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brandnewhuman · 2 years

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Can I please get headcanons on how Soap, Ghost, and König would react/help their s/o who is grieving the loss of two of their friends.

I may or may not be going through this right now...

GRIEVE BUT

DON'T SUFFER ALONE

Headcanons

STARRING:

Dominic aka König

John Mactavish aka Soap

Simon Riley aka Ghost

CONTENT

Tw: talks about grief, mature language

A/N: I'm so sorry for not doing this request sooner. I hope everything is getting better dear, I'm very sorry to hear your going through this. I can't say it's going to get better cause losing someone will never be easy but I hope that one day you'll get to at least be at peace with it. I hope you like it darling and hope your grieving is going well

SIMON GHOST RILEY:

Ghost knows very well what losing someone you love feels like

He would try to be there as much as possible cause he refuses to let you go through that alone

Despite what many say ghost is not a heartless and cold person by choice

It's difficult for him to open up but that doesn't means he enjoys just being straight up insensitive

For you though? For you he would do anything just to help you feel better

So just know that he's dropping the tough act as soon as he hears the news

His own personal problems can wait, he knows you need someone to rely on and he wants to be that person

If you want him to he's going to the funeral with you

If not he's probably gonna take care of things at home and try to prepare you some sort of self-care day for when you come back

If it happens while he's away he'll be calling you almost every night and fall asleep with you during the call

He takes your part of chores at home to let you rest and have time for yourself

I don't know much about grief cause I have never lost anyone I care about but I have seen what it does to other people and it's honestly horrible what they have to go through

He has never been that good at taking care of himself but he's the best at taking care of you just because he wants you to know that he's there, he's not going anywhere and he cares

I'm talking about the whole package of going out with for walks so you get fresh air

Listening to any rants you might have and being ready to dry your tears

It would honestly bring back a lot of memories but for good

He has never had the opportunity to grieve his own loved ones

It has always been a touchy subject but now he gets to kind of make it right for someone so they don't feel the same

He feels like for once his own problems are helping rather than make it more difficult

He's going to ask you about your friends, but not like the sad stuff or the usual stupid questions everyone asks

No, he's gonna ask for funny stories, for weird facts about them or embarrassing things you have done together

What he's trying to do is that one day, when you'll talk about them, there won't just be the fact that they're dead

He wants you to be able to say their names and think about them in a more happy way

After this he's definitely going to be more careful while on mission

He hates the idea of putting you through something like this just because he hasn't been careful

DOMINIC KÖNIG:

König is maybe going to panic a little bit

Big guy gets so stressed when he sees the people he cares about being so miserable

He won't be able to think of going to work and leaving you behind with all that going on so he's probably going to take some days off

You can be 100% sure that if there's someone who you can cry and just let it out it's him

Never once you going to see him reacting negatively or trying to get you to stop crying or stop being sad

Nono bro here is gonna ask you the opposite

As much as it pains him to see you sad he will want you to let it out

To scream, to cry ecc whatever you need to feel better he's going to do it

He may be panicking on the inside but outside he's gonna be your anchor

Everytime you cry he's gonna hold you and if you don't want to be held or want to be alone then he's gonna respect that and, like ghost, do whatever else he can for you that doesn't implies just comfort you with words ecc

He would make all your favourite meals, watch with you all your favourite movies and get you near to everything you want

He wants so bad to be useful and to make you feel loved

I think he's the type of person that counters sadness with gifts and acts of service

It's like all the tabs he has kept of things you like has been open right now

He would go for a walk when you want to be alone or you're napping (cause otherwise he won't leave your side) and return with a shitton of stuff

When you're particularly upset or you're having a really bad day coping with what has happen he's gonna keep you as close as possible to him

It's all about the small touches

He will kiss your hands, fingers, face ecc

Wherever he can kiss you he will

He would dry your tears but as I said won't ask you to stop crying

After he will get your water and anything else you might need

He spends hours at night looking at you and making sure you're sleeping alright

Once you're ready he would even go and visit their graves with you for as long as you want

Overall he just wants you to help you grieve as peacefully as possible no matter what it takes or how long

JOHN SOAP MACTAVISH:

Soap being the most empathetic person in the world is a hill I'm willing to die on

He will get teary when seeing you so distress and sad

It's one of those rare occasions where he'll lose his cheery and bubbly personality

It really feels like you're going through this together

Even if he doesn't knows anything about your friends the fact that they were important for you it's gonna make them important for him as well

Obviously he's not gonna even try to say he knows or understands what you're feeling

Cause it's not true, no one will understand how it feels cause grieving it's a very personal experience and he knows that how he might have felt in a similar occasion has nothing to do with how you feel now

And it won't make you feel any better to know someone else has gone through this

Cause right now he knows that no matter how many people may have felt the same, you will feel like you have lost a piece of yourself

Definitely will tell people who ask inappropriate questions to fuck off

Same with people who say very stupid stuff like "god knows best" or shit like that

He's gonna talk with you about them

He's gonna tell you how unfair it is and that you have every right to be angry

As ghost and könig he will to make himself useful

I feel like soap is a very domestic person and shows his affection through acts of service

He knows chances are that whatever advice he has will not make it better and will just be annoying at best

So many late night talks

If you're not sleeping as much as before he's gonna stay up with you

If you're sleeping a little bit more than usual he's just gonna let you rest and make sure that when you wake up you have water and something to eat

Being that empathetic he knows when you want to be alone or you need him

This man is literally the embodiment of a service puppy

He would definitely go with you to the funeral if you ask him to and he would feel so honoured to

He may not be the most profound person like könig or ghost but he is gonna give you the stars if you ask him to if that means you'll feel better

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cozy-autumn-moth · 7 months

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💀 Scary Girl Headcanons 💀

Personality & Interest Headcanons

-She’s pansexual though she finds it difficult to express love in general because her way of showing love is physical pain and that's a turn off for most people, though she doesn’t discriminate for any gender, race, or type of person because death doesn’t discriminate either.

-She owns tons of really ugly plushies, some of which she ended up making herself by ripping them apart and then stitching them back together so they end up as this Frankenstein Esque abomination in plush form.

-Loves Halloween a lot and has made home made costumes every single year. They freak out lots and lots of people and have made tons of children cry.

-If you couldn’t tell I feel like she’s fantastic at sewing and anything in that ballpark. I like to imagine she made her own dress.

-Likes to draw and has made her own really weird world with her super freaky OC’s that she probably kept around since she was extremely little. The lore and story is overtly complicated and the only person who is capable of even understanding or finding appeal in this is Lauren herself.

-She was totally obsessed with things like creepypastas and FNaF when she was younger. I feel like nowadays she still is very much into them but it got toned down a lot more as time went on and she found more horror related stuff to be obsessed with.

Family Life Headcanons

-She doesn’t actually live in a funeral home like she says in S2Ep4, but her family does own a family run funeral home which acts like their family business.

-At home she basically only lives with her single mother with her dad being out of the equation for the most part. Though on occasion some members of her decently big extended family visit for a few days if it's a holiday or something but they mostly meet at the Funeral Home more often than not.

-At work she is usually the family embalmer, which means she disinfects and dresses the bodies before putting them in their caskets, and has been practicing it for years. She finds it very fun and has had interest in it since she was able to properly think and walk.

-Her family holds a sacred form of respect for the process of death as a part of life and they see a funeral as a celebration of how someone lived and not a mourning regarding how someone died. Lauren is the outlier as one who is almost obsessed with the ways people die and feel pain and has taken incredible special interest in it as a whole, though I like to imagine that she has one elder family member who acts very similar to her and they bond a lot.

-Lauren genuinely does love her mother and expresses this love really weirdly, basically she makes really weird and creepy gifts or says some super suspicious stuff. Her mom is fine with it because in her head it’s just how Lauren operates, though she is mildly freaked out.

-Anyone who is closer to Lauren's age or younger legit hates her so she more or less has become more comfortable talking to her mom, aunts, uncles, and grandparents rather than people her own age even though the adults in her family find her just as weird but they tolerate it thinking she’ll grow at if it despite acting like this since she was very young.

-Lauren used to be bullied and isolated a lot at her elementary school and because of it her mom never properly enrolled her into school after like the third grade and so she was just homeschooled for the rest of her life.

-Joined a circus at one point in time for some inexplicable reason to the point where her family thought she was missing and there were just people trying to search for her. Anyway she did lots of weird things there and ended up blowing up a clown which was completely by accident, also she got really good with athletics and acrobatics so that’s cool.

Total Drama Experience Headcanons

-Was always the first to wake up in her team's cabin and totally got close to peoples faces just to spook them when they woke up.

-Since Damien was the person to give her the name of Scary Girl, which she actually loves a lot, she took it as a form of friendship and only harasses him as much as she does as a sign of affection and respect. She totally believes Damien is her best friend.

-Knows a lot more about the contestants and their lives not out of them telling her but because she just stalked them.

-The skull she got in episode four is now just in her room and the major reason why she even thought about giving it a makeover was out of compulsion from being her family's embalmer for so long.

-Once she got home she totally made a tier list based on how fun the contestants were to hurt or how good their screams were. It’s also basically just a ranking of the contestants from favorite to least favorite.

-Respected and liked Emma for how enthusiastic she was in wanting to hurt Chase.. She got sad when they ended up getting back together and then was very happy when they broke up again. Would love to beat the shit out of Chase with Emma someday.

-Least favorite contestants were Ripper and Millie and that’s by an incredibly wide margin, her feelings for Millie became mixed after the whole slide incident with Damien.

-When Lauren came back after season one and her mom watched the first season she realized her daughter’s behavior in full and obviously needed to say something but is so overly scared to upset her that she basically is like, “Lauren, not that it’s my place to judge and you totally don’t need to take my advice but maybe just tone down your scariness a little bit, it’s not your fault but maybe it will help”.

-Lauren and her mom definitely went to the store to buy some “normal clothes”. Her mom found it fun but Lauren probably hated every last selection her mom gave her and only wore them because she loved her mom so much and desperately wanted to be normal so she could be liked.

-Since she got eliminated super early the second time around she did a lot of introspection and basically came to the conclusion that she wasn’t going to let people influence the way she acts because to her it just isn’t worth it if she can’t be who she is in her own life and people aren’t even going to like her for it. She also realized that she couldn’t stand most of the cast members and by the end most of the contestants just made their way into the bottom tiers.

-Was probably forced to get a therapist when the second season finished, it’s up to you to figure out how well that experience is going for her.

#total drama #total drama headcanons #Scary Girl #scary girl total drama #scary girl td #Scary Girl Headcanons #total drama spoilers

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amysubmits · 4 months

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Loving your podcast (except the amount of “ums” used in every sentence ;) )! I shared it with my husband as we venture into our dd/ds journey. It’s very refreshing to hear a real couple and their real perspectives from fetish/kink POV’s. I know you’ve talked a lot about your DD and spanking fetish; but how did you actually start/come out to CD about these things? What was his initial reaction?

Sorry for the late reply, I was a bit triggered by your 'joke' about my overuse of "ums". I believe in at least one podcast episode I addressed how I am self-conscious about how I am not a graceful speaker and how it makes editing difficult because I am not a linear speaker or thinker. I lose my train of thought frequently, struggle to find words, etc. So, I do say 'um' excessively, it's way worse IRL than on the podcast as we edited the vast majority of them out. Not all can be removed as it would break the flow of conversation or whatever else. We tried to edit to make things a little more cohesive and easier to listen to. So, yeah, what I basically got from your message was 'this person finds you annoying even when your way of speaking is cleaned up more than 50%' and that's painful even though it's true, I wish you hadn't told me that as I can't really do anything about it, it's just part of how my ADHD or other neurodivergence works. I felt like I should respond to that portion as I'm working on using my voice to defending myself, being less of a people pleaser, accepting myself and having more self-compassion/respect, etc. But I don't want to dwell so, moving on to the far more enjoyable part of your ask!

I think I've shared how I 'came out' to CD at some point in the past but I don't recall what blog post(s) that would have been in. If I come across them later I'll try to reblog for you. It's now been about 10 years since I asked for DD, and I had told CD about my interest in spanking prior to that, though I don't really recall when that was. So, my memory is not super detailed at this point but I'll try to give a general idea.

As wild as this is, he playfully spanked me before we were officially dating. About a week before he'd ask me to be his girlfriend, we went to the grocery store to hang out because that's all that is open in our town after like 7pm so we'd just go walk around the store sometimes when we were friends. And this day I had attended a funeral and I was still wearing a dress but I had switched into some flip-flops so my feet would be more comfortable. And as we're walking around I decided to buy some chips, but the ones I wanted were on a higher shelf and I am short, so I stepped on one of the lower shelves to get myself high enough to reach the chips I wanted, but one of my flip-flops fell off and he grabbed it while I was still up on the shelf and used it to swat my butt. I think basically in response to seeing that he was open to that sort of play (literally meaning play, no sexual connotation) I started leaning into that sort of play fighting, play wrestling kinda rough housing stuff with him and I'd slap his ass to get him to retaliate. He'd always do this harder, so I'd fight back harder, and I think it was after we were officially dating, but it eventually advanced to him using my belt on me over my pants! But it was all very giggly and playful. In hindsight, this sort of play probably should have made it clear to both of us that we were playing with spanking as a kink but it was never overtly sexual so I had compartmentalized it as just, innocent play. Haha.

I'm REALLY guessing here, but I think we had probably been dating at least six months before I actually told him I was into spanking. He's always had an easier time being open and direct with conversations in general, but especially sexual ones, than I have been. So pretty early on he would try to ask me questions to get a better understanding of my sexual interests and what I liked, basically. I had a lot of shame and anxiety around my sexuality and my kinks and had no experience with being open about anything like that, I found myself sort of just getting awkward when he tried to get me to talk about things like that, and so he never pushed too hard. I knew that spanking was a meaningful part of my sexuality but I was so young and naive still that I thought this was like a one in a million type of kink to have. So for a while I thought it was so weird that I would just never be able to tell him or anyone as it was so 'freakish' in my mind. But as our relationship progressed and I felt safer and safer, it just felt less possible to keep it from him. So eventually I did. I don't remember exactly what I said, sorry. I know that when I spilled the beans, I said something like 'I hope you don't think I'm weird' or gross or a freak or something like that, idk exactly. But I know his response to me was essentially "What? no….that's hot!" which was SUCH a relief because I was so in love with him and it would have been devastating if he was judgemental of it. I believe he also said something to make me think that being into it wasn't nearly as weird (I guess what I really mean is rare) as I had believed it to be. At this time, I had not yet come across the idea of DD, so really all I shared was I was into spanking as that's basically all I knew.

After finding that out, he'd smack my butt while we were doing sexual things but I didn't really enjoy that much so that didn't last. A few years later I came across the idea of DD online and shared that with CD. He was curious but also had some concerns and a lot of questions. He didn't feel like I 'needed' rules and worried that giving me a rule would cause me to break that rule to get spanked which was a dynamic he didn't want to create. I didn't really have good answers to his questions, and I also was still deeply ashamed of these desires so it made it hard for me to have conversations about any of this. I'd even try to avoid saying the word 'spanking' out loud which was really confusing. In hindsight, I just clearly was not ready to engage with any of this stuff because I couldn't talk about it clearly enough to keep things safe. And I didn't realize that, but thankfully, he did. So for a while we'd occasionally talk about it but he'd raise the same questions that I didn't have good answers to and so I'd get awkward and embarrassed and end the conversation and it wouldn't be brought up again for a while. But over time we worked through some of the questions and concerns enough to feel comfortable giving it a try, except we couldn't think of any good rules at first. But then one day I lost my debit card again, which was a recurring problem for me, and it occurred to CD that it might make a good rule so he suggested it as our first rule and that's how we started.

And since then it's been a whole lot of communication and learning as we go, adapting regularly to insight we gain into ourselves and each other along the way. :)

#asks #d/s #vanilla to d/s

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hellionhpau · 4 months

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Request for Help

Hey guys. In compliance with AO3's policy, I'm posting this here on my private blog for this fic. I ask that if nothing else, you read and share!

So, this is not only embarrassing but also extremely difficult and saddening on my part. Unfortunately, I don't have a chapter update for you, but I am reaching out publicly to ask for help. Please read this whole thing before you dismiss this because I am in seriously bad shape here and am rapidly running out of options.

To hear a fuller story, you're free to reach out to me personally. If nothing else, if any of you can share that around, it would be a huge help.

Here's the low down, and some of you who have been with me from the beginning know some of it. So, in short order over a span of a little over a year: covid hit, I lost my job, I lost my house, my mother got extremely sick (not with covid), my sister, her family, and I move in together to help take care of her and to financially support each other. Turns out my sister's husband is a complete asshat, and it was a very abusive home for the year I lasted there. Shortly after I moved out, my mother died, my dog died, and then my grandmother died right before Christmas. Both my mom and my grandmother were my two biggest maternal figures of my life, so you can imagine the blow. Add to it, I was just staying with a friend, was making shit money, and spiraled into a bad, bad depression.

That's why I was gone for a year lol. I tried to pick myself up and became roommates with another friend. We had grand plans to move to the city and start great lives. However, it didn't work out. Suffice to say that neither of us were who the other thought we were. It ended on friendly terms, and thankfully, we hadn't made the jump to the city or I would have been fucked, man.

Things were looking up from there, but my depression wouldn't go away. I ended up staying too long at that shit job, then moved to factory work, and now I'm working two fucking jobs day in and out. I'm burning at both ends, and it's just not enough to cover the bills I'm still paying off for those two horrible years, my mother's funeral and burial, not to mention medical bills.

Right now, I can't pay my rent. I can't afford food, and I've been struggling to get on food assistance. I can't pay my therapist or doctor. And now this month, thanks to coming to head with some of the earlier mentioned debt (ie, my mother's gravestone), I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to pay my electric and phone bill, let alone afford the gas to get to my second job. I was so, so close to getting ahead of everything, and I just can't get over that edge…

I want to make this very, very clear—this is not me soliciting in any way. That is to say, this is not in any way, shape, or form requesting payment for anything I do on here. It's just my way of trying to reach out to anyone wanting to help a dude out.

I do want you guys to know I have no plans on abandoning this fic. Just the other day, I made time to pick through chapter six, adding in an extra ghoul scene for you. Also, you guys are hilarious. I give you an awesome adventure into Muggle London with Draco sodding Malfoy, and you guys were just like "i love the ghoul!"

Don't blame ya. I love them too. Don't worry, I had originally planned on the ghoul having more scene time in this than canon. Anything creature related, you know Hellion's going to be all over it lol.

If you took the time to read all this, thank you. It's embarrassing, having to ask for help, but I'm officially at the begging strangers position. Please, please, help if you can, even if it's just a dollar or sharing this.

For anyone interested, my paypal is paypal@deanjharrison or https://www.paypal.me/deanjharrison

Or this one: https://www.gofundme.com/f/dean-and-pets-recover-financially

Thanks, you guys! I appreciate you just taking the time to read this.

#harry potter #harry potter fandom #harry potter au #hellion #i need help #this is not my personal profit

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sablewing · 1 month

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The Non-Heroes of Everyday Life

Photographic theme: A day in the life #335, Photos in BW & Sepia #336

Lately I've seen more stories about heroes, extraordinary people who have stepped up when difficult events called for it. These stories are important, a set of role models for us to look up to and respect. Yet most people won't be recognized as heroes by the people around them. For the majority of people, they live their lives, quietly dealing with the hard problems that everyone has to deal with.

As part of my genealogy research of my family, I have found stories handed down of the lives of my ancestors. Unlike other families there aren't many stories of great heroism or great service. Most stories are quiet tales of people living and eventually dying, after surviving the memorable events that happened in their lifetime. There are some stories of heroism, but they aren't the stories we share when we gather. We talk about the times we shared with each other instead of heroic deeds held up as examples.

Here are a few of the stories I've collected from my research. The focus is on the women in my family and some of the stories that have made it down to our generation. There is some heroism and fame but for the most part they lived, had joy and sorrow, grieved losses and had celebrations, living quiet lives.

Great-Great Grandmother Amelia - Mother of seven children, one died at birth. A woman of faith, she encouraged her children to be respectful and to care for others who were less fortunate. Her husband was sickly and he died when her youngest child, my great grandfather, was 11. She herself died a few years later. I sometimes wonder if she died of a broken heart based on the reports of the love shared between her and her husband. A family friend wrote a poem dedicated and published it as part of a collection of his poetry.

Great-Great Aunt Amelia - The oldest daughter of GG Grandmother Amelia, she married a young man who eventually became a banker. The couple had three daughters who lived and one son who died at birth. Based on old church bulletins, she and her husband were active in a local church in the New York City area. She had health problems when she was older and died relatively young at the same time her husband was struggling with the bank failures of the early 30's. In a letter at her death it was reported that many people, black and white, attended her funeral and mourned her kindness and charity for many people. One example was given of a woman with arthritis who could no longer sew for a living. This was the time before social safety nets, she provided a stipend that supported the woman for many years. Two of her sisters appear to have lived with her family and may never have married.

GG grandmother, maternal - Charity Annette - The family story is that an aunt forced her to marry a widower with a young son so the son would not grow up motherless. Charity had wanted to be a missionary to China but ended up staying in the US to care for her family. Her husband was a missionary preacher who was not home very often. When he was home, he was abusive towards the children. One time he came home and started to whip one of the children. Charity stepped in and told him to leave her children alone, she would punish them when needed. Another time he was home and made the oldest daughter, my great grandmother, give him four years of savings intended for her trousseau. He wanted to use it to start new churches. When Charity came home and found out, she made him give the money back. He died and left her a widow. She remarried within a few months and outlived that husband by a few years. She was the great granddaughter of a revolutionary war soldier.

Great grandmother, maternal - Hazel Fern - Traveled about Colorado in a covered wagon, we have embroidered chairs in the family that are reported to have been brought out by covered wagon to the west. Met her future husband after he recovered from tuberculous at a sanitarium in Arizona. As a relatively new mother, she lost her father and grandfather within a week of each other. After their deaths, her mother moved in with her family. Her husband, a minister, left the ministry for several years due to problems in the church he had served. During the depression, her husband enrolled in the civilian conservation corps during the depression. While he was gone, she and her daughters moved to live with her brother. There are reports that she had to sell or pawn her wedding ring for money during this time. Her husband eventually returned to the ministry and their remaining years were quiet. After he passed, she moved again to live down the street from her oldest daughter.

Maternal grandmother - Elizabeth - A very active young woman, interested in athletics, one of her idols was Babe Didrikson because she played golf. She met and married my grandfather, a medical student, in the late 30's and followed him to his residency in Tennessee. After his residency, they moved back to Colorado and Wyoming. He was called to serve in WW II and left her with two young daughters and pregnant with their son. She moved closer to family and kept things together for the two years he served as a surgeon in the Army. When he returned she kept house and raised the children while he served the community as a doctor. In the early years his office was in their basement and payment was sometimes fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs or chickens. In her 50's , she was diagnosed with skin cancer on the face, attributed to X-ray treatment of her acne in her teens. The cancer was removed and she had to wear a prothesis for part of her nose and had skin grafts for part of her face. She looked after her mother who lived down the street while also running her husband's medical office. When her husband retired, she enjoyed golfing and visits with her children and grandchildren. She eventually had dementia and struggled with that for several years before she passed away shortly after 9/11.

Paternal grandmother - Eva - One of the youngest of eight living children, she grew up on a farm, living in a house with a dirt floor. She married my grandfather and they started a family within a year. They lived on a farm for several years, without running water for the house. When they moved into town, she started working as a sales clerk at one of the local department stores when many women stayed at home to care for their family. She was always very concerned about keeping things clean and was a good baker and often baked goods for the church to sell to raise money for various projects. She had anxieties about many things which could cause problems within the family at times. She eventually had dementia although she did remember the family during that time. A broken hip was too much for her and she passed away a month later.

Great Aunts, maternal - Florence, Phyllis and Lucille - My grandfather's three sisters who survived to adulthood. One sister died in infancy, reportedly due to non-pasteurized milk. Their parents were strict and were not physically affectionate with their children. However, their father believed that young woman should be educated so they could support themselves if needed so all of the daughters had some education after high school. Florence and Phyllis both had polio when they were younger, Florence recovered, but Phyllis had lingering effects. Phyllis was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy as an adult and ended in up in a wheel chair. Florence and Lucille both signed up to serve in WW II so that four of the six children served in that war. Phyllis was a registered dietician and Lucille was studying to be a nurse when the war ended. Both married and had families. One of Lucille's sons was disabled and died relatively young, for our family. Lucille is the one who wrote the stories about her.

Pictures taken by J.T. Harpster per photographic themes.

#messageinabottle #writerscommunity #writers on tumblr #ordinary people #everyday life

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snippyssnippets · 4 months

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Do You Remember Your Mother?

“Leia, do you remember your mother? Your real mother?”

“Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.”

“What do you remember?”

“Just images, really. Feelings.”

“She was very beautiful, kind...but sad.”

From this

Through the years, there were many duties Tsabin took up as Padmè’s second. She’d sacrificed anything if her queen only asked. Her career, her identity, her life if it were necessary, and all too often, it was only luck she got to keep it. It was bittersweet when it ended. Her life may have been safer, but it left her lost and confused. What purpose did she have? Who was she without Padmè? She’d been Sabè for so long that she had to remind herself of her name every morning. Sabè was a role they created, a life lived and now gone. Tsabin was the woman she was left with, a life she abandoned at sixteen.

They had been so close that it stung to hear of her passing through a hurried commlink. Of all people, it came from Bail Organa, and of course, it came with a request. One last mission for her queen, but not one that could be discussed in the open. She needed to make it to Alderaan to find what it entailed. A baby. A little girl named Leia, she learned. Padmè’s daughter.

Bail was hesitant to separate from her, but they couldn’t keep her at the palace. The family needed to draw up an official adoption, which meant they needed a mother to adopt from, as well as someone to care for the child until they were cleared. The girl couldn’t just appear out of nowhere, even if they were the ruling members of their world. It was one thing she knew endeared Padmè to her friends on Alderaan. The royal couple remained incredibly humble and transparent, which gained them such loyalty from their people, but created a terrible problem when they got into a mess like this one. Tsabin was troubled by the idea, but she had sworn loyalty to Padmè, and even if her queen was gone, this was when Padmè most needed her. And so, Leia traded arms, and Tsabin became her mother.

It was perhaps her most difficult mission for Padmè, which was fitting that it would be her last. She hadn’t much experience with children, let alone newborns, but she learned quickly, mostly from necessity. Leia depended on her for everything, and Tsabin only enjoyed being needed. She was sure there were better caretakers the royal family of Alderaan could find, but Leia’s history required discretion. She wasn’t told why in exact words, but she didn’t question it when the funeral pronounced her and her child dead. Notably absent was any mention of her husband. It was all suspicious. Padmè was healthy and young. Childbirth couldn’t have killed her. For it all to happen the day the Empire came to power and her Jedi husband went missing was most damning of all.

But, Tsabin didn’t have time to raise questions of political conspiracy or murder. She had a baby to raise. Leia was growing faster everyday, and she could see so much of her mother in her little face. Both Breha and Bail would visit regularly, of course, always between meetings or travel plans, sometimes for minutes and sometimes for hours, though never together. They took care of any need either of them had. Leia was well cared-for and always well-dressed for as small as she was. The parents hadn’t even spent a full day with the girl, and she was already living like a princess. It made her smile as she toddled around the apartment in a frilly white dress, tinted pink at the collar from her berry-filled lunch, inspecting various items until she found one worthy to bring to the woman. Tsabin took the candle from the tiny hand while Leia struggled over her “m”s, working out a babble of “mba-amamaa…mam-ma”.

“Mama?” She repeated, putting the little candle on a shelf above her chair with a dozen more items Leia had done this with. “I’m only ‘mama’ for a little while, sweet girl. Your mama should be coming to see you soon. Maybe the forms will finally be ready for you to go home with her.” She tucked a little curl off her forehead. When the little girl’s arms stretched up, Tsabin pulled her into her lap with a soft smile that didn’t make it to her eyes. “You know, you have quite a few mamas who love you so very much that you don’t even know yet. I wish I could tell you.”

Leia hadn’t yet made a full year, and already, Tsabin could see her mother’s obstinance, her curiosity, her passion. If she became anything like Padmè, she was sure to do well in politics, especially thinking of what Breha and Bail would teach her. She wondered if they would ever tell her of her birth mother, how much she longed to meet her child, how hard she worked to create a better world for her to be born into, or how deeply she believed in the good of all people. Padmè was an idealist to her core, and maybe that was what killed her because it would have been too strong a lesson to pass to future generations. She always had hope, and so Tsabin had to hold onto it for little Leia. Hope that she will continue her mother’s journey. Hope that her future will be brighter than their present. Hope that she will know the women who loved her.

Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them away, not needing to start this again after all the months she’d spent with her baby girl. Instead she pressed a kiss to the girl’s forehead, feeling a tiny hand reach for her cheek, and a much more assertive voice reached her ears, calling her “Mammma.. Ma.. mamma.”

This time, she let a tear fall. “Mama,” she repeated softly.

~*~

“Leia, do you remember your mother? Your real mother?”

The question startled her as she looked over the man, whose questions only concerned her more and more. Still, it was Luke, and as much as he’d grown, he was still that sweet farmboy who rescued her simply because he wanted to help. He only ever wanted to help. She trusted that much about him. “Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.”

“What do you remember?” He pressed, and she sighed, finally giving in.

“Just images, really. Feelings.” She tried to dig back into her memories for the woman who raised her before her parents. She was a vague, fuzzy picture that only popped up when she would find an old dress or rifle through archived documents. Leia never could pin down a face. Each time she tried to picture her mother, her jaw was less sharp or her eyebrows too round or her nose more narrow. Her face always changed, but she knew a few things. She could feel them through the scattered images. “She was very beautiful, kind… but sad.”

#star wars #leia organa #sabe #naboo handmaidens #padme amidala #fanfic

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astxlphe-fics · 2 years

Text

flowers on your grave

Characters / Relationships: Mori Ougai & Elise

Summary : Mori Ougai dies, and they grow flowers on his grave.

(Rintarou and Elise after the Port Mafia)

Tags : Fake Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Retirement, Growing Older Together, Future Fic

Listen I think they should be able to retire and live peacefully in a small town in the countryside, which is what this fic is all about

Everyone with a passing familiarity with the Yokohama's underworld hears about Mori Ougai's death.

On a Thursday morning, the Port Mafia-issued car commonly used by the boss explodes. They find a body in the debris, wearing a black coat and a well-known red scarf.

They wait until the body is formally identified before they organize the funerals, which happen the following Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the Port Mafia has a new boss.

By the time the week is over, it goes back to business as usual.

-----

Twenty-seven years is a long time to lead the Port Mafia.

It’s very long time and, Mori decides, definitely long enough.

He’s not tired, not exactly. But he’s sixty years old and, looking at the youngsters, he figures his job here is done.

Elise is the first to bring up the idea. It must have been in his head for a while if she speaks up about it. To be honest, it’s a wonder he has the opportunity at all because Port Mafia boss isn’t exactly the kind of job you can just quit. He is supposed to get his throat slit by an ambitious and resourceful youth, not decide when he wants to leave.

She watches him as he prepares the files needed for the transfer of power. He does this quietly, carefully, he doesn’t need anyone to know about this, especially not Natsume.

Knowing the man, he would try to convince Mori to stay. They’ve known each other for over forty-five years now, and he doesn’t doubt Natsume would find a way. And while Mori has always been a determined man, pushing away sentiment for the sake of practicality, it’s always a little difficult to refuse his old mentor.

Elise goes to fetch Kouyou and bring her to his office. In the past decades she has been one of his most steadfast supporters, and never stopped pointing out each of his shortcomings with what he once dared to suggest to be fondness.

“Exasperation, more likely,” she replied dryly that day, with a shadow of a smile. “What would you do without me, I wonder.”

“I’m afraid I would be quite lost,” he said then.

He smiles at the memory when Elise shuffles back in, holding Kouyou’s hand. The woman is well into her forties now, her red hair starting to grey slightly, but her blade and eyes still as sharp as ever.

“You called for me?” she asks. “Is something the matter? Elise is strangely quiet.”

She has been quiet, uncharacteristically so, for the past month, to be fair. Since he took his decision. It’s like she’s been waiting in silent anticipation, helping him put his affairs in order.

“Yes,” he says. He pats the files on his desk and pulls out an expensive bottle of whisky. “Would you like a glass?”

“It’s rare for you to drink anything but wine. What is the occasion?”

He gives Elise her own glass and fills it with a soda. It’s not great, but it’s what will mix best with the whiskey.

The shared senses have gotten sharper as the years went by.

“Do we really need one?” She sends him a look, and he admits: “Yes, there is an occasion.” He looks through the window at Yokohama's skyline. “I’m not sure where to start, to be honest with you.”

Elise sends him a judging stare, and snaps: “Come on, out with it already!” Then, without waiting for him to reply, she turns to Kouyou: “Rintarou is going to retire.”

A second of silence, and then—

“Oh dear,” Kouyou says. “I think I’ll have that drink.”

-----

Three people know about the death of Mori Ougai.

The first is Ozaki Kouyou. She wears a black kimono and a red scarf at his funerals. The very next day she takes her place in the highest office of the Port Mafia.

The second and third are Elise and, of course, Mori Ougai himself.

They planned this moment with a lot of care, after all.

-----

“Good luck” Kouyou texts him.

“You will need it more than we do” he replies.

He pulls out the sim card from the phone and crushes it under his foot. Then, Elise slips her hand into his, and with one last look to Yokohama, they leave.

The train moves and moves and moves away from his beloved city, and all he feels is light.

-----

There is a learning curve.

“Oh, good morning!”

Rintarou tenses, and his hand goes into his pocket, looking for the handle of a scalpel. “Good morning,” he answers, seemingly unbothered.

Elise stops putting apples in the paper bag.

“You are the man who moved in town last week, is that right?” When he nods, the old lady’s smile widens. “Welcome!” Then, she looks down to Elise. “Oh, is this your daughter?”

Sort of. Not exactly. They have never been very good at describing their relationship.

“I’m Elise,” she pipes up.

The woman is not a threat, but he still can’t help the small knots on in his stomach that he learned to associate with danger. He makes himself let go of the scalpel to shake her extended hand. “I’m Rintarou.”

“I'm Kanae. Where do you come from?”

“Tokyo,” he lies easily.

“That’s quite a distance away. What brings you here?”

“Retirement.” He doesn’t lie, this time, every good story has a grain of truth in it. He ads another sprinkle of veracity: “I used to be a doctor.”

“That’s wonderful!” She takes a box of strawberries, and puts it in his hands. “Here, for the young lady.”

She winks at Elise, and Rintarou blinks, before he smiles back. “Thank you.”

Elise tugs on his coat. “Rintarou,” she says, “I saw a stall with candies, let’s go!”

“Of course!” he nods apologetically. “Thank you again for the strawberries.”

The woman waves as they leave. It’s only once they’re out of sight that he feels Elise relax and the shared part of their mind ease into a new sense of security. There is no danger, just a kindly woman welcoming a new face in a small town where everyone knows each other.

At candy shop stall, the owner greets them enthusiastically. He smiles down at Elise and, like the woman, offers them a treat.

They both take a candy. It tastes like lemons and freedom.

-----

There is no doctor in the village. They learn this when Kanae shows up with an apple pie and her grandson with a twisted wrist.

She apologizes profusely, citing the lack of doctor in town, and asks of he could help her out just this once – her car is currently being repaired and unusable, you see, so she can’t take him to the city.

Elise is sitting on her armchair, doodling in a notebook, when Rintarou stands to look into their emergency medical supplies for what the boy needs.

“I don’t have much,” he says, “but this should do.”

He fumbles a little in his movements and the boy winces. He doesn’t find the right words so easily, and is a little too rough for a regular child. Soon enough, much to his dismay, the boy is sniffling.

“I’m very sorry,” he tells Kanae as the boy grows upset. “I’m not used to treating children and I —”

“Rintarou was a military doctor before we lived in Tokyo,” Elise explains, and Kanae’s eyebrows shoot up all the way to her hairline. “That’s why he’s so clumsy.”

Gentleness is not something that comes easy.

When they leave, Rintarou sighs, his exhaustion echoing in Elise’s own made up bones. He settles on the couch, and looks at the homemade apple pie.

“Well, who knew a single child could be so tiring. Let’s have a piece of that pie, all right?”

“Tiring?” Elise snorts. “You’re just getting old, Rintarou.”

He sends her a hurt look. “I’m wounded, Elise,” he whines. “So mean to your oldest friend, what did I do to deserve this?”

“You looked really funny fumbling around. I made a drawing of it, look.” She tilts her notebook towards him, showing him a grimacing stick figure with long dark hair and a doctor’s coat.

He laughs, and offers to put it up on fridge. Elise grins back.

Gentleness is not easy, but they will have to learn.

It feels like planting flowers on your own grave.

-----

It happens repeatedly. More precisely, Kanae tells her friend that Rintarou is willing to lend a hand despite “his clumsiness”, leading to the word spreading all over town and several people a week dropping by to ask for medical help.

Elise, when Rintarou was a child, existed only as a voice in his head. This was her base form as Vita Sexualis, which she abandoned for something different, something new: the shape of a human girl.

When she took this appearance, it was because he needed protection she couldn’t provide without a physical form. Her shape, roughly the same age as Rintarou at the time, stayed the same as long as this function was to be fulfilled.

As Rintarou grew, her appearance made people around them ignore or underestimate her, giving her the advantage in battle. It had been kind of an annoying job, and she wished Rintarou didn’t need it, but she had done it anyway.

It is very obvious, today, as she watches Rintarou offer candy to another sniffling child, that providing him with protection is no longer necessary.

It hasn’t been since the death of “Mori Ougai”, since he went back to just being “Rintarou”.

Still, some of her usual role remains, because he turns to her and asks for her help, so she rummages in his supplies until she finds the tool he’s missing. It brings her back to the days they worked as an underground doctor, except there is no Fukuzawa Yukichi guarding them, no outlaws and no mission.

Considering this, she could, if she wishes, simply go back to being an intangible voice in his head. It would be easy, she would just have to want it.

She doesn’t have time to finish this line of thinking. Rintarou stills, but the strange anxiety suddenly pooling in her mind is not his alone.

She pushed herself, long ago, to be something she wasn’t supposed to be, and yet today she has grown to love her physical appearance.

The physical form is not what is unnatural for her, she just wasn’t supposed to be the fighter she became out of necessity.

Such necessity no longer exists. Her duty is finished, like Rintarou’s, and now she can just be his friend and all she feels is light.

------

The following April, a couple of months since they settled in, everyone in town is in a frenzy about the blooming cherry trees.

Elise never really saw them, neither her or Rintarou ever taking the time to enjoy them. Well, now has never been a better time, so she pinches Rintarou's arm one morning to attract his attention.

(She doesn’t actually need to do that, to be honest, she could get his attention through their shared mind, but it’s funnier this way.)

“Take me to the cherry blossoms,” she demands. “Everyone is talking about how great they are, I want to see them!”

Rintarou rubs his forearm and smiles. “Of course! Whatever sweet Elise wants!”

She makes a gagging sound, and goes to put on her shoes. They feel strangely uncomfortable today, her toes squished at the end of it, but for now she ignores it in favor of grabbing Rintarou and dragging him along.

He stumbles after her, his coat halfway on and his hair undone. It has been a long time since he let it loose. He always tied it when he worked, and kept the habit in his retirement.

The town’s park is lined with cherry trees, and with the wind the flowers rustle and the petals fly, and Elise stares at them quietly.

Rintarou watches her, not the flowers.

For the first time in many years, they don’t need to worry about dangers, or hidden assassins.

They both know that something within them as changed, though he can’t word exactly what and how.

He has never been the best at figuring things about himself on his own.

Maybe she can help a little. “My shoes are a size too small.”

-----

Elise is growing up.

It becomes obvious when they go to the next city over, where they’ll find more shops where Elise can find shoes she likes. They’re a size larger than the ones she usually wears.

When they get home, he has her stand against the wall and, with a black pen, marks her height. She is, so far, one meter and forty-nine centimeters, which is the average for a twelve years old girl, but still one centimeter over her usual height.

Rintarou doesn’t know what to make of it.

It shouldn’t be possible, because she is not actually a twelve years old girl. She’s a supernatural entity of unknown origins, probably older than Rintarou, who is merely pretending to be a twelve years old girl.

“Are you sure you’re not doing it on purpose?” He asks.

“Do you think I’m lying?” she shoots back, narrowing her eyes.

“Of course not! Elise would never lie to me!” He isn’t even sure they could lie to each other, considering the shared mindspace.

Elise puts her hands on her hips, pouting. “I bet it’s because of the retirement. We have been acting different than before, so I’m also becoming different from before.”

Rintarou has been acting different from before, for the most part. He has been trying to integrate them into the small community they now live in, perfecting the persona of a retired, well-meaning but clumsy doctor living with his daughter.

“Very well,” he says. “Just let me know when your clothes get too small so we can get new ones.”

----

Elise’s personality changed a few times in the past: when they joined the military, when they met Yosano, when they met Natsume, and after meeting everyone who has been important to Rintarou on a personal level. Her core always stayed the same, but her actions were different.

Then, they retired, and for the most part she stays, like Rintarou, the same. Instead, what changes is her appearance, and it’s a completely new territory for both of them.

As it turns out, teenage girls grow up by several centimeters per year. Rintarou may have worked with teenagers in the past, but it still takes him completely by surprise.

“You are now a meter and fifty-one,” he declares, putting a new line above the first one.

She wrinkles her nose. “Well, this is fast,” she says. She looks down at her long sleeves, reaching just short of her wrists. “I’ll need a new shirt.”

“We will go in the city for a couple of new clothes this Saturday.” Seeing her grimace at the perspective of having to try on clothes, he ads: “I promise we will go for desserts right after!”

“Ugh, fine!”

In the end, Elise doesn’t know how to navigate this new situation either. Neither of them has seen it coming, and they’re both learning.

He takes his attention off her when someone knocks at the door. When he opens, Kanae is here, one of her now famous apple pies in hand – she has been around a few times a month recently, always bringing with her a few treats and pastries she knows both Rintarou and Elise enjoys.

Elise makes a discreet face at Rintarou when he asks her to bring out the teacups, and he watches her go.

How would he fare, he wonders, if he was alone?

Beyond the fact that he would’ve died before he even reached adulthood, would he have even thought about retiring if she hadn’t been there?

Maybe not. He doesn’t think so. Being on his own is a foreign idea, he tries to imagine enjoying his retirement without her and comes out with nothing.

The teacups are set, he serves everyone tea, and he takes a moment to offer his visitor of genuine smile.

Next to him, Elise does the same, and when Kanae leaves she gifts her one of her candies.

They’re learning. It may take a while, and with the blood on his hands he may not deserve this chance, but one day they’ll get there.

(They grow slowly, like flowers, on Mori Ougai’s grave.)

-----

They have a small garden attached to the house. When they first moved in, it was somewhat abandoned, but as a way to put their mind off Yokohama they quickly start to clean it up.

They cut the grass to an appropriate height, and Elise picks which flowers she wants to plant.

Rintarou, on the other hand, selects a few trees. Cherry and apple ones, for a start, hoping it’ll give them some fruits.

It takes a long time for it to start looking like a proper garden.

Even more time for them to figure out which plants are suitable for which season, so they have several failures before they finally find a book about gardening at the local library.

It’s not enough. Rintarou feels like there is a metaphor here, about failing to bring about life after only dealing with death or something of this caliber.

When this also fails to bring good results, it turns out the librarian has a friend who is the neighbor of a retired gardener who is willing to lend a hand.

It takes almost a year but after careful tending, pretty, colorful spots start appearing in their garden.

Rintarou looks at them bloom with wide eyes, and Elise sits on the grass to draw them.

From the corner of her eyes, she watches his face break into a smile. All flowers, even metaphorical ones, she remembers, need care and effort to make them grow.

-----

The doctor and his daughter are a strange pair.

The man, Rintarou, speaks very little about their past. He eludes questions easily, talks circles around the most curious, gets people to talk about themselves instead.

On the contrary, Elise is loud and, without a doubt, spoiled rotten. She looks nothing like him, she doesn’t go to school (“she’s homeschooled”, the doctor says) and doesn’t get along at all with other children.

They have no last name, at least none they’re willing to share, and never receive anyone at home or even mention friends or colleagues which, for someone who supposedly had a long and fulfilling career as a doctor in Tokyo, is quite strange.

They keep their distance, at first. They’re difficult to talk to, and the first time Kanae brings him her grandson out of emergency they’re tense and rough.

But it’s obvious, to Kanae, that they’re trying.

He tries to make his smiles gentler, and the girl is more and more willing to share the stash of candies she has hidden in the doctor’s desk.

(She spots several scalpels in there one day, and she thinks of all the times the doctor kept at least one hand under his desk.)

While Kanae is terribly curious, when she looks at her grandson, sporting the plaster with a cartoon dinosaur that Doctor Rintarou gave him for the nasty cut he got from falling from a tree, she can’t help but think it’s not that important.

-----

“One meter sixty now,” Rintarou says, and squints. “Well, almost. Fifty-nine, which is the average for a fourteen year old.”

It’s been two years, and Elise is still not an actual teenage girl, but they’ve gotten used to this growing up thing now.

At least she’s growing at the same rate as a regular human, which is nice, because otherwise there would be some explaining to do.

Still, it’s the first time the change is gradual.

Rintarou used to change almost all at once, putting on a new mask to fit into a new role — the medical student, the military surgeon, the underground doctor, the Port Mafia boss. Anyone who knew him at those times would have a hard time seeing the true Rintarou, instead of the one he wanted them to see.

Now Rintarou changes slowly. There is no need to put on a mask everyday so her guess is that he’s truer to himself than he has ever been before.

It’s a new identity, someone he’s developing all on his own. Elise too then, changes slowly, figuring out who she can be after all this.

(Flowers planted on your own grave. Bury the old you and make someone new out of it.)

“Rintarou,” she says, very seriously, and the man peers at her from behind his glasses.

She’s been mocking him a lot for these glasses, and she thought he would be frustrated about his lowering eyesight, but instead he’d taken it in stride.

“It would have been a problem if I was still working but…” He shrugs. “I’m old enough to have presbyopia, I suppose.”

“What is it?”

“I want you to cut my hair.” She tugs at her long blonde curls and nods decisively. “Right now.”

“Let me see if the hairdresser can take an emergency appointment —”

“No, no, you don’t get it. I want you to do it.” She could do it herself, to be honest, poof the excess hair out of existence, but it’s better if Rintarou does it.

“All right.” He smiles, and goes to the bathroom to get the scissors. She follows him there to wet her hair, and then sits on the chair outside, waiting, arms crossed. “I’m so glad Elise-chan trusts me to do this,” he ads, chuckling.

“If you mess it up I’ll kill you.”

“I know, I know~”

He starts cutting, shortening it to her mid back first. He doesn’t accidentally pull or tug, making an effort to be gentle, and stays focused on his task while Elise zones out.

When he’s done he dries her hair with a towel and lets the summer heat do the rest of the job. Soon enough, Elise’s hair is back into its ringlets, falling just short of her shoulders, and she hums in approval.

-----

The topic of birthdays is brought up several times before they decide it’s time to give Elise one.

The other people in town know that Rintarou's is in February. He mentions it when asked, but every time they ask about Elise they have to elude the question because, well. She doesn’t have a birthday.

It’s harder than expected, mainly because Elise is quite picky about it.

“August?” Rintarou offers, looking at the calendar. She already refused June and July (too rainy) as well as October (wet and gross). “The weather is always nice in August, we could have a garden party.”

“August is too hot.”

“Well, maybe April then? Cherry blossom season, you love cherry blossoms.”

“Uhm.” Elise makes a face, unconvinced. “I don’t know.”

She doesn’t even have a favorite month. She tries to remember the date she first manifested, but both their memories fail her.

A date similar to Rintarou’s would make more sense. She leans over the table where Rintarou has the calendar open, and flips it over to February.

“January,” she says, “I think end of January would be nice. Or maybe early February.”

It would be strange to pick to 17th, the same as Rintarou, or people would wonder why they never celebrated together.

“January 31st?”

She considers it. “All right.” She nods, tapping the date with her fingertip. “January 31st. It’s in two days.” She rest her chin on her hands, grinning. “So, what’s my gift?”

This puts Rintarou on the spot, and she can feel the gears turning in his head. She sees him go through pretty dresses, dismissing them almost immediately, before settling on the image of Elise in the garden, drawing on loose sheets of paper or small notebooks.

“It’s a surprise,” he says, even though he already knows it’s anything but. “You’ll have to be patient.”

She is, for once. On top of her gift Rintarou also asks Kanae to come, and she brings a cake. The candles declare her fifteen years old — a completely made up but realistic age considering her appearance. It’s decorated with roses made of sugar, and Elise takes the first opportunity to stuff one in her mouth.

It tastes like pure sugar, and she sticks out her tongue at Rintarou when he wrinkles his nose at the sensation.

----

“Do you miss Yokohama?”

Elise looks up from her notepad. Her drawing tools have been updated since her first birthday, two years ago, to a set of watercolor pens, which she sets down to twist her body, facing Rintarou.

“What are you talking about now,” she asks.

“Well, as you are often so happy to point out, I’m not getting any younger, and like every old man I tend to think about the past.”

“You shouldn’t, idiot.” She frowns. “No, I don’t really miss it. I liked Chuuya and Kouyou, they were fun, but...” She shrugs. “We are doing okay here, why would we miss it?” Then, she narrows her eyes, looking at him, into him. “Rintarou, what is this really about? You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” He sighs. The truth is, he has not once regretted leaving all of this behind. Kouyou is probably doing perfectly well as Port Mafia boss, and between her, Chuuya, and Akutagawa’s Black Lizards, he is confident that they can deal with whatever is thrown at them. His true concern is not with Yokohama, for they both know the city is in good hands.

But this – the retirement – seems too good to be true, especially for someone like him. Someone who may not have enjoyed causing harm, but who did it anyway because he considered it the best possible option.

Maybe it’s a little late to worry about it, five years down the line, but he can’t help but wonder if he has the right to live in peace, after all he has done, if he actually deserves this, and—

Elise throws her pencil at him. “Quiet!” she snaps, and he flinches when the wooden instrument hits him.

“Ouch, Elise—”

“I don’t want to hear about your stupid reasoning. Who cares about deserving, anyway?”

“Ah, you heard that—”

“If you didn’t think so loudly maybe I wouldn’t have.” She groans, slumping back into the couch. “You’re so annoying, since when do you even care about that sort of things?”

He blinks, considering her words. “I—”

“And since when do you take in consideration what other people think you deserve? Have you gotten soft in your old age?”

“Maybe,” he admits. “It’s not so bad, you know?”

“I know.” She still glares at him for a couple of seconds. “If it makes you feel any better, Kouyou thought we deserved some peace and quiet.”

Her tone makes him laugh, and he slumps down too, leaning towards her. She leans back, her head resting against his.

“You’re happier like this,” she says in a whisper. “I’m glad.”

“I love you too,” he says back. It has never been something easy to say, but he loves her with the kind of love you hold only for your oldest and closest friend, your partner.

Five years ago he wouldn’t have said it, telling himself that she knew anyway.

Her hand squeezes his softly. She may have known but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like to hear it.

-----

There are fireworks in town. It’s a community effort to make it happen, and Rintarou and Elise even participate.

Rintarou uses a bit of his Port Mafia savings to help with collecting funds.

Well, it’s put to better use here than in whatever the Port Mafia usually dips its fingers in.

Blood money some cute and fancy fireworks, which take funny shapes when they go off, a cotton candy stall, and an outdoor bar serving punch for the adults and soft drinks for the children.

Rintarou laughs to himself when he thinks about it. How retirement has changed him.

He almost doesn’t see Elise for the full day. She’s out and about helping setting up the stalls. She never warmed up to any of the town’s children, but she tolerates the adults better now.

She joins him when the sun starts to set. They find themselves a little secluded spot, and sit in the grass next to each other, waiting for the show to start.

It does, with a long whistling and a bang that, five years ago, they would have initially mistaken for a gunshot.

There are no guns, no bombs, no dangers here. There is just Rintarou and Elise trying to live peacefully.

“I think I understand what you meant,” he tells Elise, “about deserving.”

Rintarou spent most of his life harming and taking advantage of others in the name of causes bigger than himself.

It doesn’t matter if those causes weren’t always good, moral or law-abiding. Someone had to do the job and since that person ended up being him, he did it as best as he could, pulling Elise along with him.

(Elise who wasn’t made for battle, Elise who still had to learn in spite of her gentle nature, Elise without whom he wouldn’t be alive).

Objectively, he knows a good amount of people would take issues with him walking away so easily, and would rather see him dead or in jail, for rather good reasons.

Even then, he will still follow his selfish desire for a quiet life with Elise.

“Took you long enough.” Her laugher is clear and light and everything it should be.

-----

Elise never expected to see Rintarou grow old.

She believed, just like him, that one day he would get murdered and that his murderer would take his spot as Port Mafia boss. Rintarou hoped it would be Dazai, though Elise didn’t like him much, but they were both prepared for it to end this way.

It’s usually what’s coming to people who do this kind of work. Most think it’s a well deserved fate, but Elise doesn’t think any of it is about deserving.

Not even this. Rintarou doesn’t deserve to retire peacefully, by usual standards, but it’s about whether or not that silly man is willing to take the chance.

Thankfully, she stands in a small town far away from Yokohama, looking up at fireworks. Rintarou sits next to her with his graying hair and glasses and the laugh lines that have started appearing on his face and at their feet the flowers bloom.

#bsd #bsd mori #bsd elise #mori ougai #fic #gen #writing #look it's basically domestic / family fluff

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thepropertylovers · 1 year

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How Do You Mourn the Death of a Parent Who Was Never There?

My dad died last week.

We weren’t very close; we hadn’t been in a while, and I don’t think I had even seen him in person in more than three years. The last time we were in the same room together was in 2019 in his nursing home bedroom when we went to visit him. He couldn’t walk or move much of his body after the major stroke that left him bed-ridden and unable to function like he used to. My dad was a tremendously good athlete and could play any sport he was interested in, so to see him in this state was strange and difficult. All of that potential, gone, reduced to a metal bed and a thin hospital gown.

Gary, my father, had a big heart. He had a passion for life and, as I was told over and over again at his funeral by everyone who greeted me, he loved his kids. A lot. They all told me how he always talked about us and how important we were to him. The thing is, he wasn’t there for so much of my childhood and almost none of my adult life, so it was hard to feel the love that everyone spoke about.

And that is why I find myself here, writing this and questioning why I am so damn heartbroken over his death.

I truly didn’t know him that well, so why am I so sad? Why am I taking this so hard? When we received the call about the horrible choice that no one should ever have to make for someone else had, in fact, to be made the next day (my older sister was left with the harrowing task to choose to remove him from the ventilator or to keep him on for a few days until his passing), it was almost a relief.

We had all, myself and my siblings, been waiting for a call like this for years. My dad was never in good health due to the drinking and the drugs, so it was a situation where we knew he could die at any time because how could anyone live a long life with the choices he was making to his body?

And the truth is, he wasn’t living. Not really. Not in any kind of way that would be considered a good life. We were told he shared those same thoughts with our aunt a few months back. He was in the nursing home for close to four years, confined to a wheelchair and not really able to do anything on his own. He would often say random, off the wall things daily, which was all caused by the stroke. So I have to agree with him: that isn’t really living, is it?

A question we’ve received over and over again throughout the years is what our relationship with our dads is like. People have picked up on the fact we don’t ever show them online and that we only feature our moms. That’s because our dads are not in our lives, and we both believe it’s for the best.

When my parents divorced in 1996, I was five, so a single-parent home is all I’ve ever known. We would visit him in the summers, and he would come into town every now and then, but we lived with my mom, and we were all happiest that way. After the divorce, my dad moved back to South Georgia where the rest of his side of the family lives, which, in turn, left me and my brother and my younger sister back in Tennessee.

He left us to fend for ourselves. He left my mom to raise three kids on her own while working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. He left us to pick up the pieces of a life they built together, a life they envisioned for themselves, for us kids, and for our family.

If you’ve been here a while, you know we live in the same house I grew up in, the same house my mom and dad bought in the mid 80’s, renovated themselves and raised three kids in. If that sounds just like our story, just know the similarities are not lost on me, either. We have dreams and a life planned out for our family, too, and after thinking about it for the last few days, asking myself why I’m taking his death so much harder than I thought I ever would, I think I have come to this conclusion:

For what could have and should have been. He should have seen us get older and experience our milestones in person. He should have been at every one of my football games and helped my mom shuffle us between school and activities. He should have held me when I was sad and smiled when I was happy and cheered for me when I succeeded. Instead, he wasn’t there for any of it.

There was so much potential for a happy life spent together. Now that I’m a father myself, I can’t imagine ever doing anything to jeopardize my family and what we have. And the thing is, my dad had it all: A loving wife, children who adored him, a successful business. But he chose a different life.

The frustrating part about all of this is, and despite all that I’ve said, we actually had a good relationship, considering. He accepted me whole-heartedly and never had a problem with the fact that I am gay. He loved PJ and had so much fun talking construction with him whenever we got together.

My dad was a doer, always building things and helping people out with whatever they needed. PJ is the same way, so they always bonded over their shared love of working on houses and getting things accomplished.

Because we got along so well, and for the most part, always enjoyed each other’s company, I just see the life we had as wasted potential. If he would have stayed in our lives, we could have been great together. I know it. Instead, my siblings and I spent our adolescence feeling let down whenever he wouldn’t show up, and wondering if we had done something wrong to make him leave.

When you’re young, your parents are your world and can do no wrong. When you get older, you know better. Parents are not as superhuman as you once thought, and they can make mistakes, and they often do. Kids are resilient, and they will keep coming back to you even when you don’t deserve it. So once we were older, we started to know better and we started to take measures to protect ourselves from the hurt he had caused us so frequently when we were little.

This meant less trips down to see him over the years (from now on, if he wanted to see us, he would have to find a way to come to us), less and less phone calls and texts, and less reaching out in general. When you spend your whole life waiting for someone and they never quite show up, you eventually get tired and you find ways to move on for the good of yourself and those around you. For us, it meant realizing that, as much as we wanted and needed him in our lives, he would never be a dad to us, and we had to let that idea of him go. We loved him as a person, but not as a father anymore.

I know my dad had a rough childhood, and after my parents’ divorce, his life was even harder, but I also know he had choices to make, and he made them again and again. He had so many chances given to him by everyone in his life, and he just kept making the wrong decisions. I wasn’t in his shoes, so I don’t know what he was going through, but I do know how it felt being on the receiving end of those choices, and it was excruciating at best and crushing at worst.

I have come to the conclusion that I feel the most sad about the fact that things will never get better between us now. I think a small, tiny part of me that I had buried deep inside still felt that, even though we didn’t talk and he would be in a nursing home for the rest of his life, he would one day tell me he was sorry, that he messed up and had a disease that he couldn’t fight alone and that he made mistakes but wanted to make it right now. I didn’t realize it before, but I needed some sort of closure from him, a closure that I now know I will never get. I would have loved him forever, but death is so finite and forever for him means something different for me now.

How do you mourn for a parent who has passed away when they were never there to begin with? It’s a question I’ve been asking so much lately because I need to know why I feel the way I do. How can I cry over someone, still, after 32 years of doing so, when they’re not even in my life anymore?

He was never there, but I wanted so badly for him to be, until one day I didn’t anymore. And suddenly it became normal to not talk about him, to not think about him, to not see him. He was never there, but he should have been there for us all, which I feel angry and so incredibly sad about at the same time. He was never there, but I know now it wasn’t because of me or my brother or my sisters, but because he didn’t get help for something he battled his entire life. He was never there, but I so wish he would have been to meet our children, because they’re so great and he would have loved them. He was never there, but he should have been. For all of it.

He was never there, and now, he never will be.

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farehamflorist · 2 months

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I said that title post in my best 'Swedish Chef' voice!

Many of you might recall the post I shared some time agao regarding the Dog Planters, created by a gentleman from Fareham Men's Shed. They have become quite a popular item for us to sell, especially as a unique/personal tribute for funerals.

In addition to the dogs, he also crafted some bird houses, one of which featured a chicken on the front of it. That chicken brough such a smile to my face that I couldn't stop looking at the photograph of it. Naturally, I asked if he might be willing to make just the chicken for me; happily for me he agreed.

Chris, whom most of you have seen standing on your doorstep, or at your workplace- as he is delivering flowers to you - occasionally you'll also see him have a grumble at me inside the shop! He'll deny that but we all know the truth :) That aside, as Chris the person who introduced me to the chicken (he's an active member of Fareham Men's Shed) he was tasked with figuring out how to enlarge it from just the bird box size, to be able to fit into the perfect two-foot square space I had on the shop wall. All of this was done with the permission of the gentleman who originally designed the chicken.

One morning, a few weeks after our discussions and time spent working out measurements, Chris arrived in the shop, handed me many pieces of wood, and said "One chicken for you"!. As you can see from the photograph below, it wasn't quite what I had been expecting!

As a puzzle and challenge enthusiast, I took those pieces home and was able to resolve a few issues which arose (like the chicken's head falling off for one!). Then, I reached for my tube of Gorilla Glue (other glues are available). I would advise being absolutely certain you have the pieces aligned before applying the glue, because it bonds almost instantly - unless you have painted before sticking it all together, at which point you may want to try a different glue.

Next I painted and was very pleased with the result. The red smudges on it's tummy have since been fixed, and now that prototype sits grinning at me from my bedroom door, ensuring I start each day with a smile. Having worked out any issues from that first one, I was able to tell Chris what needed to be changed so he was able to perfect the next one!

Oh yes, there was a next one... then another... then another! Because I wanted the one to fit my two-foot gap, Chris kept working on it until he got it right; boy did he get it right.

I cannot tell you how therapeutic it was to spend last Sunday aftgernoon in the garden with pieces of wood for three different sized chickens, tubes of acryllic paint (don't try using oil paints like I stupidly did at one point - it won't dry!) and a set of different sized paint brushes. Being at work 6/7 days a week, 50 weeks each year it can be quite difficult for me to switch off. My brain is constantly buzzing with questions - did I remember to order that flower? Did I send off that email to Mrs S? Have I ordered enough flowers for the wedding? What time do I need to start in the morning to get it all done in time? Although with many others, the most popular one being "Did I lock the doors at the shop when I left?". Painting those chickens took me away from it all for those few hours.

I orginally only want one, ended up with four and I love them; they make me smile whenever I look at them. The second size has been commandeered by a family member; Number three is sitting on a specially made stand in the shop (a stand Chris also made) and Number Four, the biggest - although due to the cutting machine he uses he wasn't able to make it quite the two-foot we were hoping for - sits proudly above the doorway from the shop, into the kitchen, where its clock hands (oh yes, I turned it into a clock) move around keeping perfect time.

"Is Chris able to make different shapes?" Absolutely. Ive currently set him another challenge for something he doesn't have a design for already. I have no doubt he will exceed my expectations.

Are they expensive to purchase? The depends on what you class as expensive. The large one - which I turned into the clock - cost £20 for the chicken pieces, plus the price of the clock mechanism (I paid £8 for the one I purchased). I don't think that is expensive. In fact I think they'll make a great gift for someone; they're easy to make, simple to paint and can't help but raise a smile. A bespoke one (that Chris doesn't already have the design/template for) would cost £30 for the first one to allow for his time and the wood needed to experiment with a prototype to ensure it was perfect for any potential customer.

The dog planters also come in kit form = £20, or ready made/painted for £30, but who wouldn't want to put one together and make their own? They do have a twenty one day turn around period; I personally feel they are so worth the wait.

#flowers #fareham #farehamflorist #moonstones #loveflowers #natural #shoplocal #fareham mens shed #mens shed #bespoke #hand painted #chicken #mens mental health #challenge #mental health #puzzle

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selfish-thunder · 4 months

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Request for Help

Hey guys. To remain compliant with AO3's policy terms and to keep them, me, or my fic from any trouble, I'm posting on here about this.

To hear a fuller story, you're free to reach out to me personally. If nothing else, if any of you can share that around, it would be a huge help.

For anyone interested, my paypal is paypal@deanjharrison or https://www.paypal.me/deanjharrison

Or this one: https://www.gofundme.com/f/dean-and-pets-recover-financially

Thanks, you guys! I appreciate you just taking the time to read this.

#hp fandom #harry potter #harry potter fandom #hellion #not for profit #for food and bills bro

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etruatcaelum · 1 year

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On Ruakh.

Lux Aeterna, the kingdom Ozma and Salem had built together, was situated in the foothills of what is now the contested border between southern Mistral and the Palash region. Salem fled east after the kingdom’s violent collapse and ultimately came to a vast, arid expanse of grassland known today as the Taiyin Steppe. There, she buried herself: literally found a cave, laid down, and did not move for centuries.

About six hundred years later, a faunus boy called Irem found her. He was thirteen, and he hailed from a nomadic group—a deme—which had recently been decimated by human rivals; Irem had been among the youths captured and enslaved by the raiders, and after two grueling years of mistreatment, he had slain his master, stolen the man’s fastest horse, and escaped into the night.

All he had meant to do was hide in the caves from his pursuers until nightfall. Instead, he found Salem—far from an intimidating figure by then: emaciated and barely conscious, her flesh so fragile after centuries of stillness that it shredded like wet paper at the slightest movement. When Irem looked upon her, it did not occur to him to feel afraid; he felt only pity and profound concern.

He decided to stay with her. Help her, if he could. She did not speak any language he recognized, but when he offered her half of what little food he had, he saw a faint spark of hope catch behind her eyes as she reached out to take it.

The pair stuck together from then on, gradually learning each other’s language and piecing together their respective histories as they roamed the steppe. Salem grew very attached to him; he began to call her mother.

Then, about five years later, they were found by Irem’s old captors. The human warriors did not recognize him as the boy who had once killed one of their own, but they did see an able-bodied young man and a monster; they attacked, intending to slay the witch and capture the youth.

Not a single warrior survived.

After that massacre, they gave those who remained a choice: gather what they could carry and leave unharmed, or stay and live by the rule of Irem and his mother.

Most chose to stay.

Every enslaved person in the deme—whether human or faunus—was immediately freed, and the livestock of those who had owned them was immediately portioned between them. The dead warriors were given proper funeral rites and, with them, the brutal cruelties of the past were to be laid to rest too.

That was the beginning of Ruakh.

Irem would eventually take the name Samandar Khan. Under his rule, the deme grew stronger and swiftly became the dominant power on the steppe—not by conquest, but by brokering peace with grimm hordes and demes alike.

(Of course, it is rather difficult to say no to a khan whose favorite steed is a grimm.)

Ruakh lasted for some three hundred years: a khanate comprising myriad demes of humans and faunus living alongside thousands of grimm hordes, spanning the Taiyin Steppe from the western mountains to the more fertile plains far to the east. Salem never staked a claim of rulership, though she did receive a say in the assemblies to elect new khans. Mostly, she came and went as she pleased, sometimes among grimm and sometimes among people.

Owing to her immortality, her grimmness, her presence in the story of the khanate’s origins, and her reputation as a teacher of magic, Salem gradually came to be regarded as a god. She was mythologized as the Witch-of-the-Wilds, a god of storms and fire, witchcraft and war, death and rebirth—a prominent deity in the Ruakhian pantheon, but far from the only one.

However, nothing lasts forever. West of the mountains and far to the north, the young kingdom of Mistral had been pushing its borders ever further south, and although the mountains had long prohibited conquest of the steppe, the invention of airships opened the eastern frontier to the empire.

In Mistral, in those days, grimm were thought to be demonic spirits who preyed upon humans and infested the bodies of the slain, reanimating them as faunus. When rumors of Ruakh began to flow north, they inspired first panic, then hatred. The steppe was not desirable country, unsuitable as it was for farming and crawling with grimm besides, but that did not matter: terror of the grimm and religious zeal made the only arguments Mistral needed to justify a conquest.

Brutal, ugly warfare followed.

Ruakh held its own for many years, bolstered by the grimm—who were far more numerous than the khanate’s people and the empire’s armies combined—and by Salem’s raw power. The mountains and the vast steppe gave the advantage to the Ruakhian defenders, whose horse archers gained fearsome reputations among the Mistrali infantry.

For a time, it seemed as though the campaign would be forced back in the end.

Then Mistral found a powerful champion of its own in Kawayanagi Asaki, a young man of common birth who claimed to have received the blessings of the gods to put an end to the scourge. He demonstrated awe-inspiring magical powers, and the emperor sent him to the front without hesitation.

It was the first time Salem had seen Ozma in almost one thousand years, and meeting them again on the field of battle in a war of undeserved persecution broke something in her. That day was not the fall of Lux Aeterna all over again: it was far worse.

Ozma had not yet sacrificed their divine gifts—they would do so in their next life—nor found the lamp of knowledge. Asaki possessed the limitless might of ancient magic and nine lives’ worth of mounting desperation burning with the conviction that Salem could be destroyed. Salem, meanwhile, fought for a land and a people she had lived with and loved and learned from for three hundred years.

When they dueled in Lux Aeterna, they had ripped the castle down on top of their own heads and burned each other alive. This time, they met as opposing forces of nature. The mountains shook and the sky rained fire and the earth opened like a great maw to swallow the armies of Mistral whole; but Asaki was the better fighter, and she lost ground slowly but steadily as he advanced with what remained of his force.

So catastrophic was the scale of the battle that by the time Salem managed to kill him at last, the steppe had been utterly destroyed by fire, quakes, and a volcanic eruption.

The surviving Ruakhians were few in number. Although they begged her to stay, fearing what would become of them without her protection, Salem looked upon the charred husk of what had been the happiest time of her life and decided that she could not live among people ever again. Not if this was what Ozma would do if she tried.

But neither could she abandon the few people she had left, so Salem made them an offer: far away, on the other end of the world, she knew of a magical oasis protected by impassable expanses of uninhabited desert. It would be different from the life they had known, but she could take them there, and they could live in safety without her.

Most of them agreed.

And that was the beginning of Vacuo.

In the modern day, Ruakh is a quasi-mythical lost civilization—think in the vein of Atlantis. The Taiyin Steppe is very sparsely inhabited, still torn up and prone to quakes and volcanic activity.

Unlike the very short-lived kingdom of Lux Aeterna, Ruakh endured for hundreds of years; Ozma couldn’t erase it from history, but they did succeed in muddying the waters enough to create widespread uncertainty among historians as to whether the khanate truly existed as described in the sources. (Grimm have foiled every effort to mount archaeological surveys of the region.) The legend of Ruakh a favorite of occultists and conspiracy theorists, and better known to faunus than to humans.

Descendants of the Ruakhian survivors Salem brought to southern Sanus still live in the Vacuan desert, and although their culture has dramatically evolved in the three thousand or so years since, there are traces of Ruakh to be found even now in stories of an ancient journey into the unknown, a paradise promised by the gods and ripped away by human hands, and indomitable will to survive.

#MAIDENS AND KINGDOMS ( hc. )#THIS DARK THING THAT SLEEPS IN ME ( hc: salem. )#FOND HEARTS CHARRED AS ANY MATCH ( hc: ozma. )#[ yeah.#there are two things that #salem never talks about.#one is her daughters.#the other is ruakh.#but when she references not being able to live among people for fear of a crusade—#ruakh is what she means. ]

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