d worked, but really, all customers were the same when you got down to it. For all the Mills clientele were the crème de la crème, their manners were just as shocking as everyone else’s when they were complaining. In fact, more so, most of the time, since they worked on the principle that money gave them a license to behave however they pleased.

Belle sighed, trying not to feel bitter, but it was hard. Too many festive seasons spent listening to people far richer than her scream at her that she had personally ruined their Christmas had made her lose the faith in humanity that she’d tried to hold onto for so long. Maybe that was why she sought solace with Leroy and Alistair so much. They had to deal with the ungrateful public just as much as she did, and to the public, they were invisible, the door holders and the microwave menders, of no note to the customers, who were naturally the most important people in the universe, and boy, did they know it.

Speaking of important customers, though… Belle caught sight of the mother and son (at least, she assumed they were a mother and son) that she had met earlier when she’d taken the handwarmers out to Alistair. They were coming down the stairs into the foyer, and she could have sworn she’d already seen them going up and down a few times today already.

Well, it wasn’t unusual for people to make a day of a shopping trip in Mills and go from top to bottom of the store and back again to make sure they hadn’t missed any of it, but they seemed to be suspiciously free of bags. In fact, they’d lost the bags they came in with somewhere.

Belle wondered, because the more she thought about it, the more she remembered seeing them come in the previous day as well, still laden down with all their baggage.

Unlike some more naturally suspicious souls would be, Belle wasn’t worried about them being shoplifters. In her experience, the people who stole from Mills were either professionals who stole to order for customers who could no longer afford the luxuries to which they had become accustomed, or people who could well afford what they were taking but who nevertheless baulked at the price and felt that since their haggling didn’t work, they’d just take it anyway. If you were desperate enough to have to steal to survive, then there was no way that you’d steal from Mills. The goods would be too hard to shift and would be completely useless. If you were living hand to mouth then you needed basic essentials; Belle knew that from experience after her father had lost his livelihood and she’d been breadwinning for the both of them. Mills provided a lot of things, but basic essentials wasn’t really one of them.

The pair coming down the stairs looked around furtively then ducked down towards the basement, and it made Belle wonder. Living in a department store was better than living on the streets, after all, especially so close to Christmas. Although she had no intention of telling another soul about her suspicions, she vowed to keep an eye out for them, just in case. She didn’t have all that much to spare, but she could help them out in her own way.

[majirocksoff]

Majima breaks Kiryu out of prison; now with alt backstories. Majima x Kiryu / Kiryu x Nishiki (implied) Takes place during Y1. (Longfic, 70k words+)

His name is One-Thousand-And-Five.

Yesterday he was someone else, had been given, with the manners of a machine and the politeness of policy, the name, Mr. One-Thousand-And-Six.

Tomorrow he will be someone else again, at the ringing of the perfunctory bell that divorces one day from another: Mr. One-Thousand-And-Four.

In between the going-aways and the coming-tos, he collects names like dust. He goes to the chow hall, and he becomes Wait Your Turn; in going to the yard he becomes Thirty Minutes More. At the shower he gains a uniquely ephemeral identity: Batch-Two-Quickly-Now. He goes in, let the water scald off his skin, be reborn in water burning so hot it strips him red. Coming out shiny like a cooked lobster, he can wear a new identity for the rest of the night: The Dogshit of Dojima.

— —

In his prison cell he is nothing, his action is waiting.

Waiting is not inaction, this is the second thing you learn in prison.

Before prison you have assumptions, and the assumption is that waiting is just something that happens while the rest of your life is unraveling, becoming, acquainting itself to happenstance; fusing itself, in chemical reaction to coincidence, so that events may soon happen. You are always about to do something while you are waiting: buy groceries, run errands, break someone’s neck. Waiting is anticipation, a pre-meditated murder of time.

You were wrong, you know that now. Waiting is action, this is what you learn in prison.

It is an action that must be actively done. You fold yourself as small as possible into diamond-shaped patterns in the privacy of your cell (waiting is not done in public, it is sacred). You may sit cross-legged or seiza, stand on ceremony or leaning coolly, curled up in your bed with an arm tucked behind your head. Sucking your thumb, if you must.

Your exterior does not matter when you’re waiting, what matters is your interior, which must be shrunk. You shrink yourself inside, small-small as possible, until you can be turned around and poured out, and out-plop comes your soul and it won’t fill even a leaky thimble. You do this by stripping identities out of yourself.

Once upon a time you might have wanted to be great, for example, to follow in the footsteps of Kazama-san, to trace yourself in his shadow.

You take this desire and you erase it, line by line from the top, beginning first from the greatest concept then extending to everything else. You first forget the sentence whole; then you dismiss in inches and angry nights everything else: Kazama-san, the concept of greatness, the idea of footsteps, the desire of wanting, an entity of ‘you’, the stretching of time, once of the past, until at last you can be left alone with nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Then you wait.

— —

The first thing you learn in prison, is that you have no identity.

You’re given an ID the moment you step in, and you think philosophical thoughts: ah, is this what I shall be? You were wrong, of course, because a series of number is an identity, and that identity is more solid than what you’ll eventually end up with.

Your identity becomes the days you have left, because 8-1-5-7-6 rankles your ears and bedevils your patience. At roll call, they put existential fear into you: will you be here for eighty thousand days, each by minutes longer than the last? You cannot. You fear. Your soul trembles and weep. You cast it off and take a new name: Mr. Three-thousand-six-hundred, all ten years to be waited tattooed on you; it is a long time but it can be waited. In contrast eighty thousand is forever.

When you take on the others it becomes easier; take them on in the secret corners of the prison where lips can split, skulls can break, nails torn one by one out of grasping flesh. There are many corners where the guards don’t see, willfully blind, and here you can be beaten by anyone: your seniors, your juniors, your hitmen, your old friends, your new enemies. Gradually in blood you extract from them new names:

The Dogshit of Dojima, that fucking backstabbing cunt, the lil Tojo shit, why ya staring, asswankcuntsucker, goddamned cocksucker, oi fuck off, are-ya-happy-now-ya-murdering-cunt, and so on.

They’re fine names; at least they don’t have numbers.

— —

The man with the one eye comes and instantly breaks every rule. He is an earthquake: in his presence you must obey new rules, run for high ground, cower in clear spaces.

He comes, swinging his hips like a new officer, twirling his hands holding an invisible bat, eating with his lips a pop song five years too new for you. He peels back the skin of the cell the moment he arrives. He overturns containers. He looks into the toilet, opens up the flusher, cracks open the sink to examine the deep sadness of the hole in the middle. He takes out his sheets, folds it messily so that he can lay in it like a well fucked boy.

All this you see, his cell is right opposite yours.

“Yo,” He says. He puts his legs up in a cross, carefully, making space for the steel tips he must have worn once. He straightens the eyepatch he was allowed (they had tried taking it from him, but realized too late it was too much a part of him, it would have killed him).

“What’s yer name?”

You are surprised. It is a terrible question, a faux pas, an abhorrent question never asked in prison. How could he, how dare he?

A name? He wants a name? But you don’t have a name, you’re a condemned spirit. You’ve worked hard to get this far. The Japanese dream: work so hard you don’t know who you are. Once you had a name, and it’d laid discarded in a laundry pile. You wait for him to understand how rude he’s been and go away.

“Oi ya deaf? Ya want me to go over there and beat it out of ya?”

There’s three feet of corridor and two sets of bars separating you, and you see that he means it.

You lick your cracked, chapped lips, tried hard to recall…

“My… Name?”

“Just my luck,” He swore. “I’m roomed with a fuckin’ idiot. Your name! Your name! Are ya daft?”

He needs to be patient. Names are the first thing to go, and the last thing to be replaced. He doesn’t know what he’s asking, demanding a name. Oh, the weeks to come, wracked in the throes of identity. Does he not know? Does he not care, how much this hurt, to recall a name?

Reluctantly, slowly (time itself is slow here) it is said.

“My name is… Kazuma. Kiryu. Kazuma, Kiryu, Kazuma. Yes, that’s my name.”

Oh, he says, mouth perfect on an O. The Dragon of Dojima? That Kazuma-fucking-Kiryu? That you? The Dragon of Dojima? The fucking Dragon of Dojima?

“Hell yeah! Always wanted to fight me a dragon! Sit tight in that cell, dragonshit, because I’m comin’ for ya Kiryu-chan!”

— —

Majima Goro was introduced to him in bits of nerve, bones, and tissues.

Kiryu goes as far away from him as he can. Now that he has identity it is not so easy to walk the hallways of the prison; it clings to him like bits of plastic wrap, tight and suffocating, each piece determined to make themselves be remembered. Every nook and cranny and day and night that once he’d lived as a young man of Kamurocho, clamored to be the one to dice his anonymity to pieces. He will not be forgotten, he cannot forget, not if they have any say about it.

In the manner of Majima’s walking and the dance of his fingers on the cutlery he sees the glittering manner of a younger Kamurocho, a visitor, a stranger, here to tell him: time has passed, but not enough time yet so that you can see it firsthand. Time is here to visit. The outside world has been let in, poured angry but fearsome into his cells.

The rattling of Majima’s bars replaces his roll call, his silent private mornings.

“Hey,” He screams (he is always screaming, he has no other verb). “Hey Kiryu-chan! Wake up, I’m bored!”

At night he rattles them like chains, screaming again: “Tell me a bedtime story, Kiryu-chan! Hey? Ya ignorin’ me? I can’t sleep, why don’t ya stay awake too? We could play imaginary shogi, how 'bout that?”

He is gyoku; the king that has come to sweep all of Kiryu’s neat, patiently-allocated time away and replaced it with himself, loud and trying, rolling over all the hallways into the secret corners where he is allowed to beat up Kiryu.

The first time he does this he shatters bone, broke clean through in one piercing fist Kiryu’s entire cheekbone, part of his jaw. Lovingly Majima brought him to the sink and tended his wounds; he tended him five times, smashing Kiryu up-down-up-down onto the metal until it shatters Kiryu’s nerves, it was so loud, and the metal had caught him in the ear. Majima left him tended, tender, tenderized, lying in a pool of blood leaving him rapidly for the freedom of the drains. The water, slow and warm now, cascading over him, lights bright and disorienting, the smell of soap mixed with the secrets of prison bathrooms.

He is made to realize he is fuhyo; a low mere degraded pawn. Like a pawn he could only move forwards, could not retreat, could then only be pushed into Majima’s arms, holding him in a chokehold over metal plates of curry and rice.

“Ya not such hot shit, Dragon of Dojima,” Majima tells him, whispering in his ear. “Ya just plain shit. I’m so disappointed. Ya disappointin’ me here, with your lousy ass performance. Kiryu-chan, ya need to shape up. Ya the best entertainment I’ve got around here and you’re so. goddamned. boring.”

He cracked his neck and laughed the whole time Kiryu goes down.

Once Kiryu remembers, he would have soared with Majima in his clutches and brought him down like thunder, would have stepped on him and never realized it - ah, might have thought, it’s dirtying the soles of my shoe, the little soul of Mad Dog Majima stuck in the rubbery meat he walks on.

“Kiryu-chan!” The hound howls. “Kiryu-Kazuma-chan! Come on, let’s play imaginary shogi! Are ya mad I beat ya? Or are ya mad that I beat ya up? Don’t be such a princess, Kiryu-chan! Let’s play, let’s play, let’s play!”

The hellhound becomes a puppy at night, frolicking in the lonesome cells; his cell bounded by Kiryu’s bounded by others. Only other people don’t matter to him; only strangely, Kiryu mattered to him. Kiryu was fun, Kiryu was gokudo, Kiryu had a past. The others Majima couldn’t wake up, couldn’t ask: who are you? What did you do to end up here? They can’t answer him, all of them mute and anonymous, because most of them have worked hard to forget, and unlike Kiryu could not be brought back.

With their sad sunken eyes and closed eyelids they watch Kiryu and Majima play imaginary shogi; kei-ma leapt over kin over gin, pushing aside hisha, storming onto kaku. Who are you, Kiryu whispers one night in bravado. He pressed his head back against the cell bars, sitting with his eyes closed to better remember the shogi board. Hands folded loosely across his lap, moving invisible pieces around.

I am Kei-ma, Majima whispered. Kiryu collects this identity, examine it in the moonlight, thinks fragmented thoughts –

“Are ya an idiot, Kiryu-chan? It just looks like my name - it’s a joke! Ya stupid ass thinking it means anything?”

He grinned, laughing so hard he overturns their imaginary board; neither can remember now which pieces were where. “This prison getting to ya, you’re a goddamned old fuck now.”

— —

Trapped now in the machine of his identity, Kiryu loses his numbers. He realized this one day when he had to go down to the office, to ask with form in hand exactly how many days he had to wait; the answer came back and surprised him, he is holding less numbers than he thought he had. They had slipped through his fingers and rolled into forgotten corners when he wasn’t watching.

He is now Mr. Nine-Hundred-and-Fifty, a whole month having passed him in scorn. Those numbered days he could no longer wear; Majima had forced his identity back onto him and they won’t go on now, came on like a loose coat, baggy in the elbows. He can no longer wait, at least wait the way he used to. There is no patience to be had, with Majima strolling bored and callous into his privacy, intruding with answers, leaving with questions.

Why are you here, Majima-san, he asked - desperate to give Majima more form, more identity, to know more so that he can become less to Kiryu.

What crime did you commit? Who did you kill? How did you live?

“Wouldn’t ya like to know, Kiryu-chan? I’m bored, bored, so maybe I’ll tell ya - but ya have to beat me first.”

They dance in the yard. They have exactly six minutes before the officers come with batons and extra days, so they must be quick, trading fists until their faces are bloated with blood and torn epidermis; Kiryu dancing better now but still far from a match to Majima, so that Majima danced with him only because he had no better partners. A fallen dragon made of shit was still better than just plain shit. Majima pivots on the officer, says: it’s me, I started this.

An act of generosity. It surprises Kiryu, he doesn’t know what to say, Majima taking this sin into the confession of his records.

“I ain’t plannin’ ta stay here twenty-five years, so what’s a few months that I won’t be around for?” He bared nasty teeth at Kiryu. “I ain’t like ya. I ain’t the wallowing sort. I’ll be out before six months is up.”

Oh, Kiryu said. Glad but sad, sad and glad. He is relieved that Majima in leaving will restore him to his formless mass again; bittersweet that he loses such a strict mold. Kiryu Kazuma Kazama Nishikiyama Dojima. Things he can’t forget as long as Majima is around, rooting him, anchoring him without his permission and against his wants.

“Whoooo—”

— —

The days are slipping away so fast now that he has to seize it with both hands clenched so tight his knuckles go white. Stay, he commanded. Stay. Seizing his miserable days in his hands, he watched Majima prepare for flight. By inches and minutes and lost seconds he withdraws from Kiryu, become more and more likely to disappear during yard time and bath time and free time, to meet with associates strange and shapeless huddling in the other yard.

Lined up against theirs but separated by a fence is the small-timers, the low-hitters, the off-ballers, little people who won’t be doing more than six months in the most deprived luxuries, off-site beside them, counting less than one-hundred-eighty-days.

It is these people that Majima meets, forehead-to-forehead like lovers, whispering convoluted plans calculated like algebra. When they hide, when they bother to hide, Majima scratches at the fence with loose-tipped fingers, plucking the fence like a guitar, plucking tunes at his associates until they come: unwilling but bowed by Majima’s boys who’d sequestered themselves in the smaller prison.

Where is — He demanded.

What is —

How shall —

How does the flight mechanism work? How does Kiryu find out? He finds out in nerves; Majima sometimes, sidling up to him, having the nerve to ask: I have a question. Where is the control room for —

Kiryu frowning, turning away, saying go, go I don’t know, don’t trouble me, I’ve never seen, I couldn’t possibly know, I never meant to go, never meant to leave, this prison is for me, nine-hundred-days only left to be. Majima beating him with his fists until he lay shivering and nurturing wounds on the ground, beating his identity into him.

Tell me what you see, Majima demanded.

“Kiryu-chan, don’t ya lie to me. I’ve been watchin’ ya watchin’ and ya know it. Ya just don’t know that you know it. Well, that’s what I’m for. I’m going to beat your piece of shit memory into your head.” He seized Kiryu by the collar, lift him up so that he could be closer to the sun, shaking him over and over again.

“Tell me! Where is it? You know where it is!”

Come, Kiryu told him, spitting out blood. Led him to the dark places in the prison where things can be seen, push him into corners angled right, take him away from plans angled wrong. You’re not doing this right, he told Majima. This control room is patrolled all the time, six-at-a-go, it’s a no-go, a no-show, what you want, really want, is this other place. You won’t know it unless you’ve been like me; a man without identity, they don’t let anyone see if they’ve got eyes. The crow-pig comes and pluck out your eye, one on each side, if they see you waiting to watch.

“I get it,” Majima said. “Thanks.”

More, “Hey, ya wanna come with—”

No, he said, he only had nine hundred more to go, it didn’t mean anything to him. All he wants is for Majima to leave, and quickly - so that he can once more be subsumed by anonymity.

— —

In bits and pieces he watch Majima assembled his plan; in his patience Kiryu had learned to see everything, and in so seeing saw that his plan would work before Majima himself knows it. Majima shrunk and wrapped himself in ignorance until the plan itself is executed. He goes with the flow, himself. Doesn’t need to have foresight. He’ll work it until it works, even if he fails this time. They waited calm and nerveless in their cells for the escape that will come soon.

“It’ll work,” Kiryu told him sleepily. Tomorrow, he’s thinking. This will be their last game of imaginary shogi, so he slipped: slipped the golden knife in and ate Majima’s king whole.

“Damn, ya good, Kiryu-chan. Ya totally wreck me this time.”

“Thank you for teaching me how to play.”

“Teach ya? Kiryu-chan, ya always knew how to play. Don’t ya know? Don’t ya remember? You could do anything you wanted - that’s why you were the dragon. All I did was make ya remember.”

Oh, he doesn’t remember anymore; all he’d wanted to was forget. Tomorrow when Majima is gone, he’ll go back to forgetting again. Reverse-engineering an onion, putting back layer by layer his thin skin to cover the sound of the silence inside. Eight-hundred-something more days to be lived. The days had leapt from his hands but he’ll have them back under rein again. When Majima is unleashed.

“Good luck, Majima-san,” He said.

“Thanks, Kiryu-chan. Couldn’t have done this without ya,” Majima said.

— —

He comes awake, frightened by the silence.

Kiryu sat in the dark and listened: there were no sounds. Not just the greater sounds of the outside world: cameras that had stopped working, alarms silenced and napping, doors grinding to a halt in mid-air. There is silence in him everywhere that frightens him - he can no longer hear the sound of forgetfulness, he’s forgotten how to forget…

A knife pressed itself tightly to his jugular, nicked him not because it’d miscalculated. Its owner was just sadistic, wanted him to bleed, wanted to see the sheen of a dragon’s blood.

“Kiryu-chan.” whispered Majima. “Ya coming with me.”

“No,” He gasped. “No.” He wanted to stay, was terrified by the outer world.

“I ain’t givin’ ya a choice. Ya coming with me, whether ya like it or no. Ya my present to that fucking Nishikiyama cunt.”

He pushed his knife in. Hissed orders at Kiryu until reluctantly, Kiryu unfolded himself and groped with seeking hands in the darkness. At length he found the thread of the plan, and began to follow it as it unraveled in the darkness of the prison, its silvery length glowing with hope. They walked down the halls quiet and empty illuminated by the shining spool. Somewhere somehow Majima had secreted all the officers away.

The inmates lined row by row in their rat-holes to watch them, trapped in their cell that wouldn’t open. When they realized what had happened, they howled like hell itself - unfair! unfair! unfair! - and hands scratched, brushed, rend at them from all sides. The inmates will drag them down to the pits if they could only reach…

Outside.

Air the same but different; they’re on the other side of the fence now. There is a motorcycle waiting, a snakeskin jacket, a small tanto and a helmet. A set of clothes prepared by someone who thought Kiryu was as big as he’d seen Kiryu last. Untrue, he has shrunk now, made skinny by the weak broth of prison.

“Put on the helmet,” Majima said. There was only one.

“Don’t you—”

“I can’t fuckin’ see with a black glass on, asshole. Vision strictly 10/20. 'sides,” He smiles. “That skull of yours worth ten of mine, isn’t it?”

Kiryu knew nothing; there was too much not being said. He climbed onto the motorcycle, clamped loose hands around Majima’s middle, and then they flew, across snowy landscapes into the cold and a freedom he never wanted but had received.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #219

“make a move and you pay for it; pick a lord and you pray to it.”

Do you actually love your grandpa? I don't really remember either of mine. I do from what I remember and have learned of them, though. Do you actually love your grandma? I don't remember my dad's mom at all, but I mean, I love her simply for being my dad's mother, who loved her. My mom's mom, yeah, even though she's. Hard to like a lot of the time. Do you have Facebook? Yes. What was the last thing you posted on someone’s wall? A birthday post. Do you have MySpace? My old one still exists, but I sure haven't been on it since it was current. What is your favorite kind of music? Heavy metal. Favorite soft drink? Mountain Dew Voltage is actually cocaine to me rip. Favorite food? Probably like... pepperoni pizza or cheeseburgers. I'm a full-blooded 'Merican. Have you ever felt replaced? OH, HAVE I! Have you ever worn false eyelashes? No. Do you ever regret making a friend? I don't think so. Can you cure mental illness? I don't know about cure, but you can certainly learn how to handle it better and alleviate symptoms. Is God good? Define "God." Cats or dogs? Kitties. Do you play video games? Yeah, but I don't play nearly the variety that I used to. Do you take medication for mental health? Yes. Can you really be racist to a white person? No shit? Do you have a favorite hair accessory? What does it look like? No. What’s your favorite type of insect? Butterflies. What’s your LEAST favorite type of insect? Larvae, like maggots. Disgusting. Who was the last person you Facebook messaged? What did you say? What’s his/her favorite food? Idk and I don't feel like checking. I rarely use it. What was the last song you listened to? Does it mean anything to you? "Thoughts & Prayers" by Motionless In White is a mood with my mad-at-God-24/7 ass. It needs to stop honestly. I've become so hateful about religion. Not towards followers, mind you, just the concept itself. I could write a novel on this, but I don't feel like it. Just me and organized religion don't get along anymore. Have you ever slept in a water bed? On a water mattress, yeah. How do you feel about having sex during your menstrual period? Never tried, not for me. Sounds messy. Does your ex have a job? My most recent, I guess you mean? Yeah. Have you ever slept in a car? Yeah, on long drives to like New York and stuff. What was the last term of endearment you used (babe, hun, dear, etc)? *checks phone* "Sweetie." How often do you use Flickr? Never. I can't log into my account anymore since Yahoo said "fuck u Britt," so there's no point. Have you ever been on a blind date? No. Do you have a crush on the last person you texted? She's my girlfriend so y'know like- Have you ever got into an argument with the last person you kissed? We very much disliked each other at first, so... guess, lmao. Have you ever liked somebody who was nice to you, but horrible to everyone else? Eh, that's a mystery... Juan was very sweet to me, but I know he had a bad rep. I didn't really see how he interacted with others. How’s your appetite atm? It's normal. I'm not currently hungry. Out of all the conversations you’ve had recently, which one has made you smile or laugh the most? Sara randomly and excitedly texted me to tell me "Welcome to the Jungle" was on at work, which was on the radio both when I was there and she was here, so she thought of how much she missed me lakdjsfkalwe I smiled my face in half. Do you look decent in your most recent photograph? Eh, it wasn't awful. It was for my school ID. What is one vacation destination that many people think is just fabulous but which you personally have no desire to visit (or revisit)? New York City. My sis went and said it was 1.) insane and 2.) disgusting. If you were five years younger but knew everything at that age that you’ve actually learned over the last five years, what is one thing you would definitely do differently? Go to the partial hospitalization program way sooner. What serves as the greatest motivation for you in your daily life? To earn a happy, content future. What activity that you have to do every once in a while that you dread the most? "Every once in a while," I'd say clean Mitsu's cage. She is such a strange rat. Enjoys pets, but being picked up is a no sir. When people hear what you do for a living, what is the most typical question or comment they give you regarding your job? N/A If you were left alone for one hour with nothing more than a pen and a notepad, what would you be inclined to draw or write during those 60 minutes? I'd probably write a poem. I know I wouldn't draw 'cuz fuck no am I doing so with a pen. If you could witness anything at all in super-slow motion, what would you want to see? Uhhh. Idk. Anything I can think of, like lightning, I've seen because of the Internet. If someone were looking for you in a bookstore, in what section would they be most likely to find you? Probably like, young adult fiction/fantasy, something like that. What do you forget to do more often than anything else? Lately, take one of my mood stabilizers. I need to get the box out... aaaand forget every day. I haven't felt any different without it tho so like... If you could teach everyone in the world one skill, what would it be? Compassion, maybe. You’ve been offered the chance to paint a billboard along a highway with any message you choose, as long as it’s only 10 words long. What is your message? I'm not spending time musing over something that serious lakaljdsfawe. Would you ever travel to Africa? Hell yes. I desperately want to go to South Africa on the Tswalu Kalahari tour. Whose house were you last at? Besides my own, my older sister's. Have you ever had a near-death experience? I guess this depends on how near death you mean. I've been in one car accident that my mom managed to make minor only by being a good driver; realistically, we should've flipped, according to the cop. My mom just acted quickly enough. Then I heavily ODed, but I was given more than enough fluids in time to keep me surprisingly okay. I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't told Mom so quickly, and I don't care to think about it. I'm fucking lucky and don't want to think about what could've happened. Have you ever met anyone who was overly addicted to a computer game? Tbh I myself could've been in this position when my depression was so bad, but then there's factors to that that lean towards it just having been a preference versus addiction. Idk. It's not a problem anymore so not worth debating over. Have you ever been fingered? That was the first cheat when you chose abstinence lmao. What do you do the most when you are online? Watch or listen to something on YouTube. What video game have you played the most? So in WoW you can actually type in /played to see how long you've played JUST that one character up to the years (or maybe days?) down to seconds and. I will never type it in lmao. Ongoing games are v depressing. Do you have scars you don’t like to talk about? No, those are thankfully gone. What is something you and your significant other do that may seem weird to others? Be helplessly and openly in love with imaginary demons while dating each other lmao (she's a Freeza fanatic). When and why did you last cry? The second day of school because of math class. When was the last time you drank? I think like... back on the 4th of July. Or some days after 'cuz I know Mom and I didn't finish the container in one night. Do you wear jewelry a lot? Just my piercings, really. Save for on my ear lobes because the holes on the left are fucked up, yay. I'm going to wind up just slightly stretching the first holes when I can afford a small kit; actual studs or hoops look stupid. Never wanted gauges until the holes got too stretched by the weight of hoops; now something needs to be there. Who in your household do you not have a good relationship with? My sister's (who doesn't even live here...) dog Bentley. I hate him and he doesn't like me. No, that doesn't mean I mistreat a pet. He's just a pain in the goddamn ass. Who in your life are you scared to lose more than anything? My mom. I don't know what would happen to me or how I'd cope at this time. Honestly, would you rather be single or in a relationship? I'm happier in a healthy relationship. Do any of your friends not get along at all? No. I mean, not that I know of. What are your 3 favorite internet sites? I'd be LOST without YouTube, then KM follows up close. #3, uh... Facebook or Tumblr, I suppose. Have you ever gotten anything autographed, if so by who & what was it? No. Well, I do have a little book of Disney World character autographs, but I don't think that really counts. Do you prefer Walmart or Target? We use Wal-mart. Who is your favorite model? Sara is a gd model don't even @ me about it. What have you done that is out of character for you? The Joel thing is the most anti-Brittany thing I've ever done for sure. I can't think of anything more current that stands out, unless it's- NO WAIT, this was quite a few months ago, but I firmly stood against an opinion my psychiatrist made known. He's very talkative and open as hell about his beliefs in current events, and he said something about pit bulls where I was just like... um no sir. I wasn't going to be rude though to HIM of all people so just said I don't base dogs by their breed and shut up. Awkward silence and we moved on. What do you feel strong enough to protest about? LGBT acceptance and rights. I already protest by having given up Chic-fil-a okay I care y'all. What’s the biggest blooper you’ve never lived down? Who knows... What is the best thing you have done just because you were told you can’t? Idk. I'm lucky to not have really been told that... What are you most thankful for? Thinking it all over, probably being born where I am. Boy is America FUCKED UP in some places, but boy would I be in a MUCH worse place if I was born in, say, North Korea, between my mental issues, sexuality, and opinions that can go to either end of the spectrum. How do you feel about thrift shops or flea markets? I love them! You can find the coolest, wackiest shit. What do you like to put gravy on? I hate gravy with a passion. Have you ever gone canoeing/kayaking? No. What one thing in particular makes you feel good about yourself? I genuinely think I'm a nice person that has other's well-being in mind. What is priceless to you? Love, in any form. What is one thing you know about your family history you’re proud of? Uhhh. I guess more than anything, I'm proud of my distant cousin for her unwavering love for and loyalty to her daughter when it came to escaping the Middle East and her dictatorial husband. Read Not Without My Daughter, it's great. Do you keep a budget? I don't have an income. What makes you feel rested and refreshed? Rested, a good night's sleep following being truly exhausted. Refreshed, oh man, gimme a hot, long shower. Who depends on you the most? Nobody. Could you ever be someone’s bodyguard? Hell no. Has one of your biggest fears come true? Yes. I was entirely convinced the world would literally end if Jason left. That night still doesn't feel real. Have you ever let your mom or significant other fight a battle for you? Colleen and Mom once fought after I'd ignored her, so I guess? It wasn't my wish or anything though for her to do it; Mom had shit to say by her own volition, and I wasn't going to tell my mother "no you can't do that." Did you create a checklist for your ideal spouse? No? Have you ever ridden on a subway or train and what did you like about it? Nope. Do you have to experience something to fully understand it? Yes. What embarrasses you instantly? A LOT A LOT A LOT!!!!! It is SO easy to embarrass me, including second-handedly. Do you think you could be a firefighter, why/why not? Hell no, I'm most certainly not in the necessary shape, and quite honestly I'm not that willing to risk my life for random people that could be assholes. What do you think should be censored? Idk. I have mixed feelings on censorship, no matter how stupid it seems. Eh... yeah, idk. Are you related to anyone famous or historical, if so who? Queen Victoria and William Clark. Would you ever donate a kidney to anyone, and who? Depends on who and obviously if we're even compatible. Have you ever fired a gun? No. What is the main quality you think makes a great parent? Sincerely caring for them, probably. Who is a female role model in your life? My mom, in some ways. What childhood dreams have you neglected? Jfc a lot, I don't want to think about it. What do you have trouble seeing clearly in your mind? My future, honestly. It's hard picturing my elderly days. Like I'm not suicidal anymore, I just don't really... realize I'll get there, I guess. I can't picture myself being old and alive. Would you travel to space if possible? No, too long of a trip. Are you an optimistic person? I'm a realist. Do you consider yourself more realistic OR idealistic? ^ Have you ever felt bi-curious? I started out accepting myself as bisexual through thinking myself as bicurious. I quickly realized "bisexual" was more accurate than "bicurious," but it was an easier thing to shift acceptance towards in regards to yourself when you thought you were straight for 21 years. Are you a fan of U.S. President Donald Trump? No sir. I agree with some of his ideas, but I hate him as an asshole person without a trace of manners. Do you know anyone with autism, mood disorders or learning disabilities? Multiple. I'd assume most people know someone who fits at least one criterion there. Are you green-eyed? Not exactly, but they definitely have a green hue to them. They're a gray/green blue. Would you consider UFC fighting and WWE real sports events? I think it's beyond debate that a lot of it is staged, but I mean, I guess to a degree? You still have to fight. It's physical exertion. Have you ever had an immediate relative pass away of cancer? No. Wait. I can't remember if my grandmother had cancer or not... but I don't think so. She was just old. Would you rather work in an office, warehouse or on a retail shop floor? An office, definitely. In my work-hunting as well as actual work experience, office work is probably the only job I could actually do that doesn't require a degree... Do you have a favorite wild animal? Why? You can't know me and not be fully aware meerkats are my favorite animal. Why? Ho boy. I love social species, and meerkats have such strong personalities, and holy shit are those little things brave as fuck. They're so GOSH DARN CUTE!!!! too, and their loyalty to each other is astounding. I love how playful and curious the little guys are, and... just wow okay, I could write an actual essay on how I adore meerkats so goddamn much. Do you have any unusual, uncommon phobias? I'm sure there are other people afraid of whale sharks, but I don't think it's common? And is an actual phobia of pregnancy uncommon? Idk. Do you prefer Android or iPhone? I hate my Android. I've had an iPhone in the past, and it was great. Are you a fan of sweet, sour, salty, or savory snacks? All, depending on my mood. Most often I'd say I like sweet. Do you believe climate change is real? We can't be friends if you don't. Do you believe in evolution OR creationism? Evolution. Do you think people can really predict the future? Nah. Have you been to a lot of shrinks? I hate that word. Just call them therapists. But yeah. How often do you clean your room? Not often enough. I need to dust... Any movies coming out soon that you want to see? I DESPERATELY wanna see the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" one. Those books were my CHILDHOOD. What was the last fear you overcame? I don't know about totally overcame, but vocational rehab helped me quite a bit with answering the phone to numbers I didn't recognize. Have you ever hurt yourself trying to crack a body part? No, nothing on me really cracks. Well no, both my big toes do, but no, I haven't hurt myself trying to crack them. What’s the worst part about winter? The days where it's cold BUT ALSO WINDY asdkljfaklwej;awe Summer? It's too fucking hot and probably humid, too. Spring? POLLEN. Fall? Literally nothing. :') Are you allergic to anything? Pollen and silver. How many times have you changed a diaper in your life? Like, once. Which country has the most fascinating culture? Oh boy, idk. Who does your favorite song? Idrk what my current favorite song is. I say my all-time fave is "False Flags" by Massive Attack, but it's not something I constantly wanna listen to. I guess you could maybe say it's "Headache" by Motionless In White; I play and repeat that a lot. I've really been digging them lately. When was the last time you wore makeup? Shit dude, idk. Months ago. Do you prefer males or females or both? I'm generally afraid of men, but I mean, I don't "prefer" one over the other if he's a good guy. Where in your town do you go when you wanna chill with a few friends? I don't have any friends I go out with. But there's nowhere to go here anyway. Where’s the best place to get coffee? N/A Have you ever seen someone struggle with an addiction? My dad was an alcoholic, but he's recovered. He loved (idk if he still does it) fantasy football, too. Pretty sure I got my addictive personality from him, lol. When was the last time someone gave you flowers? Early 2017. Do you like cranberry juice? omfg NO. Do you play any zombie-killing video games? The Last of Us is fucking dope, but I didn't finish it before my PS3 broke. :'( I like the Resident Evil series too, and some of those games have zombies or similar creatures. And The Walking Dead game tears my heart out every fucking season. What is the dominating genre on your mp3 player/iPod? Varying forms of metal. Do you have a book shelf? No. What website do you spend way too much time on? YouTube is ALWAYS open. I constantly either watch let's players and a few other kinds of YTers, moving windows around so I can see it and do other things, or listen to music. Do you like wind chimes? I LOVE!!!!!!!!!! WINDCHIMES!!!!!!!!!! Do you have a fetish? No. Do you have a pet fish? No. Don't get me wrong, they're beautiful and calming, but not worth it for me personally. They don't have much of a personality at all, and cleaning a tank so much for just a fish isn't for me. Do you like kettle corn? (That sweet and salty popcorn) Yessss! Do you enjoy classic rock? Hell yeah, man. When was the last time you went for a walk, just cause? Not since I was at Sara's last. Do you listen to Type O Negative? No. Do you have any fillings or cavities? Yeah. Have you gotten your wisdom teeth taken out yet? No, and thankfully I don't need to. One was very close to needing to be, but it has just enough room. Do you actually read privacy policies when signing up for new things? "Depending on what I’m signing up for, I’m likely to at least skim it." <<< This. Did you have a lot of birthday parties when you were younger? If so, did you invite everyone in the class? I had a party every year up to... idk what age. And no, I only invited friends. Do you like when things are color coordinated? Yes. Have you ever participated in one of those “guess how many jelly beans, mints, etc. are in this jar!” contest? if so, have you ever won? Yeah, and no. Can you juggle? Nope. Have you ever mistaken a ringing phone on TV or in a movie for your own? Who hasn't? How often do you use bobby pins? Never. My hair's really too short for them. Well, I'd probably pin the right side up if I was doing something like cleaning. Do you live on an avenue, road, drive or something else? Road. What are your school colors? Blue and white. Have you ever taken a picture with Santa when you were little? Yeah. Have you ever rolled down a steep, grassy hill for fun? Actually yeah. Do you like Nerds candy? Yes I do.

[stolethekey]

we’ll end up painted on the road, red and chrome, all the broken glass sparkling

read on ao3

He finds her downstairs.

The rest of the facility is as eerily quiet as it has been the past five years, filled with the same dull despair that has filled everyone’s thoughts since that ill-fated day in Wakanda. The light of the moon filters gently through the windows, casting a dim glow on the dormant computers and monitors that were once whirring with life, in use by hundreds of people all united in the pursuit of a common goal.

Steve has no idea how many of them are left.

He can see a sliver of bright yellow light through the door leading to the gym, so he pushes through it, and even though he knows exactly what he’s going to find, the sight on the other side sends a slight pang of concern through his body.

Natasha is facing away from him, pummeling the punching bag in the middle of the floor with a force and ferocity that would make an unknowing bystander think it had been one of her worst enemies in an earlier life. The thuds each time her fists connect with the slightly-worn leather are punctuated by hisses of breath, and Steve notes with a twinge of dismay that her hands are not gloved.

“Natasha,” he says, but she appears not to hear him; she lands another combination on the bag with a lethal precision and speed as he shakes his head slightly.

“Natasha,” he says again, louder this time, and she spins wildly, the intense and terrifying focus in her eyes dissipating slowly at the sight of him.

“Hey,” she says, almost meekly, letting her arms fall to her sides. “I’m pretty much done, anyway.”

He raises an eyebrow as he walks toward her, eyeing the two gloves that lay abandoned on the floor behind her. “Oh, I don’t need a turn. I woke up and you weren’t there, so I thought I’d come find you.”

“Sorry,” she mutters, fingers toying at the edge of her tank top. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“I figured.”

She gives him a slight smile and turns to walk to the benches near the wall, picking up her gloves and letting them dangle from her fingers as she goes. He follows her, sitting down beside her as she starts to unwrap her hands.

He lets out a hiss of surprise as the wrap comes off her right hand and he catches a sight of raw, pink flesh where the skin has been rubbed clean off her knuckles.

“It’s nothing,” she says hastily, shoving her hand out of sight. “I’ve had much worse.”

He grabs her left hand, only to see the same ghastly sight, and his jaw clenches as he undoes the wrap as gently as possible. “Natasha—“

“It’s okay, really, it heals quickly—“

“You could also just wear the gloves. That’s what they’re for, you know.”

“Actually, they’re for support—”

“Okay, but incidentally, they also prevent skinning. And given what your hands have been through, one round on the bag wouldn’t do that. Which means you’re consistently ditching the gloves when you should be wearing them.”

“I don’t want them,” she mutters, taking the wrap from his hands. “I want to feel it.”

His brow furrows slightly, and she lowers her eyes to her hands, slowly rolling the wrap into a tight spiral. “I like the physical pain that comes with it. It’s a distraction from everything else, but it also—it makes me feel like I’m doing something. Like I’m not just sitting here, waiting.”

“We go tomorrow.” He reaches for her hand and she looks up, her eyes a green ocean of stormy anguish and dangerous determination. “And you should be as prepared as possible. Which means not ripping the skin off your hands.”

She sighs, her head dropping back down as her elbows land on her knees. “We can’t fail.”

“I know.”

Her eyes shut briefly before she whispers her next words. “But what if we do?”

It’s a question that rises unbidden in his mind every night as he falls into bed, but hearing the words out loud makes the possibility seem much more real.

He stays silent for a while, his fingers brushing lightly against hers, and when he speaks his voice is slightly hoarse. “If we lose—if none of this is enough—we have to at least do it with the knowledge that we didn’t hold anything back. That we threw everything we had at this, and there was nothing more we could’ve done. I don’t think I could live with myself otherwise.”

She digs her heel into the ground with such force Steve is surprised she doesn’t actually make a small hole in the mat, but when she speaks her voice is soft. “What we’re doing, playing with time—there is a very real chance neither of us will live through this anyway.”

“I know,” he says quietly, terribly aware that this is the first time they’ve had this conversation, as overdue as it is. “There has always been that chance.”

“Yeah, but it’s much higher this time—“

“I know,” he says again, and she meets his eyes this time, her hand tense and unmoving in his. “But that’s always been the nature of what we do. The best we can do is make sure the world is still here when we’re not.”

He pauses. “The sun will rise, even if we don’t. We just have to make sure it’s rising on the world we want to see.”

She flexes her fingers and winces slightly, but his concern about her pain is buried as soon as she whispers her next words. “And if it’s only one of us?”

Something very sharp lodges in his heart, and the compass in his pocket seems to weigh a little heavier. “Then we just keep going,” he says quietly, unable to tear his eyes from hers. “We have to. To maintain everything we’ve fought for.”

The muscle in her jaw tightens.

“You once told me,” he says, his voice low, “that we have what we have when we have it.”

She smirks slightly, the sardonic glint in her eye duller than usual. “Are you going to tell me to listen to my own words and live in the present? Because I may not have a sandwich, but I will find something else to throw at you.’”

He gives a slightly strangled laugh. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “I was going to say that I didn’t fully appreciate what I had, back then. I didn’t see that you were there until you were gone.”

The faint, lingering trace of amusement evaporates from her eyes.

“If this is really it—if this is the end—I want to make sure I don’t take that for granted again.” He tries to chuckle, the choked sound sending an involuntary shudder through his body. “That’s what I was going to say before you ruined the moment.”

Natasha tilts her head, her eyes somehow simultaneously soft and piercing. “You didn’t trust me for a long time.”

“You didn’t want me to.”

She snorts, her eyes shutting briefly as she shakes her head. “No, I did. I thought you did. I thought New York changed things; I thought it made me part of a team whose members trusted each other implicitly. Then I realized that you didn’t, and that Nick didn’t, and the deeper I got the more I realized that things were exactly the same. Everyone was still keeping me at arm’s length because they thought I could turn around and double-cross them at any second.”

Steve casts around for the right words to say, but she starts talking again before he finds them, her eyes trained on a spot on the floor near his shoe.

“Clint might’ve, but he had his family. He had a life. Had something to lose, something to fight for. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t have anything.”

She looks up again, a faint, sad smile ghosting at the corners of her lips. “You were the first one to change your mind.”

His grip on her hand tightens. “I’m glad I did.”

“You made me see that I had to start opening up, that being a secret was no way to live a life,” she says softly. “You may make the world a better place, but you also made me a better person. You helped me find my family. And I’m never going to forget that.”

“For what it’s worth,” he says, trying to swallow the emotion rising in his throat, “Trusting you was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”

She narrows her eyes. “What was better?”

“What?”

“You said ‘one of the best.’ What was better?”

“I’m trying to have an important conversation here—”

“Was it going with me to Vegas on New Years that one time and pretending to be my dumb hot boyfriend while I bankrupted a bunch of rich douchebags? Because that’s the only thing I can think of that would be acceptable.”

The tension breaks as he laughs, rolling his eyes, but when the quiet settles back into the atmosphere the mirth has faded from Natasha’s eyes, replaced by a wistfulness that makes his heart sink.

He pulls her hand toward him and she complies, tucking her feet onto the bench and resting her head on his shoulder. Neither of them moves or speaks again, even as the sky outside the window gets steadily lighter.

A dazzling ray of light hits the punching bag as the sun emerges from behind the horizon, and as they both take in the faint pink and pale orange he feels Natasha shift slightly.

“This may be really cliché,” she says quietly, her voice soft and comforting in the warm glow of the sunrise, “But sometimes I wonder what this is all for, whether all the pain and suffering we go through is worth it, and then I see something like this and I decide the world actually is worth saving.”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, wrapping an arm around her. “It really is a beautiful place.”

She hums, almost contentedly, as the sky shifts again, the gradient gradually becoming more and more blue. “I’ve said this before,” she murmurs, “But there are definitely worse ways to go.”

And as the light catches her hair, turning it the brightest mixture of red and gold he’s ever seen, he finds that he’s inclined to agree.

-

Time slows down as Natasha falls.

It’s either that, or her brain has suddenly evolved and is processing thoughts at ten times their normal speed.

Given what she’s learned the past five years, she’s pretty sure either is possible.

She falls, past miles of cliff and past jagged ledges that could probably hold her weight if she would just reach out and grab one.

She doesn’t.

She falls, and as the wind rips through her hair she starts counting the clouds in the sky.

One, and Thor’s face flashes before her eyes, unkempt, anguished, and utterly defeated. Then, his face from five years ago—still full of pain, but also full of determination, of power, of life.

A reason for her to fight.

Two, and she sees Bruce, hears him speak about what it’s like to feel like you may unravel at any moment. She feels him understand, sees him make peace with his inner monster just as she has been fighting to do.

A reason for her to try.

Three, and it’s Tony, sassy and sarcastic but truly, genuinely terrified of the future and willing to do anything to ensure that it is a safe one. The first one she’d met, one who understood what it is like to owe the world a debt that may never be repaid.

A reason for her to love—not one person, but the people and the world around her.

Four, and Steve’s eyes are there, piercing so deeply into her soul she feels like she’s revealing her darkest secrets all over again. The one she completely and irrevocably trusts, the one somehow least like her and most like her at the same time.

A reason for her to stay.

Five, and her eyes return to Clint, his last, strangled please still hovering in the air. There are tears falling freely down his face, and as her eyes rove over the aged, rough skin of his face she feels a fresh pang of pain in her chest.

The reason for her to go.

She feels lucky, almost. For it—for her—to end like this.

Lucky, that she found what she did before she had to leave.

Lucky, that she had so much to lose.

So many people wanting her dead, and yet—she is the only one who has succeeded. Walking her own path. Paving her own way. Making her own choices.

Even for the end.

It’s the only way she’s ever wanted to go out.

And for all the time she thought she wasn’t going to get that option, for all the time her life was spiraling out of her own control—

She’s gotten it back, now. Her life, and her death, fully in her grasp.

She can sense the cold, hard ground coming up underneath her, can feel the end rushing toward her. A faint, sad smile graces her lips as she takes one last look at Clint, still dangling off the cliff side, the ghost of his last scream still etched on his face.

She drinks it in, remembers it.

The upcoming darkness, and whatever comes after—that’s her doing, and no one else’s. She has chosen its arrival.

She closes her eyes.

Three billion people. Not back, yet, but she’s giving them a chance. A chance they otherwise wouldn’t have.

The work she’s done the past twenty years, the pain she’s gone through, was all for something like this. Incremental bits of progress, baby steps toward righting the world.

All of that was important, but it all fades in the face of this, today.

The rest of them are going to mourn her loss of freedom. They’ll say that she had to do this, that she had no other options.

But she is as free as she has ever been. This is her choice.

There was a time she thought she’d never even get one.

So, this? This is nothing, but it is also somehow everything.

Her back hits the ground, and the pain that bursts through her body doesn’t hurt her at all.

[bomberqueen17]

working with what you got

I managed to get a truly amazing amount of laundry done this weekend, all around the rain-- I was proud of myself today, I put a load in even though it was pouring, and the sun came out and i hung it up and it actually got dry (except one fully-lined dress and some socks, which are hanging indoors), and as soon as it got cloudy I took it all in, and now it’s pouring again. 

I dislike using the dryer. It doesn’t smell as nice, it seems ridiculously extravagant of electricity, and it makes clothes wear out faster. The only thing it’s good at is making towels soft. I often tumble socks and towels for five to ten minutes while I do something else, and then hang them out the rest of the way.

The other big accomplishment of this long weekend is that I’ve put away a lot of clothes, done a great deal of tidying, and dude has been tidying. He went through his closet and removed over a dozen shirts that he doesn’t wear anymore, that don’t fit, that he should replace, that don’t spark joy for whatever reason. He cut hard, too-- some of them, he wears, but only when he hasn’t got anything else. He figures getting rid of them is best, because then he’ll be inspired to pick up something he likes instead. I’m going to go through them; ones that are in newish condition will go to Amvets, but ones that are worn will be cut up for quilts. Oxford shirts are great quilt remnants. Now he’s going through his t-shirts, which live in a pile on the floor of the bedroom and mean I can’t actually reach the closet.

So that’s good. I also spent several hours in the basement actually cutting into some of my stash of discarded things and hoarded fabrics. I have several sets of sheets-- some of my own, where I went through the linen closet and was like... I don’t need pink polyester king-size sheets that have begun to pill, this is not something I need to hang onto, I know they were hand-me-ups from one of my sisters when she downsized from a king bed, I never bought them and never wanted them. So now they’re the back of a quilt to cover the yurt’s screen door. There’s a layer of Insul-Brite in the middle, and then another elderly twin sheet, this one navy blue and worn to a small hole in the middle, which I think was a salvage from a different sister, and then there’s an offcut remnant of sun-resistant outdoor UV-proof fabric I bought in a remnant sale several years ago, sun-damaged and heavily marked down. So there’s my yurt door cover, instead of clipping a quilt to it like I’ve been doing for two years now. (And before that, it was a shower curtain, so.) 

I don’t like to ponder how long that quilt took me to make just now, even though it was all whole-cloth and no piecing and only 60″ by about 35″, but whatever. It’s better than my pathetic roof-quilt attempts from two years ago, which are wildly poor in quality and have just loose edges with all the layers poking out. 

I also found the roll of drapery insulation fabric, that sort of rubberized stuff that goes on the back of insulated drapes, that I bought to make insulated drapes with in uhhh 2006 and have never used, so-- I’ve cut a length of that-- I might attach it to the back of the quilt along the top edge, or might put grommet holes in it and attach it separately, but either way, it’ll be the vapor barrier and waterproof layer for the door. I figured I’d better not quilt through it; a vapor barrier full of needle holes wouldn’t do much of a job.

I have so much of a hoard of fabric, much of it salvaged and repurposed, and I need to just do the stuff with it. It’s just hard to do when you have only tiny scraps of time and no attention span. 

[seventhstar]

“Viktor?”

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t you wear any of these?”

Viktor frowns. He is halfway through making a pile of Yuuri’s rattiest shirts which Yuuri will then insist are fine and refuse to throw away. He regrets agreeing to sort through each other’s clothes in preparation for them living in an apartment that has never housed more than one man and his dog. He can’t help but wonder if Yuuri will think the contents of Viktor’s closet are excessive.

“Any of what?”

Yuuri holds up a pile of shirts in a rainbow of colors, everything from pastels to jewel tones. “You have three drawers like this.”

“Those are new.”

“Yeah? I’ve never seen you wear anything besides exercise clothes and this rack of stuff here.” Yuuri gestures at the things Viktor does wear, most of which are neutrals. They’re tailored, high quality pieces that Viktor takes care of and rarely has to replace. Until Yuuri, who has an incredible number of tshirts that he claims were given to him for free in college with holes in them

“I wear them.”

“I’ve seen you wear three of these shirts and that was three years ago. On Instagram. Between Russian Nationals and Euro.”

“How do you remember that?”

“Do you not like them?”

“I...” Viktor hesitates. He does like them. Viktor doesn’t keep clothing he dislikes. He bought some of those. “I like them.”

Yuuri looks suspiciously at him. Then he puts the stack of shirts back into the drawer and sits down beside Viktor on the floor. He gently pulls the shirt Viktor is the process of folding from his hands.

“Are you sad?”

“No.” Viktor thinks maybe that’s a lie, but it doesn’t have anything to do with his clothes. That will be a conversation for another time. (A part of Viktor is amazed that he can envision a conversation with Yuuri about that--about a feeling he’s never discussed with anyone) “It’s easier. I used to dress more...flamboyantly. But after I started my winning streak, I got more attention than I ever had before. Everything I wear and did on the ice was already being scrutinized, but suddenly people were analyzing what I was wearing off the ice as well. It was exhausting, trying to fulfill this image I’d accidentally created, so I started toning it down. It’s easier to be put together when all your clothes match.”

“Oh.” Yuuri picks his his hand and squeezes it. “Should we just leave them, then?”

“It seems like a waste. Especially when we have to store your five hundred thousand worn out tshirts.”

“Tell you what,” Yuuri says. “You hang some of those shirts up, I’ll throw out some of my old tshirts.”

Viktor squeezes Yuuri’s hand. “I might not ever wear them.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

[badluckcllub]

verse | desolation sound ch | stevie brewin + sam wright summary | stevie dies and sam has to help bury her. 

He’s been in Desolation Sound for nearly two weeks and he’s still struggling to wrap his mind around the fact that he’s trapped in this fucking town. Everyone else seems to deal with it just fine for the most part, but he can’t walk to the convenience store unless he’s high as a fucking kite on the off-chance he sees something too fucked up for his sober mind to deal with.

It makes it easier to deal with all the staring, too. People fucking love to openly gawk at him and no amount of mouthing off on his part deters them. It’s like telling a brick wall to fuck off sometimes. Stevie told him to get over it, that the novelty of the newcomer will wear off in, oh… a year, maybe.

Like that’s supposed to make him feel any fucking better. He just wants to get out of this place, and, goddamnit, he’s been trying. Every damn day he gets in his car and drives to the city limit while Stevie watches him from that cheap pool chair she’s parked outside the motel’s office, and every damn day she watches him pull back into the parking lot with I told you so scrawled all over her face. It’s a straight shot out of the town from the motel, but somewhere along the way the road loops back to where he first drove in from. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. He might be a near high school dropout, but he damn well knows that geography doesn’t work like that.

Sometimes he’ll try to pry more answers out of Stevie, but she shrugs them all off. He can’t tell if she’s keeping things from him on purpose or if she’s just resigned herself to the absurdity of her life, so he just hides away in the room she’s given him to avoid whatever is actually going on out there.

The room itself is cheap, old, and outdated. The TV still has rabbit ears, the phone is a chunky thing with big buttons, and don’t even get him started on the carpeting. Every time he steps in the room he feels like he’s travelled back to the late 1970s.

The cracks in the textured paint on the ceiling create intricate patterns that spread out from a single point just above his bed, and he follows them with his eyes as he mulls his predicament again. At least Stevie pities him enough to let him stay here for free, but, fucking hell, he just wants to leave. He left Tuscon for the freedom of the open road, but instead wound up stuck in a town he can’t even find on a map.

Go fucking figure, right?

A loud cracking sound reverberates through the thin wall separating his room from Stevie’s. Sam bolts upright in bed, the way his heart is hammering against his ribcage is enough to rouse him from a drowsy half-sleep. The clock radio on the end table reads two forty-six in the morning, and hushed conversations coming from the lowered television fills the air; these sounds are joined by another: a faint gurgling on the other side of the wall.

He slowly pushes himself out of bed and presses his ear against the paper-thin wall. The gurgling becomes clearer, but just barely; if he focuses, he can hear the faint sounds of someone shuffling around the room, and a heavy thud as something hits the floor followed by wet groaning. He peels away from the wall, staring at it as if he’s capable of seeing right through the cheap wood and plaster.

“Stevie?”

There’s no response, so Sam raises his voice and knocks against the wall. “Hey, Stevie. Are you, uh… are you good over there?”

All sound from the other side ceases except for the faint gurgling which picks up into another wet groan. Sam’s stomach twists at the agony he can hear in it. He’s heard the sound in movies, sure, so has everyone, but hearing it in real life is something else.

Something fucked up is going on over there.

Sam swallows nervously before stepping outside to knock on her door. There’s nothing unusual outside; his car is still the only one in the parking lot and the office has been locked for the night, leaving only the vacancy sign to flicker sporadically in the night. It all seems fine until he turns his attention to Stevie’s room.

The door is open just a crack, and that sends a million alarm bells going off in his head. Stevie’s the only person aside from him that ever seems to be here, but she still keeps her door locked up tight and reminds him to do the same nearly every night. Strange for a town this small where residents typically trust each other not to just waltz into each other’s homes.

An almost imperceptible shadow shifts on the floor of her room and he calls out, “Stevie?”

There’s no answer and all movement ceases. The gurgling seems to have stopped, too.  

Terrified of what he’s going to find on the other side of the door, he pushes it open tentatively and steps inside. He’s greeted by the sight of Stevie splayed out on the floor, limbs loose and askew, her jaw slack, laying in a large pool of her own blood. Her head is turned so that her eyes are looking right at him, but they’re void of anything resembling life. There are bits and pieces of her scalp, chunks of hair still attached to bone torn right off from getting shot in the head, and a bloody, gelatinous, gray, wet-looking something scattered across the hardwood floor in globs.

He was staring at her corpse.

Bile shoots up in his throat, and it takes everything he can muster to keep from throwing up all over himself.

The other figure in the room only registers with him once he starts trying to stumble away from the macabre sight – a hooded figure, tall and imposing, their gloved hand bloody and curled around a gun. The handle of a knife is sticking out of Stevie’s chest and the figure reaches down to roughly yank it out with a wet sucking sound. Stevie’s body lifts off the floor from the force before dropping back down with another heavy thud.  

“It had to happen,” they say.

Sam’s body twists away to run, but the figure moves at an impossible speed to cut him off before he’s even fully turned around.

“It must always happen” they say to his stupefied face.  

They crack the butt of the gun against his temple and Sam goes crumpling to the ground like a ragdoll before he has a chance to react. Blood seeps out from a small gash on his temple, spreading out across the concrete like an unholy halo framing his head.

Minutes pass, blood pools; a half an hour passes, blood grows sticky, forty minutes, forty-five.

No cars drive past the scene, nobody walks by the motel. It’s Sam and a corpse until those forty-five minutes pass and a single, solitary figure stumbles out from the back of the motel.

They use the wall as a support as if they’re still learning how to walk. Strands of limp blonde hair mask their features, a grimace of both pain and disgust etched on their face. They brush the hair away from their eyes as they stagger over to Sam’s unconscious figure.

“Aw, fuck me, Sam.”

They crouch down and smack his cheek until his eyes begin to groggily flutter awake. He groans, a hand coming up to press at his temple. “What the fu– HOLY SHIT.” A near-scream rips out of his throat as his vision clears and he registers who slapped him awake. A rush of pain floods his head as he bolts upright too fast for someone with a probable concussion.

Stevie says, “I don’t look that bad, do I?” She drags her fingers through her limp waves, nose scrunching up a bit. “Like, I know it’s bad, but fuck, dude.”

“But… But I just saw– You. Your body. You’re … dead.” Sam’s eyes are like saucers as he looks her up and down for any sign of blood. She looks worn-out and  scuffed up, but there’s no gaping hole in her head or chest, no blood pooling around her or brain matter leaking out of her skull. “You were dead. You are dead. I saw––”

Stevie slaps her hand across his mouth to shut him up. “Yeah. You did. Fuck. I was kind of hoping to leave you out of this.” Getting to her feet, she holds out a hand to help Sam to his, but he simply stares at her with blank incomprehension. “Come on, bud. I’m not a zombie so I’m not gonna bite. I’ll explain while we clean up.”

“––Clean…?” He hauls himself to shaking feet with her help. Her hand is clammy and cold, and dirt coats the undersides of her fingernails.

“Uh, yeah. You think I’m just going to let all that blood and shit soak into the floor? Hell no. I’ve had to have it replaced too many times over the years to do it again.” She waltzes over to her room like nothing about this is strange, and he mindlessly trails behind her, far too confused to do much else than be strung along. She shoves open the door and immediately groans. “Oh, this is a messy one. Fantastic.”

Stevie goes to crouch over the corpse of herself and all Sam can do is stand in the doorway with his jaw slack and his head spinning. “You – That’s you.” He points at the corpse like she hasn’t already seen it, then looks at her desperately pleading for a rational explanation.

Instead, all she says is, “Sure fucking is.” She presses down on the bloody gray matter and it squishes and spreads. “Gross,” she says, shaking it off her hand and getting to her feet. “We clean, I’ll explain. Come on.” She opens the closet and pulls out a myriad of heavy-duty, industrial cleaning supplies before tossing him a surgical mask. “Here. For the bleach. We’re going to need a lot of it.”

“I really hate how blasé you are about this,” he says stiffly.

“Well, when this happens more times than you care to keep track of anymore it stops bothering you. Can you scoop up the brain bits? I’ll start with the blood.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“If you do make sure it’s not on the floor. It’s messy enough as it is.”

Lucky for the both of them, he makes it to the washroom in time to throw up his guts in the toilet. “What the fuck?” he croaks, then louder: “What the fuck?!” He sits back and stares blankly at the tiled floor. He has to be dreaming. None of this is real. He’s asleep, he’s in bed, he’s high and hallucinating. All that would make a whole lot more sense than any of this actually being rooted in reality.

But then Stevie calls out, “Are you gonna give me a hand?” and he’s reminded that no, this is happening and it’s happening to him. He unsteadily walks out of the washroom with a hand towel to scoop up the brain matter and throw it out.

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”He tosses the matter into a garbage bag and tries to fight the nausea still swirling in his stomach.

“Yeah, so … Where do I start? Uh, well, I get murdered every month. The last Thursday of every month if you wanna get specific.”

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it was definitely not that. “Sorry, what?”

“Murdered. I get murdered, in a variety of different ways, once a month, and then I come back. Don’t ask me why and don’t ask me how because I still haven’t figured it out.” She scrubs hard at the floor with a ragged washcloth soaked in bleach. “Come on. Get out, you stupid bloodstain.”

Sam bites the inside of his cheek as he scoops up more brain matter and scalp. If he tries to act like this is completely normal maybe he won’t feel like he’s losing his mind anymore. “Like … how long has this been happening?”

Stevie hums in thought. “Since 1987, so thirty-two years.”

He almost drops the cloth, whipping around to stare at her incredulously. So much for trying to act like everything is normal. “Thirty-two years? Thirty-two fucking years? This is a joke, right? This has to be a joke. You’re lying. This is a prank. This is–”

“Hey, hey, hey. Whoa.” Stevie peels off the bloody latex gloves and drops them onto the floor. ���Deep breaths, Sam. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Relax.”

He wants to scream at her, but all he can do is grip her arms tightly, his eyes saucer-wide. “I – I just – This shouldn’t….”

“Okay, okay. Sam, let’s rip this off like a bandaid, yeah? I was born here in 1961. In 1987, while working here, I was murdered. It was in the paper, so you can look it up if you don’t believe me. The kicker is though the next night I was back. I woke up next to the fucking dumpster behind the motel. Nobody knows how, nobody knows why, and nobody knows who decided to slit my throat that night, and it keeps happening. And”–she glances back at her corpse with a grimace–“I’m always left to clean up the aftermath. The bodies don’t go away when I come back.”

Sam’s chest heaves like he just finished running a marathon. Not being able to leave Desolation Sound is one thing, but tacking whatever this is on top of that is too much for his mind to handle. Stevie says something else and begins to guide him outside to sit where he takes a deep breath of the fresh air.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbles under his breath.

“I know, and I really wish you didn’t have to get involved in this, but you’re here now.” She brushes some hair out of his eyes. “I’m sorry.” Stevie crouches down to his level. “Listen, I’ll take care of the clean up in there, but I could use a hand burying the body out back. Do you think you can do that later?”

After a long pause, Sam nods mutely, then mechanically pulls out a cigarette.

Stevie smiles brightly, back to acting like nothing is amiss. “Sweet. I’ll give you a shout when I need a hand. Deep breaths, okay?”

He sits out there for two hours, smoking and staring up at the sky while he listens to the music drifting out of Stevie’s room. He doesn’t think much of anything. He doesn’t want to.

Eventually, Stevie pokes her head outside the door. “Hey. I think things are mostly clean in here. Let’s go bury this thing.” The way she says ‘this thing’ makes his skin crawl, but he stubs out his cigarette and goes back inside to help her with the body.

The sight of her and her corpse make his head spin again, and he has to look at everything but it.

“Pick it up by the wrists,” Stevie says, grabbing herself by the ankles.

Sam swallows, then pulls the corpse up by the wrists. It’s heavier and colder than he thought it was going to be and he nearly drops it in disgust when more brain matter slips out. “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.” Even Stevie grimaces.

“Eugh. I should’ve done something about that. I’ve never been shot in the head before.”

They haul the body outside and begin to round their way to the back. “So, like … you don’t always die the same way?”

“No. I mean, sometimes I do. There’s only so many ways to kill someone and there’s bound to be repeats in thirty-two years.”

“And you don’t know who does it?”

“Not a clue. It could be different people for all I know, but whoever it is or they are are dedicated as hell.”

“Can’t you, like, I don’t know, stop them? Kill them before they kill you?”

Stevie snorts sarcastically, but her face betrays how much she hates what she’s resigned herself to. “Trust me. I’ve tried. I always end up eating shit. I don’t think I can stop them. I think… I think this is just the way things are now. Drop it here.”

Thrilled to not have to touch the corpse anymore, he all but dumps it onto the grass. Stevie hands him a shovel and the two get to digging. By the time they get to six feet, his back and shoulders are screaming at him to stop and they protest more when he does it all in reverse after dumping Stevie’s corpse in there. When they’re good and done, the sun is beginning to rise over the horizon, the sky coloured in shades of orange and yellow.

“So,” Stevie says, digging her shovel into the dirt and leaning against it, grinning. “How do you feel after burying your first body?”

Sam stares at her with dead eyes. “Fucking horrible.”

There’s a long pause where the two of them just stare at each other. It’s broken by loud and uncontrollable laughter; first from Stevie and then from Sam until there are tears running down their faces.

[besidemethewholedamntime]

it was always me and you ch. 5

ahh chapter five is finally here and *whispers* I think it might be my favourite shhh* so I’m very excited about it! Also, I just saw Mamma Mia 2 and it was honestly amazing so I’m extremely happy right now! Thank you so much for all of the kind kudos and comments and love. You guys are amazing! 

-x-

Summary:

"There had always been something about Fitz’s fiancée that she had never really admired, something off about the way she smiled with too much teeth and how she rarely blinked."

When Fitz’s fiancée runs off in the middle of the night leaving Fitz and their 4 year old daughter behind, Jemma is there immediately because she’s his best-friend and she’s been there through it all.

But as Fitz navigates single parenthood with Jemma every step on the way, maybe it’s something different than being a best-friend. Maybe it’s something more.

{Read chapter 5 on Ao3}

{Read Entire Work}

Or Read Chapter Five Below

It momentarily puzzles Jemma that, when she goes to answer her phone, Fitz’s picture flashes up. It doesn’t stun her, but it definitely makes her tilt her head in a brief confusion when she sees that Fitz is trying to get in touch with her, and only now does it hit her how seldom they have needed to speak on the phone nowadays.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Jemma.” His voice is so familiar now, she knows it better than she knows her own. He sounds nervous but not terribly panicked and so she relaxes and loosens muscles she didn’t even realise she had clenched. “I have a favour.”

“Intriguing,” she laughs. “Alright, what is it?”

“Well, see Orla’s school has this kind of mum’s and dad’s dance thing next week and she wanted me to ask you if you’d uh, if you’d like to go. With me, that is.”

“But I’m not her mum,” Jemma blurts reflexively, a reaction to the sudden hammering of her heart.

“Yeah, I know that,” Fitz answers with a laugh but there’s a bit of a bruise in his voice. “It was Orla’s idea she just… it’s okay, Jemma.”

Feeling as though she must explain for her knee-jerk reaction, Jemma says, “I just don’t want her to think I’m replacing Annie or trying to take over from her.”

Orla’s a smart child, but as smart as she may be she is still only four years old and Jemma, not sure on the effects of absconding mothers on the psychology of a four year old, doesn’t want to do anything that could cause the child she loves so much any more pain.

“I thinks she just wanted you to be there when she dresses up in a pretty dress and so she can show you off to all her friends. You’re ‘scientist Auntie Jemma’ don’t you know?” Fitz chuckles but then seemingly sobers. “It’s fine, though, if you don’t want to. I get it. I’ll tell her that-”

“Fitz,” she interrupts, “don’t. I’ll come. With you.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it sounds fun. And it rather seems like I have a sort of reputation to live up to.”

“Great!” And she wonders how she could have made him to happy simply by agreeing to go to what is essentially a primary school disco. “I’ll tell you more about it later. Orla just wanted me to phone and ask now. You’re still coming for dinner tonight, yeah?”

“Yes, sounds perfect. I’ll see you later.”

As they hang up, Jemma realises that there appears to be butterflies hovering around in her stomach and she can’t quite fathom why. After all, it’s just a disco with Fitz and Orla – her two favourite beings. It’s nothing new, nothing scary, nothing worth the nerves she feels now.

The only problem that she seems to come across is what exactly she’s going to wear.

-x-

“This is like the third outfit you’ve tried on,” Daisy remarks, leaning against the changing room wall. “I have papers to grade for tomorrow.”

“Perhaps you should have started your marking earlier then,” Jemma retorts, as she squeezes her way into dress number three. Looking at herself in the mirror, she’s met with almost immediate disappointment. This dress shows far too much cleavage than could ever be appropriate for a school dance. She sighs and begins the laborious process of un-squeezing herself from the fabric prison.

“Yeah, yeah. I think that’s your answer for everything; just start it earlier.” Daisy peeks her head around the curtain, causing Jemma to help for she’s currently only in her underwear. “Maybe you should have started dress shopping earlier.”

With the dance being in two days’ time, there is more pressure on Jemma than she would care to admit is comfortable. It’s not as though she’s been putting it off, exactly, but she’s had trouble finding a spare minute and then trying to decide on what exactly one should wear to an event such as this. Plus Daisy had to be free.

She starts to explain this but Daisy holds up one finger to cut her off. “Just admit it,” she says in a sing-song voice. “You’re nervous.”

“Of course I’m nervous,” Jemma hisses, grabbing dress number four off the coat-hanger. “What do you even wear to something like this?”

“You’re telling me you haven’t done any research whatsoever into this?” Daisy raises one eyebrow in disbelief.

“I did try but…” a pause as she tries to slip number four over her head, before discovering that it’s actually the arm hole she’s attempting to strangulate herself with, “Fitz isn’t Facebook friends with anyone whose children have been in the years previously and there’s no other records of this dance I’ve been able to find.”

That’s not entirely true, but the one newspaper article on the dance was written in the 1970s and the pictures accompanying the article didn’t show outfits that would be suitable for one today.

“Look, it’s just a kid’s dance, right?” Daisy asks, clearly taking pity as she watches her friend shimmy out of dress number four with wouldn’t even be flattering on a string bean. “So you just need to wear something you’d wear to your brother’s graduation or something. Nice dress, nothing too smart, nothing too casual.”

“The specificities are outstanding,” Jemma says drily, looking with a critical eye at outfit number five. It’s a hot pink, too low in some places and too high in others and has a rather large bow on the back. Clearly she picked this up in the desperate hope that it would look better once she tried it on but now she isn’t even going to attempt it.

“I dunno why you’re getting so stressed over it. Fitz and Orla are just gonna be so excited you’re going. You could turn up in a garbage bag and they wouldn’t care.”

Jemma knows that, really, it doesn’t matter, but it’s a big event to them and it would be nice to look nice.

“If your hesitation is about Jack…” Daisy begins, arching her eyebrow once more but in a way that’s softer, and let’s Jemma know that she’s here to talk, whenever she’s ready. But there’s nothing  to talk about.

“Of course it’s not,” she dismisses entirely, not letting thoughts of her ex-boyfriend cloud her looking forward to this event. “Let’s just go out and find some more outfits to try on.”

It takes another forty-five minutes of trying on several different styles and combinations and colours but eventually Jemma finds a dress that is pretty enough and appropriate enough.

As Jemma slides it off and back onto the hanger to take to the till to pay, Daisy from her spot on the floor says wearily, “You know what they say: seventeenth dress lucky.”

-x-

It feels a bit like she is going on a first date, as she stands at her front door, smoothing down non-existent creases on her dress as she waits for Fitz’s knock. He’s meant to pick her up at quarter past six and it’s only just gone five past, but nerves have her hovering anxiously.

Jemma checks her phone, checks her reflection, adds a touch more lipstick even though none has worn off in the five minutes since she last applied it. She dabs some perfume on the inside of her wrists and behind her eyes, the way her own mother taught her when she was four years old. She looks in the mirror again, biting her lip, hoping she looks alright.

Fitz knocks on the door at fourteen minutes past, and there’s a moment, when she opens it, that neither of them speak.

“Wow,” Fitz says softly, the first to break the silence.

“What is it?” Jemma worries that her dress isn’t sitting right, that it’s too fancy, not fancy enough. Her nerves go into overdrive. “Is something wrong?.”

“Uh, no.” Fitz clears his throat, smiling at her shyly. “Not at all. You look really nice.”

“Oh.” She smiles back, indescribably relieved. “Thank you. You clean up rather lovely yourself.”

Indeed, he does. It’s been a while since she’s seen Fitz in a suit, and she’d forgotten the effect it could have on her. The last time had been at their graduations, years ago, and, peering at it, Jemma realises that it’s the same one. Right down to the tie.

“Is that the same tie you’ve always had?” She teases, watching as he flushes red.

“Yeah,” he grins sheepishly. “Good job, though. It matches your dress.”

The royal blue tie does indeed match the flowers printed on her dress and looking down to affirm what she’s just realises covers the blush she feels on her face.

“You ready to escort me to the dance, Jemma Simmons?” Fitz asks, holding out an arm which she accepts with a laugh. How utterly right this feels.

“Lead the way, Leopold Fitz.”

-x-

The primary school have really outdone themselves for the mum’s and dad’s dance. They’ve transformed what Jemma assumes it usually a dinner hall into something out of a fairy-tale. Twinkly lights have been hung from the ceiling, the tables are covered in a soft confetti shaped like snowflakes. Jemma looks around, mouth hanging open slightly. Whatever she expected, it certainly wasn’t this.

Everybody has been given certain tables to sit at, each place setting clearly written by the child related to said adult. The folded-over piece of cardboard bears the full name of the designated person, along with a clip art sticker of some sort. Jemma reads hers to say ‘Auntie Jemma’ along with a microscope sticker. As she sits down she makes sure to slip it into her bag discreetly, knowing she could never leave it behind.

The children are off being children as the adults are left to socialise. At first it’s a little bit awkward; many of the adults at this table have never met either Fitz or Annie before and so they assume that she is Orla’s mother. Fitz takes the lead of explaining the situation; no, Annie’s not here anymore. No, Jemma’s not Orla’s stepmother. No, she’s not biologically related.

“She’s my best friend,” Fitz says, turning to grin at her. Her belly tingles pleasantly. “The best of best-friends really.”

“It’s so wonderful you came along,” one of the other mothers comments. “So selfless really.”

“Definitely,” a father chimes in. “Really selfless.”

Jemma feels herself blushing fiercely, knowing she doesn’t deserve these compliments. It’s not selfless, not really. It’s just natural, just normal to be with Fitz and Orla. It makes her happy to be with them.

Orla comes running up her, tugging her friend behind her. Her curls are flying out of their already precariously arranged updo (she did teach Fitz how to do it – but she knew he’d end up forgetting the hairpin arrangement).

“Auntie Jemma!” She careens into Jemma’s chair, her poor friend looking very much bewildered.

“There you are. Are you having fun?”

Jemma watches her face light up and nod fervently. “Oh, yes! We’re having so much fun!” She turns to her poor bewildered friend. “Aren’t we Mina?”

Mina looks up at Jemma with some kind of wonder on her face and nods slowly, mouth hanging open. In a not-so-subtle whisper she asks Orla, “Is this her?”

Orla shoots her a play it cool look. Turns back to Jemma with a sheepish grin that is so much like her father’s. “This is my Auntie Jemma” she says proudly, puffing out her chest. “And she’s a scientist!”

“Wow,” Mina breathes. “That is so cool.”

“Yeah, it is.” Orla frowns, seemingly unhappy with how enraptured her friend is. “But she’s my Auntie Jemma, Not yours.” She turns back to Jemma. “I think we’re going to go dance now, okay? Bye!” And she drags Mina away (who looks more than a little crestfallen at being reminded that Jemma wasn’t her auntie) , her purple party dress swishing around her ankles as she runs.

“Orla seems in very high spirits,” Jemma remarks to Fitz, who sits next to her trying to engage in polite if slightly mundane conversation with the other parents at the table. He turns to her with relief evident on his face.

“Yeah, she’s been so excited for this for ages now.” Jemma watches his eyes follow to where his daughter is playing kick about with a balloon and some friends. She hears him sigh. “It took me hours to figure out her hair as well.”

Orla’s hair is now loose and streaming across her face. “Oh dear,” Jemma giggles into her hand. “At least we got some pictures at the start of the night.”

There is a myriad of pictures now in Fitz’s phone, some that have already been sent to her so she can frame them. Her favourite is the one of Fitz and Orla, Orla on Fitz’s shoulders, both of them looking at the camera with the same ridiculous grin on their faces. She’s already asked Fitz for a copy, knows that it will live in the photo wallet of her purse forever.

Orla looks back to them both and waves excitedly. Jemma and Fitz both wave back at the same time which only makes Orla laugh loudly before she runs off to do something else.

“How does she still have so much energy?” Jemma asks Fitz.

“Honestly? No idea. Mum says she must get it from me?”

“Really?” Jemma asks him, shocked. “It took me ages to get you up some days when we were at university. There was that day you didn’t surface until five pm and I thought you’d run off.”

He turns to her with such an odd look on his face; a half smile, half contemplative look that gives her a pleasant ache in her chest.

“What?” She asks.

“Nah, nothing,” he dismisses, and although it’s clearly something, her head holds her back from asking about it.

They sit together in a companionable silence for a bit, letting the evening just wash over them. This is what she’s always enjoyed about her relationship with Fitz. It’s easy, effortless really. There’s no forcing of anything, no compulsion to force anything. They’re quite content with just being together. In fact, there’s nobody else she’s ever felt like this with. There’s nobody else she’d want to.

“Alright guys,” the DJ interrupts. “Here’s a slow one. Everyone up on the dance floor now. Parents included.”

Jemma, assuming that this doesn’t apply to her, leans back in her chair and laughs at the grumbles of parents begrudgingly making their way up out of their chairs. She’s absorbed in watching them all take their places, all of the children finding partners to dance with, also, that she doesn’t notice that Fitz is standing in front of her with an arm outstretched until he clears his throat.

“Dance with me?” His voice is a little bit nervous, but his smile is bright and genuine and her heart flutters in her chest in the most unexpected way.

She accepts his hand and lets him lead her to the last empty space in the dance floor. She’s never dances with Fitz before, or at least not that she remembers, but they fit together so naturally that she wonders if her memory is going. Her arms loop around his neck, both his hands burn her lower back and they sway together in time with the music in an uncanny synchronicity, the kind she’s only ever seemed to have with him.

The mood of the night making her brave, she steps closer to him, closing whatever little gap there had been. Fitz’s breath hitches,  only minutely, but he says nothing and his hands on her waist become more sure.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into her hair, “for coming. I really appreciate it.”

“Of course I was going to come, Fitz. What else was I going to do?”

This, right here, feels like exactly where she is meant to be.

“I know this all hasn’t been easy for you either and I’m – I’m so grateful, Jemma.”

There’s a sudden lump in her throat and she buries her face into the soft fabric of Fitz’s suit. It smells like home. He holds her tighter, says nothing else, and they sway together as if they were one. The twinkly lights and the soft guitar music make it all feel very dreamlike. If only there had been drinking permitted at this event, and then she could blame the alcohol for the reason it appears that there’s nobody else in the room, only them

She closes her eyes and lets herself pretend. Maybe, just maybe, if she doesn’t open them, then this moment will last forever.

-x-

The dance finishes at ten but it might as well be one in the morning for Orla almost falls asleep standing up and Fitz has to carry her to the car otherwise she’s in danger of falling over. Once they arrive back home, Jemma helps him get her out of the car and opens the front door for him, helping him get his daughter into her pyjamas and into bed.

Once they’re done, he turns to her, cheeks flushed and eyes twinkling and asks, “Stay?”

She clears her throat, perfectly aware of the tension in the air that surrounds them. “Yes,” she agrees, voice barely above a whisper.

They end up watching movies together on the sofa and, the excitement of the night making them a bit more relaxed than they usually are, they end up cuddling on the sofa in a way that neither of them ever have before. Their arms are around each other, Jemma’s head rests on Fitz’s chest while his chin rests on her hair and they breathe at exactly the same time. Jemma can hear his heartbeat under her ear; it’s not fast, not like she thought it might be, but slow and steady and sure.

Like this, in absolute comfort and serenity, does she fall asleep, thinking of nothing except home.

Waking up, however, is a different story.

She awakens first, woken by the bright morning summer sun flooding through the curtains that they didn’t shut last night. Without the haziness of the night before, without the dream-like edges, she’s suddenly very aware of the position they’ve maintained throughout the night. It feels as though someone’s thrown a bucket of cold water over her, and she disentangles herself from Fitz immediately, feeling something akin to shame burn her skin and set it alight.

Fitz awakens with a moan, squinting at her in confusion before it settles on him. He doesn’t look as uncomfortable as she feels. It only makes her feel worse.

“I should be going,” she says hurriedly, looking at her watch. It’s only just gone five. There’s still plenty of time. It terrifies her.

He blinks at her resignedly, says nothing as she stands up and fumbles for her bag, her phone.

“I have to get to work early,” she offers as an explanation to his eyes.

Fitz nods, rubs at his stubble, his face with two hands. “Yup. ‘Course you do.”

Jemma deflates. “I do, Fitz.” Why can’t he be fair to her now? Why can’t he see?

“Yeah, no, I believe you.” He makes no move to get up and stays watching her from his spot on the sofa.

“There’s new equipment arriving at the lab today and-”

“I know,” he tells her, smiling softly if a little wearily. “It’s fine, really. Do you need me to drive you or-?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

His smile is weak. “Alright then. Have a good day.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, before grabbing her things and all but fleeing.

There is new lab equipment coming today, she wasn’t lying. She just hadn’t told him yet, didn’t figure she’d ever need the excuse. She’s left Fitz’s house plenty of times in the early morning but never like this. Never because every cell in her body wanted her to stay so badly that it ached.

-x-

It’s midnight when she finally drags herself home from work. It’s been a trying day, and she’s purposely stayed so long in the hopes to avoid her empty flat for as long as she was able. It’s not the same as it once was. Nothing is.

She puts the kettle on to boil and half heartedly puts on her pyjamas, washing her face with a lack of enthusiasm that she doesn’t even have the energy to be surprised at. A cup of peppermint tea in hand, tea  a cure for all ills, she softly makes her way to bed, hoping that maybe tomorrow will be brighter.

Jemma’s just settled under the duvet, just taken her first sip, when her phone buzzes with a call. Her heart stops when Fitz’s picture flashes up but still she doesn’t hesitate to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Fitz’s unsure voice breathes into her ear. “I’m sorry this is so late but I – I wanted to say sorry, for earlier. I was out of line, being like that. Guess I was a bit spooked as well and I took it out on you and I’m sorry.”

Jemma’s heart constricts in her chest, but she feels so much lighter. “I’m sorry, too,” she confesses quietly. It feels good to say it. “For the same reasons as you. I was a little bit disoriented and I ran away without thinking things through properly. I’m sorry.”

There’s a soft chuckle in her ear. “Felt really rotten all day. It was so strange – going so many hours with us being not okay.”

“I know,” she hums, recalling how today she had most certainly felt off-kilter. “It wasn’t pleasant.”

“No, it wasn’t. I think after last night we were just caught up in the mood and, well, I don’t know, I suppose what was alright last night looked kind of wrong in the morning.”

“Yes,” she says carefully, feeling a tell tale burning of frustration behind her eyes. “I suppose.”

“I’ll let you go,” Fitz tells her. She hears him yawn. “I just wanted to say sorry before I went to bed.”

“I should have phoned earlier to apologise as well.” Because she should have. She left it all day, stewing, afraid of what would happen. But this is Fitz. There is no need to be afraid of him.

“Goodnight, Jemma,” he says sleepily, and she responds in kind before hanging up.

Placing her phone on the bedside table a little harder then absolutely necessary, tea forgotten, Jemma throws herself back onto the pillows, longing to tell Fitz that the reason she ran away wasn’t because anything felt wrong, but because it felt absolutely right.

[styleatacertainage]

It’s that time of year when it’s out with the old in with the new. So why not set up some time for a closet overhaul? If you find yourself claiming “you’ve nothing to wear” an unorganized overflowing closet just might be the culprit. Or if you’re like me it’s time for a closet refresh. This is when I ruthlessly go through my closet item-by-item and purge. Whichever scenario you find yourself in I have a tried-and-true method for a closet edit. Are you ready?

First step, you ask, for a clean sweep? Dedicate an afternoon to your busy schedule to assess your closet and go through every item in your wardrobe. I know, I know, there are a million other priorities competing for space on your ever-expanding to-do list rather than sorting through pencil skirts, cardigans, and that swoon-worthy dress found on the final sale rack. But, I promise, devoting an afternoon to properly sort through your clothes is time well spent. If you are like me, you’ll discover that fashion mistakes have been made over the course of a season, weight gained, (even better, lost – let’s face it ladies weight fluctuates, it’s a fact of life) or maybe, just maybe, it’s finally time to retire that beloved go-to blazer. You know the one, it has a shiny sheen on the elbows due to years of love, but you’re still loath to part ways? It isn’t easy to rid your closet of items that no longer fit or have sentimental value, especially when you’ve shelled out major cashola for the purchase in the first place. But keep calm and carry on. Which is why, through the years, I have devised a tried-and-true method to purge my burgeoning closet and in the process make room for that drool-worthy new puffer vest.

Since I am a bit of an organization addict (I’m a Virgo by birth and have a strong penchant towards planning and systematizing) I wanted to share my method for a wardrobe detox.  First off, when sorting through my clothes I put on a great playlist – still loving the seventies, nothing sounds better to me than the Doobie Brothers or Steely Dan – then pour a glass of wine, and ask these three questions:

1.Does this fit?

2.Have I followed the ‘one year rule’? If I haven’t worn it in a year, it’s time to let it go. Ruthless, I know.

3. Is this item damaged, e.g., moth holes, broken zippers, pilling or missing buttons? Or can it be repaired? Having a great seamstress and shoe cobbler is a must.

If the answer is ‘no’ to any of the above questions, then it’s time to part ways. Divide your clothes into three piles. Sell, donate, and trash.

Sell

The items that make it to your sell pile are the ones that are either currently in style or gently used. It could even be a pair of brand new, to-die-for jeans that were bought with the promise of losing five pounds. Sigh. But take heart, these clothing items have the potential of making you a profit with little effort thanks to an emerging online marketplace for buying and selling clothes. There are several to choose from which have a streamlined experience that makes it possible to list my items, ship them out, and earn money or credit toward on-site purchases, all while sipping my coffee in my pin-striped pajamas. As a matter-of-fact, I don’t even have to leave the comfort of my house. How’s that for convenience? Check out thredUP.

Charity

If by chance some of your unwanted items are still in good condition, please consider donating them to a good cause. Of course, Goodwill Industries and Salvation Army are always good choices for your orphaned clothes and are reputable if that is one of your concerns. But there are other organizations that deserve and appreciate your contributions as well. Personally, I love and support Dress for Success – a non-profit organization that addresses and fulfills the needs of low-income women who have left welfare and are interfacing with the challenges of the workforce. But consider local homeless shelters or even better ones that specifically cater to battered women. In recent months, blogger The Midlife Fashionista opened a non-profit in the greater Boston area, Uncommon Threads, with a mission to empower women. Trust me on this; somehow it’s easier to let go of clothing when you know it is going to someone in need.

Rubbish

Now onto the hard part, those items that can’t be repaired or have significant wear-and-tear must be tossed into the rubbish bin. I know it’s hard to say goodbye to your beloved LBD, or your favorite graphic tee worn on countless occasions, but don’t let your emotions get the better of you. It must be thrown away. I repeat, the item must be thrown away.

It might take more than one try to get into the swing of downsizing your wardrobe, but the reward is a streamlined closet that makes getting dressed in the morning just that much easier, and maybe even fun. But you have to know what you own is working for you.

Happy cleaning!

It’s time for a tour of my closet/office. Yes, this is where you will find me on any given day editing my daily post or planning my next outfit. Notice how the shelves don’t have doors. This one feature lets me utilize every square inch of space. Nothing hides from me behind closed doors. There’s never a time when I have to squeeze in and fish something out from a dark corner. A nice design trick would be to install curtains in front of the shelves. But for now, I’m happy with an exposed workspace. The shelving unit is ALGOT from IKEA that we’ve had since our Shanghai, China days.

When we moved to Georgia last year, I knew the first re-do in our home would be my closet. Here’s what happened after we finally found a contractor. Which took several months… They kept disappearing on us. Who can relate? Originally, this room opened to the adjoining bedroom. The first step to enclose the room was drywall. Then a few coats of paint in Dove Gray by Benjamin Moore. For many years, I’ve been a big fan of neutrals in bedrooms – they’re sooooo soothing. But gray paint is currently on-trend in home decorating so it’s safe to say this room is ‘in.’

A Possini Flower Chandelier replaced the original light fixture to give the room a modern look. After it arrived, Mr. Style thought it might be too big. But once it was installed he changed his mind. What do you think?

In keeping with a light and airy space, I chose a contemporary glass desk from World Market that sits on a chrome sawhorse base. But when we created our YouTube room we exchanged the glass desk for a white desk. Anyone else moves furniture from room-to-room? The desk chair is chrome and white leather. It’s very simple and practical. Tucked underneath is a turtle stepstool that I rest my feet on when working. Sometimes, I pull it out if I need to reach something on the top shelf.

Last year I purchased an orange egg chair and glass table for my office/closet. But, again, those items were repurposed to the YouTube room. After our new kitten, Ollie arrived and decided to use the wool chair as her scratching post the egg chair found a new home in our guest room. The good thing is I’ve used a cohesive color scheme throughout the house which allows me flexibility. And that egg chair (which is a favorite of mine) has been repurposed several times over. Sheesh! Recently, I ordered a modern hot pink chair that will sit in front of the desk. At first, I thought I could get away without having an extra chair in the room but when my children visit they always drag a chair in from the other room then plop down so they can jabber away. Mr. Style does the same thing. Point taken! Directly across from the desk are three inexpensive white bookcases that house my shoe collection.

How about some closet organization tips? Here we go.

Organize by category.

Organize clothes by category – skirts, pants, sweaters, blouses, jeans – arrange pieces by item and color so you can see exactly what you own. The same holds true for shoes. Hang sleeveless dresses or shirts first, short sleeves then long sleeves.

Stack foldables.

Jeans, sweaters, scarves, lingerie are all items that I fold then stack on the shelf. Arrange cedar strips or mothballs on your shelves to prevent moths from snacking on your cashmere or wool sweaters. Jeans are folded lengthwise and layered one on top of the other. Chinos and leather leggings too.

Lingerie is organized by color, size, and type. These are folded and tucked inside lingerie storage units. Place a linen sachet inside for a special treat.

Upgrade your hangers.

Who else remembers the movie line “No wire hangers!” Well, we don’t have to be quite as obsessed as Joan Crawford but I would advise upgrading your closet hangers. It’s a simple style trick that will extend the life of your clothes. And it gives uniformity. Whether you prefer thin velvet hangers, Joy Mangano huggable hangers, or wood hangers, there is a hanger for you. Don’t forget space-saving stackable skirt or pant hangers.

Shoes, scarves, hats, and handbags.

Store your shoes and handbags where you can see them. Use clear shoeboxes or better yet store them on closet shelves or a bookcase. Right toe out left toe in is a space-saving technique. I like my handbags out of their dustbags and visible. Out of sight out of mind happens if I don’t! Hatboxes are perfect for storing hats with the larger ones resting on top. Scarves are color-coded, folded and stacked.