#if grief is love with nowhere to go i am constantly grieving for people who are still here

[faggotry-enjoyer]

guy who objectively has a very strong social network but is so so lonely

[hanazou]

hello,, I’ve been feeling down lately and a loved one of mine recently has passed away...

if you are comfortable with it may I request a scenario of Atsushi and Chuuya comforting their s/o who were grieving over a death of a loved one? ;0 thank you I love your blog 💖💖

𝙘𝙝𝙪𝙪𝙮𝙖 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙪𝙨𝙝𝙞 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙛

Books : Chuuya | Atsushi

Genre : Comfort, romance

Category : Headcanons, short scenario

Shelves : Hardback | Paperback

Warning : Description of grief

Note : I am deeply sorry for your loss. I can’t do emergency requests but I tried to get this one out as fast as I could. I could only do short scenarios of this so I added headcanons, I hope this is alright. Once again, my condolences and please stay strong.

Chuuya has to ask you a couple of worried questions before it strikes him what you’re dealing with.

He will be on the verge of panicking when he first hears the bad news, worse if you're the one that has to tell him what happened. He instantly undergoes flashbacks from experiencing something like this himself and he fears that your coping with the grief might harm you.

If you can’t afford to talk to him like you usually do, he understands.

He stands/sits next to you, arms crossed, occasionally glancing at you to see if there’s any change in your stance, expression, anything.

He avoids staring at you directly in concern that you'd become pressured by him.

He’s ready to catch you if your legs fail you

Holds the top of your head lightly yet firmly. If you don’t show signs of protesting, he’d slowly pull you closer to his neck.

Getting physically affectionate is his prime card to comfort you, but before anything, he takes off his gloves so he won’t dirty you.

His fingers move kind of unevenly and feel rough, but that’s how you can feel his desire to support you

If you can’t stop crying or on the verge to go on a complete mental breakdown, he immediately collides his body against yours as tight and strong as he could.

If your legs give up, he drops down with you in his arms instead of keeping you standing with his ability and he’ll clutch your face close when you both land on the floor.

If you won’t hug him first, he’ll pull you to him. He forces your face down his shoulder so you’d grieve as much as your heart can empty while his hand brushes your back up and down.

“Cry as long as you need,”

Words, as I’ve once said, isn’t his speciality, but he tries regardless. He wants to make sure that you know you aren’t alone, that you have him with you.

He doesn’t talk as much but his distressed expression stays as long as he’s with you.

“You can take it out on my shoulder, you know,” He hesitates a bit, unsure if he sounds too rough.

If you can’t stop crying, he pats your shoulder, only knowing how to say “There, there” since he thinks it’s better than saying nothing at all. Chuuya thinks you need to hear him being there.

Chuuya squeezes through his tight schedule to make time for you.

He negotiates as best as he could with Mori to give him as much time off as possible.

If it’s impossible to take a week off, he goes full rampage in his job with the thought of you in his head motivating him to finish everything as soon as possible, making a mess where he goes.

If someone gets in his way, Chuuya shouts, "I've got someone more important to see, you punk!" while blasting them away.

He always brings food and drink over and makes sure you eat. He spoon-feeds you if necessary. He isn’t the cleanest but him wiping your face clean makes up for that.

"Come on, babe, you gotta eat," Chuuya says. "They won't like seeing you grieving like this, so eat, yeah? For them?"

If the emotions exhaust you to sleep, he sits against the wall and pulls you to him so you’d sleep against his body, making sure his limbs are around you so you’d never feel the loss of pressure around your body.

If it's cold, he wraps you with a blanket and occasionally touches your fingers to know whether you're staying warm or not.

Since Chuuya’s goal is to make sure you don’t feel alone or abandoned as I’ve mentioned, he does everything to solidify his presence.

He calls often if he has to be away, he sends food delivery, leaves short sticky notes, and sends voice messages.

It’s noticeable he doesn’t know what to say and even more obvious that he wants to keep reaching out to you.

Chuuya tries to strike a light and brief conversation once in a while. He’s disturbed by your uncharacteristic silence, it scares him.

“Do you want some takoyaki?” He’d ask randomly. The anxiety on his face never wavers away.

He does any activity that comes to mind when he stays at your place, but regardless of what he does, he’s never more than three feet away from you.

Always, without fail, kisses you good morning and good night on the forehead regardless he stays at your place or not.

Or if you're not opposed to it, Chuuya wants to take you to his place. He may still have to go to work, but something doesn't feel right about leaving you alone for so long in a place he's not too familiar with. At least in his space, you're constantly reminded you're not alone and that you're there because you're never abandoned.

Like a strayed ship in a storming ocean, your emotions are the waves storming your damaged vassal of conscience to the point that even looking forward to sunray from the bleak sky of endless cloud sounds mythical, making speaking a heavy chore. You’ve been exhausting yourself to sleep, soaking everything with your tears until it no longer comes out. It’s frustrating, it’s turbulent, so active in making you passive. Your tears run out but not the multiple stabs around your heart. Your voice leaves you but not the intensity or the transparency of hurt on your face.

It feels impossible, fictional, but if it were, then you aren't supposed to have your heart cauterized. It's the reminder of the bitter truth you're grappling against accepting.

If they had to go, why not bring the pain with them? Why do they have to leave you fractured, incomplete, empty, by transcending away while you stay behind, only able to watch them shrink somewhere unreachable?

Why do pieces of you have to be chipped off your already fragile soul, leaving holes in your essence? Why leave many pieces behind, why leave you alone?

“Hey,” A voice zaps your mind back to your head.

You remove your face from your wrinkled, moist, and sweaty palms, everything in front of you foggy from the swelling of your eyes. You still wear your dark clothes, unable to find the heart to change into something new, something brighter, after the sudden tragedy strikes. It was not, and still not is, in your capability to even stand up to eat.

Chuuya’s oddly timid and soft-sounding voice for this week is what makes you feel something other than rocking instability.

Slightly opening your eyes to see him, his figure before you hurts your eyes from how colourful he is. His face appears like a messy mix of vibrant paint, his orange hair, blue eyes and fair skin, and dark clothes sticking out from the stale background behind him.

A pair of silver keys, ones that unlock your door, stand out from his black-gloved hand from beneath his tightened fist. He puts it in his pocket and takes your hands, forcing you to stand and steadies your arms when your knees wobble.

"Have you eaten the lunch I had delivered here?" He pats off the dust from your shoulders and arms, his vibrant face still paining your swollen eyes.

Your eyes roll to the untouched paper bag on the table. You figure Chuuya’s eyes follow because of the stifled sigh he holds in.

"Babe, come on…"

"I can't," is what you try to say, although with your dry throat, it comes out like scorched empty words. "I'm sorry, I know you picked it with great care and thoughts so I'd eat, but I just can't, not when—" You catch a coarse breath. "Not when I'm like this, I can't yet."

"Still don't want to talk about it?" His voice squeezes. "You can't keep it in forever, you know, and you really shouldn't."

With your blurry vision, you figure that his arms extend open. A weak ‘what?’ is all you can hoarsely ask.

“Saying nothing, skipping meals and not drinking.” He says sourly. “Let out your grieve like how it should be done. That's what they'd want too."

Your tears make a reappearance at either a bad or perfect timing, depends on how you tilt your head to see it. They prickle your eyes, some rushing down your face.

“Come here,” Chuuya says, perhaps frowning from the way his voice changed.

Your eyes close slowly before opening again, your puffed eyelids troubling you from keeping your eyes opened. “I don’t think I can,” You sound like an overworked opera singer. “If I hug you, I won’t be able to let go and I might suffocate you without meaning to.”

You think Chuuya makes a sound of annoyance until a force smashes your body forward, lunging your face against him. The brief faint glow of orange earlier helps you process that he used his ability on you to bring you to him. Now his arms trap you in him, your forehead strongly weighted on his shoulder.

“Then suffocate me,” His muffled voice says from behind your head, one of his hands taking your arm to hold his body. “I’m always here.”

Your hands stretch his shirt with your tight clasp as you feel yourself getting lost in the waves. The turbulence crashes out from within you as you incoherently cry on Chuuya’s stable body, him becoming your guaranteer in the midst of the rocking forces that threaten your balance. His rigid arms support your weight as you wail out, ensuring that the waves don’t sweep you away, somewhere unreachable from him. He secures you, letting you explore the storm’s rolling waves while still grounding you safe.

“I’m here,” The soft wind in the storm grazes your ear. “I promise.”

Atsushi is one of the most sympathetic and empathetic people you could ask for when it comes to comfort you through your grief.

He’s nowhere oblivious to someone who’s hurting. He recognizes what kind of pain you’re going through and it doesn’t take him too long to identify what you’re feeling and the intensity of it although he can’t process it into words.

Atsushi is so worried sick for you that he has trouble thinking straight and his breaths get faster.

He’s really anxious about you feeling left behind or abandoned.

He makes sure that you don’t doubt that your beloved one who has to leave earlier definitely loves you.

It breaks him if you think of things such as disappointing them, unable to fulfil their wishes, etc.

Atsushi can feel your hurt as if it’s his own, and because of his heightened emotional senses, he’s quick to jump in to support you. It’s instinctive.

He’s at first hesitant to touch you, let alone comfort you with his embrace, so he starts with generic sentences like “I’m so sorry” and “You can lean on me” while offering his empty shoulder

It’s challenging for him, but Atsushi is persistent to comfort you with his words before he touches you.

He insists on speaking before holding you around him.

Atsushi validates your feelings by putting his guesses of how you’re currently feeling into words. He’s not the best with words so he’ll struggle to pick his vocabulary, but the things he says are mostly true.

“I’m sorry you have to feel like your heart is becoming stiff,”

“If you feel like everything around you is empty, I’m still here,”

When he does get to the point where he feels that physical touch can help you, Atsushi is very tender.

He starts with wiping your tears away until your cheeks are drier and offers you tissues. He’ll help you blow your nose

He removes the hair sticking to your face and wipes your face until you’re dry

He hugs you like he's the one broken; putting his face on your shoulder, arms hanging from your neck. It's because that he fears that you might get as hopeless as him. He dreads for that for that happen so he holds you with the strongest Affirmation he can give.

"I'm with you, I'll always be," He keeps repeating while he hugs you.

Touches your fingers most of the time and squeezes your hand

Atsushi fights tooth and nail to get several days off to stay with you in your place. He’ll have a whole speech prepared so he can convince Fukuzawa and Kunikida

He’ll spend the morning bargaining with Fukuzawa in his office after giving Kunikida a 15 minute TED talk about how badly he can empathize with your loss and how he’s rock certain you need his company

He asks Kyouka to help him make your food that’s easy to digest for the stomach, like soup and porridge. You can best bet that she’s going to add some tofu to it.

“Kyouka-chan helped me make this fish soup,” Atsushi presents you the bento boxes, unwrapping the cloth. “Let’s eat, okay? You have to keep your stomach filled. I’ll help you.”

If he’s unable to spend the night at your place, Atsushi makes sure to arrive at 6 am sharp every day to check on you, and the earliest he’ll leave is around 8 o’clock

He cleans your place every day diligently and does an excellent job at it. Doing the dishes, cleaning the floor, making sure the sink is clean and ensures the bathroom floor isn’t slippery. He doesn’t want an untaken care living space to worsen your emotional state.

Despite always bringing fresh food, Atsushi makes sure to cook fresh batches of rice to eat with anything he delivers so if you miraculously want to eat something, you’ll have something to consume.

If he has to leave for a while, he surrounds you with plush toys. If you don't have any, he borrows Kyouka's bunny plushies collection and arranges them around you, your pillow, the corner of your bed, and on your blanket.

Atsushi never wants you to forget that your loved one loves you. He does everything in his power to remind you everyday that although they're gone, the love they have for you will eternally stay with you and that nothing can ever change that.

He hugs you while verbally reminding you of that.

His hugs always lasts a long while if you're not uncomfortable with it. He can stay long minutes in that position.

Or he sits/lays down next to you in silence, doing absolutely nothing. He's anxious about the quietness himself so his fingers are always near yours.

Words of affirmation randomly comes out. Sometimes he talks about his personal experience to encourage you that everything will be alright, sometimes he tells you the reasons to his belief why your loved one's love for you preserves through all.

He keeps his talks motivational and faithful for the future. Sometimes he'd quote the things Dazai had said to him, filtering out the nonsense if necessary, or the things he always told himself in hope for a brighter tomorrow.

A breathing doll has been haunting your room for a week. It blinks, it moves, it can be spoonfed, but nobody at a glance would argue that it lives. It’s a doll. Calling it an undead is more generous than calling it a doll because of the existing needs. A doll sits inanimately, breathes at the bare minimum, and is devoid of wants and needs.

It’s the perfect status to illustrate how corpse-like you’ve been living like for this week. Your stone-cold face, just as cold fingers, eyes that barely shift, dried mouth and chapped lips make it a challenge to have you described as something living. To even use the word ‘live’ to describe you is contradictory and to hear the word ‘live’ suffocates your throat and clamps your once functioning heart. The indescribable pain mutes you, paralyzes you, turning you doll-like.

A broken doll, you are, once full, once living and moving until the one you love had to bid life farewell first without warning.

One tireless and loyal white-haired boy frequents you every day, bearing food and water to make sure the living doll in your room doesn’t fade into the cold. Cobwebs would have formed between your arms and your bed if he didn’t clean you off the filth you don’t bathe away, your nerves have been too dormant for you to feel filthy.

A bright white figure shifts around in front of you like a poltergeist. You pay it no mind. This isn't the first or second time you're seeing things that aren't there, or rather, someone who isn't supposed to be here. Your cluelessness to cope with the grave reality seems to have driven your brain on autopilot, it seems that this time it decides to give you a hallucination so you'd have someone to cling to.

A sudden snap startles your eyes to open wider, albeit without focus. Something black was in front of you, it had five branches and moves so... humanly. Like it's real. You trace it back to the white hallucination in front of you and it takes you a while to realise that you aren't hallucinating. The white haired boy who has been frequenting your place is here again today.

"Atsushi..." His name falls emptily through your teeth.

Atsushi’s mouth opens and his lips move in accordance. His face wrinkles to the centre. The inconsistent pressure he applies around your cold hand before holding you as tight as now tells you of how fragile he knows you are.

His mouth opens again familiarly. You shift your eyes to him without any effort to listen through the incoherent sound.

When his lips move for the third time, you figure out he has been calling your name. You blink twice and his chest deflates with a long exhale.

“You’ll pull through,” His hold around your hand boldens as he grit his teeth. “They had to depart first but they did so while loving you. You're loved, they love you. You can use that to push on, their love for you lives on and so do your memories of them.”

He observes you with high intensity as if expecting you to speak. You notice the disappointment when all your eyes do is gaze hollowly through him. You think he breathes in a sob from the sudden squeak he makes.

Your eyes lazily roll to follow your hand Atsushi lifts to put against his face. “I’m with you, I'll always will be. You’re not alone, you’re not alone, you’re not alone.” He chants. “You’re never alone, you’re never alone.”

He brings your hand down against his chest. Something beats inside to hammer you the reminder that it will never stop thrumming. The warmth reminds your nerves of something. It feels contagious, bringing you recollecting something you used to feel often.

“I promise, I promise, I promise,” Atsushi hurriedly says, “I’ll always be here for you.”

Like a mantra, his words deliver the familiar sensation his chest makes you feel to your essence. After your slowed blink, you tilt down your head and tilt back up, repeating that movement until it’s fitted to be called a nod. Atsushi heaves a breath out and pulls your hand to get between his arm and side until your upper body drops against his.

“They watch over you, I promise,” His hand holds your head as you passively breathe on his shirt. "Anytime and anywhere, they're with you, and so am I.” He says airily. "You're never alone and never will be. They're with you and I'm staying forever, you'll never see your side empty, I promise they watch over you, I promise, I promise, I promise,"

Your head tilts to the side, giving more space to breathe. His solid body exudes more of the feeling you don’t realize you crave. It reaches your throat eventually, nourishing you with words you once lost.

"Thank you," You whisper.

A living doll you temporarily are but not forever, and most certainly, a loved human you are for as long as the memory of your beloved and Atsushi keep you close to them.

© all rights reserved to hanazou. do not repost, modify, or claim any of my works as your own.

[katierosefun]

back on my w: two worlds bullshit but also make it star wars and obi-wan and anakin angst, because in typical caroline fashion, i’ve wondered about like. au? au. like, lowkey a canon divergence but also not a canon divergence au, i don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s really fucking meta--

anyways. thoughts under the cut, because i don’t want to burden anyone with ‘caroline what are you talking about why don’t you just write/don’t you have things to do’ shhhHHHHhh at this point i’m just a miserable pile of half-written docs and ideas but let me word-vomit for a second  (but also please do indulge me in this because i need to scream and i lowkey am into this idea but also i have too many things to write but also)

okay, so i’ve already rambled a bit about w: two worlds, but basically, the actual kdrama’s premise is that a young woman accidentally is dragged into the world of the comic/webtoon her father writes--essentially, this young woman saves the comic protagonist’s life, and she keeps accidentally slipping into the world, and it’s just. it’s so fucking meta and so fucking good and so fucking smart, and even though i think this is the kind of story that you.....can’t really mimic just because of how fucking smart and unique it is, it still got me thinking about star wars but make it “w” and uh--

disclaimer: i don’t think i’d ever actually write this because it would be so niche and also so incredibly convoluted, idk man i’m just kinda going off here: 

- so, the events of rots do happen. (note how i said that this is still slight canon-divergence au but also not? yeah, it’s about to get super complicated) 

- and of course, at this point, the galaxy like....no one except like obi-wan and yoda and bail actually know that darth vader is anakin, right? i think that’s what the situation is? 

- anyways, i think that’s where the story picks up: obi-wan’s in the middle-of-nowhere tatooine, and no one knows where/what the fuck happened to anakin skywalker, but we know that anakin skywalker was a pretty well-respected/public figure (because war propagandaaaaa) 

- anyways, thinking about obi-wan kenobi coming into town one day and realizing that people are shadily passing around a data pad to look at hey, this story just updated!!! this story just updated, and obi-wan realizes that there’s a rebelling artist somewhere out in the galaxy making comics about a young man who just so happens to Look Like and Act Like and also is named Anakin Skywalker, except he’s not a jedi, he’s just a regular guy making an honest living in the galaxy (and also on the hunt to avenge his friends’ and his family’s mysterious deaths) 

- i know, really fucking meta at this point 

- things are harmless enough: obi-wan tries to ignore this comic’s existence (if anything, he’s a little insulted by it because how dare you use his face and his name and turn it into...whatever this is), but like. 

- the thing is, grief is a funny thing, and sometimes you start to look for your person everywhere. 

- so obi-wan winds up reading along. he reads, and sometimes he thinks that things are a little too eerie--like, apparently, obi-wan is one of the people who was mysteriously killed / anakin’s mom was mysteriously killed / the dialogue is way too fucking real-- 

- anyways, the comic updates one day: obi-wan sees that the author has somehow decided to basically almost kill off anakin--bleeding out in the middle of nowhere, and obi-wan just watches and it’s painful because this isn’t actually anakin, this is just a comic character-- 

- and that’s when obi-wan gets pulled in. 

- obi-wan kenobi--our obi-wan kenobi--staring at this anakin skywalker-but-not-really-anakin-skywalker, who is bleeding out at his feet-- 

- obi-wan saves anakin’s life because what else is he gonna do, it doesn’t matter if this guy is a comic book character or not--he’s still going to save this person who has his best friend’s face 

- obi-wan gets transported back into his world. he looks down at the comic to find a drawing of himself saving the comic-anakin and promptly freaks tf out because that just happened why did that happen how the fuck did that happen 

- anyways, lots of other things happen. obi-wan now sometimes gets randomly pulled into this comic, and the comic-anakin skywalker is freaking out a little too because he’s like “you look exactly like my best friend, only my best friend was murdered”. and our obi-wan’s just like “yeah. i know the feeling--” 

- meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, imagine darth vader/anakin walking past a bunch of stormtroopers/former clone troopers and discovering this comic (lol this is kinda funny but also kinda not, because vader’s going to be like “find this artist and kill them”) 

- but who is the artist? who is the author? do we know? (we do not. at least, not right away.) 

- but anyways, back to obi-wan and comic-anakin: holy shit, okay, it seems like i’m getting a little invested now oh no, but anyways, in the comic, obi-wan still meets others: he meets a comic-padme (who is Not Married to comic anakin but there’s obviously some flirting there), and he meets a comic-ahsoka and a comic-rex, and it’s utterly painful for obi-wan because. because in this world. in this world, things are kind of okay. 

- comic-anakin still doesn’t know where obi-wan’s come from though--comic-anakin doesn’t know that he’s just a comic character. (which makes for Bad Realizations later.) 

- uh now there are other details i want to work out and an Actual Storyline in the process here in this what started as a joke to now what is turning into a brainstorm, but like-- 

- the actual plot? idk probably something to do with comic-anakin slowly realizing that he is. actually. just some grieving author’s fantasy / darth vader in real-time tracking down obi-wan and whoever tf is writing this comic / obi-wan constantly being yanked into this world against his will. 

- angst? so much angst. 

- just thinking about how our obi-wan decides to help comic-anakin.....comic-anakin being like “who are you?” / obi-wan: “me? i’m someone who wants you to have a happy ending. at least in this life. in this world.” / comic-anakin: ??? 

- kind of a bittersweet ending ngl-- 

- comic-anakin learns the truth: everything, from the fact that he. he is but someone’s imagination, to the fact that obi-wan comes from the Real World and that the Anakin Skywalker of the Real World turns into a villain/is the real killer of everyone he’s ever loved. 

- sad. so sad. 

- but ends with comic-anakin giving our obi-wan one last hug. (”i’m sorry that you never got to save your anakin.” / obi-wan trying really, really, really hard not to cry because a part of him doesn’t want to leave this world. this world where everyone’s safe and alive, but he has to go. in the end, he always has to go.) 

- as obi-wan leaves, comic-anakin smiles at him. (”i’m someone who’s rooting for you to have a happy ending.”) 

- anyways. uh. oh god. 

[doodledraw]

Return (Of What Was Cherished)

Cody crash lands on Tatooine. He doesn't really know why, but there's nothing left for him in the Empire. Little did he know there's a lot waiting for him this far out in the Outer Rim.

(thanks @katanrocksketches​ for the title idea!! and for being my sounding board ily)

Today for @commandercodyweek​ I decided to write a fic I’ve been wanting to try my hand at for a while!! Post-Order 66 reunions are just...the BEST so here’s my shot at it!

Read on AO3 here! Or under the cut!

He didn't know who he was. He didn't know what he was doing. All he knew was that it was kriffing hot and it had been over 24 hours since he had crossed paths with another being. Granted, 12 of those hours had been in space and then another 5 had been spent unconscious in the desert, slowly baking under the hot suns. Most of his armor had quickly been removed and fastened to a small sled using a piece of debris from his now absolutely trashed ship. Dragging that along, he began to wander the desert (it was just his luck he managed to land as far away from civilization as possible).

After two hours, he felt like he was going in circles.

After three, he spotted a ridge in the distance and started to make his way towards it.

After four, the ridge was still firmly in the distance and he was starting to think it was a mirage and that he was going to die out in the middle of nowhere.

He never realized that he was thinking clearer and more him than he had been for the last five years, like taking a breath after being underwater.

He finally reached the ridge on hour six and allowed himself a small rest. Clones were built for endurance but not for invulnerability. Besides, he needed to tend his wounds and the shelter he had found was the most he was going to get.

It was only once he'd stopped that his brain, no longer preoccupied with moving his legs through the rapidly shifting sands, caught up to his situation. That was when the panic set in. He was all alone, on a planet that very well could be the death of him, and yet at the same time he was feeling more alive than he had in a good long time.

After he gave himself a moment to panic, the rational part of his brain kicked in and he looked through the pockets on his toolbelt to see what he had with him.

Unfortunately, his black armor did nothing to help him from the heat of the suns, and he curses his competency for that. Why couldn't he have been forgettable?!

None of you are forgettable to me, my dear. You're all so very important, the memory surfaced unbidden. Obi-Wan would reassure him like that whenever he or his vode felt inadequate.

Cody's breath caught. He tried the name out in his head again. Obi-Wan. Then out loud: "Obi-Wan," he whispered to the wind.

He can say his General's name!

For the first time in years, he can say the name of the man who gave him everything and asked for nothing in return. It made him want to cry. But water is precious on Tatooine. Even he knows that. So he stashed that grief with all the other grief he'd piled away into a corner of his mind and then he left it be.

He's got a bacta patch, some tape, two painkillers, a spare comm that's broken straight in half, a ration bar, and nothing else. He split the ration bar in half and ate one of the halves along with one painkiller. Then he set to work making bandages out of part of the sleeve of his blacks and secured it around the cut on his head with some tape. Luckily he could still think rather clearly, so he didn’t think he was in danger of anything worse than a concussion, and the blood had stopped hours ago.

~~

He didn't realize he had fallen asleep until he woke up the next day. Sighing, he decided to conserve his painkillers and food. He wanted to make it out of this canyon...gorge...thing...whatever it was, if he even could and make it to some sort of civilization. So with a groan of pain, he set off again.

He focused on the fact that he was no longer burning under the suns constantly due to the slight shelter the ridge provided, and told himself that he could make it. He was Marshal Commander Cody turned Purge Trooper, the sun was not going to be the thing that killed him. Kriff it all, he was going to live. For his vode. For his General. He would live.

~~

Civilization was a sight for sore eyes. After almost having fallen to his death multiple times, and having definitely aggravated the wound on his abdomen, he had made it out. He wanted to fall asleep. No wait, he wanted to eat something other than the expired ration bar and then fall asleep. And food required civilization.

The citizens of the town had apparently had a good amount of half-dead beings stagger their way into town because he was barely even given a second glance. The town, which he later learned was Mos Espa, was located in the north across from the Dune Sea, where he'd crashed. The barkeep was helpful enough to direct him to somewhere he could trade in some of his armor and scrap for some credits and get new clothes for it. He traded everything except his vambraces, greaves, blaster and toolbelt, and got a hooded jacket and a pair of patched-up spacer's pants in return. Freshly outfitted and feeling lighter than he ever had, but also more exposed than ever, he wandered back outside and through the town.

He had no working commlink, not that he would want to call the Empire anyway, better they just assume he died, and no credits and nowhere to go. Credits, he obviously needed. Shelter could come later.

~~

Cody spent three weeks in Espa. He picked up odd-jobs here and there, and with the credits, bought some medical supplies, treated his wounds, and then did more odd-jobs. He had no purpose but also no reason to leave. The townsfolk weren't so bad once you got to know them and Espa was quiet, out of the way. No one could find him there.

At least that's what he thought.

Brown robes weren't uncommon on Tatooine. The first time he had seen one, he nearly killed himself by looking away from the box he was supposed to be catching. But it wasn't him, how could it be? The second and third times, he had been no less surprised, but this time he knew it wouldn't be him. It couldn't be him.

Now, being the tenth time, he barely even glanced at the stranger on an eopie wandering into town. But he felt the eyes on his back anyway.

Cody knew he was recognizable. He was one in a a few billion, obviously there would be people that had seen his face before. Some of the townsfolk asked about that at the beginning, but not for long. They stopped asking soon enough. So this stranger would realize soon enough that he wasn't who he thought and move on. They all did, everyone had for as long as he could remember, except for one. Cody couldn't escape the slight feeling of relief that filled him when the stranger's eyes were gone. For some reason, that stare had felt more piercing than normal. He shivered despite the heat, then turned back to his work.

He forgot about the stranger until that night, when he made his way into the bar for a refreshment after his day of work. They were there, at the bar, almost as if they were waiting for him. But that was crazy, and Cody resolutely placed himself as far away from them as possible. They made no move towards him, didn't even notice him, as far as he could tell, and they mutually ignored each other for the rest of the night.

Until Cody left to make his way back to where he was staying. Noticing his brown hooded shadow, he made his way through alleys and then stopped. "Whoever you are, whatever you want, why don't you just leave me alone. We'll both be happier that way."

The figure made a choked noise and took another half step towards Cody, who had spun to face them.

"What do you want from me?" the clone demanded.

"I don't know."

"Who are you? How did you find me?"

The figure lifted their hands to remove the hood, and Cody immediately tensed towards his blaster. Moonlight illuminated silver threaded copper hair and Cody's eyes widened.

"My dear, I think you know the answer to that by now. It's not an expression you've particularly liked me to say," Obi-Wan Kenobi said, tears streaming down his drawn face.

Cody stumbled back against the rough stone wall. "No. No, it's not you. It can't be. I...I killed you! I watched you fall! That should have killed you!"

"You of all people should know I am rather good at surviving things normal mortals should not be able to," he chuckled wetly and his gaze moved off into the middle distance. "It was a specific point of anxiety for you during the war. Oh Kote. Ner'Kote...what have they done to you?"

"More like what have they done with me," Cody remarked bitterly. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Is this real? I need you to tell me right now if this is real, General."

"Not your General."

Cody gave him a withering glare. "Yes you are."

The Not Apparition took a step forward. "May I?"

Cody nodded slowly, and then General Kenobi was gently, carefully, cradling his hand in both of his like it was the most precious thing he had ever held. "I'm here, Cody."

Cody broke right there. In the middle of nowhere on Tatooine, Cody fell to the ground and sobbed. He grieved in his General's arms, the man he was not allowed to even think of until earlier that month. The man he thought he had killed. The man he loved.

"Ni'ceta! Ni'ceta, Obi-Wan! I should have fought it harder, I should have escaped earlier, I should have looked for you, I should have--"

Obi-Wan shushed him. "You should have nothing Cody. You did everything you could. It was not you. I forgive you. I've forgiven you. I'd forgiven you as I was falling. It was not you, my dear."

They sat there, two broken pieces slowly healing each other in the middle of an alley in the middle of nowhere in Mos Espa until Obi-Wan pulled away.

"Let's go home cyar'ika," he murmured.

Home. The first true home he would ever have. "That sounds perfect."

[lilacandladybugs]

hey since youre talking about christianity, i was wondering if you could answer a question ive been curious about. if god cares about people and if jesus died for our sins, then why does hell exist? and if god cares about us then why did he let so much bad stuff happened in his name, and even cause it, like with the noah’s arch story?

sorry if any of this is wrong ive never read the bible, but ive had bad experiences with christianity in the past and the way you talk about it seems much nicer than the way i know it

I don’t think I can answer this question in a way that doesn’t come across as pretentious or like I’m asking for an argument or just being straight up unsatisfying. But I just am going to try anyway because i'm hoping that maybe this will be comforting or helpful to someone. I’m sorry if this is offensive I am really trying my best, please take this all in the best possible way and be gracious with me 

The thing about this ask is that it’s actually a bunch of different questions, and since each of them individually is really hard to answer so I’m going to narrow it down to just one ( im sorry ;-; ) . The one I’ve thought about the most is “Why does God let bad things happen if he loves us?”

When this question first really occurred to me, I was already a believer. So I was already pretty convinced that God exists logically, from the perspective of history, philosophy, science, and my personal experience. I believed in the /existence/ of the God who is represented in the scriptures. (I doubt anyone wants it but I can give you a list of resources if you want to look into any of that.) The struggle for me was whether or not all that evidence held true in the face of this moral dilemma; the problem of evil in the presence of a loving God.

But I just couldn’t turn my back on the concept of a moral grounding in God. I had a philosophy professor tell me that people are mortal and so we shouldn’t grieve them like they’re immortal, that grief is a choice, and that trauma is a choice. I respected her so much, but I just couldn’t accept that. There’s nothing more unsettling to me than suggesting that cruelty and death and suffering are only wrong because you think they are, and not because they’re violating sacred ancient laws. My friends dying, people hurting me, that isn’t just in my head. It’s /real/. They’re really dead, and it really matters. People really did something wrong when they hurt me, and it isn’t my fault for being hurt. It’s their fault for being cruel. And their cruelty is objectively morally wrong.

I realized that if I became an atheist I would have to accept the fact that there isn’t /objectively/ any difference between right and wrong. There isn’t any theoretical “right way” that the world should be. But to me, there is a right way it should be. There is a right way and it was lost because of sin.

It was I guess comforting that Christianity provided the premises I needed to ask a question like this. Evil exists. And love exists. So how can God exist? What a comforting question, in a way. To get to grieve, to be angry, to wonder what’s going on, to want things to be different. It was validating i guess

Don’t get me wrong i was FURIOUS i was so angry. I was so angry and so conflicted I kind of thought I might just like rip apart at my seams but I just felt caught between a rock and a hard place to be either abandoned by God or to not even be able to think about my experiences in a way that felt coherent.

He showed up though. I remember swearing at him, and laying up at night thinking he wasn’t there, I told him I wouldn’t have to have trauma if he would’ve stepped in, that my friends wouldn’t be dead, that he let it happen to me, that he just /witnessed/ it. And man idk he just showed up. He showed up every time. I almost walked away like five times that summer. And every time he sent someone, there was always someone that showed up and talked to me like out of nowhere. Or music, or scripture, or something someone said in passing. 

The night that it was really bad was when I realized that the only person who could save me was God and I cried out to him, and I just idk I’ve never been so desperate. I went to church the next day against my will and the sermon felt like it was written for me specifically. I cried through the whole thing.

If God is goodness, then how can I say he isn’t with me and around me constantly? In the sunrise and sunset, in the stars, in flowers, and in kind words. In sermons. In friends and family. In all the coincidences that stopped me from becoming an atheist, all of the answered prayers and the impossibilities. That’s why my side blog is called @in-the-whisper. Because I felt him there, even though it hurt, he was with me in the quiet and in the silence, in his whisper in a thousand different ways.

I was posed this question by someone who was there for me in one of those moments where I almost walked away from God, “Is sufficiency abundant?” I guess I thought it was. Where was God? In the peace that surpasses understanding. In the knowledge that everything is finished, that he died for us, that he didn’t abandon us. That whatever terrible things happen, he was willing to take all of the consequences for that onto himself in the person of Jesus. That one day he will set things right, even though it isn’t right right now. 

It comes down to the Gospel (good news, core story of the Christian faith); humanity actively chose to walk away from God in an act of rebellion. We had free will because God created us tenderly to be in a loving relationship with him, and loving relationships must be based on free will and they must be two way. So he let us walk away from him, and away from the sustainer of life our bodies break, our world crumbles, and we die. In order to bridge that gap, he chose to die in our place, so that we could re enter that free will relationship with him if we so choose. He died on the cross, descended into hell, and then in three days he rose from the grave, defeating death. And one day he will return on a white horse to rescue us and to take the world back as his own. If I believed that to be true, then I believed in the greatest intervention in human history that has ever occurred. The God of the Bible isn’t a distant God, "God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him." 1 John 4:9 He did the unthinkable for us.

Living in light of the gospel helped me to understand the way that God is present in my life, my present, past, and in my future. It gave me peace. When Horatio G. Spafford’s two daughters and wife died in a shipwreck, he wrote this,

“When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul." 

“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control: that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed His own blood for my soul.

“My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

“And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight The clouds be rolled back as a scroll The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend Even so, it is well with my soul!

“It is well with my soul, it is well, it is well with my soul.”

I don’t have an answer for your question. What I know is that I am willing to rest in the knowledge of my personal experiences and my research that God exists, that he is loving, and that he is powerful, just, and wise. Even the winds and the seas obey him, the mountains are like pebbles to him, thunder rolls at the sound of his voice. He had thought before time began, he gave all knowledge and all wisdom to us. 

Why do bad things happen also brings up the question, why do good things happen? Who do we have to thank when we get up in the morning and can see or hear or move or are alive in general? Why are we so blessed as to have two days and not just one? Where do mornings and complexity and beauty and wonder come from? They come from him. Not because we need it, but because he wants to give it to us. Enjoyment, existence, love, laughter, thought, beauty, heartbreak. The world is just as beautiful as it is terrible, and why should it be beautiful? Because he wants it to be that way.

God is so patient. He is so patient and kind and powerful, and he wants to hear your questions. Some of them, like this one, are in my opinion something that you have to talk to him about directly. He gives us thought and logic and reason and wisdom, and he asks for us to engage him. He will answer.

If any believers are reading this, I want you to know that it is enough to cry out to him in pain. It is enough to want to want to believe in him. He would so much rather hear from you in your anger than never hear from you at all. Seek him out, he will find you. He will chase after you.

I bet that he would chase after me, bet my life on it. I might not know the answer, but I am confident enough in what I do know that I’m willing to bet my existence that God will come true on his promises, that he will deliver me, that everything will be okay, that he is bigger than my trauma, and that he will hold me.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,     neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,     so are my ways higher than your ways     and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow     come down from heaven, and do not return to it     without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish,     so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:     It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire     and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy     and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills     will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field     will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,     and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown,     for an everlasting sign,     that will endure forever.” Isaiah 55:8-13

And I’m holding him to that promise.

[amariaamaris]

Of Grief and Realm Jumping

This idea randomly popped in my head and I felt that I had to write it down! Don’t worry I am still working on writing the second part to Bennett’s Saviors! The whole premise of this is that I thought of instead of Wanda Maximoff staying with the Avengers after her brother Pietro is killed in Age of Ultron. Her abilities/magic go haywire and send her to a different realm where the Vampire Diaries and the Originals story is. You know... so that when the whole Captain America v. Iron man thing happens a young woman (who is in over her head) isn’t pulled into it! Anyway, without further ado, I hope you enjoy this! Let me know if you want another part or a snapshot of something that Wanda could come across while in Mystic Falls (and maybe New Orleans?).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanda Maximoff felt the moment her twin died, the moment her other half left the world. The heart wrenching scream that came out of her led to the red energy of her powers to destroy every single minion robot of Ultron; including Ultron himself. What Wanda didn’t notice in her all-consuming grief of losing her twin was that her magic came rushing back to her as fast and violent as it came out of her. Instead of hurting or killing her though, it teleported her and her brother out of the area; not just the area, but the realm.

It brought them both to a town called Mystic Falls in the state Virginia. Wanda’s magic easily slips back inside of her and leaves her sobbing over her twins body. Having no idea that she isn’t even in the correct realm, but rain is pouring out of the sky as a storm rips through that atmosphere and Wanda doesn’t care to know. She doesn’t care to know where she is or that the people she had just gotten to know would not be there with her.

Wanda doesn’t care because she just lost her twin and the sky is crying and screaming in grief and fury with her. She doesn’t care that she is in the middle of the road with her dead twin and she doesn’t care when a certain sheriffs car screeches to a stop right in front of her. With the headlights spotlighting her and her grief.

Wanda barely pays attention to the fact that the female sheriff is on the radio calling for backup and an ambulance. She doesn’t pay attention to the out of place british accents from a certain original family questioning why there are police and an ambulance vehicle(s) outside of their home. She only comes to when there are people in uniform trying to rip her brother from her.

Wanda’s mind goes straight to HYDRA and her fight or flight instinct come up hard and fast. Although, she isn’t thinking straight so it doesn’t even occur to her to use her abilities. All it seems that she is able to do is kick an scream and clutch to her brothers body as tightly as she can.

Wanda can vaguely hear a males voice say, “Bloody hell...” and then that same voice “Back the hell off Nik, can’t you see the girl needs help? Not people surrounding her and her loved one. Give her some space!” Wanda hears what sounds like a bit of a scuffle, “Bloody idiots, the girl is obviously grieving! Leave her be.”

She tunes out after that and continues to cradle Pietro and brush his hair as she quietly sings in her mother tongue. Wanda doesn’t even realize that she is slowly rocking herself and Pietro’s body back and forth. She hazily takes notice of her surroundings when she hears, “Come on darling, your in shock. I promise you that they’ll take good care of your brother. You just have to let him go.” Kol carefully puts his arms around her body.

Wanda hazily realizes that yes, she is in shock. She also realizes that any strength or fight that she had has completely left her being like her twin has left her. That thought causes a fresh wave a tears to run down her face. 

So, Wanda allows for the mysterious british man to pick her up and carry her towards what looks to be a mansion. Wanda can vaguely hear people protesting the man carrying her away from the scene. They are quickly stopped by people that she is guessing are the mans family members. She allows her eyes to close as she feels the shock overtake her body and shivers of the icy cold rain hitting to her very core.

Wanda can feel the exhaustion of using so much of her energy in the battle and her grief over losing her brother finally pull at her. Wanda’s awareness becomes less and less. Although she is aware of being wrapped up in a towel, the movement stopping, and the warmth of the man holding her along with the heat of a roaring fire wrapping her up. She allows for her body to shut down and sleep, as her mind slowly goes dark, all she hears is the crackling fire, the mans breath, and his steady heartbeat.

Kol looks up from the young woman after taking notice of her state of rest. He raises a brow upon seeing his siblings standing in front of him with Liz Forbes right behind them. Right as Kol goes to open his mouth to tell Sheriff Forbes off. She stops him by raising her hand and slipping between two of his siblings to the front. 

“I’m not here to arrest the poor girl, in fact I’m planning on letting her rest. She looks like she could desperately need it... It looks like she’s been through hell and back. I just wanted to ask that once she is awake and ready that you call me so that I can ask her some questions about everything.” With that Liz Forbes, sheriff, mother, an all around caring person. Turns and leaves; her words seem to hang in the air between all of the silent siblings.

Kol allows his eyes to fall back to the red haired young woman and takes notice that she is no longer shivering from the cold. So, he cradles her as he stands; getting her to a comfortable bed is the only thing on his mind. “Kol, where are you taking her?” Kol stops in his movements and rolls his eyes as he turns to face Finn.

“Dear brother, if you think I’m going to harm her... I’m not. I figured that she would be more comfortable in a bed. So, I’m taking her to my room to rest.” Elijah raises a brow and puts one hand in his pocket. “I didn’t realize that we didn’t have enough guest rooms to put her in one...?”

Kol scoffs on his brother and can feel his control slip as his vampiric face comes forward for a split second as his annoyance gives way to anger. It causes his siblings to tense up. “She’s staying in my room where I can make sure that she rests. I’m not going to do anything harmful to her. I thought all of you knew me better than that.” Kol shakes his head and then turns away, hoping that his siblings didn’t see the hurt in his eyes at them constantly thinking the worst of him. He makes sure that he is gone before any of them can say anything.

Kol’s siblings all have varying frowns of worry and disappointment in themselves on their faces. Elijah eventually lets out a deep sigh and disappears, leaving Rebekah, Klaus, and Finn to their own devises. Klaus speeds off to his art room, Finn leaves for the library, and Rebekah heads for Kol’s room; knowing that the young woman would feel better knowing that it was another woman that changed her clothing. 

Rebekah quietly knocks on Kol’s door and then walks in without waiting for an answer. “Okay brother, out. I’m going to change her clothes so that she can at least know that she still has her modesty.” Kol doesn’t even bother to argue her words, in fact he looks relieved that she was taking this part over for him. He quickly kisses Rebekah’s cheek and then he is gone. Rebekah quietly snickers to herself at his reaction.

She takes notice that Kol at picked out his own clothing for the young woman to wear (sweatpants and a random long-sleeved dress shirt). Rebekah allows herself an eye roll even as a soft smile graces her lips at her brothers willingness to care for the random young woman. Rebekah moves as quickly and as respectfully as she can to change her clothing. When she’s done, Rebekah gently tucks the young woman into Kol’s bed and quietly closes the door behind her as she leaves.

As Rebekah heads to her room Kol is walking by and she gives him a nod to let him know that he’s good to enter his room again. When he enters, the almost full moon along with the light coming through the cracked doorway to the bathroom are the only things lighting the room.

Kol pushes out a breath while shoving a hand through his hair. Now that the young woman is resting safely... he feels aimless; he doesn’t know what to do himself. As he studies the young woman, his lips twitch as he takes notice of the fact that Bekah had covered the pillow with a towel (seeing as how the young woman’s hair is still sopping wet). Which reminds him of the fact that he desperately needs to shower, seeing as how he is still wet from the downpour that came out of nowhere.

As he comes out of the bathroom freshly showered he shakes out his hair and sneaks a glance at the young woman; making sure he didn’t wake her. He takes notice that she’s in a different position, curled around herself with her head buried in the covers. He can only see her red hair and part of her body, the rest is swallowed by the covers.

Kol shakes his head and decides to start a fire in the fireplace that seems to be in every single bedroom. Once he is satisfied with the warmth coming from the fireplace, Kol allows himself to sit down on one of the sofas. He knows that he is going to have to settle in for a long night.

-----------

When it finally comes around to 5 AM Kol is pacing as quietly as he can with his eyes firmly on the red haired woman. She’s still sleeping peacefully and she is still curled in on herself, but her face is now showing. Kol can’t stop himself from getting agitated, he just wants her to wake up so that him and his family can get the story behind her appearing in the middle of the road with a dead body (of which he assumes is her brother).

His agitation also brings up his blood lust which helps nothing. Kol lets out a quiet snarl and practically rips his hand through his hair, then he’s gone from the room. Before he knows it, he’s in their kitchen ripping through four blood bags. “Brother, what’s causing you to act like a newly turned vampire?”

Kol glances to Finn as he tosses the used blood bags into the garbage as he gives him a sarcastic smile. “Whatever do you mean Finn? There is nothing causing me to act like a newly turned vampire... as you put it.” Finn just stares at Kol and Kol stares back. He hates when Finn gives him this look; it’s the same look Finn gives all of his siblings. It’s this look that has - without fail - made each and every one of his siblings spill whatever it is that is bothering them; it surprisingly works on Nik too.

“Well, brother... if you must know, I’m just a tad irritated with the waiting came for the young woman in my room to finally awaken. So that we can all figure out what the bloody hell she is doing here. With her clutching a dead body to her no less. And why it is that a violent storm ripped through the sky... Causing people’s possessions to be thrashed.”

Finn just quietly listens as he slowly nods, agreeing with what Kol is saying. Although, he continues to study him. “There is something else... isn’t there brother?” His words cause Kol to make eye contact with Finn once again and Kol curses when he notices the realization in Finn’s eyes. “The smell of her is testing you... Isn’t it? There is no shame in struggling with control brother. It is rare that we have ever completely lost control of ourselves. It is even more rare that we ever come across people that just the smell of them cause a struggle in control.”

Kol can’t stop the scoff from escaping him; out of all of the siblings, Kol struggled the most. Not just because his magic was ripped from him in the transition, but because he didn’t want to put the work into truly exercising restraint and learning control. “Finn is right Kol, it happens to all of us.” Kol looks to Elijah when his voice pulls him out of his thoughts. He studies his expression for a few moments before he nods; only when he sees that Elijah is not lying.

A hand landing on his shoulder causes him to look to Nik. “When there are people like that... that test our restraint it also causes us to become extremely possessive over them. Which would explain why you weren’t happy about the idea of putting the young woman in one of the guest rooms.” 

Understanding and realization dawns on Kol’s face... but confusion quickly takes over. “Then how the bloody hell are you two,” Kol waves his hand between Nik and Elijah. “sharing the little witch?” Kol makes equal space between himself and his three brothers as mischievousness lights his eyes. “While we are on the subject, why is it that Bonnie Bennett is even okay with the sharing? At least the witch isn’t like those doppelgänger bitches.” A scoff escapes him, “Ruining bonds between brothers the moment they spread their legs for one of them.”

Klaus lets out a huffed laugh, while Finn rolls his eyes and leaves the room, and Elijah lets out a long suffering sigh and adjusts one of his cuff links. “And he is back to being the Kol we all know and love.” Kol just laughs, “Oh, come now Elijah, I really am quite curious. If what Nik says is right, how is it that you two haven’t been at each others throats?”

Klaus’s lips twitch, “Okay brother, I’ll humor you - not that I believe you’ll end up having to share the young woman with anyone. When a vampire or werewolf comes across a person that smells in the way that the woman does to you and Bonnie does to us. They can be seen as - for lack of a better word for it or explanation - the other half meant for you. Obviously it would be a different feeling and reaction for wolves than it is for vampires. Since, it brings up the blood lust. Before you ask, yes it gets easier to deal with. It will eventually get to the point where you don’t have the blood lust effecting you from her smell.” Kol allows the information to sink in as he stares off into space.

Klaus and Elijah exchange looks, the can’t remember in their long lives a moment when Kol has ever looked as serious as he is right in this moment. “We’ll leave you to think brother.” Elijah quietly says, getting a mindless nod from Kol. Both Elijah and Klaus are gone by the time Kol stops his nod. Kol doesn’t know how long he’s been standing in the kitchen, completely still, and lost in his own mind thinking through the information given. It’s 8:30 AM when Kol finally comes back to himself and glances at the time. He decides to make his way to his room to see if the young woman is awake.

When Kol gets to his room door he pauses and listens for the young woman’s breath, heartbeat, and hopefully movement. He takes notice first of her elevated heartrate and hear faster breathing pattern. He can hear her slowly trying to shift off of the bed. He knocks on the door softly to announce his presence, he hears her suck in a breath and go still. The her hesitant, almost silent voice, “He- hello?” He takes her response as an invitation to open the door and walk in.

Kol quietly closes the door behind him, but makes sure that she notices that it stays unlocked. They both take a moment to study each other; Kol can’t help but notice how heartbreakingly beautiful she looks, with her red hair tumbling down her shoulders, his clothing practically swallowing her, her eyes slightly red from her crying, and very faint tear tracks on her face. 

Wanda is to busy being wary of him, confused as to where she is, and wanting to know where her twin is to really look at the man standing in front of her. Her eyes flicker around the room, looking to the door he entered from, then to the windows, to him, then looking around the room again. As she shifts a bit she feels different material - softer material than what she is used to - brush against her skin. She takes notice that they seem to completely swallow her she allows the sleeve of the shirt to cover her hand as she raises it to her face. As she carefully brushes wisps of hair away from her face she catches the scent that clings to the material and a shiver goes up her spine.

Wanda’s eyes flicker back to the man standing in front of her as he watches her curiously. Kol can’t stop the pride that he feels rush through him at her response to his scent. He could tell that she thought she hid her reaction, but he noticed. He can also tell that she is uncomfortable with the silence and even though he could spend the rest of the time just watching her... he decides to put her out of her discomfort. “My name is Kol Mikaelson, I can promise you that no one here will harm you. I can also explain to you what I know about you being here. You most likely know more about it than me. Care to tell me your name darling?” 

Kol’s lips twitch at her body jolting towards him in reaction to his voice (he just barely hides his joy at her reaction). He watches as she hesitantly goes to say something and pauses. Then she tries again, “I’m Wanda.... Maximoff.” He watches as her eyes fall from his to her lap as she fidgets with the sleeves of the shirt. “I don’t really know what I’m doing here... or where here is. You probably won’t even believe me if I tell you...”

Kol can’t stop the twinge of worry that touches him as he watches and listens to her. But he doesn’t move toward her in worry of scaring h- Wanda. When her hair falls to curtain her face, Kol watches as her body harshly jerks. Causing him to take a step forward. “What... what happened to my hair? I-- it wasn’t this color before...? I...”

Kol furrows his brows as her breathing picks up and her movement become broken and jerky. His eyes widen as he realizes that Wanda is having a panic attack. He assumes that everything that must have happened to her is coming to a head and causing this. He doesn’t know if doing what he is about to do will help or if it will make it worse, but he wants to try. He move toward Wanda and quickly pulls her into his lap and cradles her. “Calm down darling, you’re okay.” Kol unconsciously runs one of his hands softly through her hair and tightens his hold. “Breathe lass, we’ll figure it all out, just breathe.”

Wanda’s response to to grab his one arm that is wrapped around her and curl into him. Eventually her breathing evens out a bit, but neither move away from each other. A small smile makes its way onto Kol’s face when he feels Wanda (his Wanda) actually clutch onto him tighter; while burrowing closer to him. 

Wanda knows that she shouldn’t be trusting the man - Kol - so easily, but right now she needs someone to help ground her. To help comfort her and seeing as how her twin brother won’t be here to do it anymo-. Wanda finds herself choking on a sob as tears rush to her eyes and her hands clench so hard on Kol’s arm that her knuckles go white. with the pressure.

Kol takes notice of her violent and fast change in state of being and frowns, but before he can ask what’s wrong... Wanda’s cracking voice fills the room before he can open his mouth. “He’s gone... my twin brother - Pietro - is gone. He’s gone and I couldn’t stop it! I wasn’t there for him when he needed me, I wa--”

Kol cuddles her closer and softly shushes Wanda as he carefully moves them both to a more comfortable position. When Wanda finally quiets into a restless sleep, Kol pushes out a breath, shaken with how much her pain affected him and presses his eyes tightly closed. Trying to ignore the answering tears that wanted to come out at his other half's tears. The silence that filled the room once everything fully quieted... was full of the dead, the left unsaid, and the questions left unanswered.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope you guys liked it! I tried to keep as close to what I perceive/observe of the characters; their emotions, thoughts, dynamics with others, etc. I hope I did them justice! Let me know what you think and if you’d want a second part or a one-shot of something specific with Wanda’s time with the Mikaelson family. Constructive criticism is always welcome! Have a wonderful morning/day/evening/night!

Peace, Love, and Joy!

[woodyclawson]

( MILO VENTIMIGLIA + CISMALE ) —  Have you seen WAGNER ‘WOODY’ LAWSON ? This FORTY-ONE year old is a/an BARN MANAGER who resides in STATEN ISLAND. HE/HIM has/have been living in NYC for FOUR YEARS, and is/are known to be STEADY and HUMBLE, but can also be BLUNT and DISSONANT, if you cross them.  People tend to associate them with THE SMELL OF FRESH HAY and AGED WHISKEY

Name: Wagner ‘Woody’ Lawson

Age: Forty-One

Birthday: January 25, 1979

Sign: Aquarius

Neighborhood: East Kingsboro

Home: Quaint two-bedroom home with a small yard

Occupation: Barn Manager

Character Quote: “Sometimes I feel like Jesse James / Still tryin’ to make a name / Knowing nothing’s gonna change what I am” ~Troubadour by George Strait

Pos. Traits: Hard-Working, Steady, Humble

Neg. Traits: Blunt, Firm, Dissonant

Likes: farm work, aged whiskey, loping through the open country

Dislikes: people who push around others, well-done steak, warm beer

Aesthetic: tennessee whiskey, the smell of fresh hay, roping

Born in Tennessee Wagner Lawson was raised along the banks of Mississippi mud, never given a chance to be anything but the down-home country boy, which had always suited Wagner just fine. His daddy was a colt starter and former rodeo champion, having won national titles for roping and reining. From the moment Wagner could waddle he was following his daddy around everywhere, at first just watching as his father worked and as he got older helping with the chores himself. He found that spending time tending to the many horses cathartic and volunteered for just about any chore that would get him around them. Never once did he need to be asked to pitch in to do what was needed at the family ranch, from picking vegetables in the garden for his mama to helping his daddy check the cattle fences. As far as most childhoods go, his was pretty perfect. Sure, sometimes his dad drank too much and sometimes his mom just would not stop fussing over him, but he had no cause to complain.

His father, seeing his boy take an interest in horses at such a young age decided to help Wagner begin to follow in his footsteps. As a kid he enrolled Wagner in the pee-wee portion of rodeos where his wife would take pictures of the young boy struggling to stay on the back of a wildly running sheep, but in the end, he stayed on. He almost always did. With natural talent like that his father was quick to get his son started on the path to becoming a bull-rider. His mama threw fits and got into fights with his daddy, it was too dangerous, he could be hurt, killed even, but as he got older and started to have a mind of his own there was nothing that he wanted to do more. So he practiced, and practiced. By sixteen he was competing on broncs, a safer alternative to the bull, and was cleaning up at junior rodeos, his room becoming full of belt buckles, the tack room full of all the special made trophy tack he had won. But being bucked was far from his only talent. At age ten he had broke his very first colt and at twelve he was winning local roping competitions. He even became adept at helping his dad sort and catch cattle, something he was never fond of but did anyways as it was expected of him. Despite how it sounds, his childhood wasn’t all work. While never the best in school he managed to get passing marks and had a group of boys he roughhoused and fucked around with who were constantly getting him into trouble as a teenager.

Fast forward a few years and he was one of the hottest young bull riders to hit the circuit. But his career as a rider didn’t last as long as anyone would have hoped. The reason? He fell in love. Some would have called the pretty woman he fell in love with a buckle bunny, what with her affinity of dating all the big rodeo stars, but when him and her spent one night together the rest was history. Now twenty-two and married with a baby on the way, Wagner knew he could not be as hell mell as he had been for the past few years. He now had a family to think about; and so, he quit bull riding and switched exclusively to broncs. It was still dangerous, but the risks less than if he was on the back of a bull. Life went on and for the most part the little family was happy, until tragedy struck. On the night of his twenty-eighth birthday, with his wife and little girl in the stands, he overtightened the strap around his hand. At first everything seemed to be going well, he had one of his best times, but as he threw himself off the bucking bronco his hand caught. It was an instant disaster. The animal began to panic, bucking harder and higher, with Wagner hanging on for dear life. His only blessing was that the first hoof to his head knocked him out cold. He was rammed into the side of the fence and drug for minutes before those in charge of wrangling the horse were finally able to calm it down. In the midst of the chaos, his wife, fretting over her husband, had not noticed her daughter slip down through the stands calling out for her daddy. No one noticed her presence in the ring until it was too late. All it took was one wrong move from the frightened animal and the sunshine of Wagner’s life was no more.

The blow to Wagner’s own head had been so severe that he was kept in a medically induced coma for two-weeks, giving the wounded flesh time to heal. When he awoke, his whole world was shattered. He grieved, and as he did his grief turned to anger. Anger at the situation, anger at the long arduous healing process, and anger at himself. But all that anger had to go somewhere, and with the only person around during his recovery being his wife, she took the brunt of it. It took him a little over a year to fully heal physically, and during that time he began to develop a dependency on his pain medication. He spent his days sitting in front of the tv drinking beer after beer on top of the opiates as his wife worked in a small diner to try and keep the roof over their heads. One day, a year and half after the tragic accident, the woman had decided that she had had enough. She gave Wagner an ultimatum, get help or she was gone. It led to largest fight yet, a massive blowout that made it clear where Wagner stood.

At that point he was nearing thirty and with nowhere else to go moved back in with his parents. His father though older now was still tough as nails and no patience for his son’s pansiness as he called it. He put Wagner to work. Sober or not he was expected to help, and if he didn’t, God help him. At first he railed, his rage boiling over and eclipsing everything. Rather than argue with his son, the elder Lawson simply gave him a new task. It would be his only job- start the colts. It was something Wagner had used to excel at, but his anger and rage at the horse’s mis compliance made things difficult. The gentle animals became scared of him and began to lash out. One colt in particular, a beautiful bay, resented Wagner more than any of the others, and he let him know it. That was Wagner’s wake up call. He ended up forming a bond with that colt that pulled him out of his stupor and set him back on track. His special relationship with that animal also earned him a nickname, Woody, because wherever Woody went, Buzz followed. Buzz and Woody quickly began racking up wins in roping and reining competitions, and for the next years, Woody allowed himself to feel the happiness that had come into his life. The two traveled all over the countryside, with Woody picking up odd jobs such as stable hand or working cowboy. Until one competition where in the middle Buzz came up lame with an injury too bad to fix, leaving Woody the tough choice of having to put his beloved companion down.

That was four years ago. Woody now resides in Staten Island, working at the local equine therapy and riding lesson program center. He’s the barn manager, the one in charge of making sure the stable hands are doing their job and that the horses are receiving the correct care. It’s a big job, and one he takes seriously. Being around the majestic animals once more is helping him slowly heal, correctly this time, from all the bad that has happened to him. It is a hard road to hoe, but step by step he’s doing it. Perhaps one day he’ll once more be ready for a horse of his own.

[wxlawson]

[ WAGNER ‘WOODY’ LAWSON. 42. CISMALE. HE/HIM] is here! They’ve lived in Silver Lake for [ THREE YEARS ] and are originally from [ TENESEE]. They are a [ MANAGER AT A DUDE RANCH ] and in their downtime love [ COLT STARTING ] and [ TAKING NAPS IN THE HAYLOFT ]. They look a lot like [ MILO VENTIMIGLIA] and live [ IN OASIS APTS ]

Name: Wagner ‘Woody’ Lawson

Age: Forty-Two

Birthday: January 25, 1979

Sign: Aquarius

Home: Quaint two-bedroom home with a small yard

Occupation: Manager at a dude ranch

Character Quote: “Sometimes I feel like Jesse James / Still tryin’ to make a name / Knowing nothing’s gonna change what I am” ~Troubadour by George Strait

Pos. Traits: Hard-Working, Steady, Humble

Neg. Traits: Blunt, Firm, Dissonant

Likes: farm work, aged whiskey, loping through the open country

Dislikes: people who push around others, well-done steak, warm beer

Aesthetic: tennessee whiskey, the smell of fresh hay, roping

~bio~

Born in Tennessee Wagner Lawson was raised along the banks of Mississippi mud, never given a chance to be anything but the down-home country boy, which had always suited Wagner just fine. His daddy was a colt starter and former rodeo champion, having won national titles for roping and reining. From the moment Wagner could waddle he was following his daddy around everywhere, at first just watching as his father worked and as he got older helping with the chores himself. He found that spending time tending to the many horses cathartic and volunteered for just about any chore that would get him around them. Never once did he need to be asked to pitch in to do what was needed at the family ranch, from picking vegetables in the garden for his mama to helping his daddy check the cattle fences. As far as most childhoods go, his was pretty perfect. Sure, sometimes his dad drank too much and sometimes his mom just would not stop fussing over him, but he had no cause to complain.

His father, seeing his boy take an interest in horses at such a young age decided to help Wagner begin to follow in his footsteps. As a kid he enrolled Wagner in the pee-wee portion of rodeos where his wife would take pictures of the young boy struggling to stay on the back of a wildly running sheep, but in the end, he stayed on. He almost always did. With natural talent like that his father was quick to get his son started on the path to becoming a bull-rider. His mama threw fits and got into fights with his daddy, it was too dangerous, he could be hurt, killed even, but as he got older and started to have a mind of his own there was nothing that he wanted to do more. So he practiced, and practiced. By sixteen he was competing on broncs, a safer alternative to the bull, and was cleaning up at junior rodeos, his room becoming full of belt buckles, the tack room full of all the special made trophy tack he had won. But being bucked was far from his only talent. At age ten he had broke his very first colt and at twelve he was winning local roping competitions. He even became adept at helping his dad sort and catch cattle, something he was never fond of but did anyways as it was expected of him. Despite how it sounds, his childhood wasn’t all work. While never the best in school he managed to get passing marks and had a group of boys he roughhoused and fucked around with who were constantly getting him into trouble as a teenager.

Fast forward a few years and he was one of the hottest young bull riders to hit the circuit. But his career as a rider didn’t last as long as anyone would have hoped. The reason? He fell in love. Some would have called the pretty woman he fell in love with a buckle bunny, what with her affinity of dating all the big rodeo stars, but when him and her spent one night together the rest was history. Now twenty-two and married with a baby on the way, Wagner knew he could not be as hell mell as he had been for the past few years. He now had a family to think about; and so, he quit bull riding and switched exclusively to broncs. It was still dangerous, but the risks less than if he was on the back of a bull. Life went on and for the most part the little family was happy, until tragedy struck. On the night of his twenty-eighth birthday, with his wife and little girl in the stands, he overtightened the strap around his hand. At first everything seemed to be going well, he had one of his best times, but as he threw himself off the bucking bronco his hand caught. It was an instant disaster. The animal began to panic, bucking harder and higher, with Wagner hanging on for dear life. His only blessing was that the first hoof to his head knocked him out cold. He was rammed into the side of the fence and drug for minutes before those in charge of wrangling the horse were finally able to calm it down. In the midst of the chaos, his wife, fretting over her husband, had not noticed her daughter slip down through the stands calling out for her daddy. No one noticed her presence in the ring until it was too late. All it took was one wrong move from the frightened animal and the sunshine of Wagner’s life was no more.

The blow to Wagner’s own head had been so severe that he was kept in a medically induced coma for two-weeks, giving the wounded flesh time to heal. When he awoke, his whole world was shattered. He grieved, and as he did his grief turned to anger. Anger at the situation, anger at the long arduous healing process, and anger at himself. But all that anger had to go somewhere, and with the only person around during his recovery being his wife, she took the brunt of it. It took him a little over a year to fully heal physically, and during that time he began to develop a dependency on his pain medication. He spent his days sitting in front of the tv drinking beer after beer on top of the opiates as his wife worked in a small diner to try and keep the roof over their heads. One day, a year and half after the tragic accident, the woman had decided that she had had enough. She gave Wagner an ultimatum, get help or she was gone. It led to largest fight yet, a massive blowout that made it clear where Wagner stood.

At that point he was nearing thirty and with nowhere else to go moved back in with his parents. His father though older now was still tough as nails and no patience for his son’s pansiness as he called it. He put Wagner to work. Sober or not he was expected to help, and if he didn’t, God help him. At first he railed, his rage boiling over and eclipsing everything. Rather than argue with his son, the elder Lawson simply gave him a new task. It would be his only job- start the colts. It was something Wagner had used to excel at, but his anger and rage at the horse’s mis compliance made things difficult. The gentle animals became scared of him and began to lash out. One colt in particular, a beautiful bay, resented Wagner more than any of the others, and he let him know it. That was Wagner’s wake up call. He ended up forming a bond with that colt that pulled him out of his stupor and set him back on track. His special relationship with that animal also earned him a nickname, Woody, because wherever Woody went, Buzz followed. Buzz and Woody quickly began racking up wins in roping and reining competitions, and for the next years, Woody allowed himself to feel the happiness that had come into his life. The two traveled all over the countryside, with Woody picking up odd jobs such as stable hand or working cowboy. Until one competition where in the middle Buzz came up lame with an injury too bad to fix, leaving Woody the tough choice of having to put his beloved companion down.

The loss of his friend sent Wagner ass-first back into the destructive patterns of his life, drugs and alcohol once more waging war inside his body. Only this time he wasn’t a young man, and the substances were taking a heavy toll on his health, not that he cared. His parents, unable to reach him, packed his things and kicked him out. Woody’s father, unable to completely give up on his son, reached out to an old friend who owned a dude ranch an hour outside of LA. For over a year Woody lived there, forced to claw his way back to sobriety through back-breaking labor. The option was always there for him to quit the job, fend for himself, but the company of the horses and being the source of looking after their well-being brought him back from the brink much like it had the last time. A year and a half later he was completely back on the wagon, though he can be known to slip with the drinking whenever the subject of his daughter is brought to the forefront of his mind, mainly around birthdays, his and hers, as well as holidays. 

Wanting more independence Woody turned in his resignation, thanking his father’s friend for getting him back on his feet. Much to his surprise, rather than accept his two weeks notice, he offered Woody a promotion: to oversee the entire running of the dude ranch. It is a big job and one he takes very seriously, knowing that the overall welfare of the horses depends on him, even if he is no longer responsible for their day to day care. That was three years ago.

Since then he’s moved into an apartment at Oasis Apartments in Silver Lake, a place where he could have his freedom yet still manage his responsibilities. Anyone who’s ever been inside his apartment will say it looks like a country movie blew up, with saddles scattered on stands throughout the place and rodeo memorabilia hung up throughout, but for him, it’s the closet thing to home.

[nuestronuevoparaiso]

Sweetheart, I know  you are {BORED AF}  I get it .. tired of staying home while constantly being bombarded by these mundane annoying  restrictions w/ nothing to do nowhere to go.

If you want it, Tess I got it. Whatever it is you are wanting .. needing I got it!

No need to look elsewhere. We are 1 to all things  time and space.

Yes. Do your earthly things.  -  Do all of them.

Move with your dreams.. because that’s what U love and because you love life… and by doing so  thereby exponentially increase the opportunities I have to share what's ours… and because you can.

I love U ~ IB/IGJ

*** Isolation from people you like and Lack of Doing things you Love have you grieving a Life(style)  you onced Lived & Loved. ***

You can choose to be a homebody but [it's different] when the choice is taken away from you. I like so many people who live alone is used to solitude. But after 8 months deprived of my usual activities (entertaining life of c*/parties/event) and borders being closed indefinitely so can't even take a quick bus to WA (their c* opened in april) it’s different and  extremely frustrating -  bc my  sources of joy were being taken away . I feel i got thrusted into this situation w/out any prior notice ...and am the type who has  a active  life coming n going  enjoying the places where i live ..  then all of a sudden stop / been flipped around .

..as 4me no choice --still waiting for my c* to open ... this is all i really do or like to do in life. so its normal if i feel   depress n shit.

earlier I  to book a flight to vegas to make my life  feel normal/got a nice rate/package but a wk after i paid ..AC cancelled for some weird reason..ugh

  way of life’s too regulated and restricted / even  going out to restaurants banks or stores  restricted and long line up . 

It heightens the sensation of being locked away. :(

MOURNING CHANGE: 

IF YOU’RE FEELING DOWN ABOUT THE LOSS OF A LIFESTYLE, YOU’RE NOT ALONE

Two months in, I suddenly felt like my life was over. Maybe not over, but definitely ruined. I still got my wealth and health .. no one close to me got sick .. yet my future remains uncertain, even if there is no immediate, visible jeopardy.

It took me some time to assess my feelings. I had to acknowledge that when the world stopped and shut down March 2020, a part of my identity was gone .. 

and I can only hope it’s temporary.

I loved my lifestyle as it existed pre-pandemic  .. but now seems like My Life's currently on hold. 

My day-to-day is very different yet mundane. I don’t have that excitement which used to motivate or inspire me.

On top of that abrupt change, I can’t stop beating myself up about it, because I’m one of the lucky ones who still has a home/money  (aka survivor's guilt complex)  considering what everybody is goin thru and all.

Stop complaining. Suck it up. Get busy.

Now it’s been more than 7 months , and I’m still wrapping  head and heart around the fact that what I’m feeling is grief.  I’m trying to figure out how to mourn what I’ve lost—a lifestyle, not a life — while moving ahead and putting it all in perspective :/ 

When you find out your normal daily lifestyle is called quarantine

Saturday March 28 2020

As the outer world polarises beyond anything you’ve experienced before, frame it as walking the razor’s edge between two lines of force- between Saturn/Pluto’s soul crunching contraction, collapse and destruction of the way things used to be and the Seeding of the New during  this viral pandemic. Paradoxically, both  are necessary liberating us into the beginnings of  something progressive collaboration. This transitional weirdness of not all there and not all here yet either is deeply uncomfortable.  The ego craves company while spirit wants to connect in solitude. Frame this social distancing as an unprecedented opportunity to shift into the next cycle & to release yourself from expired  contracts.

Ask that part of you who Knows: Now that my old maps have disappeared, what new strategies do I seem to be navigating by?  By having to go “offline” from 24/7 busyness, what is my own guidance and wisdom showing me? Now that I’ve stopped struggling, striving, seeking, and searching, what new freedoms am I enjoying?  Since I stopped linear planning and trying to control the uncontrollable, what are the next steps materialising in front of me? As I open to the possibilities in the collective chaos, instead of focusing on what I’ve lost  {realize that what I think I lost (aka certain lifestyle) will not/does not really go away if this is who you really are}. It might be on pause or hold atm but bear in mind it will resume again to was b4 .. then u can continue doing what u like/love.  Meantime inbetween time ~ what sparks my interest  to explore further?  When I find that place inside myself that is already thriving, what  get manifested?

Bc of this pandemic I feel like shit .. feel like shit not doing shit .. every day is the same wasting my time my life away .

But they say it's ok bc 2020 is cancelled anyway.

U better off not doing shit than trying to push the river. Look at the many who tried only to loose all - hearts/soul/career/livelihood-lives :(

At times I suffer from survivors guilt bc despite every1 loosing everthing I still have it all - even more wealth/time. Maybe am the lucky1 or maybe am the exception to the rule (as my contract dictates )

So I guess it's okay to waste time n do jack .. this is where am supposed to be right now.

Once the gates open up sooner than later .. then it's off to the races 🤪 no ifs buts about it .. off to going n doing my heart's desires / not a minute/second longer :)

Day1 I'd probably be here there everywhere in every way ~ just to catch up on what I been missing :* ..

might be slow-blow-awkward starter but eventually will get hang of it .

This Is My Life after all .. Am here to do well . live well . be well

The life of a hermit is a life of freedom ~

Being alone does not mean you are lonely. You have time to think of what you want in life because no one dictates what you should do. Your independence makes you smarter, and better as a person.

You are at your original mode. No filters or regulations. You discover your true self. We become self sufficient ; can take care of ourselves. This inturn enhances our sense of self-worth and self-esteem security.

Living alone is a blessing. It means you are living in peace, your mind will be sound and so will be your decision. When you live alone, you give yourself proper space that helps a lot in today’s world filled with noisy disturbances ready to spoil your mind.  You can do whatever you want, however you want, whenever and wherever you want. You can live your life according to your will without unnecessary   judgment of others. Living alone is like finding  your preferred world inside you.

After squabbling  weeks w/ myself if i should go back or not ... Bottom line enough is enough .. let go all animosity doubt resentment and just re connect ~  hook up way it used to be when u were happy n things were better. No matter how many times things got  screwed or mistrusted ..It's  cold n lonely ‘’out there’’ w/out each other. { Truth Is } i realized there is nothing really out there but  dark  empty void. (why spend remaining of ur life there)

No matter wtf happen .. it's complicated .. so let it be. U  have long history with each other why waste it or just  let everything slide. U searched to see if there is something ‘’anything’’ else better .. A: Nothing Really.  Once you focus on wats right n meant to be. . It will all line up again perfectly .

[atths--twice]

Chapter Two     2/4

December 

Back at work, Scully is feeling overwhelmed. Doggett is there to offer words of comfort.

December 15th 2000

She had been back to work for a week, the days blending together. Nothing interested her and walking away crossed her mind constantly. She could, she had enough money to take care of herself and the baby. She did not need this job… but she did. Needed it like the air in her lungs and the blood in her veins.

She felt him most when she was in the office. There were reminders of him everywhere: a stray sunflower seed in odd places, Post-it‘s with his familiar scroll, a tie shoved into the bottom drawer of the desk, and books he had read and they had discussed.

The files in the many cabinets she guarded like a treasure, not allowing some of them to be investigated, not wanting anyone but Mulder to be the one to do it, knowing how ridiculous that sounded, even in her own head.

She spent a lot of time in the office, Doggett there with her, watching, but remaining silent. When he was gone, she did not know where he went, his whereabouts of no concern to her.

The baby was growing and it was finally obvious to others that she was expecting. She heard their whispers, wondering if it was Mulder’s baby or if she had been impregnated by an alien.

When she heard that the first time, she had made her presence in the elevator known, staring down the man who had dared to say it. He had mumbled an apology and the other passengers kept their eyes on the floor, but she had continued to stare at him until he exited the elevator.

After that, she stayed in the basement as much as possible, away from assholes and their rude comments.

There was a lot of work she could be getting done in the office. However, the thought of doing anything to change the appearance of the room, made her feel anxious and tired.

Instead, she simply sat in Mulder’s office chair, wishing that at any moment the door would open and he would be standing there, airline tickets in hand, ready to chase down some monster in a forest.

But as hard as she wished, as many prayers as she sent up, he would never be there to pull her away to some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. He was gone and she was left to carry on.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself up and began to gather her things to go home, needing to leave before she started to cry. The office door opened and her heart stopped for a second, before she saw Doggett walk into the room.

“Agent Scully,” he said, smiling kindly at her. “You leaving already?”

“Yes. I uh…”

“Hey, no need to explain. I understand.”

“Agent Doggett-”

“Agent Scully,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “I understand. You lost someone you cared about. Someone you loved.” She swallowed hard, a lump suddenly taking up residence inside of it. “I know loss. How it takes a hold of you and weighs you down. That grief, that pain… well, if you pardon my bluntness, it really kicks you in the balls sometimes.”

Her eyes widened in surprise and without any warning she began to laugh, something she had not done in a long time. She laughed and then she was sobbing with a hand at her mouth. He sighed with an apology, pulling her to him gently.

She clung to him, unable to stop her tears. He rubbed her back, his touch soothing, but once more, not the one she wanted. Pulling back, he held onto her arms, looking into her eyes and nodding. Reaching behind him, he grabbed the box of tissues on the desk and held them out to her.

“Thank you,” she whispered, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. She took another tissue and wiped her eyes again.

“Agent Scully… I don’t want to tell you what to do or how to… Jesus, how to grieve or move on.” He shook his head and sighed deeply. “I just want to make sure you’re ready to be back. I’m not questioning you, just…”

“I appreciate your concern, Agent Doggett, but I… I need to be here. I…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I feel him here. It’s like…” She shook her head, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I feel like… like being here… it keeps him alive. I know that sounds crazy…”

“No, it doesn’t,” Doggett said softly and she opened her eyes. His blue eyes held such sadness, she knew he truly did. “I understand why you want to be here… I just worry about you.” He glanced down at her stomach and she nodded, wiping at her eyes once again.

“I thank you, but I am… well, not okay, but…” She shrugged and attempted to smile, though she knew she failed.

“Yeah, I gotcha. You go ahead and get going, don’t mind me.” He smiled and she nodded. “You’ll be back Monday?”

“No. Actually I’m off until after the holidays. I just… there is truth to what you’re saying. And… although I do feel I need to be here, I could do with just a bit more time.” She took a deep breath and stared at him.

“Sounds like just what the doctor ordered,” he said with a smile, his hands outstretched and she nodded. Throwing out the tissues in her hand, she looked back at him and exhaled.

“Well, I’ll see you after the new year, Agent Doggett. I hope your holidays are… have a good holiday.” She stuck out her hand and he took it, holding it with both of his own.

“I’ll see you soon, Agent Scully.”

“Yes, you will, Agent Doggett.” She squeezed his hand and let go, picked up her things and walked out the door.

________________________

December 22nd

“Thank you for dinner, Mom,” Scully said, starting to stand up, intent on gathering the dishes and bringing them into the kitchen.

“No, Dana. I’ll get them. You just sit.” Her mother picked up the plates, rubbing Scully’s shoulder as she walked past her and into the kitchen.

Scully sighed and stood up from the table, rubbing at her belly as she walked over to her mother's couch. She closed her eyes as she relaxed back, taking a deep breath as she continued to rub her belly, the scent of cinnamon invading her senses.

Shaking her head, she felt tears slipping from her eyes and she wiped at them quickly, wanting them to stop. Of course that was not going to happen, the tears hitting her hard in unexpected bursts. At least she was at her mother’s tonight and she would understand.

“Oh, honey,” her mother said and Scully opened her eyes, her mother’s kind smile causing her to cry harder.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Scully said, her mother's arms pulling her close. She held onto her, her tears falling faster.

“Don’t apologize, Dana. You have nothing to apologize for, nothing at all. Fox is, was… He was…” And then her mother was crying as they held one another.

When they had both quieted, her mother silently stroked her hair. Scully took a deep breath and wiped her eyes.

“I miss him so much, Mom. I had… I had my faith that he would be okay. That something would… I don’t know. Then people started coming back… and... why couldn’t he have come back? Alive? Why couldn’t I have that? Why did he have to die?”

Her mother held her again as she cried, the baby moving inside of her, causing her to cry harder. It was beyond unfair. After all this time, the belief she would never have a child, and now… now she would face it all alone.

“I know, honey. I know how it hurts. It’s not the same, no grief ever is, but… I know the feeling of loss.”

“I know you do, Mom. How did you ever get past it?”

“I don’t think you ever truly do. I never have. It’s always there, waiting to rear its ugly head when we least expect it.”

“That’s comforting,” Scully stated sarcastically, shaking her head with a sigh.

“I know,” her mother said and they feel silent again, the smell of cinnamon once again filling her senses.

“Mom, I can’t be here for Christmas this year. I just can’t.” Her mother squeezed her hand and nodded in understanding.

“We could go someplace together,” her mother suggested, and Scully shook her head.

“I don’t want to ask that of you. The house is already decorated and you need to be here, for the kids and Bill.”

“They would understand,” her mother said quietly, and Scully shook her head again, the decision made.

“Thank you, Mom, but no.” Her mother nodded, rubbing her back as they once more fell silent.

___________________________

She spent the majority of Christmas Eve in bed, sleeping, and with no energy to get up. Being pregnant tired her out, and adding grief on top of it, she felt exhausted the majority of the time.

Finally getting up in the late afternoon, she sat on the couch and attempted to watch a movie. Everyone was far too happy and cheery, even during the saddest parts of the movie. She shut it off with a sigh, ready to head back to bed.

A hard, loud knock at the door startled her, and she stood to her feet to see who it could possibly be. Frohike stood at her door, swaying on his feet, and nearly toppling in when she opened the door. He smelled of whisky, his eyes bloodshot and sad.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly and she sighed, grabbing his arm and leading him to the couch.

She made him some coffee and brought it over, sitting beside him. He sighed heavily, leaning forward to grab the mug.

“Langly and Byers usually go away and visit friends or some family. They even go on these pilgrimages, to...  I don’t know where. I don’t usually care, but this year…” He shook his head and she nodded in understanding.

“I thought… I figured you might not be up for festivities this year either and I took a chance you would be home. I didn’t want to be alone this year and thought maybe you wouldn’t either.” He looked at her and she smiled, a true smile and took his hand.

He squeezed her hand and then suddenly he was crying softly. His tears brought on her own and they sat together, holding hands in the silence of the room.

When his watch beeped at midnight, she squeezed his hand and wished him a whispered merry Christmas. He nodded, telling her the same.

“You should stay the night,” she said and he nodded his thanks. Squeezing his hand once more, she stood up and got a couple of blankets for him, bringing them back to the couch.

When she left the bathroom she could hear him snoring loudly, and it made her smile. It was loud, yes, but it was comforting, reminding her that she was not alone.

In the morning, she woke up to a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. After using the bathroom, she walked in to find Frohike at the stove mixing something in a pan. Glancing over at her, he nodded with a small smile.

“Huevos rancheros, but without too much spice. Don’t want Junior there giving you any undue grief later.” She smiled as she stepped forward and looked at the ingredients sitting on the counters.

“I didn’t have anything like this in the refrigerator.”

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “No, I went out earlier, finding a small shop open and I got the necessary items. I wanted to thank you for letting me stay last night and well… my huevos rancheros are quite famous.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

Coffee, orange juice, and tea were on the table as he placed their plates down and sat down to her right.

“I need to apologize for the state I was in last night.”

“No. Don’t apologize,” she said, echoing her mother's recent words. “You, me, all of us... we have nothing to apologize for.”

He nodded and she smiled at him. Picking up his fork, she did the same as she looked down at her plate. Taking the first bite, to her joyful surprise, she discovered she had an appetite again, her mouth watering as she raised her fork and took another bite.

She cleared her plate and even asked for a second helping.

Famous huevos rancheros indeed…

[arigatouiris]

out of my league // t.h — 12

Pairing: Tom Holland x Critic! Reader [I use female pronouns]

Warnings: depressive/triggering thoughts, explicitly mentioned; swearing; eventual fluff; angst; hurt/comfort; pining; a little bit of cliche because come on.

A/N: Again, more angst. But there’s fluff if you squint a bit. Don’t worry, this will pick up soon~ 

Also, if you want me to add you to the series taglist, just drop a note or comment! ^^

Word count: 3644

Series Masterlist 

 11 | 12 | 13 

Harrison never considered himself a very successful actor. Though, he had never really found himself being too attached to the profession as Tom was. He loved acting, and that’s where he wanted to end up, this was certain. And he believed that if he didn’t make it, he would be okay, and wouldn’t feel too disheartened. He wouldn’t feel as if the world collapsed above him, and that he was carrying the weight of his sorrow in his bones. However, Harrison was wrong.

    When his director told him that his show was now cancelled—he didn’t care what reason it was. Three days into being in Portugal, having been so excited in diving into a new opportunity, Harrison told himself his big break was finally here. But, his director walks and and tells him that it wasn’t his fault or it wasn’t anything that had to do with him, but the funding hadn’t come in and the production team had cancelled and all Harrison could think of was how he wasn’t Tom Holland. He was never jealous of his best friend, he never told himself he was, and this wasn’t jealousy—he knew he was more than happy for his friend’s success, but the failure of his own broke his heart.

And the flight he took to London had him rethinking every choice he had made. His blue eyes were always filled with some or the other positive emotion, but were now devoid of feeling. Strangely, he knew he had to surround himself with family or friends to help him cope, but he didn’t want any of it. He didn’t want sympathy or empathy, he wanted someone who wouldn’t linger on this topic.

    And the only person he could think of was (y/n). Strangely, he understood why Tom found her company pleasing. Even if Harrison had no intention in his mind, and thought of the girl as only his good friend, Harrison understood what was so likeable about her. She treated them both as regular people, and it isn’t easy for someone to do. Harrison himself found it difficult sometimes to have a conversation with someone more popular, but (y/n) made it look way too easy. As soon as his flight landed, Harrison shot a message to (y/n), and awaited her reply. She didn’t respond immediately, but agreed to meet him that evening.

(y/n), on the other hand, was slowly healing. Healing took a lot out of her, and she buried herself in reading and watching Star Wars again from the beginning. She was currently watching Return of the Jedi when she saw Harrison’s message. Shouldn’t he be in Portugal? Her mind jumped to thinking maybe something was wrong, and accepted to meet him that evening. Standing up, she quickly rushed to the shower and began to get ready.

She thought of Tom as she was getting ready. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that they had almost kissed the last time they met, but she told herself it was just the spur of the moment. She would definitely apologize when she met Tom next, and felt slightly glad that he was sending her messages everyday. She knew Croatia was an hour ahead of London, and that communicating wouldn’t be too hard; but, considering he was acting and it would take most of the day, and sometimes night, she didn’t tell him too much. Their messages were cordial, and she planned them to be that way.

Harrison and (y/n) met at the usual bar. Harrison was already sitting there when (y/n) showed up, confused and not aware that Harrison was in the need of some mental comforting. She embraced him, like she would any friend, and sat across him. The two were quiet, her not knowing how to bring it up and Harrison not knowing where to start. Calling the waiter, Harrison broke the silence and ordered them both a beer each.

    “Haz, what’s wrong?” Her voice broke him out of his reverie. “You’re back?”

Harrison looked at (y/n) and sighed, “They cancelled our show, (y/n).”

Her eyes widened a second later but that was all that her reaction was. Biting her lip, she placed her hand on Harrison’s, bringing a smile to his face. She squeezed his hand and said nothing for a full minute.

    “May I ask why?”

    “Apparently the production team pulled out. Not sure why entirely. Didn’t have the heart to ask.”

(y/n) observed her friend for a full moment. He was trying very hard to look like it didn’t affect him; Harrison had a calm and composed demeanour which was begging to slip at that second, an instinct that she noticed rather easily.

    “Haz,” she began, looking right into his eyes. “You can feel bad, you know. This calls for it.”

Harrison chuckled, “Do you want me to feel bad?”

    “Actually, it’ll do you good,” Haz looked at her like she was mental. “I’m not kidding!”

    “Why?” His voice was low.

The waiter came back with their drinks and (y/n) let go of Harrison’s hand. He wanted to understand what she was trying to tell him and why she was saying it, but perhaps, the grief was still fresh and didn’t allow him to think as clearly as he wished he could.

    “Susannah, you know about her?” (y/n) asked. Harrison nodded. “She’s my manager. And ever since we found out where she had gone, and ever since she had returned, she’s been very unhappy. Her unhappiness projected itself as anger and bitterness. And she took it out on everyone at work.”

    “That’s terrible.” Harrison said, not sure where this was going.

    “She asked me not to come to work,” His eyes widened now. “She told me I was the reason she was unhappy and a great many other things that made me feel terrible about the choices I made and what I’ve done—”

    “(y/n), you’ve wanted nothing but the best for her. Don’t blame yourself.” Harrison’s voice sounded super kind. It melted her heart.

    “That’s the thing, Haz. I thought it was best for her. I made those actions. She wanted to be left alone so she could grieve. And I didn’t give her that. Sure, she could have made it clear that she wanted to be alone at first, but some people grieve differently. And I never gave her that chance.” Harrison blinked.

    “Sounds very familiar.” He muttered.

(y/n) smiled bitterly, “It does. I did the same thing to Tom. I hurt him using my grief as a weapon. And he only tried to apologize.”

Harrison smiled. “So, your take on this is?”

(y/n) rolled her eyes before saying, “My take on this is simple, Haz. Allow yourself to feel bad. Susannah isn’t letting that happen and that’s why she’s hurting. Let yourself feel bad, Haz. For the past few days, since she’s told me not to come to work, I’ve been feeling bad a lot. But, doesn’t end there. It’s getting better slowly, and I can feel it. Please, don’t try to hide it.”

Harrison smiled at her before lifting up his beer can.

    “To feeling sad.”

(y/n) giggled before clicking her can with his, “To feeling sad.”

The two had never thought it possible but it felt like they have known each other since forever. Friendship and romance were not different. They were the same; albeit two different versions. They were the different versions of the same desire to be close and stick to one another. Harrison and (y/n) could laugh and smile at things as lovers did, but at the same time, their bond needn’t require physical closeness in any way. It was a pull so pure, it gave meaning to the world platonic.

    “I’ve always believed that this whole calm nature of mine is a lie,” Harrison said, after his fourth can of beer.

    “A lie?”

Nodding, “A lie. I don’t know… Feels like everything I say and do is a lie. I feel like I’m constantly lying to people about who I am. But, I know I’ve nothing to hide, though this feeling never really goes away.”

    “You feel like an imposter?” (y/n) asked, taking a sip of her own beer.

Harrison nodded. “An imposter.”

    “Harrison, you’re so humble. I’ve critiqued things and people for years now, I can tell apart any sort of lie. It’s both a curse and a gift, really.”

Harrison laughed. “So, let me tell you this. You’re very talented. And your calm nature is no lie. You’ve been telling yourself that you can’t feel grief like the rest of us, and that’s the only lie. Nothing else, love. You’re a darling and you need to believe that.”

Harrison leaned back, “Aww. You’re making me swoon here, really.”

    “Shut it.” (y/n) said, giggling.

    “Have you ever had a dream you gave up on?” Harrison asked, out of nowhere.

(y/n) was drunk enough to answer this with no hesitation, “I’ve always wanted to write a TV show.”

Harrison frowned, “That’s still possible—”

    “Don’t be like Tom, Haz. He told me the same thing. I just… I don’t think I ever could. It’s something… I don’t know.” She couldn’t find the words.

    “You’re giving up on this because you don’t know?” Haz made it sound ridiculous.

(y/n) rolled her eyes, “I know it sounds ridiculous, Haz. But, I just can’t. It’s…”

    “You’re not brave enough to take a risk, is that it?” Haz pressed.

    “It’s everything, really. I won’t deny it, it’s a risk and I’m scared. But, I haven’t had the best and very confident days either. Everything that went on with Susannah and—”

    “Is that why you broke down the other day?” Haz’s voice was low.

(y/n) nodded quietly. I miss Tom, she thought, randomly; unsure if it was the intoxication that made her believe so, or if it was pent up feelings from the last time she saw him. She was aware, that each time she thought of Tom, she thought of loving him. She was aware of it now, she knew it was too soon and perhaps it was because he’s an actor that she believed she loved him, but some part of her heart knew otherwise. Some part of her heart told her it was because Tom tries so hard with people he cares about; it was because Tom had a laugh that would crease his eyes in the corner and made him seem so happy; it was because his happiness was contagious. She knew she thought she loved him because Tom was just that easy to love—humble and kind, even when the world showered him with affection.

    In her quiet wonder, she knew she was in and over herself for just knowing she loved him. He was someone from an entirely different world; she could never reach up to him.

And perhaps, Harrison saw the dilemma in her at that second. He saw the far-away look in her eye, and her face was transparently thinking of his best friend. The problem here wouldn’t end with Tom confessing to her and her accepting—it was related on a more ideological level. She believed, firmly, that he was out of her league and invariably, so did Tom.

    “You’ll need to book a cab this time,” Harrison chuckled.

(y/n) hit him on the arm playfully before nodding. She stood up with him, Haz’s hand around her shoulder. He radiated a warmth, which was different from the warmth that Tom would send her way. This warmth made her sleepy, calm and everything that fell under serene, while Tom’s warmth sent her stomach to space.

    “Thank you so much.” Harrison said, just as her cab arrived.

    “Haz, I’m here for you. Anytime. Alright?” Harrison chuckled.

    “You’re going to be a great writer someday, (y/n).” He said, looking into her eyes.

    “And if I do, I’m going to cast you as the main character.”

They may have met that evening, feeling low about their circumstances, but it was almost a miracle that they left on a happy note.

*

Tom had just finished acting a scene when he thought of her. It was strange—he found himself repeating her name like a mantra before falling asleep. Somehow the simple pleasure of uttering her name, and the added pleasure of hearing her name was heaven for Tom, and he couldn’t go to bed until dawn, on most days. Isn’t it odd how a single name, a single word associated with her, could bring another person such joy that they inflict insomnia upon themselves and call it a blessing?

    At some point, Tom found himself thinking of the feeling of her hands above his, the night they met for dinner. Tom knew, in between all those sleepless nights, so far away from her, that would remember the feel of her hand around his for the rest of his life.

He sent her a message, “I hope you’ve had a good day today.” He knew about Harrison’s show, and he had called him the night before he left to London. He wanted to give his friend some time, hoping it would heal him more than his words ever could. Just as he was about to put his phone away, it began to ring—startling him, throwing him off balance. When he looked at the name of the contact, his stomach flipped like he was back in school. He immediately answered, placed the phone next to his ear, his eyes widened and his cheeks reddening, breath rolling out of his lips as Tom let out a feeble, “Yes?”

    “I miss you, Tom. I hope you know that.” (y/n)’s voice was soft. Cherry pink. Infused with the intoxication that alcohol provided her.

Worry seeped into his veins and he wondered why she was drunk. Before he could ask, she told him herself.

    “Harrison asked to meet. He was feeling down, the poor fellow. We talked and drank and I took a cab home. I’m safe.”

He could feel the worry being replaced with relief. It was funny how much control she had over him, being countries away.

    “How much did you have to drink, (y/n)? Did you drink water?”

    “Four pints, I think? And yes, I’m drinking water right now. Anyway, I’m sorry for the other night. I wanted to make things clear with you before I start feeling bad about myself for the way I behaved.”

Tom chuckled. He had a shoot to complete, but he wasn’t going for that now. The time was close to midnight, and he had had enough for the day. The director would definitely understand.

    “I miss you so much, (y/n). I do.” Tom spoke, his voice low.

It was no picnic missing her, Tom realized. It drove him insane on most days, he couldn’t concentrate, he found it hard to maintain an appetite, and he found it even harder to sleep. All this for someone he doesn’t even have, he wonders if on the off chance, how things would be if he had her.

There was silence on the other end, but he knew it wasn’t the bad kind. He wanted her to continue talking, he wanted her to pour her heart out, to tell him things about her—to fill his heart with her details, to make him feel so full that he could explode; but Tom knew he had an infinite amount of storage in him just for her.

    “Susannah’s been… She’s been hurting,” (y/n) began, her voice breaking. Days went by when she felt the sorrow on her own, and it was perhaps the first time since coming home did she allow herself to openly break in front of another.

Tom listened, as well as he could, as kind as he could. It was her pain and he embraced it with poise, he knew she was hurting and this was what had happened the night he met her, before leaving. He could tell she cried in bits where she felt confused about her anger and hurt, he knew she struggled trying to be rational about the entire situation, and he knew she was simply in pain regarding being blamed.

    “I did the same thing to you…” She voiced and it threw him off guard.

    “What?” He asked, feeling his heart beat against his chest.

    “I blamed you for my sorrow. I did the same thing that Susannah—”

    “Don’t finish that sentence, (y/n). What happened with us is something you can’t compare with this. They’re both very different scenarios, love. Don’t do that. Don’t corner yourself against a wall. I know you want to, but don’t.”

    “Tom, about the other night…” He felt his heart beat against his ear. For some reason, he knew what she was going to bring up. “I know we almost…”

He gulped and pulled his sleeve away from his throat. He was sitting inside his air-conditioned room, but he still felt sweaty. Tom felt as though he could chew up nails and spit out a barbed wire fence.

    “We almost kissed.” She finished, and he almost fainted.

He didn’t know what to say. He knew she was being direct because she was drunk, but he now so desperately wished he was drunk too so as to not feel this nervousness that brought him down like anchors tied to each of his legs.

    “We…” Tom gulped. “We almost did, yeah.”

    “Tom… Tom, you can’t see me that way. You can’t.” She said, almost begging, her voice breaking at each word.

He felt as if his insides were on fire while speaking to her regarding this.

    “Why not?” He suddenly ran out of liquid in his throat. His throat was on fire, and so was his stomach and his brain and his eyes.

    “Because you’re way out of my league.”

Is she being serious? Tom thought, rubbing his palm over his mouth. He could taste the sweat in his palms, and when he blinked he felt tears well up in his eyes. His head was spinning and he suddenly fought the urge to throw up.

    “You’re wrong, (y/n).” If anything, it’s you. You’re out of my league. Always have been.

He could practically see her shaking her head and not believing his words. But no, now was not the time. He knew she wouldn’t believe him if he told her over phone. She was drunk and sad and alone and in London and he was sober and sad and alone and in Croatia.

    “Sweetheart, you need to sleep.” Tom said, kindly.

    “Tom, I’m sorry. I really am.”

He smiled as he replied, “You have nothing to be sorry for, (y/n). Goodnight.”

*

The morning after, just when she could think about all that she had told Tom the night before, Aditi called her. Her heart leapt, and she wondered if she could go back to work—she wondered if Susannah had changed her mind and forgiven her, if her life could get back on track once more.

    “What’s the scene?” (y/n) sounded perky.

    “She wants you to come in.” Aditi sounded rather monotonous, hiding something she clearly didn’t want to divulge on call.

Getting ready as quickly as she could, (y/n) felt her heart beat against her chest. She was nervous, almost as if she was going in for an interview for a new job. It took her about 30 minutes to reach her office, and once she was inside, she found Susannah near her desk.

    “Susannah—”

Susannah turned around and beside her stood an older male, salt and pepper hair. He had a large nose, but it strangely sat well on his face. (y/n) blinked before turning to Susannah again, wondering who this person was. Her eyes fell on her own desk, someone’s bag had been kept there, and she wondered whose it was.

    “This is Martin Posner,” Susannah said, “He’s our newest addition.”

Aditi entered the area and stood right behind (y/n). Looking at Martin, the Indian woman’s eyes widened before turning to (y/n)’s back.

    “That’s… That’s great. Welcome—”

    “He’s our new critique.” Susannah finished.

Her heart fell. A new critique? Her throat suddenly felt dry. She felt Aditi’s hand grab her elbow, but (y/n) didn’t budge.

    “What do you… Um… Am I transferred?” Her voice broke at the end.

    “You can pack your things and leave, (y/n). We won’t be needing your services.”

What Susannah said stabbed (y/n)’s heart, like someone had ripped through her carefully stitched up world and exposed the infected, pulsing red tissue that she thought was healing.

    “What?”

    “You heard me. Get your things and leave. This isn’t a firing. You have to resign—”

    “What if I won’t?” It came like a small ember, her courage.

    “I’m not giving you a pink slip. If you resign on your own, it won’t look bad. If you still won’t, then I’ll have no choice.” Susannah said, coldly.

    “Susannah, on what basis are you doing this? I’ve been doing my job! You were overworking me and I still didn’t complain—”

    “Don’t make this difficult—”

Aditi grabbed (y/n)’s hand and pulled her away, just as (y/n) broke down. Before exiting, Aditi turned to Susannah and sent her a rather nasty glare, and missed how Susannah’s fists were clenched tight.

*

It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed destroyed made to disappear. Susannah struggled through every hour of each day feeling as if her each breath would be the last. She didn’t know what she was doing and why she was doing it for the most part, and it left her feeling nasty and guilty—she found solace in hurting those around her and perhaps, the most was out of hurting (y/n).

She remembered like it was yesterday when she spoke to her as Stephen, wanting to come out as Susannah.

    “What do you think of the name ‘Susannah’?”

    “I think it’s a wonderful name. Why’re you asking me, Stephen?”

    “I think I’ve always known, (y/n). I think I’ve always known I was a she and not a he.”

She remembered how (y/n) looked at her at that moment. No surprise. No judgement.

    “Alright then, Susannah.”

Susannah felt herself sink to her toes as soon as she closed the door in her new flat. Her eyes immediately travelled to the wall on which a single photograph was fixed. (y/n), herself and Aditi and the rest of the office—looking happy and cheerful as they were a while ago.

She pressed her hands to her mouth and cried, thinking if what she had done was wrong. She thought of when (y/n) opened up to her one night, when they were drinking alone in a bar. (y/n) had told her she’d always wanted to be a writer. She chose to be a critic instead because it ‘suited’ her. Susannah had always known the truth—being a critic never suited her, it was simply a cage. A cage that prevented her from dreaming. A cage that made her believe that her dreams were unimaginable.

A cage that she was out of now. For good.

I am so sorry, Susannah thought. And felt it too.

series taglist:

@strangemaximoff​, @aestheticgaybish​, @noobmaster63​, @why-are-all-the-teens-gay​, @wonders-of-the-multiverse​, @boushalaivre​, @jackiehollanderr​, @nerdypisces160​, @yourwonderbelle​, @quackson606​, @stickyqueenbouquetsstuff​, @fandoms-stuff​, @danicarosaline​, @toolateformcrtooearlytoleaveemo, @multiverseprincess @spider-mendes @jazzhandspotter @the-rad-mad @itsjlynadaxoxo

[beautifulinaway-blog]

you have to lose your mind to find your peace of mind

It took awhile, but I have experienced some sort of awakening. It happens when you lose what you considered to be everything; when you invest your soul into all the wrong things and then out of nowhere BAM they’re gone. 

Well, I guess you can say that is what I have gone through. I will never fall victim to my pain, but in these recent months I have definitely been challenged and forced to humble myself. My outlook on life has changed, my self-awareness is intensifying, and I am growing. 

I will say one thing: love is inevitable. I truly believe we cannot control who or what we fall in love with. When we are born the first humans we love are our parents, that is inevitable. When we grow up and meet a best friend, we fall in love; that is inevitable. Then, as time goes by we meet another human soul that connects with ours in the most deepest level, we call these people our soul-mates and we fall in love with them; that, too, is inevitable. The same goes with ideas; I fell in love with the thought of being stable and successful in my future that I had let it consume me. Yes, it is good to meditate on the things you want in life but it is not okay to allow it to control you or create anxiety and stress in your present life. Push yourself but also allow yourself to enjoy the journey. 

Now, let’s talk about grief. Grief does not only happen after death. Just think about it. Can a person die yet still roam this earth? My heart says yes. I have had some of my deepest loved ones removed from my life and I went through a long, dark period of grief for each of them. I was mourning the side of them I grew close with and fell in love with; I was mourning how peaceful their presence was to my soul, I was mourning the sight of their laughter as we danced in the middle of a crowd, I was mourning the late night talks we had about conspiracies and beliefs, I was mourning the feeling I felt when we’d make eye contact from far away, I was mourning the scent of their Dove body wash, and that isn’t even half of it. 

That person I knew is someone I no longer know. Even if we were to reconnect, I would not know them and they would not know me... Because we are constantly evolving, and that is okay. 

But I went through that for a reason. The universe works in mysterious ways, there is a greater reason we go through these struggles. Pain shines light on our blessings and it also shines a light within ourselves; it shows us the strengths we didn’t even know we had. 

For the past few months I had experienced a type of pain I had never known before. In the beginning I felt alone, I questioned the value of my life, I questioned if I could live without them, I was in such a state of sadness, denial, and shock, I was blaming myself for everything that went wrong in my life. However, that was everything I was meant to go through. I needed to experience those emotions and that loss. I HAD TO LOSE MY MIND TO FIND MY PEACE OF MIND and it was truly a blessing in disguise. It took more than a couple months, but now I have gained full control of my life. I am getting to know myself in a much different way. Everyday I discover a new passion and I now know what I truly seek in life. I am slowly but surely becoming the woman I’ve always wanted to be. 

I wrote this because I am finding a new kind of peace and I wanted to share it. So many people in my life have been experiencing heartbreak recently and trust me when I say I know how hard it is. Don’t let anyone try to tell you how to heal because we all do it differently. It is okay to grieve, it is okay to be sad, it is all okay and it will all be okay. Do not give up because you are not alone in this. Allow yourself to feel these emotions and also allow yourself to use this as a time of self discovery. You are strong and please try to believe that there is a greater purpose/lesson embedded in the pain.

We have to lose our mind to find our peace of mind. 

[universalmemoir]

my muses: the master list

updated 21.03.19

let me introduce you to my muses.  there will be more, and some will fade over time, but these are the people who currently inspire most of my poetry. if you connect with a person and relate them to someone in your life, click the links to read the poems about them.

tsl: the lost love. the one who i can’t talk to, but constantly dream about. the one who tortures me.  the one who taught me loss, and yet he still lives.  forever, aglow, luminescent, grieve, rewind, brothers, (aurora) borealis, grief, serendipity, loss, saturday, love and loss, dreams, intertwined, traffic, starlit, a narrative, memories, believe, hope (II), changes, unconditional, edge, dodie yellow, nostalgia, but/yet, second to last, why, vibrant, tune, 3:30 am, the most important: the story i don’t like telling

cab: the blind love. . the one i wanted to become, and loved too much to let go. the one who forgot and rejected me in favor of others. the one i justified.  honey, midnight, lie, connect, gone, cologne, faith, matches, an analogy, addicted, infatuation, suffocate, breathless, gossamer, useless, stomachache, disgrace, snapped, verge, intimacy, zipper, appeal, her, bittersweet, key, silent, 

mvf: the manipulative love. the one who unknowingly took control of my heart.  the one who broke my heart and my trust. the one i kept coming back to.  cottonwood, mediocre, lie, fury, current, balance, corrupted, indifferent, hurricane, accident, consistency, conflicted, toothpaste, awake, soldier, extinguish, schadenfreude, chemicals, rash, outburst, romance, tendrils, thief, disillusioned, justified, 

aje: the true love. the one who never left, and who fought for me despite everything. the one who stayed beside me as others came and went.  freckles, apart, lovely, sunset, distance, affection, forgotten, beige, cafune, naming colors, tattoos

ljd: the confusing love. the one who came out of nowhere. the one who accepted me despite everything. the one who i could lose in an instant. penumbra, young, untitled quote, tolerance, smile, untitled quote, where infinity ends, untitled quote, devotion, if i am the sun, deserving, melancholy, we talk in terms of forever, he called me darling, mettlesome, in the dreams, epiphany, 

if you're reading this as a reblogged post, click here for the most recent update to the list.

// h.rae

[jeuneoiseau]

“Stay Awake”

Been thinking a shit ton about what lockdown/isolation/whatever you want to call it has done for me personally, and especially what has gone down over this summer. The distancing began in March. It was sad, weird, and hard. Not to mention hug-less. For someone who requires physical touch for my love tank to fill up, there were days i had to wrap my own arms around my shoulders just to feel real instead of numb. Sending myself love from What lives inside me. Though emotions like sadness and helplessness were prominent in those earlier months, as time has gone on, and as social movements rose and arguments followed suit all across the world and therefore the internet, and though my mourning heart has never not welcomed the softness it is easily drawn to, i have found myself grieving in other ways. I saw a quote today that summed up my feelings quite succinctly: “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corner of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” - Jamie Anderson.

That hollow part of the chest. I used to refer to this feeling as “the hum.” It is both a feeling of sadness yet restlessness. The restlessness comes from helplessness, for not knowing where to place all that I feel and create something constructive from that. Nowhere for the love to go. Within the last two months, something snapped in me. And I think that the hum began to scream. Starting off with a grieving moan, then yelling, then escalating to a window shattering scream. Like so many, I have always been in the fight against anxiety and depression, whilst simultaneously choosing the side of victory. This does not mean the war(s) is over, it just means that I know in the end, I will always come out alive. I have chosen it. Yet, this journey from hum to scream hasn’t been without the ugly mess of spending too much time in my head, harmful isolation, constantly refusing the desire to never leave the safety of my bed, tears in the corner of my eyes, lumps in my throat, debilitating anxiety, sitting in depressive bouts, violent frustration, and the overwhelming desire to run away from everything to some proverbial place of safety.

This notion of emotional safety, of it even being an attainable thing, has been close to my heart for years. It has also been shattered and has resulted in a loss of trust, and a gruesome internal journey of what any of it even means, or if it even matters. As a day dreaming child (and who am I kidding, grown adult), my mind would often become my safe place. I could return to it and soak up, reinstall, remember all the things I love, and do my best to execute the sum of those things into my reality. Obviously, growing up with intention to actually grow, this has shown to not always be attainable as it caused me to get stuck living in a wonderland version of what I needed to be present for, specifically, to Love true. I don’t feel shame for how I coped- she did what she needed to do, even as I do now, as we all do. And so, as a 26 year old with little to her name and a shit load of love in her heart, my grievances and screaming have thrown me forward into causes that have always lingered inside of me, but often at a place of complacency, due to people pleasing, fear, self betrayal, and again, fear. The amount of sheer fearlessness that has resulted from this “snap” in me, has caused many chapters of my life to continue to make sense for me. I dive into pools of attainable “safety”- pools of mental wholeness, psychology, self awareness, and art and poetry that remind of divine meaning and hope. I realize again (and again and again) that adults are often children dressed as grown ups and holy shit! I am a grown up! Grace floods in. Flooding every floor of intolerance, annoyance, shame, disappointment, and woe. The world was built on hopeful yet often blind attempts. Who am I to judge? And who am I not to change things? The safety I once knew and revisited ever so often may not exist so prevalently now, but the complacency is jolted alive again, even if it leaves me feeling nauseous. And I seek out to trust again, even if it leaves me feeling like I am falling.

I say the words “Stay Awake” a lot both to myself and whomever listens my way. I mean this statement both literally and figuratively. While Covid19 has been a real mindfuck specifically for those of us struggling with mental/emotional health, I do believe that there is a call to wake up and stay up. I am so tired of hearing that valuable human beings choose to end themselves. I am so tired of seeing people I love second-guess their worth and feel stuck in a vortex of muddling creativity and ingeniousness because their hum was never given guidance. I am tired for my family, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my friends, the strangers I hear about on the news. I am tired for myself. I am tired of the stigmas that keep people quiet, that keep their screams hushed at hum level, so it can only be felt but not seen or heard, until the movement stops altogether. I’m tired of excuses made by people who want to pretend like it doesn’t relate to them. Grief is universally experienced. Why do we act like we are different from each other in this way? Why do we clam up, turn away, act as though people dying is not tied to us? This isn’t to toss the weight of the world on our backs or say it is our fault, but rather our responsibility. To Stay Awake. Stay aware, soft, listening, humble, learning, hopeful, alive. Do you mourn with the mourning? Or is it not your problem? While I do believe all of our lanes are important, the mast as important as the rudder, and we don’t need to drop all that we feel called towards in order for our hearts to remain open to the fact that: Love, we are all connected. Healing the sprained ankle allows the whole body its deserved freedom of movement. Are you waking up?

Becoming aware of Who I Am and what I am made up of has kept me literally alive. Accepting and loving all of this has caused me to Stay Awake. This is why the well meaning wish to “stay safe” during a world wide time of crisis feels slightly off-putting to me, and the words flowing naturally from there (for me) are for you to Stay Awake. This does not always mean feeling absolute safety. There is risk involved in reality. There is personal responsibility, heartache, trust broken, and deconstruction. There is also abundance. Abundance of freedom, of no turning back, of grace, of resilience, of reconstruction and unconditional love. I don’t think it is too utopian of me to believe that I can change things. I just think it’s my responsibility, and my joy, to Stay Awake.

Julie Ellen Vogel

7/29/2020

[spiderwebheart]

Soon I'm getting a Nikita Gill quote tattooed.

"This is a love poem to myself."

It will be a reminder to put myself first.

I made a doctors appointment in two weeks as well and I'm not just hoping for a new beginning this time. I'm going to force myself to start one. It's time I learn to let go of old hurt and betrayals and people who left me. It's time I put myself first and that does not mean I have to be selfish.

This tattoo will be a reminder that I am a piece of fucking art and that I have survived so much already in such a short life and I will not allow myself to give in. I'm 19 and constantly feeling like there's nowhere up from here and that this is all my life will amount to but I'm still so young. Education is not the be all, end all. People leaving is not the be all, end all. I've lost people I never ever thought I'd have to lose and it hurt me to my core. It's okay to not understand. It's okay to miss people. I'm learning that it's okay to grieve but it's not okay to carry around all this pain and heartbreak on my shoulders.

This quote is more than just a quote. Love poems can be painful or beautiful or healing and I am all of those things. The people that left me or don't see my potential are people I do not need. The hurt will leave. The betrayal will leave. The grief will leave. I am more than my pain. I have always been more than my pain and I am going to start seeing the absolute fucking strength I have in living through the worst times of my life. I am one of the strongest people I've ever known and I can be proud of that.

I have done so many things I regret and I have been my worst enemy so many times, I have torn myself down too many times to count. I am not proud of some of the things I did to stay alive or the things I did not to. But these things are like my bones, they hold me up but they do not define me.

This is my reminder to learn from the past but leave it there.

This is my reminder that all the potential I had 5 years ago did not disappear into thin air, it's been here along, drowned out by the ruin. But with every rock bottom there comes a rising and this is my time. I know what I need to do and I know how to do it.

The last 5 years have been the worst of my life but the upside to never having had a happy time in my life is that I am free to create one. I am strong and beautiful and brave and intelligent. I am goddess and hell. I am a force to be reckoned with and it's time I remember that. After all, all mosaics were once shattered glass all over the floor.

[essayofthoughts]

For the headcanons: Wanda, Pietro, Clint, and Natasha! (because I'm predictable af and also i want to see what different ones we come up with for the twins! :D

send me a character and i’ll tell you:

Wanda Maximoff

1. 2-4 songs that are probably on their iPod

I can’t say exactly? But probably something like Ammunition by Aviators, a song about protests and how, when you have no weapons, you are the weapon, the ammunition against those who would oppress you. The song is in English, so I imagine Wanda has a similar song in Sokovian.

… Okay, I may just give in and be Aviators trash, because my next two suggestions of things that Wanda might have on her iPod are again, things like Aviators songs. Namely, Bulletproof, the importance of ideals and continuing those in the face of those who would crush you down, because you might fight and you might die, but the ideas and ideals you’re fighting for, the desire for freedom and for justice you yearn for is something bulletproof, that cannot be killed.

The next one is for after the experiments, Aviators’ We Are Not Machines, a rising denial in the face of someone trying to turn you into a tool, a refusal to be what someone else makes you - not a weapon in their hands, but a weapon in your own hands, of your own choices and not some simple input-output  machine - for you are a person, not a machine. I imagine that a song like this would also gain additional meaning to Wanda on meeting Ultron and on meeting Vision - Ultron who is constantly fighting against what he was made to be and in doing so, allowing that to shape him, and Vision, who knows how he was made and what he was made to be and yet is simply… not. Is simply his own. Is, because of all of this, not a machine.

Last song… hmm. IAMX, My Secret Friend. U will understand Nell. U will understand.

2. the one place they sometimes end up falling asleep — where they’re not supposed to

Less, “Not supposed to” and more “others frown at it”, Wanda often falls asleep against her brother, sitting beside Pietro and just tilting her head to his shoulder and sleeping, or after nightmares when he comes to see if she’s ok, falling asleep in the comfort of a hug.

After he’s gone, Wanda falls asleep in the shower, the warm water and the noise dulling the grief of her mind and giving the illusion of a warm presence. Vision finds her like this, some late evenings.

3. the game they’d destroy everyone else at

Truth or Dare or Never Have I Ever

Wanda has no fear because Pietro has always been there to protect her, and even when he isn’t anymore the lingering strength and certainty it gives her, the fact she has had that strength to fall back on all her life and yet often tried not to in order to keep Pietro safe and well means she has a confidence in-and-of herself that means she’s unafraid of a lot. Also, living on the streets kind of means she takes a practical view of a lot of things.

And then for the truth aspects - Wanda can tell when people are telling the truth with her powers and I imagine that even before the powers she had a knack for reading people and understanding them in a way Pietro always lacked. In turn, I imagine Wanda has a knack for telling almost-truths, that are truth enough that people will take them as truth, but that allow her to hide things she doesn’t want to talk about extensively.

This would make her rather hard to provide counselling for, I fear, as well as the fact that I don’t think she’d trust anyone enough to talk about even the least of her issues with.

4. the emoticon they’d use most often

That depends on who she’s messaging and when. Usually it’s just “frownyface” but Stark occasionally gets a middle finger emoticon (and if one doesn’t exist I would point out that with the Avengers she’d probably use a Starkphone and if Tony Stark designed it then it 100% has a middle finger emoticon. Because Tony Stark Would).

5. what they act like when they haven’t had enough sleep

If just “without sleep” then quietly grumpy, somewhat bitchy (very bitchy, according to Pietro but he thinks it’s amusing) eventually tapering off to just conking out wherever is comfortable enough.

If caffeinated and sleepless: very very giggly, Laughing at the oddest jokes the weirdest puns and also things that are not jokes or puns but that are, to her sleep-deprived brain, very amusing.

6. their preferred hot beverage on really cold nights. or mornings. or whenever.

Tea. Herbal tea, black tea, green tea. She uses chamomile, mint and lavender for headaches, spiced black tea with a lot of milk to wake up, green tea when she needs to think. She’ll drink coffee if she has to, for the sake of pure biting caffeine and also because the taste is so foul it always wakes her (no matter how much sugar she adds and she finds this infuriating), but her fallback is always tea.

7. how they like to comfort/care for themselves when they’re in a slump

Before the events of AOU she’d curl up beside Pietro and talk to him about whatever it is happens to be niggling inside her brain, whatever is worrying her and making her doubt and loose sight of their goals and Pietro would pull her from it and pull her into a hug and possibly go off and “find” her some chocolate (whether he found it or stole it depends on how much money they had at the time and how much he cared about “stealing will get you killed Pietro”. The worse off Wanda seemed the less he cared about the latter).

After the events of AOU, she curls up in her room or in her chair or at the bottom of the shower and tries not to get lost in the twisting grieving paths of her own mind. Sometimes Vision finds her and says something so wholly unexpected it makes her laugh and consider and pulls her from it. Other times Steve alerts Clint who proceeds to drop by and go “right, come on, holiday time. The kids are begging me for a barbecue and no one knows how to make that sauce for the lamb skewers like you do” and drag her off to the farm. Lila and Coop and little Nathaniel Pietro Barton pull her from her slump more quickly than anything.

8. what they wanted to be when they grew up

Free. Safe. Well. Secure. With Pietro. With their vengeance completed. In Sokovia.

And now Sokovia’s capital is a hole in the ground because of her actions, their vengeance has been shed in the face of a bigger threat, Pietro is gone, and any hopes of safety and security and freedom and wellbeing were stolen from her with the Accords and the Raft.

9. their favorite kind of weather

When you are high up enough in the mountains, or ringed by them, the sky can be clear and yet you are shaded, and though it is sunny it is softly cool.

When the weather is this mess of contradictions it reminds her of Sokovia, of Novi Grad, of home, and sometimes she needs that.

10. thoughts on their singing voice (decent? terrible? soprano? alto?)

She can sing and sings softly, she sang lullabies on those rare occasions Pietro had nightmares and woke her, she sings lullabies to Lila and to Cooper and to Nathaniel Pietro Barton when he is fractious, and she sings them in soft Sokovian, so softly that only Vision can really hear all of the words.

She can sing louder, but too often she has had to sing quietly unless she be found by those who would do her harm. 

11. how/what they like to draw or doodle

Wanda can’t draw much. Oddly enough Pietro can, and after his death, Wanda doesn’t dare try for the rising, grieving memories of her brother.

Pietro Maximoff

1. 2-4 songs that are probably on their iPod

So uhh… I’m gonna give in and pick Aviators songs like songs Pietro would have liked if they were in Sokovian.

First of all, Lowborn by Aviators - the hope of rising against impossible odds, of even those at the bottom finally getting recognition and all that they have earned. I mean. “Honor means nothing when war is unfair/ We’ve come here to battle and return to nowhere” and “I’ve nothing to lose, with no debts left to pay” and “The gods have not listened /Though prayers turned to cold-blooded screams” and “Vengeance igniting the fire in my blood” I mean. Goddamn Aviators.

In many ways, Pietro is the more cynical of the twins - he’s had to be, to keep Wanda safe, and so the next song is Aviators’ Welcome to Paradise, which has a lovely thread of “oh, you thought there was hope here?” throughout. I mean. “A wishful thought won’t take you far/ When hell on earth is where you are”and “Our lives are on the line/ In ruins we strive/ We’ll never thrive/ Without the will to survive”. Goddamn Aviators.

Next, This Means War by Aviators. Which is a song they wrote specifically for AOU. I am horrendously predictable. The song is a rush of fighting and having to fight and “a world worth fighting for” and my gods. It’s Pietro racing and the entire Battle of Novi Grad. 

Lastly, Diamonds and Guns by The Transplants. I don’t know why, but this song has always felt rather Pietro to me.

2. the one place they sometimes end up falling asleep — where they’re not supposed to

Um. Pietro is a hard case to judge because well… Look do you honestly think he’s going to sleep if he has to watch over Wanda. He sleeps when exhausted or when Wanda makes him, so the place he falls asleep when he’s not supposed to is like for half an hour outside the backdoors of the Bakers and the Butchers who he runs deliveries for. The managers open the door and hear a thump as Pietro falls over because the door is gone.

3. the game they’d destroy everyone else at

It. Obviously. Even before his powers he was fast, and with his powers he is uncatchable. And, with his speed, he can search and find you in a fraction of the time it would take you to find him and once you’re it good luck catching him. Your best bet is waiting for him to fall asleep and we all know how he is about that ^^.

4. the emoticon they’d use most often

In Sokovia he never really had a phone and so had no use for them. Then he died. 

If he was still around, however, probably the built in “middle finger” emoticon that all Starkphones come with as standard. That said, he does make use of that one Japanese emoticon - ✿＼(｡-_-｡) (“i got your flower”) - whenever Wanda wants to go and fight someone. It is saved in his phone for regular use.

5. what they act like when they haven’t had enough sleep

He never has enough sleep. He sleeps in fits and starts and has done this for so long that he’s functional. The question is What does he act like when he has had enough sleep.

The answer? Like a… mostly normal person, actually. Not reckless, not (quite) as ADHD. I say mostly, however, because he won’t have had enough sleep for long - his dedication to Wanda’s safety makes sure of that.

6. their preferred hot beverage on really cold nights. or mornings. or whenever.

Not a hot drink! Pietro prefers orange juice, no matter what. He does exercise when he wants to warm up, as he always has the energy for it.

7. how they like to comfort/care for themselves when they’re in a slump

Pietro is rarely in a slump; he has his focus on keeping Wanda safe and so he subsumes just about everything to this one purpose, no slump lasts long when he has the eternal focus of making sure Wanda is safe, that they have enough food and a place to sleep that night, and can get to their jobs in the morning and survive each protest with minimal police brutality.

The only time Pietro is in a slump is when he fails to protect Wanda, and that rapidly turns into guilt and a desire for vengeance (“I’ll kill him”) which is only tempered by Wanda (“No, no, I’m all right. I want to finish the job.”) who is the only one who can redirect him when he’s like this.

Pietro comforts himself by taking care of Wanda.

8. what they wanted to be when they grew up

Safe, Happy, with Wanda and with their vengeance completed. In Sokovia.

He dies before he can see any part of this, and gives up on vengeance in the doing so.

9. their favorite kind of weather

Rain. While Wanda likes the bright-shade sunny-cool of the mountains, Pietro likes the rain and the snow, but mostly rain because he finds it so so refreshing.

Also it makes Wanda laugh when he shakes his hair to try to get the worst of the water out.

10. thoughts on their singing voice (decent? terrible? soprano? alto?)

He can sing, but only does so for Wanda. Mostly old Sokovian lullabies.

11. how/what they like to draw or doodle

Draws kind of mechanically - not for artistic reasons but so he can have a visual representation of something. While Pietro’s memory is fantastic, he trusts Wanda’s recollection of things more than his own because Wanda will read things in the behaviours of other people that he’ll miss. So, instead, he draws out scenarios and situations from memory so Wanda can name the ones they know and tell him what each was thinking and who they’ll need to be wary of. He also draws the faces of the people who attack them and burn down the flats they stay it, so the twins can track them down, and do the same to them.

Fair’s fair, after all.

Clint Barton

1. 2-4 songs that are probably on their iPod

Right. Okay.

Love To Hate You by Erasure, because of course. Every time he and Natasha have any kind of disagreement when on a job with SHIELD he’d start playing it at full volume. To which Natasha would respond “ITS NOT SAFE HOUSE IF THEY CAN HEAR US THREE BLOCKS AWAY CLINT”.

All the same, its their theme song, because they are one another’s dearest friends (and possibly have been lovers at some point maybe I don’t know) and also they sometimes hate each other, mostly for being right.

They’re Taking The Hobbits To Isengard. I don’t care if this is a meme, you cannot tell me that Coulson or Fury or Natasha didn’t play this at him at full volume (I mean. He is hard-of-hearing) at some point.

Probably the ten hour version, to be honest. Clint thought it was jammin’ and now will sometimes be found singing it under his breath.

2. the one place they sometimes end up falling asleep — where they’re not supposed to

In the Quinjet. At the controls of the Quinjet. This is why he almost always pilots with Natasha.

He may or may not have also fallen asleep on stakeout at least once.

3. the game they’d destroy everyone else at

Darts. Obviously.

4. the emoticon they’d use most often

I don’t care if they’re not real emoticons, he’d probably have a Starkphone and his favourite emoticons would be a high five one and fingerguns.

5. what they act like when they haven’t had enough sleep

Trying not to nod off. Unless he’s had caffeine pills, in which case he’s trying to stay still. When dealing with a baby at home, Laura has vetoed the use of caffeine pills and so, instead, he makes do with very very very big cups of frankencoffee.

6. their preferred hot beverage on really cold nights. or mornings. or whenever.

Coffee. Specifically, frankencoffee, aka, “so what happens if I have this coffee and this coffee and then also some chocolate and some cinnamon and oh is that butterscotch syrup, yeah, sure, and oooh, Laura won’t mind me borrowing half a bottle of peppermint essence and oh look we also have orange extract-” until he has a pint mug of the most unholy thing you could ever drink.

And I say this as someone who created coffeetea for all-nighter essay writing.

7. how they like to comfort/care for themselves when they’re in a slump

Spends time with Laura and the kids, and sometimes takes the kids out to a paddock where she shows them how to shoot. They’re getting almost as good at him at regular archery, but he dreads what Laura will say if he starts them on trick shots too young.

What he doesn’t know is that Lila and Cooper are already practising trick shots, just without him around.

8. what they wanted to be when they grew up

“not arrested” I think is the closest. Then he was arrested, and Coulson said, “so, hey, would you like a job?” and then he was SHIELD, and though he got arrested many times after that they always got him out.

… though after he brought Natasha in Coulson did leave him to stew in a cell for almost two days before going to fetch him. But Clint thinks that’s fair payback for bringing in a possibly-evil opposing agent when tasked with killing her.

9. their favorite kind of weather

Sunny, clear, not too windy. He can hear more easily and he can see for miles, which really helps with his archery.

10. thoughts on their singing voice (decent? terrible? soprano? alto?)

Clint can… kind of sing? Laura calls it a “warble”, mostly to tease him about the bird thing. He mostly sings to their kids, though he has been known to serenade Laura on occasion.

11. how/what they like to draw or doodle

Angles for shots when he’s got to stakeout and snipe.

Natasha Romanoff

1. 2-4 songs that are probably on their iPod

Tachikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Because cannons and also Russian. In The Hall Of The Mountain King because she kinda likes the ominousness.

I Knew You Were Trouble - the Gollum version, because memes, and Pocketful of Sunshine, which she considers a “Laura Song”.

2. the one place they sometimes end up falling asleep — where they’re not supposed to

You think that Clint climbing through vents is bad? You’ve never had to deal with Natasha falling asleep in them.

3. the game they’d destroy everyone else at

Any drinking game. The only one who could beat her is Vision, except Vision doesn’t generally drink, because he doesn’t need to. That said, the twins come close, as did Stark, before he decided that he really needed to cut back on the self-medication via alcohol.

4. the emoticon they’d use most often

Is there one for a frownyface with one raised eyebrow? That’s Natasha’s fave.

5. what they act like when they haven’t had enough sleep

Absolutely normal until the moment she keels over. Common procedure with SHIELD was to debrief her and give her one cup of coffee, as soon as the coffee was finished, debriefing would be delayed until she’d got some sleep.

6. their preferred hot beverage on really cold nights. or mornings. or whenever.

She doesn’t really have a preference; the chance to have options is her preference and she’ll generally go with whatever her tastebuds are craving at the time, unless it would blow her cover.

7. how they like to comfort/care for themselves when they’re in a slump

Visiting Clint and Laura and the Barton kids.

8. what they wanted to be when they grew up

A ballerina. Not a Black Widow-Ballerina, an actual Ballerina. And she could have been, if not for the Red Room. Now she just wants to make sure that people don’t do that to more kids, and that kids who’ve been shaped so don’t get a chance to destroy the world.

9. their favorite kind of weather

Cold, crisp, biting winter snow.

10. thoughts on their singing voice (decent? terrible? soprano? alto?)

Natasha Does Not Sing. Not ever.

11. how/what they like to draw or doodle

Sometimes she sketches things, not really thinking.

Almost inevitably, its things from the Red Room.