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damthosefandoms · 1 month ago

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This old house

(ao3 link) (based on this post)

Summary:

The house will always be theirs, and nobody can take it away from them.

———

There was something so incredibly enticing about the attic pull cord.

Maybe it was the proximity to Darry’s bedroom door; how every morning when he was younger, he’d get up and stand on the step-up to his room, and try to jump clear across the upstairs hallway, like the floor was made of lava, to the step-up to his parents’ room to wake them up. How he’d always manage to narrowly avoid that pull-cord smacking him in the face as he did so.

He still remembers his mother nagging him about it, about jumping around the tiny landing when it would be so easy to misstep and fall down the steep wooden staircase to his inevitable doom. He remembers his dad laughing and telling Mama to relax, because Dad did the same thing when he was a kid, growing up in Darry’s same bedroom, back when Grandpa Pat sacrificed a decade’s worth of paychecks to give each of his three boys their own bedroom, and built that addition onto the side of the house himself in between shifts at the factory and fighting in the first world war. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was home, and Grandpa made sure of that.

Grandpa used to tease Darry when he was real little, back before he passed; he’d hold him up and show him his best handiwork, which in hindsight was just an amateur addition to the side of an old two-story cottage, and Darry would wiggle around in his arms and try to grab at whatever he could, including that stupid pull cord. He’d laugh and untangle it from Darry’s pudgy baby hands and put him down for a nap, right there in that room that never belonged to anybody except Darrel Curtis.

Darry thinks about Grandpa Pat every time he sees it, these days. He can’t help himself when he goes up there, always reaching out to hit it, like he’s a middle school boy trying to show off and touch the top of a doorway in the hall—it’s instinct. He’s still there, in that bedroom—a room built by his grandfather, and now that he works in construction, Darry thinks about that a lot. About how his grandfather put his whole heart and soul into making this place a home, something that their family could use for generations, and how he’s unintentionally letting it go.

If you pulled the cord, a drop-down ladder would take you up into the attic, and it would take up the entire upstairs landing when it was down. You could barely maneuver around it, and that wasn’t Grandpa Pat’s fault, but when Darry was seven, he thought his Grandpa built the whole house (he didn’t—just the two side bedrooms, upstairs and down) and would blame him for everything that he felt like complaining about. Darry could grab the cord if he jumped, but his mother used to nag him about trying, saying “quit it, baby, I don’t want you takin’ a tumble!” as he’d stand up on his tip-toes at the edge of the staircase trying to reach it.

But one day, Mama’s distracted, stuck between trying to convince her most picky eater that carrots aren’t going to kill him and trying to get baby Pony to take medicine for his fever. This is his chance—Darry’s been eating his greens and finally, finally he is tall enough to pull down the attic ladder. He just wants to see what’s up there, maybe find out where that roof leak is that Dad mentioned the other night, and maybe he’s a little stir-crazy because this is the era of barefoot kids playing baseball in sandlots, but it’s a summer afternoon in 1954 and it’s raining cats and dogs out there in east Tulsa, so he can’t go play outside.

His five-year-old neighbor Keith is sitting on the step-up to Darry’s bedroom door, laughing, and his laugh only gets more infectious when the attic door opens and the ladder drops down. Darry dives out of the way, crashing into Keith as they fall back through the door onto Darry’s bedroom floor. Mama yells something up from downstairs, but Darry ignores her, telling Keith to grab the bucket so he can get it up there so Dad doesn’t have to worry about it later.

Fast forward and Darry’s twenty years old, reaching for that same pull cord so he can put away the holiday decorations. They don’t have to worry about leaks anymore, because Darry’s got a new job and has learned how to fix the roof, but that ladder still drops down like it has it out for him, and this time Two-Bit holds it steady for him. This time, Mama isn’t there to warn him to be careful.

---

The thing about living in what used to be a glorified summer cottage is that it’s nice, almost, in the summer. They don’t have one of those fancy central air conditioning units, but with all the windows and the front and back door open, a nice breeze will blow through every so often.

Darry remembers the summer of ‘57, when he was ten years old, and he was determined to send a paper airplane from the front door all the way out the back. Two-Bit told him it wasn’t possible, not with how their house was laid out (“Maybe if it was a straight shot, but there’s a wall in the way, Dar, it just ain’t gonna work,”) but Darry’s got two little brothers dead-set on helping prove him right.

Keith’s being going through a bit of a know-it-all phase lately, hence why they’ve started calling him Two-Bit—something about getting a little sister and “becoming the man of the house” as he puts it seems to have given him the idea he’s got to be the boss of everybody else, too. But Darry doesn’t care that the kid’s dad left right before Christmas right after his mom found out she was pregnant or that his best friend is no longer an only child or has to be involved in everything. Right now, all that matters is that he’s trying to steal Darry’s role as the coolest big kid in the neighborhood.

Darry’s the oldest. He’s the smartest and the best at football and he’s been organizing their Fourth of July baseball games (because Darry might think football is better but the Fourth of July is a baseball holiday) for three years now, since enough big kids like them moved in to play. Two-Bit Mathews will run their little corner of the East Side over his dead body.

He tells Sodapop and Ponyboy very carefully when they’ll need to turn on their little fans to make this work. He can only pray that his brothers are better listeners than Two-Bit’s five-year-old neighbor. The Cade kid doesn’t even talk! Pony can count to twenty and he hasn’t even seen his fourth birthday yet. Soda will make anything happen for a candy bar. Darry’s got the best throwing arm this side of the tracks; he’s got this in the bag.

Darry’s paper airplane takes a nosedive as soon as he throws it.

Ah, well. Bad luck. He’ll get his best buddy back at some point.

---

The downside to being the oldest in the neighborhood is that Darry gets stuck with the most boring jobs. At least mowing lawns makes money; walking his little brother to his friend’s house? Are you kidding? But Mama saw one too many missing kids’ faces posted on the milk cartons and now, in the fall of 1959, Darry’s stuck walking Sodapop down to his friend Steve’s house.

It’s a longer walk there than to any of their other friends’ houses, which isn’t saying much because Two-Bit lives basically across the street and Johnny’s two houses down from him. Steve’s the only one whose house isn’t on a road directly facing the lot, though; it’s in the next block over and Darry figures that’s why they hadn’t met him until Soda started school. Or maybe he’s one of those kids whose parents just don’t let him out for some reason.

It wouldn’t shock him if that was the case, not with how Steve’s mom had died. Darry remembers the day his mom told him about it, just a few years earlier. He had been sitting on the counter drying the dishes as usual, just opposite the oven in their tiny kitchen so he wouldn’t be in the way while his mom pulled out a piping-hot lasagna.

“It’s for Mr. Randle and his son,” she’d said to him, placing it on the stove to cool while Darry carefully dried Soda’s favorite plate. “Glory, that poor little boy. He’s about to lose his mother. No child should ever have to grow up without a mother.”

He wonders if Soda knows what happened, or if Darry had just been told because he was old enough to understand it. The boys hadn’t met until after Mrs. Randle’s cancer caught up to her, anyway. He wonders if Steve ever talks about it. If Darry’s mother died, he sure as hell wouldn’t. Just the thought of losing his mother sends chills running down his spine.

They’d walked this same way that day, cutting through the lot to deliver the food. Darry had skipped around the bases on the overgrown baseball field, just like Soda is now.

“Why’s this here anyway?” He muses, and Darry glances over at him.

“What?”

“The baseball field. Nobody ‘round here even likes baseball. I mean, Dally’s the only kid in town who really goes for that kinda thing, but he spends his summers in New York with his mom and prolly sees games all the time, but I don’t know nobody else who plays, so why we got a field here an’ all?”

“Grandpa Pat told me he asked the city to put up a backstop,” Darry says, kicking an old Pepsi can across the sandlot. “He got everyone in the neighborhood to go for it, hoping it would keep Dad an’ his buddies outta trouble. The socs on the other side of town got a real nice little league park and they thought maybe us greasers would be good like them if we got one. ‘Cept the city’s supposed to take care of our field too, but they don’t, so we got nothin’ to do and get into trouble anyway. If you ask me, I say they shoulda made it a football field, but I figure that was more expensive.”

Soda picks up a stick off the ground and swings it like a sword. “Everything’s expensive.”

“Nah,” Darry mutters, “we just don’t got no money.”

---

Sodapop’s favorite thing about their old house is the load-bearing crayon mark trailing from his bedroom door upstairs, all the way down and around the corner to the living room fireplace. Bright red crayon, scrawled for what felt like miles to the toddler behind the crime—probably his greatest feat to date. He doesn’t remember doing it, but Darry’s always reminding him who the culprit was.

Nowadays Ponyboy’s the artist of the family, and Soda’s crayons have been long since passed down. But the other piece of homemade artwork in the house that Soda treasures isn’t one of his brother’s. Ponyboy might’ve gotten his love of movies from their dad, but he got his artistic talent from their mother. Back before Soda was born, Mama was so deeply convinced she would be having a girl that she decorated the nursery for it, complete with pink, flowery wallpaper and little horses along the baseboard. She’d gotten a horse stuffed animal instead of a teddy bear for her baby girl and when a boy was born instead, she put her foot down and stood by it. Called him her little cowboy.

(His horsey is named Rascal, by the way. Pony’s the only one who knows he still sleeps with it stuffed under his pillow because every time he sees it, he zeroes in on the “surgery scars” from where his mother had sewed it back together after playing too rough as a kid and he’ll run a finger over the stitches and feel close to her again.)

Soda may not have been the best academically, and maybe he couldn’t even attempt to really start reading until he was seven, and maybe he’s not the best at math but—there are 167 little horses along the walls of his bedroom. He’s named and treasures every single one of them. Admittedly, the walls of what was originally Soda’s bedroom still are covered in the pink, flowery wallpaper. It proved too much of a project to take down.

---

Seeing Paul at the rumble, for Darry, was like seeing a teacher in public. A person that you’ve compartmentalized away into being in one specific part of your life and never expecting to see outside of that. Of course, that’s where the comparison ends, and now, with Ponyboy sleeping the day (and hopefully his fever) away and Soda working a triple shift at the DX because Darry’s gotta stay home with the kid, he’s left to his own devices.

That’s never a good thing, because free time always ends with him either stressing about money or thinking about Paul, and that’s what brings him upstairs to his old room, where now he’s trying to patch the hole Paul punched into the wall when they were seventeen.

He’d been angry with his parents that day. Darry doesn’t remember the exact reason why, but he’d watched as Paul slammed his fist into the wall, immediately cringing away afterwards in pain. It wasn’t the first time someone’s done that in their house, and it probably won’t be the last, but it left a hole there that Darry covered up with a football poster and forgot about until now.

Now, when he can still feel Paul’s fist on his jaw. Damn. He really should’ve iced it.

Darry thinks back to that night. He’d been lucky, really, that no one overheard the whole thing. Usually, the walls between their rooms upstairs were so thin that anyone sneaking in would wake Soda up immediately, but when he tore his ACL at the rodeo, their parents made Ponyboy switch rooms with him, and that kid—once he’s really asleep—doesn’t wake up for anything. Except the occasional nightmare, or if he’s sleepwalking, which is why his room was downstairs in the first place. But then Soda got thrown off that horse and his knee has been and probably always will be fucked because of that, and so he gets priority with the downstairs bedroom. Fair enough.

(Pony moved back into that room with Soda anyway after their parents died, so it’s not like it was ever that big a deal. Darry sure isn’t complaining about having the whole upstairs to himself these days. He gets some quiet.)

Paul would show up pretty often back in those days, and here’s the thing. Darry’s bedroom was upstairs, the one on the side of the house, and probably the second-nicest room behind Ponyboy’s, because they both had a window on three of their four walls. Sodapop used to bitch and moan for hours about how hot his room would get at night, having the tiniest room in the house, right above the kitchen. The only downside to Darry’s room upstairs was that Grandpa Pat apparently missed the class where they taught him how to build a level floor.

(Seriously, it’s a good thing Darry’s got two closets built in, because even his bed will slide down the floor if you don’t push it up against the outer wall, and he could swear it’s getting worse over time.)

That and the fact you’d have to scale the side of the house to get in, which probably didn’t help Paul’s attitude when he was already pissed off.

Well, he was probably more scared than anything, but Darry’s been sworn to secrecy on pretty much every conversation they ever had that involved Paul’s parents, so he’s not about to question it. He knows what goes on in that empty house on the West Side.

He punched the wall and Darry had snuck downstairs to get some ice and the first aid kit, praying Soda wouldn’t wake up and hear him.

They don’t really talk about it, but… but Darry gets it and he’s got a way he copes with getting angry, so he talks Paul into coming with him downtown to Tim’s once his hand is healed, to borrow his punching bag, the same one he was teaching Darry to box on.

There’s a million things Tim Shepard could say about Darry bringing a soc into the ring, but he keeps his mouth shut, ‘cause he knows better.

The thing is, Darry gets angry too, and he gets angry a lot. And it’s really hard to stop being angry once you start, sometimes. His parents have reminded him time and again about when he was eleven how he’d gotten so frustrated while playing with his brothers that he’d held Soda upside down from the monkey bars until he cried uncle, and then when Pony snitched and Mama came out to holler at him, he got so worked up yelling back that he dropped Soda.

And, you know, all those hours in the emergency room waiting for somebody to put a cast on his brother’s arm kinda knocked some sense into him. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt just because he couldn’t control his anger ever again.

So boxing kind of helped. It gave Darry something to get his anger out on, and it was exercise, and maybe—just once or twice—he had made a few bucks off it. He never told his parents about it. They’d gotten real upset back when Soda was nine and spent a month practically begging Mama to sign him up for classes ‘cause he heard about it on tv and thought it was cool.

Dad used to tell them never to hit anything he could hurt. And Darry gets that, he does. But Grandpa Pat didn’t take the fall for nothing, and the money he’d posthumously made from it all paid off the house. Darry lost all interest in the sport after his parents died, and he pretends he doesn’t know that Soda still sneaks out to Tim’s backroom ring just like he used to, just to feel something.

Darry doesn’t hit people or things anymore, or he tries not to. Whether it runs in the family or not, it has fully lost its appeal.

Until a storm takes the chimney off the roof and Darry feels like punching another hole into the wall. It’s just one thing after another.

---

The post on the corner of the wall by the kitchen is cracking. Darry hasn’t cried in years—not in front of anybody, anyway, not like Soda does or Pony will under pressure, but.

But right now he feels like sitting on the floor and sobbing.

He knows how to fix it. He knows he should, and maybe there’s even enough in the budget this month to afford it. But at the end of the day it’s really just cosmetic, maybe, and the rest of the house has cracks in the walls and water damage and stains and that fucking crayon mark, and those—well they aren’t more pressing but he thinks about it a lot.

That’s not what’s killing him.

The crack in the wood, now big enough to really be noticeable, is about three feet above the ground, and it runs right through his dad’s name, written in Grandpa Pat’s shaky handwriting.

Darrel 6/7/30 — 3 y/o — shoes on.

Not the lowest point on the Curtis Wall of Fame’s height chart, but one of Darry’s favorites. It’s dumb. But he crouches down and runs his hand over the letters anyway. He looks a little above, searching for the same date.

In pencil:

Patrick Jr. 6/7/30 — 10 years — new boots!

Mikey 6/7/30 — 8 years — barefoot.

Darry’s the only one of his siblings who met their grandfather, but even he’s never met his uncles. They both died in the second world war.

Mama’s on there, too. Only once, and the date reads their wedding anniversary—the day she moved in. The same date is by dad’s name up at the top. Neither of them had much more growing to do, at that point.

Well, Dad didn’t. Mama was growing a baby at the time.

God, Darry misses them.

He looks down again.

Darrel Jr. 4/17/58 — 11y/o — shoes on.

Sodapop 8th birthday — no shoes.

Ponyboy Michael Curtis 11/14/1953 — 4mos. — sock feet.

Darry can’t help but grin at that one. It’s Pony’s first, measured younger than anybody else. Sock feet. It’s so Mama. Soda’s entries never seem to have shoes on, probably because he has never once willingly worn shoes (or socks) in his life. He hates the way it feels wearing them, and Darry swears he’s spent more of his life listening to Soda complain about his socks being itchy than he has playing football, and Darry has played a lot of football in his twenty years. Soda complains about shoes more than he complains about reading, and he used to cry over having to read six times a day.

Their family are not the only people they keep track of. The height chart is like a welcome to the family. He knows Pony’s always looking at this wall, like he’s memorizing just how long their friends have been part of their lives.

Keith Mathews — 16mos. 10/20/50 — no shoes.

No surprise there. You know someone's family when even Darry doesn’t remember a time without them around.

John Cade — 4/13/1957 — 6 y/o — shoes on.

Steven Randle — almost 7 — 4/13/57. No shoes.

There’s a mark with Soda’s name next to it listed with the same date. It’d been the first time Johnny and Steve slept over. Soda hadn’t stopped talking about it for a month after. Darry wonders if Soda had realized why their parents hadn’t wanted either boy to go home.

There’s a few marks with names scratched out. Darry knows the one pretty high up that looks like it was carved out with a knife used to say Paul’s name. He’s pretty sure Soda scratched out Sandy’s, too.

Somebody must’ve been embarrassed and started to scribble over the next one he reads, but they must’ve gotten stopped halfway through, because it’s still legible:

Dallas W. age 9 — cowboy boots — 12/21/58.

Darry’s still lost on how Mama pulled that off. Dally’s got only one other mark on the wall, pretty high up, actually:

Dally — 17th birthday (1966) — cowboy boots.

Soda’s also got one from that day, and it’s the only one where he is wearing shoes, actually. Cowboy boots, just like Dally. Soda had begged for them for years, and got them sixteenth birthday.

It had been an apology gift from their dad, for banning him from the rodeo. They couldn’t afford Soda risking his health like that, but they could find room in the budget for some nice boots, right? Soda hates shoes, so begging for them was a big deal.

That, and Soda just really likes matching with his friends. Hell, Darry’s half-convinced the reason he works at the DX with Steve is because they get to have matching uniform shirts and hats.

(Well, that, and Evie’s dad owns the greasy joint and has known them for years, so he hired Soda full-time on the spot when he dropped out of school. Apparently he used to be buddies with Uncle Patrick, and Mr. Mathews, actually, back before the war, but now he’s the only one left. Darry kind of understands the feeling.)

Darry hasn’t made the gang line up since his parents died. Most of them are done growing anyway, and even if he did have time to think about it, he can’t imagine seeing anybody’s handwriting up there for his friends, other than his Mama’s and Grandpa Pat’s and maybe a few other family members Darry never got to meet. He runs his hand over the most recent mark, his Mama’s last.

Johnny 12/25/66 — 15 — NEW yellow high tops!

Pony had spent months saving up to get him those. Now they sit up on the mantle collecting dust because he won’t let anyone touch them.

There’s a crack in the mantle, too, but this house is all they’ve really got, and it just wouldn’t be home if it wasn’t falling apart.

———

bonus inspo pics (because this fic was based on my grandma’s old house that she's since moved out of & it doesn't look like that anymore due to renovations over the years so i'm not doxxing anybody, and I miss it there so. fucking. bad.):

#darry curtis #sodapop curtis #ponyboy curtis #the outsiders musical #the outsiders #curtis brothers #my post #julie writes stuff #in which i base their house off my grandmas house bc I miss it there #also yet another sandlot reference #I may or may not add more to this one day. like another chapter of rambles. idk yet #not anytime soon I’m done writing for a while after this #probably #pls excuse that these pictures range from about 1985ish-2001ish #i'm the baby on the doorstep lmao #the picture of my cousin getting measured was too good to pass up #I have no fucking clue which cousin it is tho #I wasn’t there for that #like. as in I wasn’t born for another 13 years wasn’t there for that #the closest cousin in age to me is 10 years older than me & 7 years older than my brother lol #and our oldest cousin is like #four years younger than our mom so #suffice to say we barely know them.

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shannonsketches · 8 months ago

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Thinking about how Toriyama wrote an Entire Plot centering around how Vegeta has spent the last seven years learning how to be happy and comfortable with his family on Earth and how he loves his wife so much that being Gently Reminded that he loves his wife was enough to pull him out of a violent midlife crisis and made him such a powerful guardian of Earth that Heaven broke its own rules just to put him back in that position

and Toei was like 'okay but in the sequel to that plot their marriage is terrible and he's never home'

#mmmkay but toei sweetie that's Goku. That's Goku you're thinking of. goku's the one who wife-dodges and doesn't come home for months #bulma goes full guns blazing rescue mission if she loses track of her husband for more than a week. she'll kill a man for Vegeta #Bulma shot a 12 year old in the face! she kicked vegeta out of her house when he was being a jerk about her pregnancy! she is NOT the one!!#Toei writing Vegeta rude all the time like Bulma would not Leave his ass is so funny. She ALREADY left his ass once she'd do it again.#She does not tolerate bullshit. She is not Chichi. She does not need him. She's already been through that shit with Yamcha she's TIRED.#The end of the last manga chapter of Vegeta going 'yeah I should get home or Bulma will forget me' is so good.#He knows she doesn't put up with being mistreated. He loves her for it. Bulma's the person he's mean WITH not /to/ you fools.#sorry if y'all follow my personal i AM hating very loudly on dbs again tonight while I try to get through it kasdjklasj #dbtag

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ruvviks · 1 month ago

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– Beginnings.

Characters >> Lily Castellanos, Nathan Dixon (oc), Sebastian Castellanos Total >> 3.5k words Warnings >> Alcohol mention Context >> The first chapter of my own TEW3, taking place some months after the conclusion of the in-game events of TEW2! You can read more about it all here!

It snowed in Krimson City.

The sky had been the same dull gray color since sunrise, snowflakes slowly cascading down and covering the street in a thick blanket of snow. A heavy fog held the city tightly in its grasp– an eerie atmosphere hanging in the thin afternoon air and low-hanging clouds swallowing entire buildings whole– and with only limited visibility on the road, traffic was forced to crawl by in slow motion.

While not an unseen phenomenon, it was far from a common sight for early January, only days after Nathan’s birthday. He had spent that day snowed in in his little apartment, had celebrated it alone; not as if it mattered much, he doubted Kid even knew and besides his ex-colleague from MOBIUS he severely lacked other friends to hang out with those days.

He stood motionless at the fence of the small playground located in Krimson City’s public park, gloved hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his long, black coat with the collar popped up to shield the lower half of his face from the occasional sharp gust of wind. He had not moved in a while, shoulders and tousled black hair covered in a thin layer of fine white powder, frost nipping away at the tip of his nose as his eyes followed a group of kids excitedly running around.

It did not take a genius to notice Lily was significantly older than the others there, but none of the kids seemed to mind. It came as no surprise to Nathan to see her there– she had not once lost her playfulness even after everything MOBIUS had put her through, and without a proper outlet for it in all her years trapped in the shadow organization it only made sense for her to want to have a chance at spending the remainder of her childhood like she had always been supposed to.

He watched in silence as she scooped up some snow in her pink and orange mittens, wincing when one of the other kids threw a snowball directly at her face; she was smiling, though, and quickly pressed the snow together to then hurl it back, the surprisingly well-aimed attempt hitting someone else on the back of their coat.

‘You’re startin’ to freak out the other parents, standing there like that.’

The corners of Nathan’s mouth lightly curled up upon hearing the familiar, low voice, not needing to turn his head to know who joined him on the other side of the fence.

‘Was starting to wonder how long it’d take for you to notice me,’ he said, his own voice a little rougher than usual on account of the cold, and his severe lack of proper rest in the past few weeks. ‘Was gonna give you another five minutes before I’d walk over to introduce myself. You’re getting slow.’

‘I’m getting comfortable,’ Sebastian Castellanos corrected him with a scoff, returning Lily’s little wave as she ran by the both of them– Nathan merely greeted her with a single nod of his head– before quickly shoving his hand back in the pocket of his green jacket.

‘No need to keep my eyes up anymore, Nate. Threat’s gone, MOBIUS’ gone. Life’s improving day by day.’

‘Good.’

Nathan wished he shared Sebastian’s sentiment.

If anything, life had turned rather sour for him after they had successfully gotten rid of a large chunk of MOBIUS several months ago. He had never expected to walk away from it alive to begin with– and now, without the steady income the organization had provided him with for years, he found himself struggling to get by.

He glanced to his right, gaze briefly meeting that of the ex-detective before he quickly averted his eyes and let them wander back to the playground, trailing over the various snow-covered playground sets.

Sebastian looked good, healthy– much better than the state he’d been in when Nathan had last seen him all those months ago. Part of him regretted not reaching out sooner, the sudden reconnection now an obvious sign that something was wrong; though the wiser part of him knew that had he stuck around the Castellanos family they would not have been able to move on and heal, which was the last thing he would have wanted to be responsible for.

‘What about you?’ Sebastian quietly asked, as if he’d been able to sense Nathan’s melancholy. ‘You look like you haven’t slept in days.’

Nathan scoffed, slightly tilting his head to look at his feet and he absently kicked some snow off his boots. ‘That obvious? Sure feels like it.’

He had teamed up with Juli Kidman to deal with the remainder of MOBIUS, after the Union incident. Of course the destruction of the STEM environment hadn’t led to the fall of the whole organization– it would’ve been stupid of them to link all of their employees directly to the mainframe of a single STEM device, despite the Superiors’ obvious lack of knowledge concerning the technology– and while MOBIUS had suffered massive losses, it would only be a matter of time before they would regroup.

But he was not there to talk to Sebastian about how their hunt was going.

Something else had come up.

Nathan’s silence did not go unnoticed and Sebastian turned toward him, leaning sideways against the fence with a concerned look in his eyes. He did not need to say anything– and neither did Nathan, as he slowly pulled his hands out of his pockets and removed one of his black, leather gloves.

The pale top of his left hand had a burned appearance, as if fire had scorched away skin and flesh– the wound only partially healed leaving it broken and torn clinging closely to his veins and bones. Though despite how recent he had received the scar, its appearance instead implied years long possession, and despite its severity it did not hurt at all.

He could tell by the look on Sebastian’s face the scar reminded him of someone.

‘Now, I know what you’re gonna say–’ Nathan started, but Sebastian cut him off.

‘I can’t do this, Nathan. I have a daughter–’

‘–I know.’

His voice came out a lot sharper than he had meant for.

‘I’m not asking anything of you,’ he said, his heartbeat pounding in the back of his throat.

‘Not this time.’

It had started as police radio chatter.

Late in the afternoon, Nathan had already been getting ready to go home. Kid had picked up a mention of Beacon– its doors long closed for the public yet the building remained in the heart of Krimson City, left to rot and wither away– supposed ghostly activity reported within its decaying walls, and she had wanted to investigate.

Nathan sharply exhaled and put his glove back on, exposed fingers growing numb in the freezing winter air. He leaned forward with his arms on the fence, to move a little closer to Sebastian; as if he was afraid someone would overhear them, as if they could make sense out of any of it to begin with.

‘He’s back, Sebastian,’ he defeatedly stated, and the other man lowered his gaze. ‘I saw him. He did this to me.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Wish it was.’

Despite hearing many tales, and having worked on his project for years as developer within the MOBIUS branch he had been part of, Nathan had never seen or met Ruvik face to face. The brilliant mind behind the STEM technology had always remained in the shadows; up until his death, after which his brain had become the core of MOBIUS’ very first STEM device.

Naturally so, when Nathan had run into the man while wandering the abandoned hallways of Beacon, his first assumption had been that he was asleep– followed by a brief moment of panic in which he had believed he was dead, or somehow back in STEM.

But Ruvik had touched him– had forcefully grabbed his hand to make him drop his gun and had left a burn similar to his own scars– and had then vanished the second Kidman had yelled out Nathan’s name, the old and presumed broken STEM device in the room next door whirring and humming as if it had never been deactivated in the first place.

‘I’m here to warn you,’ Nathan softly continued, eyes fixed on a random spot in the bright snow covering the playground and thumb absently running over the gloved back of his scarred hand.

‘We don’t know yet what exactly he’s here for, what exactly he’s tryin’ to do. Investigating as we speak, but– shit’s looking serious. Somehow reverse engineered the STEM signal to reach outward, expand into reality. Push itself out rather than draw people in.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Similar to the wireless connection that pulled you into STEM the first time round, but– without being pulled in.’ Nathan had to bite his tongue to stop himself from getting too technical. ‘An– An active environment in our world, if you follow, rather than on the device’s mainframe. Signal seems to be inactive still, but we’re gettin’ the readings. No idea how he’s planning to activate it yet.’

They had moved the device to their own headquarters, on the outskirts of town. Had needed to connect it to the second prototype– the device that had supported the Union environment, which they had taken from MOBIUS’ headquarters after wiping out its agents– in order to gain access to the mainframe, get any data extracted from it in the first place.

Their initial hope had been that it was nothing more than echoes– malfunctions in the STEM device caused by neglect promptly activating the wireless signal allowing shades from within to wander the Beacon hallways– anything but Ruvik’s actual return, however that was even possible–

‘Daddy!’

Nathan blinked, drawn out of his thoughts by Lily’s voice. He watched her run over to the two of them– the front of her coat, face, and hair completely covered in snow and a bright smile on her face as she attempted to wipe some of it from her forehead, but if anything her mittens just further spread it out.

‘I’m getting cold,’ she said, squinting when Sebastian reached out to help her with the snow. ‘Can we go back home soon?’

‘Of course honey,’ he replied, barely able to mask the exhaustion in his voice now that Nathan had explained the situation to him– and for a brief moment it was as if they were back in Union, radioing back to Kidman from the momentary safety of one of their established safehouses. ‘Don’t want you catching a cold.’

Lily looked up at Nathan and smiled at him– but she was a smart kid, and he watched her expression change as she looked back up at her father, head slightly tilting before she shook it to get some strands of her ink black hair out of her face, the single white strand in her bangs– matching Nathan’s own– a grim and constant reminder of her mother’s fate.

‘Is everything alright?’ she asked, and Nathan couldn’t help but wonder if she still associated him with MOBIUS, if she still associated him with the tests and experiments they put her through and if she still associated him with the STEM device, meeting one another within in some facility in the Marrow where he was forced to watch over her like a vulture at all times, all to keep the system stable.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he simply answered her, unsure if she would fall for his lie, but knowing it would give her infinitely more comfort than the truth ever could. ‘Just came to say hi.’

The breeze picked up, howling loudly in Nathan’s ears as if the whole city softly cried for him; the cold boring its way through his clothes and eating away at his skin, exposed or not, freezing him all the way down to the bone. He lowered his head– a futile attempt at shielding his face from the biting wind and snow, individual snowflakes cutting like knives across his forehead and cheekbones.

He watched Lily smile at both him and Sebastian again before running off to get back to the snowball fight for just a bit longer, diving behind the slide to get cover. His gaze was pulled back toward Sebastian– but said man appeared deep in thought, eyes pointedly fixed on something in the distance, head anywhere but in the present.

‘I gotta go back in,’ Nathan quietly continued; an unnecessary statement, the gravity of the situation like static in the air between the two of them, though to put it into words was to accept the harsh reality of it all– acknowledgement of what had to happen, what was going to happen, something he had not been able to do before.

‘It’s nothing like Union,’ Sebastian bluntly replied with a shake of his head, turning his back to the playground and resting heavily with his elbows on the fence. ‘He’s nothing like Stefano– nothing like Theodore. He doesn’t need a weapon or a core to draw his powers from, you get too close and it’s over. You understand?’

Nathan didn’t know what else to say.

He had never thought he’d have to go back into STEM after Union. He’d be alone this time round– no Sebastian by his side, no Kidman to radio back to. They had reconnected some old friends– Joseph, Yukiko, Esmeralda– but had no idea whether or not their consciousnesses would still be somewhere within STEM, and for all Nathan knew he would be diving into a world entirely of Ruvik’s creation, with the same horrifying creatures haunting it as last time, if not worse.

Of course he was terrified. All it took was one encounter with Anima and he would never see the light of day ever again.

‘You should go,’ Nathan said, pushing himself up from the fence and stuffing his hands back in the pockets of his coat, ‘get out of town while you still can. Grab a bag or two, grab Lily, take her on a– on a road trip up north or something, while we figure this out. Just in case he–’

He couldn’t finish his sentence. The thought of Ruvik succeeding and trapping the world in a constant state of STEM was something he would rather not think about.

‘–you know.’

An uncomfortable silence followed. And rightfully so– what else was there to say? The whole situation was ridiculous to begin with, and for Nathan to show up only now instead of at any other point in time, months of radio silence after nearly dying together in a simulation of reality lingering between real life and a dream–

He carefully watched as Sebastian shifted his weight from one foot to the other, able to study his face for longer now that the other man refused to make eye contact with him. He truly did look a lot better; Nathan could only assume the man had stopped drinking, and had been getting a much better night’s sleep.

Though despite the improvement in his appearance there was still that lingering sense of dread, the dark shadow that had washed over his face the second he had laid eyes on Nathan’s scarring and had realized what he had come to him for.

Nathan couldn’t blame him. But he’d had to let Sebastian know.

He licked his lips and nodded to no one in particular, ending the conversation himself by taking a small step back and turning back around to return to his car, drive home, drink himself blind and pass out to hopefully get some sleep in before he would have to dive back into his worst nightmare–

‘Hey.’

Sebastian’s hand on his upper arm was unexpected and Nathan hated how he could not stop himself from flinching, a reflex more than anything else, and he hated how it made Sebastian pull his hand away as if he’d touched fire, the tips of his fingers on Nathan’s body despite the layers he wore the first physical contact he had experienced in months.

‘Who is “we”?’ Sebastian quietly asked, briefly glancing behind him to see if Lily was still far enough away. A surprising question; though not out of character for the ex-detective, his curiosity piqued just enough for him to try and get a little more information out of Nathan before they would say goodbye and possibly never see each other again.

‘Me,’ Nathan plainly answered, ‘Juli. Used to be just us two but we gathered a team of old STEM developers to help us with this. They got moved on to other projects while we were working on Union– they removed their chips, came back for us.’

‘So all MOBIUS.’

Not even a question, simply a statement.

Nathan bit the inside of his cheek. ‘Ex MOBIUS.’

The atmosphere changed, a sharp tension bouncing between the two of them as Nathan straightened his back and lightly tilted up his chin. He couldn’t exactly place the look on the other man’s face, though by then knew him well enough to know his hesitation wasn’t caused by uncertainty, but moreso distrust.

‘Thought the program was meant to kill them all,’ Sebastian said, a somewhat hostile undertone in his voice that had not been there before.

‘Just our branch.’ Nathan paused, watching as Sebastian slowly nodded and mouthed a soundless “right”– not entirely sure what his reaction was supposed to mean, but he decided not to ask. ‘Already told you it runs a lot deeper than you thought.’

Myra's sacrifice had put an end to the Administrator's reign of terror– had destroyed his legacy, and all research and findings on the STEM system as designed by Ruvik and improved by MOBIUS. Whichever branches remained did not nearly have enough resources or knowledge to pull off something even remotely similar; and whatever scraps of code they could have gotten their hands on before Kidman and Nathan had wiped their systems clean would prove insufficient to provide them with a stable environment.

And even if they would make it that far– provided they’d be able to recreate the STEM device from written instructions alone, Ruvik's original blueprints lost to time and MOBIUS' own burned to a crisp in the aftermath of the Union incident's conclusion– the mental erosion Union's residents had suffered from and the Anima manifestations that had happened as a result had never been resolved, leaving any future STEM residents with the all but comforting promise of a similar fate.

'I'm diving in tomorrow,' Nathan said, knowing there was nothing else left to say. The breeze in the park was picking up again, sweeping snowflakes that were starting to feel more like hail than anything else into Nathan’s face with a lot more force than before, melting on collision and dripping into the collar of his shirt. 'First thing in the morning. Can’t waste any more time. In case you wanna come say goodbye–'

He reached into the pocket of his pants, then held out a note to Sebastian; handwritten, containing an address located on an abandoned warehouse site, not too far from Nathan's own home.

'–our headquarters.' He waited for Sebastian to take the note from him. 'No pressure, of course.'

No pressure.

The note was almost a blatant sign that Nathan wanted him to be there. He could not ask it of him directly– but gave him the option anyway, leaving the decision up to Sebastian instead.

But deep down Nathan knew that Sebastian knew that he really did not want to go back in alone– and if it had been up to him they had recruited Sebastian a week ago already, when things had first started to go wrong.

‘Do you have backup?’ Sebastian softly asked, as if he could look directly into Nathan’s head– asking the one question he had hoped for, with an answer to it that could easily enough change Sebastian’s mind about letting Nathan walk away if only he would play his cards right–

But despite how often he had practiced the entire conversation alone in his car, despite going over all the different things he could say at least a million times, just to get Sebastian to feel sorry for him– as selfish as it fucking was– Nathan found himself unable to speak.

He simply shook his head instead.

The other children and their parents were leaving, now. It was getting late, and colder, and Lily slowly wandered back to Sebastian to start dragging him back to the car if he were to take any longer than he already had.

Nathan looked up at the sky, eyes fluttering shut as he allowed more snow to drift down onto his ice cold skin, and he breathed in and out deeply before turning back to Sebastian.

‘They’re expecting more snowfall tonight,’ he said, locking eyes for only a split second and shooting a smile in his direction, as he began walking backwards into the direction of his car. ‘Don’t wait up. And– Drive safe, okay?’

Sebastian did not answer him.

It snowed in Krimson City, accompanied by a deafening silence weighing it down and choking it out, as if the whole city was expectantly holding its breath.

Nathan left.

taglist (opt in/out)

@nistarot, @deadrlngers, @euryalex, @ordinarymaine, @mojaves;

@shellibisshe, @dickytwister, @mnwlk, @rindemption, @ncytiri;

@calenhads, @noirapocalypto, @florbelles, @radioactiveshitstorm, @strafethesesinners;

@fashionablyfyrdraaca, @radioactive-synth, @katsigian, @estevnys, @devilbrakers;

@aezyrraesh, @carlosoliveiraa, @adelaidedrubman, @fromgotham, @wardenevka

#nuclearwriting #kinda nervous posting this and also genuinely don't know if i'll keep writing because i haven't actually written much more yet LOL #i do really wanna work more on this because it's just nice to have for myself. but i'm definitely not gonna do the one chapter a week #that i used to do for king of fools. i don't know how i managed to do that like genuinely don't ask me #but yeas hi =] nathan introduction <3 obviously he and sebastian have already worked together during tew2 but i didn't feel like #writing about all of that just because it's basically what happens in the game except nathan is there. commenting on everything #this is the first part of the story where he gets to actually lead a bit more himself rather than just following sebastian around #and most of it will be written from his perspective if i do end up writing more =]#if i did my math and timeline right nathan did in fact already work for mobius when ruvik was still alive. so logically they could have met #but they didn't... closest nathan got was when he led the operation to burn the victoriano estate down after ruvik was killed #and then he wasn't there for beacon so he didn't experience any of that. and obviously in union ruvik wasn't there #so him running into ruvik as described in this chapter is the very first time they came face to face with each other ^_^

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a-writing-otter · 2 months ago

Text

WIP Wednesday - Relativity Falls AU

In that moment, there are a million things going through his head. Stan Pines, who’s prided himself for years on protected his big brother, can’t move. There’s something lion-bird …lion-thing barreling towards him and all Stan can do is stand there.

How’s he going to tell Grauntie Mae?

How he’s going to tell his mom?

What’s he going to do?

One summer away, Stan’s in charge, and he gets his brother killed. They’re outlasted everything this dumb town has thrown at them, but now Ford is going to die to a bird and Stan can’t do anything!

Fuck!

“Ford—!”

The thing charges at where Ford and Bill are crouched on the ground, then a beam of blue light flashes across Stan’s vision. He thinks that maybe, maybe, the twin-telepathy thing is real and that, because Ford is dead, Stan is dead too.

Except his vision does clear out and then something thuds against his shoe. Looking down, there’s a large, beaked head with empty, lolling eyes, pouring blood from the places that a neck and shoulders had been previously.

Apparently then he can move because he shouts and jumps backwards into Fiddleford who’s still holding his wrist.

His worry of who did that, how they did it, and what is immediately put to bed when he looks up, takes a step forward to try and go to Ford when he stops.

Because something else is between him and Ford.

To call it “human” is an insult to humans, but that’s about the closest thing Stan’s got. It’s tall and spindly, but has two arms and two legs, jet black limbs, to be specific, and its dressed in some weird golden suit that eventually stacks into a giant golden pyramid floating on its shoulders, a singular eye in the center of it. It’s looking down at Ford with a squinted eye as it brings a hand shaped like a gun to the eye. Stan lets out a nervous sound as the eye shifts into a mouth and it blows out the tip of the finger that, Stan realizes now had been smoking.

“Ford, get away from that!”

“…Bill?” Ford asks, looking up at this thing that is decidedly not Bill. Great, he survives the animal and gets a concussion.

Grauntie Mae is going to kill him if they have to go to the hospital.

“Aw, Fordsy, you do recognize me,” the thing trills, reaching a hand down to help Ford up. Stan makes to tell him not to, but it’s too late. Ford grabs his hand, stands, and stares up at the thing that called itself Bill in wonder.

The pyramid-thing looks over at Stan, but his eye slides slightly to the side and its shoulders sag.

“Oh, come on, don’t give me that look.”

Stan gets ready to say he’ll give the thing whatever look he wants, but Fiddleford interrupts him.

“You ain’t serious right now.”

“…Fidds?” Stan asks, looking at Fiddleford who is standing there, one hand on his hip, the other pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What in the hells did you want me to do?!” The pyramid asks, gesturing to Ford. “Did you want me to let him die? Was that it?”

“No, I— You didn’t have to—!” And Fiddleford gestures to all of the creature.

“Yeah, alright, Specs, what makes more sense—Bill Cipher, the dreamy counter boy can shoot fire from his finger, no big deal, or there’s something, dare I say it, weird happening in Gravity Falls?”

“Sorry. Sorry.” Fiddleford, Ford, and the thing all look at Stan who is sidestepping his way over to Ford. “Did you say you’re Bill? You’re actually Bill?”

“Geez, slow on the catch up here,” Bill mutters, arms across his chest before looking at Fiddleford then jerking a thumb at Stan. “You like ‘em dumb, don’t you?”

Both Stan and Fiddleford bristle at that.

“And you,” Stan is halfway to Ford now, pointing at Fiddleford, “knew about this?”

“Oh, I can do you one better, kid,” Bill cries, taking two steps over with his long legs before throwing an arm around Stan’s shoulders in a way that makes Stan immediately try to push him off. For looking like a stack of twigs, Bill is a lot sturdier like this. “Show ‘em, Specs.”

Fiddleford puts his arms across his chest, shrugs his shoulders, and looks away.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on,” Bill deflates. “You’re not doing this to me.”

“You got yourself into this mess, Cipher, I’m not getting you out.”

“Really? Really?”

“If you want to blow your cover, you can. That’s your decision.”

“Oh, for the love of—“ Bill shakes his… pyramid a little before raising a hand the way he did before. Index extended, he makes a ‘pew’ noise with his… head and then fire shoots out again.

Fiddleford lets out a nervous noise and dives to the side. Stan immediately grabs for Bill’s arm to stop him, but something blue and spherical surrounds him.

“Just— Just trust me, Pines, I’m not going to kill your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend! And fucking knock it off!”

The fire keeps shooting at Fiddleford and Fiddleford is doing a valiant effort to dodge it. All things considered, he’s never seen the hillbilly move like that before.

But finally, Fiddleford is backed into a tree, his eyes are wide and—

And this time Stan’s legs work. Sprinting forward, he dives in front of Fiddleford as another beam of fire shoots out.

What happens next is quick succession: Ford cries out “Stan!” and Stan is touched that he sees Ford dive for Bill to probably stop him; Bill curses loudly and tries to move his hand away, but it’s too late; and Stan, Stan accepts he’s probably going to die, but he had a good run, and his only regret is he didn’t beat that Robbie guy’s score on Fight Fighters. …and some other things.

What happens after that is that, well, nothing happens. Or, at least, he doesn’t die. Which, like, is great for him.

There’s an arm fierce around his shoulders, pulling him back into a very steady body. In front of them both is a massive shield wider than Stan and nearly as tall. Fire fans across the front of the shield and then disperses as Stan stares ahead in shock.

Silence resounds afterwards before everyone is talking at once.

“Stanley, are you okay?!” “Ha! I knew that’d work!” “So help me, Cipher, I’ll skin you!”

And Stan belatedly realizes that that last voice is from behind him. That should be Fiddleford.

It doesn’t sound like Fiddleford.

Pushing the arm off of him, Stan takes a few steps away and is hit in the eyes by blinding light.

Another figure out of some comic book stands there, jet black, too, in appearance, but somehow glowing. Stan can’t look up at where the face is supposed to be for long, it’s like trying to look into an eclipse (he did that once and Ford chewed him out for an hour). But it’s dressed in a white suit, like a lawyer in one of those old films about the south. Talks like one too, but wrong.

Which is to say, it sounds like there’s a bunch of Fiddlefords talking all at once.

“We didn’t have to do it this way,” Bill says, waving his hand and appearing a cane that he plants into the dirt and leans on. “But we’re here, so we might as well. Boys, let me re-introduce ourselves. I’m William Diaphodos Cipher, lovingly known to all as Bill, host of the spirit of Bacipherous, lord of chaos, and that there is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, host of— What is it? Serenity? Compassion? Some other lame virtue?”

“Felicity,” Fiddleford corrects icily before looking to Stan and Ford. “I’m still Fiddleford, now, I’m just also host to an angel named Felicity. Or, well, it’s translated to mean ‘felicity’. Angels don’t speak English, funny enough.”

At this point, Stan is trying to inch his way back to Ford, who is trying to inch his way back to Stanley.

“…so you’re possessed?” Ford says slowly, to which Bill makes a halfway gesture.

“Eh, kind of.”

“Not kind of!” Fiddleford balks. “We ain’t possessed! We’re just… host bodies for these spirits and, sometimes, we’re given the ability to call upon their powers and forms when necessary. And only when necessary.”

Fiddleford is glaring at Bill when he says that. Or, at least, Stan assumes he’s glaring because his voice got hard and he faces Bill, there’s no eyes or face to be seen with the whole glowing ball of black light.

“Give me a better time to do what we can do than then.” Bill takes another two steps and grabs Ford by the shoulders who stiffens immediately. “Our little Pines twins were in trouble and, if I hadn’t taken care of the griffon, it might be their bodies we’re cleaning up.”

“…you didn’t have to transform to do it.”

“Fascinating.”

Stan looks over, Ford is gazing up at Bill, and Stan knows he’s lost Ford immediately.

“So, what, your parents made a deal with the devil or with god to get you possessed?” Stan asks before turning to Ford. “I told you Catholicism was a load of creepy shit.”

“Stanley.”

“No, I— This isn’t through the church,” Fiddleford says slowly, clasping his hands together. The shield he’d been holding before is now strapped to his back somehow. Like this, Stan can see that he also has a substantially sized sword hanging from his hip. “It’s through— Well, mine is through something called ‘The Society of the Blind Eye’.”

“And yours as well?” Ford asks, still not looking away from Bill who is now hugging Ford’s shoulders in a way that Stan can see is making Ford blush. Gross.

“Me? Oh, no. That bunch of sanctimonious freaks would never call on demons. They think they’re better than that, as if we’re not made from the same stuff—“

“We’re not!”

“No, Bacipherous is his own cult.” He shifts his arms to hold up his thumbs and pointer fingers together to make a triangle in front of his eye. “Traces back centuries, but the first known instance of it is in Ancient Egypt.”

“Like the pyramids?”

Bill makes another halfway gesture before dropping his arms and putting them around Ford again, his eye squinting when Ford stiffens.

“I’m not going to tell you that the pyramids are pyramidal because of Bacipherous, but I will tell you that his worship was easily integrated because triangles are the superior shape.”

“Not at all biased about that, huh?” Stan asks from across the way. “That doesn’t explain anything though. Why the fuck are you here? What are you doing here?”

Bill and Fiddleford exchange looks before Fiddleford sighs.

“That requires… a lot more explanation. Here.” Fiddleford takes a deep breath and then, as he exhales, his figure starts to shimmer, the light goes out, and he shrinks back into his human form, sword and suit and shield all gone until he’s the spindly little nerd in small glasses with that ugly teal shirt. “Why don’t we go somewhere private? The four of us can talk and we’ll explain it all.”

“We’re in the woods,” Stan points out, gesturing around them. “Can’t get anymore private.”

“Something you kids need to know,” Bill starts, shrinking back to himself, still holding onto Ford and dragging Ford down a few inches when he’s back to his human self, “is that you’re never safe from prying eyes and ears anywhere in Gravity Falls except for one place.”

“Where’s that?”

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