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philtstone · 2 months ago

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24. Showing up injured at their friend/mentor’s house: for shawn? :)

[emerges from writing this fic bloody and beaten and on the verge of collapse] ill explore karen vicks character in an overly complicated post-episode missing scene fic or die trying! set immediately post "right turn or left for dead". i genuinely dont know if im happy with this but i also cant figure out how to fix it. actually, it would have probably been easier to write if i was willing to rewatch the episodes its based on. which i am not, because i am a sensitive little soul. so i winged it. i think there are like 10 different ideas that crop up and theyre all equally fascinating as character threads but i have no idea if i tied them together in an even remotely coherent way. also, WOULD she say that??? i had to call my brother twice to ask. this is what yall get for sending me actually interesting prompts, huh

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Henry’s voice said on the phone. “I’ll send Shawn over with them on his way out. He's going in your direction, anyway.”

In her short tenure as the junior detective to Henry Spencer’s lieutenant, Karen Vick observed two things:

First, that he was a far more clever strategist than most people gave him credit for. Despite the ongoing wreckage of his impending divorce and a kid who was slipping through his fingers as everyone looked on, Karen didn’t agree with the other junior detectives’ impression of him as a smash-the-door-down old school hard ass with thinning hair and a worst attitude. The man played four dimensional chess right out of a bonafide Star Trek episode. When he really wanted something done, Henry Spencer could bullshit and bluff and battle plan with the pros, and half the time you’d get too caught up in the blustering misdirect to realize his game was intricately thought out three steps in advance.

It was how they caught the Shorttown Killer, and also how they got that idiot Trembley at the mayor’s office to finally replace their coffee maker. Karen went home to her then-boyfriend, now-husband, and, right before bed, pulled out an old school workbook and took notes.

The second thing was that Henry Spencer loved his son.

Not a lot has changed since then, Karen thinks, staring down the weirdness that she now faces through her open front door.

“… Oh — Mr. Spencer,” Karen says, because it’s rude not to greet your employees when they show up at your home outside of work hours, and are also your old friend-slash-colleague’s kid. “Hello. Thanks for — bringing these over.”

“Dad said it was urgent,” Shawn says.

Urgent isn’t quite how Karen would describe it, but hearing through the grapevine that your department might be facing an audit sometime in the next quarter does light a fire under the proverbial ass. Karen would rather bend a few rules and make sure the last year’s i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed right than leave her detectives vulnerable to the whims of a mayoral stooge.

In general, Karen prides herself on caring about the people under her command just enough that it inspires genuine friendship and loyalty. The just is important. Care needs tempering – it’s important to pull back, press pause, keep certain lines uncrossed. It’s especially important if you want to be successful as a woman in an authority position where lives are often on the line.

What she’s saying is that she tries to make it none of her business what her employees get up to in their spare time. She really genuinely does. She’s shut O’Hara down gently midway through the twelfth sweetly-frazzled attempt to overshare about her dating life (or her efforts to befriend her next-door neighbor, or the endearing personality quirks of her last cat – rest in peace, Triscuit, you will be missed –) enough times to be well-versed in the art of I Won’t Ask, You Won’t Tell, But You’ll Probably Know I Care Anyway.

An invaluable rapport to maintain. In any situation, Karen thinks, but especially when you’re a person who regularly hires and works alongside Shawn Spencer.

She’s not sure whether what she’s looking at right now makes her want to second guess or double down on her usual policy.

“Special delivery,” Shawn adds, like everything is super normal.

Karen narrows her eyes. She glances behind them into the quiet residential street.

“Shawn,” she says.

“Yes, Chief?”

“You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“Ha,” he says, half rolling his eyes to accompany a weird aborted grin. “No. Even I don’t think riding a motorcycle with a concussion is a good idea. What if someone who wasn’t me got hurt? That’s — that would be no good, then you’d have to arrest me. Wouldn’t that be a huge bummer for the whole team, Chief? Gus would cry. And my dad wouldn’t let me take his truck.”

Karen stares at him. Shawn stares at the ground.

“I got a cab,” he says.

“And you are … taking another cab – home?”

Shawn looks quite suddenly like he’s going to be sick.

“Sure,” he says.

Shawn looks terrible. Bruised face, bags under his eyes, and a weird frenetic energy twitching in his limbs that doesn’t pair well with his general air of exhaustion. He’s holding his shoulders stiffly and can barely meet her eye. His t-shirt and sweatpants are rumpled, like he slept in them, even though it’s too early in the evening for Henry to have woken him up to send him here, and when he thrusts the promised files out into the air toward her, abrupt and, admittedly, Shawn-like, he only just hides the awkward wince that immediately overtakes his left side.

The last couple days have been a bit of a whirlwind, so Karen can’t say she necessarily blames herself for not looking more closely.

Even so.

Slowly, Karen reaches forward and divests him of the case files. They slip a little bit, because Karen can’t seem to stop peering shrewdly at Shawn’s face while she does it, and on instinct he reaches forward to stop the stack from toppling.

It does help, but the autopilot he moves on makes it harder to mask what is to Karen’s eyes a very obvious flinch.

“Alright,” is all he says. “Well, good to see you. Time to head back to the old hay stack.”

Like a needle in a haystack and time to hit the hay, Karen supplies needlessly in her own head. Aloud, she says, in many ways against her better judgment,

“Mr. Spencer, are you okay?”

Shawn sways on the spot for a second, one fist clenched, mouth half open. For a strange moment, Karen gets the impression that he’s trying really hard not to say the wrong thing.

“... As rain,” he finally manages, then nods to himself like he achieved some great feat. “Okay. Well –”

“Did something happen to your shoulder?”

“What? No!” Shawn’s eyes flutter closed and he shakes his head, “I’m – fine, Chief. It’s not – I mean, I’m – normal, fine. Fine in a normal way.”

“That’s not something an individual who’s fine in a normal way would say,” Karen says.

“Uh, is it not! It is. I would know, because I am that individual. It’s – I was – there’s just mild – pfft … stab wound – or something, who would even …”

Is Shawn broken? is the unhelpful thought that pops into Karen’s head. She’s never heard an attempt to bullshit collapse so quickly into pathetic nothingness before – certainly not from Shawn.

Perhaps even more than his father, the kid’s a pro.

And then the rest of the sentence catches up with her.

“A mild stab wound?”

Oh boy. She watches Shawn’s eyes widen with the panic that proceeds an unquestionable blunder.

“Chief –”

“In.”

“Chief, I really, really don’t think –”

“Inside my house. Now.”

He’s certainly uncoordinated enough that he doesn’t put up much of a fight. Karen herds him through the door as firmly as possible and leads them in a beeline past Richard’s office toward the bathroom, ignoring the reedy stream of consciousness that spills out of Shawn’s mouth as they go.

“Oh, hey, woah, it’s been like forever since I was in here. Did you redecorate? I swear that lamp wasn’t there the last time we visited. It could be the tacos I had earlier, but I’m sensing a distinct neo-modern Chinese aesthetic going on here, Chief, which calls to mind the merits of cultural appreciation in suburban home decor – hey, is that your husband’s office? Can I meet him? Is he home? That man is a true enigma to us, Chief, and it’s leading me to believe that he must possess all the facial and personality qualities of the pop superstar Mr. Pitbull Worldwide –”

Richard is home, actually, and Karen needs to alert him to the fact that they have an unexpected house guest, so, ignoring Shawn completely, she calls out,

“Honey? Shawn Spencer’s here for a couple minutes about a work thing! I’ll go up to put Iris to bed in a second!” in the finely-honed There Are Many Layers Of Complicated To This secret married tone that Richard should probably be able to catch through the closed office door.

“Alright,” floats out her husband’s pleasant voice. “Tell him hi from me.”

Perfect. There’s about a ninety-three percent chance he understood.

They make it to the bathroom, only stumbling slightly. Shawn says,

“-- or The Rock. Does your husband look like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson? I really think that would make so many things about the Chief Vick family make sense –”

Karen closes the bathroom door with a snap and crosses her arms.

“Sit,” she says, in a voice that even he knows brooks no argument.

Shawn does. He looks – well, beyond uncomfortable, and more than a little bit miserable, and probably closer to completely dissociating than either of them are prepared for. Karen wonders belatedly if he's gotten any sleep at all in the last forty-eight hours.

“I’m assuming you have not been to the hospital.”

He gives her a baleful look, like he really expected better of her. She only just stops herself from rolling her eyes in response. And there’s that huge goose egg on his forehead, too. What, exactly, he got up to in between Carlton’s wedding reception and oh-eight-hundred hours this morning Karen has no idea, but he looks like someone’s run him through the world’s most aggressive industrial tumble dry cycle and spat him mercilessly back out.

Or maybe over with a truck.

Sending a silent prayer to the universe that Iris never hit puberty and remains a sweet-tempered six-year-old forever, Karen gets to business.

“Well, I had to at least ask. Shawn. Does it need stitches?” He mumbles the answer the first time, and then looks beyond startled when she grabs him under the chin so he’ll look her in the eye. “Listen. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you’re going to tell me the truth. Got it?”

Shawn grimaces so hard at her words it’s almost a flinch.

“No,” he says finally, clearly enough that she hears him. Karen raises an eyebrow. “No, I don’t think it needs stitches,” he articulates, but doesn’t meet her eye.

“Hm. Alright. I have gauze and tape in the medicine cabinet. Can I … is it alright if I pull up the sleeve of your t-shirt?”

Released from her hold, he groans and presses his face into one palm. “Chief –”

“I don’t really know what you expected, coming here! It’s not like I’m any less of a hardass than your father.”

“Yeah, but I can bitch back at my dad,” Shawn says, sounding like he’s finally realizing the magnitude of his mistake. Karen smiles grimly.

“Tough. Now pull your shirt up while I get the first aid kit.”

While Shawn proceeds to wrestle awkwardly with his t-shirt in a muted shuffle against the toilet seat, Karen rummages efficiently through the cabinet and eyes him through the bathroom mirror. He seems oddly reluctant to expose himself. In fact, in a stark contrast to his usual insistence on making his presence and contributions as obtrusively obvious as possible, Shawn seems intent on shrinking into the aforementioned Asian-flavored floral wallpaper (which does need an update, unfortunately) with all the equanimity of an anxious chameleon. Karen feels her eyebrows crease. Taking the first aid kit in hand, she brings it over and deposits it into his arms, ignoring his small startle.

“How about you hold that,” Karen says. Shawn does, against his chest, like a pillow. She walks around him and surveys the damage, antiseptic gauze in hand.

He wasn’t lying about the severity, at least. It’s a shallow thing, already mostly congealed, and has only stained his shirt in a small smattering spot of crusty brown blood.

Karen swabs at it with the alcohol using light careful fingers.

“Ow, ow ow ah –”

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s hardly a life-threatening injury.”

“Super insightful, Chief,” Shawn snaps, as genuinely sarcastic as he’s probably ever been with her, “never thought of that myself. Totally the reason why I just had to go to the hospital.”

He doesn’t pull away, but she can feel the tension radiating through his back. She blinks, one eyebrow crawling up her forehead.

Alright then. So that’s how it’s going to be.

“I’m assuming your father doesn’t know about this,” she says.

Shawn grunts, noncommittal. Huh. Maybe he does know, then, and has just been disallowed from doing anything about it right now.

She tosses the first used antiseptic wipe into the trash.

Goddamn four dimensional chess.

She supposes she’s never been bad at the game. She may as well work her way backwards through the moves: Guster, the most obvious node in Shawn’s turn-to-in-a-crisis-system, would never voluntarily abandon his friend in a time of need, so Karen assumes that whatever this is has either already included his support or not been made known to Gus at all yet. Henry’s likely exhausted his own usefulness in the situation, and Detective O’Hara is …

Karen has to work very hard for her hands not to pause in a way that gives away her hard-earned mental sleuthing. A bad feeling wholly unrelated to her ill-advised hangover of the day before begins to bloom at the back of her gut.

“You have really small hands, Chief.”

Shawn’s voice is notably more subdued than before.

“Do I?”

“They’re like … little kangaroo hands. Like the mom kangaroo from Whinnie the Pooh.”

“Didn’t you know?” Karen says, not unkindly. “They’re given out at the hospital when all first-time moms leave with their baby.”

He lets out a tired little laugh, more boyish than he probably means it to be, and in spite of herself Karen feels her heart clench. She isn’t blind. In all her last seven years as the leader of their chaotic little precinct, she has never seen Juliet O’Hara look as ill as she did yesterday morning. The usually sweet-faced young woman had all the pallor of a Victorian ghost, and stood so far away from Shawn in any given room that to an unassuming observer he might have had the plague.

There are only a handful of things, Karen thinks, that could have invited that particular evolution in their dynamic. She rips the surgical tape from its canister a little bit more harshly than is strictly necessary and fights the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

“So,” she says conversationally, laying the tape down in neat, gentle little strips, trying not to pinch the wound too tightly. “Any fun plans for the evening?”

Shawn sniffs. She can see him gripping his hands together over his knee from where she stands above him.

“Um, yeah, uh –” he clears his throat, “you know me, Chief. We’re working our way through a Robert Guillame marathon, which means some good old fashioned Benson, running commentary on the quality of that child acting, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“Then Gus and I were gonna hit up the new, the new chili cheese joint up by Hermosa, you know – they’re doing sliders –”

“Chili cheese sliders?” Karen hums, contemplative.

“Buy ‘em by the pound,” Shawn agrees. “Then I was thinking of getting a tattoo, maybe a belly button piercing, I’ve been really – really needing a change – would you let Iris get one, if she asked?”

“A tattoo?” Karen clarifies, cutting off the next piece of tape. The skin around the cut is warm to her touch but Shawn’s arms have goosepimpled. The hair at the back of his head sticks up unstyled, like he slept weirdly and couldn’t be bothered to fix it come morning.

“Of a marmoset. That’s what I’m thinking. With distinctly effeminate vibes.”

“Well, Dick hates marmosets. So I’d probably encourage her toward something else. Perhaps a sea lion.”

“Like Shabby.” The nervous note has bled into his legs again, and his earlier subdued tone has gone back to sounding strained. “Yeah, that’ll – that could be it.”

“All in one night, huh?” Karen says.

“I –” Shawn doesn’t even hiss when she presses down with a cotton gauze to cover the last of the thickened blood. His legs are properly jittering again. “I was – yeah, y-you know me, Chief, total night owl.”

“Shawn?”

“Yeah?”

“What about going home?”

Silence. Shawn doesn’t answer for a moment long and pregnant enough that Karen wonders if her question will be ignored entirely.

Then,

“Chief,” he says finally, in an awful, tiny little voice, “I really, really fucked up.”

Finally, her hands do falter in their ministrations; as emotionally exuberant as Shawn often is, she doesn’t think she’s ever actually heard him close to tears. For a horrible moment she wonders if Shawn Spencer will suddenly start crying atop her toilet seat for reasons neither of them are capable of discussing honestly. Then she wonders if her horror makes her a terrible boss.

Boss – mother – person.

Oh, dear.

She sets down the surgical tape and lays a ginger palm over the newly-bandaged gouge in his shoulder. It’ll probably scar, but not at all badly. She doesn’t like to think about the far more obvious one just below, puckering in a violent yet unassuming divot. Another narrow miss for Henry’s boy.

At this point there are so many of them to count, Karen has to question the statistical likelihood of the whole thing. Becoming a mathematical anomaly is, Karen can attest with confidence, not exactly the future the Lieutenant Spencer she knew dreamed of for his increasingly unmanageable teenager.

Doing what he loved, on the other hand – absolutely. Being with a person he loved, even more so. Karen grits her teeth at the irritating web she’s spent the last six years constructing around herself and wonders if this evening right here is some kind of cosmic karma for leaving Iris in the care of nannies for the first three years of her life.

That sounds like the kind of thing those horrible parenting magazines and Karen’s mother-in-law would claim, anyway.

“Shawn,” she says slowly, because she has to at least knock this possibility off the list before risking her career in an attempt to mediate her detectives’ love lives, “did you … you weren’t – unfaithful, were you?”

“What?!”

Shawn yanks his shoulder away and whirls around to face her with such a look of horrified betrayal on his face that it’s almost comical.

“No!”

Thank fucking God, Karen thinks. Aloud, she says,

“Well, I’m sorry, I had to at least ask!”

“No! No! What the hell, Chief!”

“Oh would you be quiet! I’m gathering my evidence here!”

“How could I – I would never – you’d even think that I could –”

“I know! Shawn, for God’s sake –” He’s scrambled to his feet in the cramped bathroom space, glaring, and has probably messed up all that surgical tape in the process. The half open first aid kit and his crumpled shirt press lopsided against his front and her garbage can is now full of oxidizing bits of cotton. Karen officially gives in to the urge to press her palms against her forehead. “I had to ask!” she repeats finally. “You and I both know you’re not gonna give me much else to work with, and you sounded so – so sad!”

Shawn barks out a hysterical little laugh. Karen almost growls in frustration.

“I am not going to risk all the very hard-earned rules I have in place without knowing for sure that my instincts aren’t wrong. Is that so hard to appreciate?”

Does it count as sound police work when the framework for your investigation is an unacknowledged lie? Karen doesn’t really know. Probably there’s another math metaphor to be made in there (you screwed your proof from the very beginning, maybe, Richard the professor would definitely have thoughts), or just a straight up joke. How to solve a case that’s cold before it ever has the chance to go live; a cover-up if she ever saw one. Unlikely that O’Hara will peep a word, and things will be a true mess for a few weeks, if she can’t make an educated guess about it. And no one will be explaining anything to Carlton, either …

Right before their goddamn audit, Karen thinks, aggrieved. She wonders if Henry considered this in his calculus. Send Shawn over, have her deal with him. Offer a huge unspoken you’re gonna be walking into a shitstorm tomorrow canary for her perennially chaotic mess of a coal mine.

She can’t help but feel begrudgingly grateful, but that doesn’t mean she and he won’t be having words about this later.

“Jesus, Karen,” Shawn mutters, pressing his face back into his free hand. Karen shakes her head and squares her shoulders.

“Well then! Back to the issue. You fucked up.”

“You know what? I can’t talk about this with you.”

“Oh, Mr. Spencer, I assure you I am more than well aware.”

Shawn blinks at her between his fingers, looking genuinely confused for the first time since he showed up at her door.

Karen does not bother to clear up his confusion; it’s better this way, anyhow.

“Will you be sleeping at Gus’s place or your father’s?” she asks, crossing her arms.

“I’m – I don’t –” Shawn doesn’t meet her eye. The earlier thread of anxiety is back. “I wasn’t …”

So, neither.

“Put your shirt back on,” she says. “We’re relocating to the living room.”

“Chief –”

“That was an order, Mr. Spencer.”

The living room is as quiet and mundane as it was an hour ago. It’s past Iris’s bedtime – she’ll have to go up, and soon at that. Karen seats her guest, retrieves a mug and a bag of chamomile from the kitchen, and removes the fluffy throw blanket from the basket behind the couch on her way back in. He’s deflated completely by the time the tea and blanket are set in front of him. Small and exhausted. Caught. It’s a horrible way to think about it. But she can’t avoid the hundred yard stare – Karen has seen it one too many times in people only just realizing they’re about to go away for life.

“Shawn,” she says, firm as she can make it. “Drink the tea. You’re dehydrated.”

“I’m … what?”

“Your lips are dry. You shouldn’t be dehydrated with a concussion.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Karen suddenly wonders if he’s going to get up and leave. She has experience with these things – she knows a runner when she sees one.

“I might as well have,” Shawn finally whispers.

She doesn’t catch it the first time. “What?”

“I – I might as well ha – Chief, I …” Deep shuddering breaths. He’s finally shutting down, she realizes. She can’t send him back out like this; Henry would give her the stink eye for a month.

Goddamn Spencers and their goddamn irritating overcomplicated lives.

Karen pushes the tea directly into his hands and tilts her chin so she can meet Shawn’s eye. He’s still lucid enough that she doesn’t think he’ll start hyperventilating, but now that the outrage and adrenaline has worn off, the symptoms of shock are pretty hard to miss. “Shawn,” she says again, and wills for him to understand.

“What if she – what if I never –” He can’t get the full sentence out. He looks at her, eyes wide and terrified.

Life sentence, Karen thinks again. The messy stack of files Shawn brought over sits almost unimportantly on the coffee table between them and a memory comes to her, unbidden, of words penned carefully in the corner of a modified police report that she pulled the minute the door closed on the McCallum case seven years ago.

Date: May 4th, 1995. Reporting Officer, Spencer, Lt. H. Perpetrator a caucasian male, brown hair, five foot nine, insists on wearing those stupid earrings just to spite me. What the hell do you want me to write here, Chief? Spent two hours in the fucking principal’s office convincing them not to expel him one month off from graduation. All that effort, and I still booked the kid. It’s gonna follow him for life, and it’s gonna be me that did it to him. For life. You think he’ll ever forgive me? He’s the greatest thing in my pathetic little world and he keeps breaking my heart, and I can’t even properly accept that it’s my fault.

How’s that for a fucking crime.

She needs to go put her daughter to bed. It’s the thought that keeps running through her head, oddly enough, like a strange antidote to the impotent anger and heartbreak and frustration she’s feeling for the people under her care.

With all the notes she took in that little workbook, she still let herself become complicit in the painstaking, convoluted resolution of Henry’s mistakes without accounting for all the variables.

Richard’s footsteps sound muffled in the next room; he’s made his way upstairs in Karen’s absence. She needs to go. She wants to hear the soft and sleepy love you Mama that with her unpredictable hours and regular long nights isn’t nearly routine enough.

“Shawn,” she says evenly. “Do you love her?”

It’s hard to reconcile the smarmy kid who tried to barter with her for twelve hundred a day with the devastated young man sitting on the couch in front of her.

“Chief …” he starts, barely above a whisper.

“Good. Then she’ll see that. Detective O’Hara is a smart and observant woman. What she chooses to do next is her decision, but … you might be – well, comforted by the fact that she’ll know that – truth.”

Shawn stares at her. The tea steams in front of him, cooling in increments. She takes a deep breath and gets to her feet, patting his uninjured shoulder brusquely.

“I have to go check on Iris. When I come back down, I can drive you to the Psych office.”

Iris is fast asleep when she gets there. A library book lays open face down over her stomach, and her soft brown hair fans out against the pillow, silhouetted by the soft glow of the unicorn nightlight in the wall above her. Karen turns off the bedside lamp, tucks her daughter in, and kisses her forehead. Just before she leaves, she hears it: murmured, half-awake.

“Love you, Mama.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Karen goes back to her living room, car keys in hand. She’s planned her next move in the driver’s seat enough times throughout her career that it shouldn’t be too hard.

#my writing #psych #psych usa #psych 2006 #shawn spencer #karen vick #henry spencer #shawn x juliet #shules #situations prompt meme #not sure if i want to put this on ao3 yet we'll see #if it gets zero traction on here ... maybe lol

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risetherivermoon · 6 months ago

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the oak-swallows-garcia's at the time of the epilogue!! this is also me working on revamping some designs..stay tuned, im planning on doing this with all of the families! tho idk if ill get to it...we'll see

i feel like hero looks a lot like the twins where norm looks a lot like rebecca, especially as she got older, i need to revamp my design for her or at least make a proper one lol, as well as one for s2 hero

started with these guys because i have not stopped thinking abt them since the finale, like oh my god...this family man.

(HUGE descs of post-canon/epilogue hcs below cut, as well as closeups!)

first off: Hero! (i posted a wip/close up of her a bit ago but that was before i realized i got the ages wrong,) she's 40, working for NASA after going to college, she's currently single, living with her two best friends she met in college and their cat, Momo. She's living her best life, still in therapy, and is finding it to be very helpful. She hasn't spoken to the Twins and Rebecca in about six or seven years, but keeps in contact with Normal regularly, after everything that happened while she was a child and years of therapy she decided it was best to go no contact with them, they respect her decision. Her and Normal call every few weeks just to catch up.

Normal! not too different from what was already described in canon, he's 38, living alone outside of California, he attempted to go to college after graduation and ended up dropping out in his Sophomore year, after a mental health crisis got him way off track. Now he's working a retail job in Boston, while attempting to go back to school and graduate. He hasn't exactly put in the effort to keep in contact with the rest of the teens, though Scary and Linc call or text him every now and then. Normal was at there wedding, and attends every one of Gerry's birthday parties. He's in contact with his parents, though mostly only Rebecca. He's in therapy, but he's still struggling. He is also still talking to Henry, and he visits Oakvale every now and then, just to say hi to him and his Aunt Birdie. (screw yall shes real to ME)

Rebecca! At 60, She and the twins are still living in San Dimas, she's only just now retired officially, though living comfortably with the money from Swallow's ice cream. Her marriage with Sparrow has always been rocky, but they're at a point where it's easier to live together and stay married. Though they more so are living as friends other than a married couple. Her relationship with Lark has always been weird, though she'd consider them good friends as well. She texts with Normal practically daily, because she worries about him a lot. After she died for a brief amount of time, she started to rethink a lot of things in her life, one of those things being the amount of time she spends focusing on her kids and making sure they're alright. If Normal was anyone else he'd probably say she was being too clingy. Shed attempted to revive her dying relationship with her daughter as well, but inevitably respected her decision once Hero decided to go no-contact. She still asks Norm about her though.

Sparrow!! this one is interesting! At 31 (pre-s2), he hits a specific point as a druid where he gains the Timeless Body ability, where his aging slows as he gets older, Sparrow wasn't aware thats what was happening until he realized around his mid forties that he wasn't looking any different. After a long conversation with Henry, he figures out that's what's happening. He doesn't tell anyone besides Lark for a while until it's too noticeable to hide. at 59, he's living at home with Rebecca and Lark still, and is spending most of his time gardening and painting, or attempting to keep his mind off of...everything. Sparrow isn't living happy or comfortably, though it seems that way from an outside point of view. He finds himself trying to ignore everything going on around him, the fact his life is in shambles, and the inevitable of his loved ones dying before him. He throws himself into his art, to the point where Rebecca has to drag him out of their art studio (their garage) to eat and sleep. He barely leaves the house, because people around town had already started to notice how young he looks.

Lark!! agghgh if you thought my sparrow description was a bummer get buckled. Lark never really recovered from the aftermath of The Doodler and Code Purple, he had really been solely living off of his dedication to fixing everything. So once everything was fixed, he crashed. Badly. For about seven months no one knew where he was, he ran off to the other side of the country and basically went on a self destructive spree, driving around aimlessly. Once he came back home, Sparrow and him had their first heated argument. Sparrow wouldn't let Lark out of his sight, and pushed him to do something other than wallow in self hatred. So Lark started working at a mechanic shop down the road, and without his usual purpose, he threw himself into the work.He worked there for 12 years before an accident involving his right knee happened, leaving him immobilized (hence the mobility aid/cane). Sparrow forced him to leave the job behind after that, at 59, Lark's basically been in a weird stasis, waiting to die.

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wolfisland · 6 months ago

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ill admit i do at times almost miss being one of the most insufferable bisexuals on this site. like its terrible for your mental health arguing for sport and having people treat you like a legitimate public figure when youre just a dog with a blog, but im a deeply egotistical creature and all press is good press and such and such. i think i wouldve been an incredible troll if i were a worse person with a weaker moral compass.

like who needs fame when you have thousands of tumblrinas following you completely ready to skewer you at any given moment or treat you like a prophet for having common sense.

but then you also have people blatantly lying about you and taking you in such bad faith itd be almost comical if i werent so prone to cracking under pressure. like i backed up all of my old blogs so im sure i could dig around somewhere for the asks id get regularly.

i wouldnt say i regretted my old blogs either though. i regretted some things i said and did, as i do with every blog i make and every day of my life. obviously. but i do still think a lot about how special it was to get asks from people about how they learned to be more comfortable and confident in their bisexuality, or that they realised they were bisexual (or bigender) through me posting about it.

its less the sense of "haha wow im so influential" and more "im genuinely touched that i got to be part of someones journey like that when i consider my presence largely inconsequential outside of me being kind of a menace" like thats very dear to me. it makes me happy to this very day that people resonated so strongly with my disorganized ramblings.

i think its very easy to dismiss the things you say or do as having no real impact (or, if youre me, assuming all youre capable of in the long run is causing harm) but its a little more real to hear it directly from someone that something you said meant something to them in a positive way. i miss that part. i do miss hearing peoples experiences and journeys with their sexuality and gender. in the scheme of it we're lucky we even have internet access to share these things with each other. its nice to be part of something positive for once.

#txt #ill delete this in a sec

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zooblenation · 11 months ago

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OK GAMERS. ITS TIME. CHESIL DEAL WITH PANDEMONIUM BACKSTORY. for those of you who are new here: this is the fellow doomed to the narrative.

if you haven’t already read pandemoniums lore i suggest doing that first:

sol is also a character in chesils backstory. heres her lore! not a requirement to read to understand but shes my baby:

LETS GET RIGHT INTO IT. I’ll quickly cover his life growing up. Chesil was born into the kingdom of Canema. Ill save Canema lore for another post but heres a quick description. A desert kingdom, located inside the ravines of sandstones cliffs. The ravines were lined with houses carved out from the sandstone, and lead into a crater in the middle. In the massive crater was were the kingdoms royal family and markets were found. Canema was relatively peaceful, apart from the monster problem. Inside these ravines were cave systems loaded with unpleasant creatures who would regularly attack the kingdom. This kingdom has very few magic users in it, the most magic Chesils ever seen is maybe a traveling wizard passing through. This is where Chesils family comes in, they were the kingdoms protectors and monster hunters. (whether or not it was ethical to invade an animals home then wipe them out when they tried to protect themselves is for you to decide.) They were widely famous and known throughout Canema. heres they r!!

First is Otto Mupfordian (biological dad) Winifred (Winnie) Mupfordian (biological sister) and Farrier Mupfordian (dad who married in) . (chesils biological mom is not super relevant. one day ill make an indepth post on the family lore) Chesil was, well, a bit different from them. He was not your RAHHHHHH KILL DESTROY gym buff. If anything he was the opposite. He was incredibly shy and reserved, and would probably fall over if you asked him to hold a shield. He loved his family more than anything, and they loved him back, but it would be a lie to say he wasn’t living in their shadow. Being born into a famous family, it was a bit hard connecting with other people your age. They either expect you to be Just like your family, or only want to talk to you because they want to meet the legends themselves. Chesil lack of social skills made it hard enough, with all this piled on he tended to isolate himself. In the process of doing this, his family became his only support system. They were all he cared about. Chesil clearly did not inherit the monster hunter title, and turned to a more creative line of work. Doll making. Not children’s toys, but intricate detailed Display dolls. He was quite skillful at it too, and due to his family’s connections, he was able to find frequent commisioners. Ok. Time jump. Chesil is 20 years old. He’s not completely miserable per-say, but depressed and lonesome. At least he has his work and family, right? (incorrect buzzer sound) WRONG! Chesil has DEAD FAMILY SYNDROME. The Mupfordians were frequently invited to royal parties, and attended them accordingly. Chesil rarely joined along, parties were overstimulating and Not his thing. One night, his family went out to one. For reference, the Mupfordians lived on top of one of the cliffs, and had a path carved out for their carriage to travel down. Would be a shame if the path became unstable from wear. But haha im sure its fine. Chesil woke up the next morning to see his family had not returned yet. Not to concerning, maybe they got drunk, and decided to stay at an inn overnight. More time passes. No sight of them. Surely they would of sent a message by now if they planned to stay out longer. So chesil decided it was time to head into town an investigate. He didn’t make it very far. Following the road down, he noticed a part of it had fallen away. When he looked over the edge he saw something much worse, the carriage his family had taken to the party. And well. His Family. They did not survive the wreck. His entire world had fallen apart in the span of a few seconds. Chesil, who’s life revolved around his family, did not handle this very well at all. Sure people stopped by to pay their condolences, but he had no connection to any of them. This is where Pandemonium shows up.

Well. Kinda. Up until the week of their funeral, a strange pink cat kept appearing to Chesil. Only ever in the corner of his eye, and never for to long. He thought he was just going crazy. During his family’s funeral, he had a moment of Fuck. This is to much, I cant be here. I cant watch this. I cant do Any of this. I have nothing left. So. He planned to go home kill himself. Chesil snuck out of the funeral early and went home, and started on his note. (visuals for the audience. here is his room. he is writing the note at that desk above the bed.)

While writing the note, he once again saw the pink cat, appearing in his window. (like. INSIDE of the glass.) Instead of immediately disappearing this time, the cat started to move across the glass, and into another reflective surface in the room, and another, and another. Chesil confused and frustrated by this creature he had been haunted by for the past week, got up and chased him. He ran downstairs following this beast as he appeared in different surfaces, until the creature went inside his family’s blacksmith room. He hadn’t dared step foot in this room since they passed, it was to much of a reminder of everything they made. With a deep breath, Chesil stepped in. The cat was no longer in sight as he slowly walker through the room. He called out to the creature, to no avail. When he made it to the end of the room, he noticed one of his family’s shield’s had fallen to the floor. This is where Pandemonium fully reveals himself in the reflection of the shield, and speaks for the first time. “You caught me!” He laughs, “Now its my turn to catch you.” And with that, it reaches a paw through the shield and grabs Chesil, pulling him inside. Erm. I never drew the room Pandemonium pulls chesil into, but I imagine it looks like this. but minus the walls and instead all these stained glass panels are floating in a black void.

Chesil finds himself at the top of the stained glass stair panels, and no cat to be seen. He calls out again, to once again be met with silence. Unsure of what to do, Chesil starts down the stairs, until he is at the round panel at the bottom. (for the audience, i imagine pandemonium is on the under side of the glass panels, following chesil. heres UGLY OLD ART OF THAT. pretend theres a panel between them.)

This is where Pandemoniums walks to the right side up, and Chesil sees him Not in a reflective surface, but in his physical form. Chesil, who afore mentioned has little experience with magic, is Beyond confused, he questions the cat in a panicked tone, asking who he is. And finally the cat answers. He introduces himself as Chatté. (french word for cat. a simple and much less threatening name then Pandemonium.) Someone who is here to help Chesil! And maybe Chesil could help Him im return. Suddenly, the stained glass stairs start moving around them, and form into different shapes, so “Chatté” can share his story of Woe. (once again to the audience, the story im about to share is a Lie. Pandemonium made it up to trick Chesil. Its backstory didn’t change LOL.) He tells the tale of three wizards, who trapped him inside the mirror plane, which is why Chesil has only seen him through Reflections. Pandemonium desperately wants to be free again! And the only way he can do so is if the wizards are murdered. Then he brings Chesils family into the mix, Proposing a deal. Three lives for three lives. I revive your family, and you go out and kill the wizards to free me in return. We both win! Just dont break the deal haha therewillbeconsquences ANYWAYS. Now Chesil isn’t the violent type, but this is his Only Chance. Its this, or go back and kill himself. Begrudgingly he accepts. Pandemonium gives him a mirror, and says it will lead him to the location of the first wizard. Once that wizard is defeated, it will show the next, and so on so forth. Heres what the mirror looks like :33 but pretend those jesters chesils skipping around the middle are Pandemonium.

And poof. Chesil is shot back out of the shield, and everything is suddenly back to normal. His family is back in the house, acting like nothing ever happened. Yay! Well partial yay. Chesil now has the whole murder thing to deal with. He was made aware these fights wouldn’t be easy, and he should train himself in advance. Insert training montage here. He asks Winifred to teach him how to properly use a sword, and shes delighted to obviously. Like damn.. Chesils finally taking interest in fighting!!! During all this, Chesil gets a commission request from a theater actor to create a doll line of herself featuring the outfits shes preformed in. This is just like any other job Chesil has had, some random rich person wanting a doll of themselves. Nothing Suspicious Here. This actor goes by the name of Soleil. (YES. THE SOLEIL. erm i never made a proper design for an actor self but heres a small doodle.)

Sol presents herself as flamboyant and incredibly extroverted. She insists on having a close eye on Chesil’s creation process, finding it fascinating. Chesils used to people checking in, but Sol is definitely the most curious customer he’s ever had. Long story short, throughout the course of Chesil killing the first two wizards, they fall in love. (YURIII) Sol opens up to him more n more as he works on her dolls, and he realizes shes more than just Rich Actor! Shes actually just as insecure as he is, and she worries people only like her for the person she is on stage, her exuberant personality is more of an act than reality. they r shitty teen romance minus the teen part its just cheesy. Anyways keep this in mind, BACK TO THE HORRORS. first wizard battle! i actually have whole battle sequences written for each wizard but i am looking at the length of this already and have decided Ok maybe this can wait for another post. but in summary the wizard battles took place in arenas they created. Kinda like a soul gem in madoka where you get Pulled In. its jn an entirely different realm, so the battles themselves were pretty extravagant and had Crazy arenas. The first wizard Chesil had to kill was Etoile.

erm also heres chesils sword in detail btw. hes kills the wizards with This

The battle was successful and Chesil now has to live with that guilt forever. Yayyyyyyyyy. Onto the next victim. A wizard by the name of Lune

This time, Chesil meets him before seeing him in his wizards clothes. Because unfortunately enough, he was Etoiles husband. Lune comes to the Mupfordians after the disappearance of his husband, asking them for help. He had already been to the royal guards, but he knows the Mupfordians are the pro monster hunters, and hopes that they can keep an eye out for Etoile, in the unfortunate scenario where he may of um. Got eaten by a monster. Chesil is sweating his ASS OFF during all of this, amd seeing the consequences of his actions in real time reallyyyy take a blow on his sanity. To have to see this poor grieving husband knowing He Did it and that he was going to have to kill him Next. And the paranoia of getting caught by his Own family is now lingering over him. But haha. In to far now huh? So onwards into the next battle. Chesil fights Lune and wins. Chesils really starting to slip now. Turns out murder is taxiing. BUT IT GETS WORSE. The third wizard is revealed. Its none other than Soleil herself. The person Chesil has spent the past 6 months falling in love with. (bruh.. i have this whole thing in my mind where over the 6 months chesils craftsmenship of the soleil dolls hes been commisioned slowly gets worse n worse until she’s revealed to be the final wizard and chesil COMPLETELY breaks the doll. representative of his mental state throughout the story haha) Seeing her again after finding out is so. hard. Having to pretend everything’s normal when you know the shitstorm that is about to happen. Anyways Chesil invites Soleil out on a date. Somewhere farrrrr out, and the truth gets revealed. Commence Battle.

Unlike Lune and Etoiles battles, its not Super extra and or extravagant, its just Chesil and Soleil in an arena(tho the arena badass as fuck.), fighting with their weapons. Its much more personal and Real. Sol fights back, but is begging Chesil the entire time to stop. That maybe we can find another way. Chesil is fucking LOOSING IT BRO. And after Sol lands a nasty hit on him he Stops. He Cant Do This. He Cant Kill Her. Its To Much. Sol tries to reach out to help him up, but he instead runs off. He’s in a complete panicked state, and doesn’t know what to do. All thats going through his head is he needs to LEAVE. He needs to take his family and RUN. So he does just that. Chesil runs back home Bloody and fucked up from that battle, begging his family to get in the carriage, they are confused and incredibly concerned, but oblige. And down the hill they start, the whole scene is fast and frantic and before you know it the carriage crashes off into the same spot. Or at least it Almost does, as the carriage flys off the hill with everyone inside, it freezes in mid air. Except for Chesil, who slams down into the bottom.

omfg this art is soooo old and a bit outdated. pretend like he has a massive cut on his chest. but i drew this moment. this whole scene makes me crazy the story Ends how it Began. looping back to the original carriage crash, to show you cant ever really change fate. it’s Inevitable. Suddenly, the world starts falling apart around him. Like a stage set. Chesil is out of his mind running through this world being torn apart as he goes through it, until he curls himself up in a little ball shaking and sobbing. A familiar voice speaks and gentle paw rests on his own paw, it’s Winifred. She tells him its safe now. Its ok. Look at me. When Chesil retreats out of his shell and looks up at her, her warm smile twists into a cruel one, and the gentle grasp on his hand turns into a much harsher one, snapping back his fingers. Owie. Her whole body contorts as she turns into a much smaller form. A pink cat. Pandemonium. “Trying to run away, are we?” His voice echoes throughout the black emptiness that was once Canema. He laughs and goes on his little villain monologue. Tsk tsk tsk. Breaking your deal, well, I guess I knew it was coming. It was designed this way after all. Chesil questions what he means by designed. And the true horror of this whole situation is revealed to him. The revived family he had been living with for 6 months? Fake. The wizards? Fake. Soleil…? Fake. Pandemonium had set him up, created a deal he Knew Chesil would fail. Soleil was planted from the beginning. But god, didn’t it make a thrilling story? Wonderful entertainment. You fell for All of it. A tragic love story, having to decide between his family and love. Epic battles. Almost getting caught. Your descent into insanity. It was perfect. But now its over, and you broke the deal by trying to run. It was all an illusion! In fact Chesil, you never left that chair while writing that stupid letter. It all started from the moment you ran down the hallway chasing me. Your body has been rotting in that seat for months. And now your soul is mine, Pandemonium explains. Before Chesil has anytime to process any of this, he is turned into another one of Pandemoniums puppets and shoved into his mind prison.

hehe YUP HIS MIND PRISON IS HIS ROOM. AND HES TIED DOWN TO THE CHAIR WITH VINES. reference to him never leaving the chair and the overgrowth from the plants in his room consuming him. kicks feet back n forth. Now hes spent the last 5 years in puppet hell. n well. Its a bad ending i know. But this is just his backstory Before our cnd campaign started. He was shoved into the party as his puppet self, and a few sessions in his curse was broken (MOST FUN REVEAL OF MY LIFE. NOBODY IN MY PARTY KNEW HE WAS A PUPPET They just thought he was some crazy clown guy. Turns out hes actually a WIMPY LOSER.) And now Chesil continues his story in the campaign, shoved into a prophecy. Not even I will know where his character will go. Shrugs. Hes currently having a joker arc right now for good reasons but i’ll keep you guys updated as the sessions continue....

OMFG THIS IS SO LONG AND I GENUINELY COULD OF MADE IT SO MUCH LONGER HAHA. I could say so much abt this story BUT I HOPE U LIKE IT ITS MY BABY

#muppysocs #oc:chesil #cnd #furry oc #furry art #furry #clown #jester #\jester oc #clown oc #character design #concept art #AUGH AUGH IM CRAZY #oc:pandemonium #oc:sol

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girlgenius1111 · 11 months ago

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wips :)

- ingrid x mapi x reader parts 1 & 2

- next chapter of ona fic ( i want to put these out more regularly lol i just get distracted with requests)

-approx. 50 diff barca femeni and AWFC reqs

- part 2s to… like a bunch of the barca femeni fics i’ve written. like honestly most of them.

-pina angst and fluff

-i have an alexia fic mostly written but im not sure i wanna post it…

-part 3 of got love struck went straight to my head (sub reader for this likely)

-more dom reader x ale bc the people have spoken

- i have reqs for leah, alexia, and misa that i’ll get around to

i’m probably missing stuff and also i always write things that i’ve just come up with instead of what im planning on writing lmao

anyway expect maybe a coupe fics this week and then once i get home ill be back to posting as i normally do :)

#woso #woso imagine #woso x reader

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kittsu-and-company · 10 months ago

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[ attached is a video file titled “1/2”. take a look? ]

(tw for.. horror im sorry im so tired i can’t think and wanna post ill fix TWs tomorrow </3)

The first thing that’s noticeable as the video clicks on is the sound of howling wind, the camera focusing from a view pressed up against a back wall. Kittsu’s breath is clearly shaky, and the camera shudders as it focuses on the dilapidated surroundings, once lavish halls and securely locked rooms lay scattered about, charred and blackened and damp after years of being untouched.

The mustard yellow wallpaper with gorgeous golden rhombuses peeled, baring their cotton candy colored insulation like a gaping wound, spilling the building’s breathing lifeblood over every surface it could reach.

The sourceless wind sounded like a terrible, shuddering breath, reverberating throughout the building that looks as if it could topple any minute. It sounded like a death rattle, a death rattle that could easily take Kittsu- and that poor lost Patrat down along with it.

What a stupid child.

Kittsu’s breath is audibly shaky as she begins to slowly place one foot in front of the other, going left from her current position, from the numbers on the remaining doors, she’s probably going deeper in. Every shuddering inhale the broken stone takes makes Kittsu freeze, as if pausing would save her from being crushed under rubble if it chose to give out now.

Her steps slowly, ever so slowly, become quicker, a bit more confident as she tries to call out to the Patrat, whose name is apparently Daisy; though muttering of “they’re just messing with you it’s fine they won’t hurt you” are regularly sprinkled within. The camera regularly turns back to make sure nothing is following the teen on her lonesome. Each step is a terrifying gamble if what may appear before, Kittsu stops at each door and calls for Daisy, before moving on. How long had she been doing this..?

This limbo of “what’s next” continues for 30 minutes, before a shuddering sound comes from within one of the closed off rooms. Kittsu stops dead in her tracks, holding her breath as her previous shaking becomes that much clearer in the face of real, possible danger. She stands there for minutes, listening desperately for the ever so quiet sounds within, and ever so carefully, she approaches and fearfully knocks on the door. The sound stops dead, and a minute passes before the door is flung open, and a humanoid shape flees further into the room.

Kittsu whimpers in obvious terror, fighting off the panic that’s so clear from watching the video. “C-can I come in..?”

Another minute passes.

She takes one tentative step forward, entering the room.

…

A feminine figure stands in the center, on a small, charred coffee table in the center of the room. The figure is wearing a blackened nightgown, a clear victim of the same fire that took its building tomb. There is no light except for Kittsu’s unimpressive flashlight, the light seems to be eaten by the darkness as she shone it on the figure. Utter silence is steadily broken by a dramatic crescendo of the wind’s howls, the building itself wailing in a melody not unlike a sorrowful symphony. The silhouette turns around, only its charred nightgown illuminated as Kittsu’s shaking, near purple hands caused the light to dance in a way one might have called playful in any other scenario.

With much effort the light stills for just a moment upon the specter’s face, for just a split second so short that the video needs to pause to get a good look at what caused Kittsu to flee in a dead sprint.

Manic happiness painted the ghost’s face, manic joy not without touches of vicious malice.

Kittsu did not turn around to see if it gave chase; and she ran far faster than most may have expected for someone of her stature and… lack of regular exercise. Her breakneck pace suddenly slowed as the camera gets launched forward, Kittsu’s shout of alarm fading slightly as it skids further away from her, having tripped on something chittering.

“My Arceus- Daisy! You- you need to come with please we need to leave we need to get out-“

Kittsu’s words are drenched in terror and desperation, pleading with the small rodent that from the sounds of it made in response, was quick to join her in her plan to leave the screaming world around. Her sobs of relief at finally being able to go home are audible, the terrified chitters of the dehydrated, starving Patrat being the only form of company she’s had in a long while since entering this hellhole of a hotel. It takes a few minutes for the camera to be picked up again, but it is turned to show Kittsu’s still wet face with a skinny Patrat in her arms. The mask she wears to protect against asbestos in this place is cracked, but still functional as the camera turns to show she had tripped on a pile of rubble.

By now the wind has died down to a low, tortured moan that never seems to quiet, even for a second; calm enough to not send the pair fleeing in terror, but not quiet enough to let go of the persistent tension that seeped from every crack in the arcforsaken place.

…

The video cuts off here. It doesn’t seem like it was quite meant to, but it had already happened…

Was Kittsu even online to post this..?

#hotel of the forgotten #kittsu #pokemon #pokemon rp #pokémon #rotomblr #rotumblr #pokéblog #pokémon irl #pokeblr #pokéblogging #// y’all im proud of this one

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