#it might as well have been me

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

Okay you know what? If no one else is gonna do it, i will. I give you: Destiel!Steddie >:)

(mentions of suicidal ideations below, for one little blurb; if you want to skip it, do not read from "The angel looks sad.." to "Pushing past that the best he could,". plus there is now self harm (? kinda, (MENTIONING HERE:) eddie cuts his palm to draw a sigil w/blood like in the show) and mentions of torture and hell if that counts as a tw/cw! read carefully, friend!)

If dying wasn’t bad enough, and crawling his ass out of his own grave (thank you Wayne for not cremating him like a hunter should be) wasn’t the worst thing that’d Eddie ever had to do, being backed into a rickety old abandoned barn absolutely covered in various warding sigils while whatever it was that’d left that raised handprint scar on his shoulder is still fighting it’s way through the door, may be it.

Had they been anywhere near any coast, Eddie’d think it was just a hurricane they hadn’t thought to figure into their smiting plans, but they were in the middle of the damn prairies and this goddamn barn creaked and groaned and against the battering winds (and also something maybe definitely not natural).

He and Wayne were shoulder to shoulder, shotguns at the ready, taking worrying glances back and forth through to the night sky between the boards that make up the barn’s roof and to the door in front of them. The hairs on the back of Eddie’s neck have been standing on end since they finished the last sigil, and despite pulling all his hair up off the back of his neck, those hairs have a thick sheen of cold sweat glazed over top of them.

Both their gazes snap back to the main doors of the barn as they fly open. Shotguns raised immediately to the…man(? Nope, not man. Can’t be, can it?) walking slowly and methodically over salt lines and sigil after sigil carved into the floor. (Okay, maybe just man..)

This man (Creature? Thing? Whatever…) is probably the most handsome person Eddie’s seen in his whole life. He’s got sun-kissed skin adorned with freckles, and very floofy and soft-looking sandy colored hair. And that only makes what they are about to do that much sadder. Sigh, goodbye beautiful man.

Eddie and Wayne spare the smallest glance to each other before letting shells fly into the man’s torso as he strides closer. Each light hanging from the ceiling explodes as he walks under it, showering him with glowing orange sparks.

What the fuck?? Eddie’s heart had already been hammering in his chest, but now it was going so fast it felt like it was about to vibrate right out of his skin. He had a quick thought about how in the hell Wayne’s old man heart was handling this, but fuck, he’s been through way more than Eddie had.

Bullet after bullet, shot after shot, did nothing to stall whatever creature this was. He just kept gliding forward, completely unaffected. 

He and Wayne shared a panicked glance and quickly abandoned their shotguns, each picking up something else to try and kill this thing. Eddie grips the First Blade tight and turns. It’s already there. Looking at him in…relief?

“What are you?” he growls at the intruder.

“I am the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.” It says (in a smooth, lovely voice), like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“Oh yeah? Thanks for that.” Eddie lunges forward and stabs his knife directly into the creature’s chest.

Nothing happens. Ok, not demon then.

Eddie is stunned, leaving the hilt sticking out from the thing’s ridiculous yellow sweater, he backs away.

The thing looks down at his chest, then back up at Eddie, something like exasperated fondness painted over his features, then raises his hand and pulls the knife out. He drops it to the floor, its focus still trained on Eddie.

Eddie glances at Wayne, and sees his uncle raise a crowbar to the creature and swing. Eddie can see this thing’s beautiful hazel eyes harden in the fraction of a second it takes Wayne to swing, then it throws an arm out to his right, catching Wayne’s blow and turning the rest of his body to face him. His other hand comes up and he places two fingers to Wayne’s forehead. Wayne’s face droops and he drops to the floor.

The thing drops the iron crowbar and turns back to Eddie, looking even more exasperated. “We need to talk, Theodore. Alone.”

“Like hell we do. And don’t call me that.” Eddie ignores the creature and skirts around him to check on Wayne. He crouches down and checks his pulse. Perfectly fine. And..is he snoring?

“Your friend’s alive.” the creature tells him, offhandedly, while he paws through one of the books he and Wayne had brought with them.

“He’s my uncle. Now, who the hell are you.”

“My name would be incomprehensible to you, Theodore.”

“Well then what do I call you? Also seriously, cut it out with the ‘Theodore’ crap.”

“What am I to call you then?”

“Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.” 

The thing smiles at him, “Call me..Steve.”

Eddie’s face scrunches up “Steve? Really?” Steve nods.

“Well okay then…I’m Eddie. Not Theodore. No one calls me Theodore.”

“Very well, Eddie.” He goes back to Wayne’s book in his hands.

“Okay. Now, again, what the hell are you?”

“I am an angel of the Lord.”

“Right. Let me clarify. What are you, really?”

He looks at him then, head cocked and brows furrowed. (Cute. What the fuck shut the fuck up no he isn’t!) “Do you not believe me?” He places the book down where it was and turns to face him.

Eddie snorts “No.”

“This is your problem, Eddie, you have no faith.” he smirks crookedly at him.

Suddenly, thunder crashes outside the barn and lights up the thing in front of him. Each flash of the light reflects the shadows of huge wings on the wall and ceiling behind him, growing and unfurling to a huge span, despite the significant lack of tangible feathery appendages

After his little show, Steve ducks his head slightly, his eyes still boring into Eddie. Had he not blinked this whole time?

“Some angel you are,” Eddie scoffs at him “You burned that woman’s eyes out of her skull.” He fights back a shudder thinking back to that particular sight.

Steve actually has the audacity to look slightly embarrassed at that. “I warned her not to try and see my true visage. Most are unable to perceive my true form…or my true voice.”

Eddie knows what he’s talking about immediately “That ear-splitting, window-shattering sound in the gas station after I came back. That was your real voice?”

“Yes. Some people, some…special people, are able to hear me as I am. I believed you were one of those people. I was mistaken.”

“Uh huh, and so what visage are you in now? Holy middle school teacher?”

The angel looks down at himself and pulls at the ruined yellow sweater and jeans. “This is a vessel.”

“You’re possessing some poor bastard?”

The angel looks sad. “No. He was a broken man. One who did not wish to be of this earth any longer. We made a deal: I brought him to heaven and he gave me the use of his body.”

Oh. Damn. And Eddie just shot and stabbed the poor guy.

Pushing past that the best he could, Eddie continues. “I’m not buying what you’re selling pal. Why would an angel be sent to pull me outta hell.”

He was trying to be rhetorical, but Steve answers anyway. “Good things do happen.”

“Not in my experience they don’t.”

Steve furrows his brows. “What’s the matter, Eddie?” he steps closer, seeming to look right through him. He must come to some conclusion because he says “You do not think you deserve to be saved.”

Oof. Looks like he peered right into Eddie’s soul for that one. 

“You are important, Theodore Munson,”

“Don’t call me that like you know me, motherfucker.” Eddie spits out.

Steve cocks his head once again, eyes looking both confused and angry. “I do know you, Theodore Munson. I stitched your body, soul, and very existence back together with my grace." He steps closer, crowding in close to Eddie, who does not waver from his spot. “I know you completely. Body and soul. And you are important.”

Trying his damndest not to be flustered at that, Eddie says “And who decided that?”

Steve smirks “God.”

He reaches out and places his hand directly over the scar on Eddie’s shoulder and suddenly he’s waking up(???) on the floor of the barn. Wayne is stirring beside him as well, grumbling out a long string of curse words.

Sunlight peeks through the barn walls, and the angel is gone. “Jesus H. Christ!”

———

The two hunters are silent all the way back to Wayne’s.

As soon as they step across the threshold, Eddie drops his duffel and starts to pace across Wayne’s open kitchen/living room.

“What can this even mean? Was he serious? Angels, Wayne! Angels?! We need to do research, we need to figure out wards and how to kill them…” He was rambling, mostly to himself, keeping Wayne’s inevitable questions at bay.

He didn’t want to believe what the strikingly beautiful man had said in that barn, but Eddie knew better. Even before the proof of the creature easily walking past all their known warding spells and sigils.

Eddie knew where he was before he wasn’t. Before he’d clawed his way out of a shallow grave that had looked like a bomb’d gone off right over where the center of his chest would’ve been, the trees surrounding all collapsed outward around him when he’d emerged.

Eddie knew he had been in hell, and had been tortured for 30 years.

Beaten. Tortured. Killed. Ripped apart. Stitched whole again for his tormentors to start all over.

Then the real kicker: he’d swapped places. For what seemed to be 10 more years, he did the torturing.

That’s what made this whole thing so unbelievable. Not that heaven and hell existed, he knew better, but that the big man himself sent one of his own to pull him out of hell. That Eddie was worth saving, that he hadn’t done the things he’d done while down there. Obviously God would know, had to know, what he’d done. And yet.

“Where are we even going to find shit like that?” Eddie asks aloud.

“Only one place to start, my boy.”

Eddie looks up in time to catch the book Wayne tossed at him. 

Oh. Duh. It was a bible.

“I don’t think this will help us, Wayne.”

“True, maybe not this version.” Wayne scrubs the scruff on his chin with one hand, the other on his hip. “Wonder what the oldest version of that book is that we can get our hands on.”

“Museum? Church?” Eddie aimlessly flips through the bible, thinking of what ruse he’d have to pull together to get his hands on an old enough copy.

“I don’ think I have it in me to pretend to be a nun.” Wayne beats him to it.

Eddie snorts, “Don’t sell yourself short, old man, you could pull it off if you wanted.” He sits down at Wayne’s old home computer and turns it on. “I wonder if there are any archive scans of some old as shit ones online.”

Hours of research later (mostly to do with how slow Wayne’s connection was), the two hunters had a couple possible warding/banishing sigils, the main one of which (and the most repeated) needed to be drawn in the user’s own blood.

“No word on how long it’ll stay active?” Wayne asks from his seat in front of his fireplace after Eddie explains what he’d found.

“Nothing, just that it must be drawn in the user’s own blood.” Eddie reads from his notes “Maybe that means you can paint one by your recliner and be able to use it forever.”

Wayne scoffs and takes another drink of his beer. Eddie moves towards the front door, flipping open his knife. “I’m gonna put one by the front door for now, I guess we’ll see if it works if Stevie boy shows his mug around here again.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you boy?” Wayne laughs.

“Shut it, old man.”

—--

About a month had passed since first meeting the angel who pulled him out of hell.

Eddie wanted to believe that it wasn’t real, pretend the longer that they went without seeing Steve, that the whole thing was just their imagination. Or something.

Obviously if heaven needed him for something, Steve would’ve been back sooner, right?

Well tough luck for him, because a month and a half after that night in the barn, a beautiful vision of sandy brown hair, hazel eyes, and sunflower yellow sweater materialized in Wayne’s kitchen in a gust of wind.

Eddie definitely didn’t drop the toast he’d been munching on in surprise, nor did his hands fly downward in embarrassment of being caught in just his boxers.

Okay maybe he did.

“Jesus H. Christ! A little fuckin’ warning maybe??”

Steve’s eyebrows scrunched together as he looked the other man up and down. “My apologies, Eddie, what would you like me to do next time?”

Eddie blinked at him, surprised that the angel was willing. “Well I know it must be great and real convenient to just appear where you want, but we have a door you know.” Eddie gestures towards the front door, “You could always appear there and oh, i don’t know, knock?”

The angel looks towards where Eddie had indicated, face still scrunched in confusion. “Very well, Eddie, I will do just that.” and blinked away.

Before he could react, Eddie hears a knock on the front door. “Damn, that worked? Coming!” he yells, heading to the door.

He pulls it open, only to find the front porch empty.

“What in the hell? How the fuck do you know what a ding-dong-ditch is?!?” He yells to nothing and slams the door back closed.

“I do not.” Steve’s voice comes from directly behind him.

“Fucking hell!” Eddie spins around, “What happened to knocking??”

Impossibly, the angel manages to look even more confused. “I did knock. Then I came right back to the kitchen to find you gone.”

All Eddie can do is laugh. “You are something else, Stevie,” he pats the other man’s shoulder and scoots around him to the steps. “Just stay down here, I will be right back as soon as I’m dressed.”

He sees Steve’s hand raise, fingers poised to snap and–

“There, now you are dressed, can I please–”

“Dammit, I can dress myself!” Eddie immediately starts pulling off the suit jacket Steve had decided he should be dressed in. “Just… stay down here, take over Wayne’s armchair, I don’t care, I will be right back, ‘kay?”

He turns and trudges up the stairs to change, “Where the hell’d he even find this suit?” Admittedly, he did a good job. The red shirt and black tie with the black suit is about what he’d pick for himself, but he doesn’t even remember owning a red dress shirt.

Eddie pulls on a well-worn pair of black jeans and an even more well-loved Metallica tee, grabbing up one of Wayne’s flannels and his pocket knife as he heads back out of his room and down the stairs.

He’s almost at the bottom of the stairs when he comes to the sigil he’d drawn on the stairwell wall. Hidden from the front door’s view, but close enough to use if needed. He places his palm in the middle…nothing extraordinary happens.

“Stevie? You there?”

“Yes, Eddie, I am here.”

Damn, so a month and a half is no good. “Okay, just making sure you didn’t leave.” He hears Steve’s footsteps coming closer to the stairwell. Shit. Eddie Flips open his knife and cuts his palm, quickly drawing a new sigil beside the old one. “Almost done, be down soon.”

Steve appears at the bottom of the stairwell as Eddie finishes and steps down the last couple steps. “See, this is what Eddie really is, not that monkey suit crap you had me in before.”

Steve’s face scrunches “I think I prefer the suit.”

“Well I don’t.” There’s a slight pause, “Hey Steve?”

“Yes Eddie?”

“Sorry about this in advance, tell me all about it when you get back?” It’s a risky time to try a one-liner, just in case this doesn’t work and the angel gets pissed, but he couldn’t resist.

“Eddie, what are you–” Eddie slams his hand to the new sigil and the house is engulfed in a blinding white light.

He opens his eyes, and Steve is gone. “Stevie? You there?”

Nothing.

“Well, let's see how long this takes.” He pulls out his phone and starts a timer.

–

It’s about 3 and a half hours until Steve returns.

Eddie hears the flap of wings and pulls out his phone to stop the timer.

“Three and a half hours seems pretty long when you can just teleport everywhere, Stevie.”

“I was unable to return until just now.”

He turns to face the angel from where he’s been crafting the most sandwich of all sandwiches, and the laugh on his lips dies before it can even begin.

Steve looks like a kicked, dejected puppy. Eyebrows pulled up, eyes wide and shining, plump, kissable lips pulled taught and downward into a pout.

“Oh Stevie, don’t look so dejected.” Eddie muses and turns away before he can do something stupid like pull the other man into a hug and pepper his face with kisses until he smiles again. Not like Eddie been thinking about it or anything, gotta tamp down the idea though, right?

“You want a sammich? That must’ve taken a lot out of you.”

“No, Eddie, I do not want a sandwich. I want you to tell me why you used a banishing sigil on me.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, angel, I can assume you’re a good guy all I want but I wanted to make sure what I found would get rid of others like you just in case.” he picks up his finished sandwich and turns to face Steve, leaning back against his mess on the counter as he takes a bite, speaking around his mouthful. “Where’d you end up, anyway?”

The angel’s face had morphed into an angry frown (at least it looked like anger; it didn’t seem like conveying emotions was something he’d gotten a grasp on yet.) “A small town in Indiana.”

“Really? Indiana? You don’t immediately get thrown back up to heaven?”

“No, we are just blasted backwards from the sigil. We are unable to return to that spot until the ward wears off.”

Eddie swallows “You said ‘we’. There are more of you then.”

“Of course there are, Eddie, I have many brothers and sisters.”

“Are all of them the good guys then? Won’t try to hurt anyone?”

“Of course not.”

“Well if they do, at least we know that this sigil will work to get rid of them.”

Steve pondered that for a moment. “Please do be careful with that sigil, Eddie. If an angel is heavily injured, the sigil may banish them from existence permanently, not just from you.”

“Good to know, thanks Stevie.” he takes another bite of his sandwich. “Now, what is it that you needed?”

Part 2 is here!! | NOW ON AO3

[hinamie]

mentor

[theabigailthorn]

"Good" Acting

i have a theory that a lot of people say acting is "good" when they're emotionally moved by it, and a lot of cishet white people have a lifelong habit of not listening or empathising when minoritised people speak, so minority actors get called "bad" even when they display some pretty fucking amazing technical skill

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[canisalbus]

What if I told you that RoobrickMarine went and wrote an entire novella starring my 16th century dog couple? It's very canon-adjacent, well researched and thoughtfully put together, has inspired me a ton during these past months and it's now publicly available at AO3. I highly recommend it.

✦ Separation ✦

[anastacialy]

guys, i think the hermits are going to accidentally start a prank war again. because just like last time, a game of telephone has begun. first, false made iskall's build into ''false beans,'' her shop from the previous season. however, to give herself plausible deniability, she signs it with "love, Joel. x" due to his username, smallishbeans.

next, iskall sees this, and completely believes it. he thinks it was joel who pranked him, and as he says to pearl while showing off the sign, which he kept even after tearing the prank down, "joel gave me a kiss." in his most recent video, he pranks joel by sending him loads of anonymous messages in order to completely spam and fill his inbox, preventing him from getting any more mail, with notes such as "thinking about you. x"

of course, joel is going to have absolutely no context for this, because he didn't make the initial prank. so who is joel going to assume sent him all those messages while he was away on holiday? well, i have a guess.

etho.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Unsolved Mysteries.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[twinstxrs]

so much happened in this whole episode but i’m still on fig infiltrating ruben’s dream, making it look like the place where his friend was murdered, and then disguising herself as kipperlilly & repeatedly saying different variants of “somebody needs to take the fall for this, and it’s not going to be me. it’s going to be you.” while adaine as the elven oracle shows up next to her. can you imagine waking up from that, the idea of a horrible truth being pinned on you by your friend to save her own skin while the personification of fate and destiny stands there, almost as a promise that this is GOING to happen to you. we don’t even know if this kid is guilty. my god.

[skymantle]

what does it all mean.

[winnie-the-monster]

“My god,” he said, his voice a mere shadow louder than breath, “you’re so beautiful.”

And for the first time in her life, Penelope truly believed that might be true.

[alymccart]

Happy Pride, y'all. *fingerguns*

[surreal-duck]

some business to take care of

[spacedace]

Had a dc x dp brain worm, feel free to use as a prompt <3

Sidenote, I decided to get fancy with the Ancients titles because of course I did lol

Shifting Where = Space (Danny)

Eternal When = Time (Clockwork)

Ever Onward = Speedforce (Ellie)

---

Bruce watched the footage again.

And again.

Again.

It didn’t make sense.

A week ago every television, radio, computer, phone - even the LED billboards - had been taken over to deliver a message. Across the United States. In every territory it held. Every military base. Down in the depths of the oceans where American submarines tried to creep past Atlantian patrols. In the endless cold white of Antarctica. Even far above in the International Space Station. Any place the United States Government had control over, any place one of its citizens found themselves. There was the message.

The face of an entity, human in shape but not in form. Hair as gleaming white as starlight, eyes bright as the twisting dance of the Aurora Borealis, skin as cold and blue as the tail of a comet. The entity wore armor as black as the depths of space with a crown to match, the later glinting and shifting with the twisting birth and death of galaxies. A cloak of nebulae danced down his shoulders, eclipsing the world beyond the entity entirely.

He named himself, jaw tight, expression serious.

High King Phantom of the Infinite Realms.

The Shifting Where. Son of the Eternal When. Father of the Ever Onward. His Epitaphs many and ever growing. The True Balance. The Bridge Between. The Devourer of Dark. The Last Child of Between. The Great One.

King of the Dead. King of the Infinite Worlds. King of so much more than Bruce had ever even known was possible.

King who had declared war. Who marshaled his endless armies. Who spoke of warnings, of efforts to reach a peace, of trying again and again and again to find a way to not plunge into violence and bloodshed. All things living come to call him King in time, he had no want or need to go out and hurry that along. But there were no options left to him now. He had tried for peace. He had been denied.

He would not see his people suffer any longer. Would not see those he’d sworn to lead and protect imprisoned by fools who had sworn themselves enemies to all the afterlives. Would no longer permit the vicious cruelty to continue.

The message was a final warning.

A final offer.

Three days, Phantom said. The United States government would have three days to release their prisoners, to begin the process of dismantling the laws that made death itself an illegal act.

If they refused, he would lead his endless armies personally in the war to come.

It had not been an idle threat.

Three days after the message, after Bruce and the rest of the Justice League scrambled to try and figure out just what it was it was all about, after Justice League Dark’s members shakily took turns explaining just how powerful the being that had gave that message was and how much danger the world was in should he and his armies march upon their world, war came.

Of all places, it began in a town in Illinois.

The sky shattered like broken glass above, Lazarus Green beyond, and the Dead poured out.

It started in Illinois.

It did not end there.

Bruce watched the footage of it all, eyes burning as he watched every second of CCTV footage, every shaky phone camera video, every news broadcast.

Most of them looked human enough. Changed in death, but recognizably human once. A pair of glowing teenagers on a motorcycle, a writhing shadow twisting about at their command sweeping chaos upon the battlefield. A young woman dressed to perform with hair a literal flame, burning bright blue and snapping furiously as she played devastation upon her enemies with her guitar. A child with corpse gray skin and luminescent green hair, flickering in and out of Bruce’s ability to see as if fighting against a law of existence to be visible, screaming orders to a skeleton crew from his place on deck of a 1700s ship that sailed through the sky, disappearing into clouds before raining down attacks from above.

There was more. Glowing skeletons dressed in the fashions of war spanning every culture going back millennia. Robots with weapons far beyond the technology they had even in the League. Creatures of myth and legend. Things of nightmares.

Leading them all, as he had promised, was Phantom.

He looked younger, smaller. Just a boy, really, a gangly teenager that hadn’t quite finished growing into himself. One holding power beyond anything Bruce could ever imagine, but still just a child as far as he could see, no older than Tim who’d just graduated high school. Frantic research found Phantom appearing as far back as human history, but those sightings had to have been after his death. Bruce can’t help but wonder how young the boy had been when he died, how much of that youth still clung to him through all these eons.

It wasn’t something he’d let him self consider normally, not with something like this.

A dangerous unknown appearing without warning and attacking with unimaginable power and seemingly endless forces. It was something that would normally eclipse everything else. Something that would make Bruce put aside the ache at seeing a face so young twisted in rage.

But.

He watched all the footage.

Civilians were put in the crossfire. Were shot at and endangered. Were left terrified and scrambling for safety in buildings that were rapidly being torn away by stray artillery.

But never by Phantom or his armies.

The dead, in fact, went very far out of their way to ensure civilians weren’t harmed. Sweeping people up out of the way of falling debris. Shielding them from attacks that would have most certainly killed a normal human. Some dead even helped evacuate, ushering a frightened and panicked populous to safety as gently as they were capable of. Some of the less human creatures - giant bear-like beings with horns and fangs and ice edging their burly frames - even rushed forward to offer medical aid.

When the sky shattered open and the armies of the dead swept in, they ignored the town below. They focused instead on what was discovered later to be the base of a secretive government agency. The dead’s fight focused on those individuals in sharp white suits, bearing weapons capable of actually injuring King Phantom’s people.

It was these agents that brought the fight to the streets to Amity Park. That fired recklessly and without thought or care to the casualties they could inflict. That didn’t seem to care if they killed a hundred civilians if it meant hurting just one of Phantom’s soldiers.

Bruce watched all the footage.

And again.

Again.

Phantom had declared war.

Phantom spoke in his message of being out of options, of attempting peace. Phantom gave three days time for the release of captives. Phantom lead armies who fought viciously but never once willingly harmed civilians.

Phantom declared war, but he didn’t want it.

“Amanda Waller has reached out.”

Bruce didn’t turn his attention from the screens before him, eyes burning as he followed Phantom as the King dove away from the middle of locked combat to shield a child from a pulse of green energy from something like a grenade another agent in white had carelessly thrown. The child was crying but unharmed. The left pauldron of Phantom’s armor cracked and shattered from a direct shot from the enemy he’d just been fighting that he’d turned his back on, a glowing green liquid uncomfortably like Lazarus Water dripped down from a smoldering wound.

Clark stepped up to stand beside him as he watched, face worn and tired. The League had missed the first battle, but they’d been quick to appear at the rest. Phantom and his army ignored them unless they put themselves purposefully in the way of the fight. They were, as Justice League Dark had warned, vastly out powered by the entities fighting. A hulking giant knight made of shadow riding a nightmarish steed had driven Clark six feet down into the dirt when he’d attempted to make his way to Phantom directly to try and talk to the king.

The depth Clark had ended up felt like a warning of what would happen if he tried to get close to the king again.

It probably was.

“She said they have intel for us.” A faint twitch of fingers, jaw clenching, voice flat in that way that told Bruce his old friend was fighting back anger with everything he had. “That she has options for how to deal with the insurgence.”

Bruce shut off the monitors.

He’d seen enough.

Now was time to get answers to just what, exactly, Amanda Waller and the US government had done to cause the Dead to rise and rage.

---

Part Two Part Three Part Four

[vigilskeep]

I wonder if Spite’s ability to pull things from the fade helped them get Rook out

au where the only reason it took weeks to find rook is that’s how long it took to explain to spite what “fade prison” meant and then it immediately just yanked them out of there

[shorthaltsjester]

the mighty nein - critical role

this is a place where i don't feel alone. this is a place where i feel at home.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.