#it’s on my mainewash playlist which i have not shared here because it’s not as good as my grimmons one

[karvviie]

i think about how the meta was going to kill wash but hesitated. i think about how he left the healing unit on wash’s unconscious body. i think about how wash knew that the meta didn’t like needles. and the fact that they made him get a tattoo anyways.

[anathtsurugi]

All right, my fellow chickadees, a lot has been going on in the world of Anath Tsurugi. Much more than computer breakdowns and the allure of a shiny new fandom. While I don't imagine those of you who've recently started following me for my Good Omens content expected anything like this, I feel like those of you who have been with me for Star Wars and Red vs. Blue and longer might want to know some of this. Might want to know some of the things that have gone into the recent chapters of my work. I just feel like, maybe, I owe you all some sort of explanation?

No. That's wrong. I know I don't owe anybody anything. I suppose I just want to get it out into the world, get my thoughts in order, as it were. It doesn't matter so terribly much if nobody reads it; it will be a lot to take in. Mostly, I just want to tell you all a story. Because telling stories is how I cope, how I interact with reality. My need in all of this is to try and create something beautiful out of something that was painful.

So...would you mind if I told you a story?

As most things are with me, this is a story about love, about love and friendship and heartbreak and family and resilience. At the end, though, it's nothing more and nothing less than a story about love.

As some of you may have heard or picked up on, my wife and I have been attempting to have a baby. At this point, it's been roughly a year since the process began (financing, insurance coverage, choosing a donor, etc.). The first attempt didn't take, but the second one did. My wife got pregnant and we were both suddenly anxious/excited/hellafuckingnervous parents to be.

As honesty is the name of the game tonight, I would have to say that 'The Colder the Winter, the Warmer the Spring' has largely been fueled by my own anxieties over becoming a parent. Like...am I good enough to properly raise another human being? What human in their right mind would even give me the chance? What is it possible for someone as emotionally stunted as I am to give to a child? Is the love between my wife and I strong enough to do for a little one in a world that will already be against them merely for the crime of being born to two women?

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, I imagine you'll have seen a lot of this in my telling of the story of Zeb, Alex, and little Arkalia, and will probably see it more now that you know it's there. But really, that seems to have happened with a lot of the major storytelling undertakings in my life. The 400K Sleeping Beauty epic I wrote for the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle fandom was fueled almost exclusively by my pining for my then roommate, now wife. The MCU and Red vs. Blue verses I crafted sprang up around the planning of our wedding. I suppose this was just the natural next step, for us and for my craft. If you see genuine terror in my writing of Zeb's and Alex's fears over not being good enough parental figures for Ari, that is why. This is my way to ask and to hopefully deal with the answers to these questions.

So things were going well on planet Earth, or at least they were in our little corner of it. First trimester was plugging along. We were dreaming up names and having conversations about how we wanted to parent. I was going ugly early on the whole 'wait on your wife hand and foot' thing and upping my nutritional game in the kitchen. We were designing a Miyazaki nursery of epic geekdom and talking about how we'd be covered on all bases, since she's such a huge Harry Potter fan and I'm nothing if not an uber Star Wars nerd. I was learning she considered me a more fit parent (which makes zero sense to me, given that she's the one with a decent head on her shoulders, whereas me? I'm just a dreamer, and sometimes it seems that's all I'll ever be, but...yeah, that's a conversation for another time), but the point is that it was all fine. Sure it was nerve-wracking, but we'd figure it out somehow, just like we did everything else. It was what we wanted. We were in it together.

Then we got back the results from the genetic testing the doctor's office advised we have done.

And oh, no. No, it wasn't fine at all.

Trisomy 18.

I had never heard of Trisomy 18 before we got those results. I suppose Trisomy 21 is the one you hear about because it's actually survivable. With Trisomy 18, the 5% of babies who aren't stillborn largely don't make it past the first year. It was not, they informed us, an infallible diagnosis. They would schedule us an ultrasound to be certain, but the numbers were not in our favor.

We didn't talk to anyone but each other that week, not really certain how we wanted to handle things until we knew more. Some of the extended family is fairly religious and conservative and we just didn't need that bullshit on top of everything else. We didn't need other opinions. It was our decision, and the conclusion we came to was that if the diagnosis was truly that bleak, then we would terminate the pregnancy before things got out of hand...before continuing would bring harm to my wife or suffering to either her or the baby. At that point, it becomes a question of 'Do you love your child enough to take the decision onto yourself, even though it will break your heart? Do you love them enough not to force them to suffer for someone else's misguided notion of what is and is not life?'

I didn't consider much during that week the effect all of this was having on me. I told myself I had accepted and was prepared to move forward should the worst happen. My concern was largely for my wife and what she was going through. She was, after all, the one who'd been experiencing it all. We were barely out of the first trimester and she wasn't showing yet. So far as I knew, we hadn't reached the point of quickening. It was all still distinctly her experience. If I hoped for a miracle, it was for her sake, not my own. I thought, 'I can take it. I'm tough. Put the world on my shoulders and I'll carry it for you. I would give everything I am to take your pain from you.'

I am, as I mentioned earlier, very emotionally stunted. I know it was far from their intention, but the impression I received from my own parents growing up was that my thoughts and my feelings on any given matter were not particularly important. Oh, I was consulted, certainly. The veneer was there, but if the correct answer was not given, it was little better than if I'd said nothing at all. So I had long since ceased to say anything of any real value out loud. (In truth, my wife was one of the few people to make me feel that my thoughts and feelings had value, but again, that's another story.) I don't often give of myself outwardly. Trying to draw words from my throat is oftentimes comparable to trying to pull a ball of razor wire up from the pit of my stomach. Sometimes the only way I can give of myself is in writing. All the things I can't give voice to come out in my work. So I am, probably to an unhealthy degree, somewhat proud of my own stoicism. With me, it's always 'No. You don't get to break. No matter what they throw at you, you will not feel it. You will remain unharmed, unbent, and utterly unbroken.'

(Heh, shit. Writing it out like that now, I'm suddenly left wondering if that isn't the reason I'm so damn good at breaking characters. Because writing out those moments of absolute shatter are the only way I'll ever allow myself to feel them...because it isn't me breaking. But...in a way, it is. Isn't it.)

Point here being that allowing that mentality to boil beneath the surface will eventually erupt to sucker punch you in the face. That happened to me as I was leaving work to go and pick my wife up for the ultrasound. The thoughts I hadn't allowed myself to think all week suddenly started to creep in on me.

Is this...somehow my fault?

(At the level of logic, you know it's not. It's a bloody game of genetic roulette. A one in five thousand chance. But there's always the one. Somebody's always going to take the bullet.)

Was I not ready for this? Did I not want it enough?

(Ridiculous. I know what it's like to get shafted at the genetic lottery. I've been dealing with PCOS since I was 18. While the disease isn't fully understood, there is a genetic component. Saying that this was somehow either of our fault was akin to saying that my own illness was somehow my fault. Even so...even so, you can't help but ask...)

Bloody fucking hell! Did I do this? Was there something- anything I could've done to stop this?

(You know. You know you couldn't have done. But still the thought haunts you.)

I hadn't allowed myself to feel it...to cry. I don't doubt that we both hoped for their numbers to somehow be wrong, but I think we both already knew at that point that it was over, and I hadn't let myself start to grieve. So there I was, hurtling down the highway with tears pouring silently down my face.

Traffic depending, it takes anywhere from a half hour to an hour to get between the bookstore and her office, so I had time to get myself back in order. I didn't want to make this any worse for her than it already was. I know what it does to her to know I've been crying, since I do it so rarely.

(You don't get to break.)

But...well...then something happened on the way to the hospital. I had my iphone on shuffle playing the playlist I'd compiled to listen to while working on Star Wars fic, and while we were driving, our wedding song came up in the shuffle. 'Boxes' by the Goo Goo Dolls. We had our first dance to it and I sang it to her while we danced.

I need a family to drive me crazy

Call me out when I'm low and lazy

It won't be perfect, but we'll be fine

'Cause I've got your back and you've got mine

I should probably have it understood that I have 'Boxes' on all of my writing playlists. It's just the love song to me now, and as far as fic writing goes, I tend to gravitate to ships that reflect the relationship my wife and I share. Kalluzeb, KuroFai, Bagginshield, Stucky, SpiritAssassin, MaineWash, Shallura, Kanera, Klance, Sterek, Zutara, and now, of course, the Ineffable Husbands themselves. The list goes on, believe me. Every word I write for each one of my couples is my love song to her, and my experience of the love between us. If you've ever commented on the depth of love and emotion you felt when reading one of my stories, then you've felt what I've felt, and I hope I've made your world a little brighter for it. In this particular instance, though...this...our love song...if we were going to have a miracle that day, that was it. (I know. One song on one playlist, nothing particularly miraculous there. But a one in seven hundred chance during a fifteen minute drive? I was going to take what I could get.)

You are the memory that won't ever lapse

When twenty-five years have suddenly passed

Wherever you take me, it's clear I will go

Your love's the one love that I need to know

You are the sun in the desolate sky

Your life's in these words and it can't be denied

Wherever you take me, it's clear I will go

Your love's the one love that I need to know

If I hadn't been driving, I would've reached out to hold her hand then. Normally, we sing the song together when it comes on, then we play it again, maybe a third time if we're really feeling it. I couldn't sing this time, not during the first play through, anyway. I was a little too choked up. But I managed a few of the lyrics the second time through.

I don't have the words to tell you what a comfort that song was in that moment. It could've been any song on that playlist, but it just happened to be that one.

(This hurts. We're both writers, but I don't think either of us could hope to express just how much it hurts. But remember...I chose you and you chose me. You were my dearest friend and I love you more than I can ever hope to say. It hurts now. It may never not hurt, but we'll get through. We'll be fine. We'll get through it together, like we came through everything else to stand at the altar together...and how we'll come through it all again to hold a new little someone. We're here together.)

So we faced it together, got the news we were expecting. There were other tests they could've done, but neither of us saw any point to it by then. Even if it wasn't specifically Trisomy 18, it was plainly something just as bad. We made the call there, and I do want it understood that we made the decision to  terminate the pregnancy. Despite what ultimately ended up happening, I won't have that spun any other way.

So calls were made, insurances were checked out, and the procedure was scheduled. We were, unfortunately, just a touch too far outside the first trimester to safely be able to just take a pill. The abortion had to be done surgically, and my wife preferred to be put under for it, fearing she might panic if she were conscious.

And I did, of course, promise to tell you how this all started to align with the writing of the more recent chapters of TCTW, along with my beginning scraps of Good Omens fic. It began that same day, actually – the day of the ultrasound. Because I had to come home from that and write Ash's birth scene.

That wasn't all that difficult. Largely numb at that point, I didn't have much trouble writing out the dream of a happy birth. But it started to get harder a few days later when I was sitting alone in the waiting room. By then I was working on the scene where Kallus is finally able to contact Zeb after coming out of his two week coma. It wasn't even a little bit of a stretch for me to write Zeb's desperation and panic during that scene because they were my own (though I suppose I managed to spare myself a little grief writing the scene from Kallus' POV instead of Zeb's).

Another thing I ought to tell you about myself is that I'm...something of a method writer, I suppose is the term, in that I will attempt to write when I'm angry, when I'm in pain, when I'm exhausted, when I'm heartbroken, in an effort to convey the experience of these things faithfully. So, in some strange way, this was almost...familiar territory for me. To write my own feelings into the scene as it was happening. Everything came off without any trouble. The doctors came to me after it was over and told me that he'd already had no heartbeat by the time they'd begun the procedure. It was comforting in its own way. Eliminated several question marks as to whether or not we'd made the right choice. I brought my wife home once she was awake enough to be discharged, and it seemed we were pretty well on the road to recovery. But, as some of you may have already noticed, this is where we come to the part of the story where something more is lost.

My wife needed something to turn her attention to, so it seemed to us a good time to handle OS updates for my eight-year-old laptop, which was an odyssey of itself. Point being that somewhere in the middle of all this my WIP draft of that chapter was lost to the digital ether.

Everyone around me was asking why it should be so hard to rewrite the lost scene. After all, I'd written it before, hadn't I?

Yes. Yes, I had.

I had written that scene when I was alone in a hospital waiting room, heartbroken and afraid, conscious every moment for an experience my wife was blessedly able to sleep through. This was why it was so devastating to me to lose that scene. Bitter as it was, it was a piece I'd poured a large part of my heart into in a moment of despair. In its own odd way, it had been beautiful in its desolation. I had already lost something precious that day. Why did I also have to lose what I had managed to create from that anguish?

It was a moment I knew I never wanted to revisit. Nor could I ever hope to recapture the emotion of it in writing, no matter how many times I tried. I could never portray the rawness of what I'd felt in that moment. So I didn't try. The scene as it exists now is particularly disheartening to me, not because it's bad, but because it's just...not what I wrote. The scene currently in the story is hollow and has no heart. There's no truth in it. The piece of my self that I gave in that moment was lost, and I can never get it back.

So, with yet one more loss endured, I continued on. I managed to make the rest of that chapter what I wanted it to be, so I could at least be proud of that. Chapter 15 was also easy enough to handle, as it was far removed from the family and childbirth aspects of the story, simply building upon what already existed in Rebels canon. But then the time came to write chapter 16, and once again I struggled.

By its very nature, TCTW has always heavily featured pregnancy and childbirth, so there was never going to be any skirting that, but another aspect I had always planned for was Zelina experiencing the death of one of the babies she was delivering. It was always meant to be part of her character arc as a rising medic and I knew I couldn't turn away from it. My wife asked me if I could change it, but I wasn't going to do that. If I was going to change something like that, it was going to be because the story merited it, because it would benefit from such a change. It was not going to be because of my own weakness. Even so, I know I delayed writing it for as long as I feasibly could. (That was also when Good Omens started to come into the picture, but we'll unpack that in a moment.)

For all I claimed to be a method writer just a few paragraphs ago, I can tell you now that I've never had such a visceral response to a scene I was actively writing as I did that one. My fingers trembled on the keys, feeling a little weak as I moved through the words. In fact, my whole body felt weak and I had to bite down hard on my lip to keep back the feeling of nausea, everything inside of me rebelling at the notion of describing the death of this little baby. For all Zelina's experience with Akinah and her stillborn son is such a small part of the overall chapter, of the overall story, it was still the hardest thing I'd ever had to write. As with everything else, though, it seems I managed to keep this in, too, as my wife tells me none of this was outwardly visible while I was writing. I sat next to her the whole time and, apparently, the only indication I gave that anything was wrong was the fact that I was still and quiet throughout. (To give you a better standard of comparison for what she's used to, I'm normally much more expressive when I write. I'll start mouthing dialogue or testing out expressions or gestures I'm describing. I once had to explain to my brother-in-law that I was actually channeling a character when he was concerned over a horrified look I had in my eyes at the time. If I, personally, were horrified, you wouldn't know it. All you would get would be a blank slate. So of course my wife would notice something was off this time.)

It was such a little thing...such a little thing, but still it was hard. It was a relief to move on, to have death and despair conquered throughout the rest of the chapter, but even near the end of it, when Zeb is lingering over saying goodbye to Arkalia, knowing he'll have to give her up...in some small way, he speaks with my voice...saying goodbye to the son my wife and I might have had.

Of course, that particular goodbye will turn out much happier than my own did in the end. But will you be seeing me continue to deal with this a lot in future pieces? Most definitely. TCTW will continue to bear most of the emotional fulcrum (yup, little in joke there), but it's also why I've been getting into writing Good Omens fic of late. Though the theme of parenting's remained the same, it's allowed me to turn my energies toward things a little more light-hearted. This was all about the time I started piecing together my little Good Omens 'Star Wars' AU, and when I put out my mini one shot of Crowley and Aziraphale as parents. Though I have started to come up with a wider verse for that particular ficlet (because it's me; how can I not? There's actually an in joke with my wife and I whenever the subject of long fic comes up with me. She'll ask, "What's the one thing I asked you not to do?" "Write Sleeping Beauty." "And what did you do?" "Wrote Sleeping Beauty," I respond meekly.).

And for all I said my Good Omens fic is giving me the opportunity for more light-hearted fare, I have also got a story idea that deals with Crowley and Aziraphale losing a pregnancy, but also with the one they don't lose. So you'll be seeing me deal, yes, but hopefully you'll also see some worthwhile stories come out of it all since, as I said, telling stories is how I cope. You'll be seeing my newly blended concoctions of angst, loss, and sorrow, but you'll see joy from me, as well. Because, as a great storyteller once said, "...let there also be Hope. It may be a grim, thin hope...but let us know that we do not live in vain." Really, that's what writing and storytelling are to me, whether they be fan fiction or any other kind – torches against the long nights that are pain and sadness, and blades against the endless tangles of thorns that are self-doubt and fear.

Wow. Heheh. Waxed hella poetic for a minute there. But no. I don't think I'll tone it down. It's a truth, and whether that truth is used to discover the strength to be a parent through a Rebel warrior and an ex-Imperial, to find a way to live through pain with an angel and a demon who have endured for over 6,000 years, or even just to find the way to a smile with a ninja and a mage in a coffeeshop AU where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts...a truth is a truth. My wife and I might not ever be facing down giant planet-killing super weapons or averting the Apocalypse with nothing more than a flaming sword and a tire iron, but when our IRL challenges feel as insurmountable as those things, well...it helps to be able to weave a story and begin to find some of those truths.

And yes, we are doing better. It's been a few months now and we're starting over again. The going can just be a little slow since not every attempt is successful and, let's face it, assisted reproductive technology don't come cheap. And as much work as I put into my fic writing, there's not a whole lot of money to be made in the field (none at all, in fact, but...turning away from it...who really wants to read another publishing hopeful's dewy-eyed delusions of sci-fi grandeur?). So if the going seems slower with me, I do apologize. Know that I never cease to write (as I'm quite certain that if I did, I would simply go mad...*backward glance* er...well...madder, at any rate, but that's neither here nor there) and I'm hopeful of creating some good things from all this. It just...sometimes it takes a while to slog through everything. So, as always, I hope I continue to do for you. Whatever capacity you might support me or my work in, know that my wife and I appreciate it.

It won't be perfect, but we'll be fine.