#its not even the eleventh anymore why am i posting this

[a-random-citrus]

A second blueberry pie has hit the senior vice president

[feralphoenix]

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: The View Myla Grants Us Of Hallownest’s Moths

hello again hollow knight fandom, i am back with my picante takes and ready to discuss two things i love: myla hollowknight and the moth tribe! Let Us Be Sad About Them Together.

as with my previous essay i’m going to be putting this fellow up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. this time i’ll be attaching that in a reblog to avoid this post getting eaten by the dread tungle algorithms.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses colonialism and genocide both in real life and the fictional depictions in Hollow Knight, as well as racism in the zombie horror genre and in fandom.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: THE VIEW MYLA GRANTS US OF HALLOWNEST’S MOTHS

In this house we are all love Myla.

Well, in all fairness, there are probably plenty of Hollow Knight fans who aren’t interested in her character, since which fictional characters one attaches to is always a matter of personal preference. But she’s still well-loved for a minor NPC and inspires a high level of devotion in her fans. There’s nothing that whips folks into a frenzy like a cute character you can’t do anything to help, and unlike some other characters in Hollow Knight Myla’s fate leaves no room for ambiguity. Once you pick up the Crystal Heart you’re left with only two choices: Avoid her, or kill her.

A lot of Hollow Knight’s world is designed to make you care about it so that it will hurt more when Ghost’s violent skillset proves too limited to save something or someone. The consequences of Hallownest’s founding and policies have directly or indirectly caused a great deal of damage to everything, and chief among those consequences with massive damage and a wide splash range is the Infection. Much has been said elsewhere by other people about Hollow Knight’s predominating mood being a struggle against futility, with Ghost arriving at the eleventh hour and every new tragedy designed to make the player more desperate to find something actionable, only finding out by trial and error what’s beyond your personal ability to save.

Myla, in that sense, is a typical example of that worldbuilding. She’s a particular kind of stock character in the zombie horror genre, the innocent who falls victim to the plague and cannot be saved, wrenching audience hearts and demonstrating the stakes.

But Hollow Knight plays with the trappings of zombie horror in a very unusual way, one I find thematically fascinating.

For a quick overview, the “zombie” as we know it in popular culture is an appropriation of a voudou (the Black American spiritual practice) concept that deals with the fear of slavery killing one’s spirit. (People more versed in/with roots in voudou culture can give a much more comprehensive overview than this simplistic one.)

The zombie horror genre, especially in Western media, is part of the great white fragility stock plot trifecta (the other two being alien invasions and robot uprisings). Zombie horror in particular expresses white fears that marginalized ethnic groups will rise up violently in revenge for their mistreatment and destroy white society. The fear of “that which is human, which ‘humanity’ is not” (to borrow mecha visual novel Heaven Will Be Mine’s pithy term) and the extreme levels of violence towards human-but-not bodies typical of zombie horror are often an expression of such bigotries. This is, again, a subject that’s been discussed in greater depth and with more nuance elsewhere.

But what Hollow Knight does is take the ugly metaphors and it makes them literal, makes it harder to ignore the toxic subtext of the genre. The Infection is literally a native god’s revenge on the settlers who committed genocide* against her people. How the Pale King’s colonization of the crater negatively affected the preexisting groups of bugs underpins every level of the worldbuilding, as does Hallownest’s cruelty towards its neighbors.

Hollow Knight is a game that is about the tragedy of Western imperialism. It is one of the work’s central themes. There are a lot of conversations that need to be had about the ways these themes manifest and, on a real-world level, about fandom’s predisposition to avoid the subject.

But, for now, let’s get back to Myla. If she fits such a stock zombie horror archetype, and Hollow Knight uses zombie horror tropes to underline the conversation it attempts to have about colonialism, then what has Myla got to teach us about the overall worldbuilding?

There's two topics I’d like to broach here: First we’ll get into how the circumstances of Myla’s infection fit in to the implied role of Crystal Peak in pre-Hallownest society. Then let’s take a long look at the lyrics of Myla’s song and what it implies.

MYLA, THE CRYSTALS, AND THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

If you think about it, Myla is an interesting outlier compared to the other NPCs we encounter on the verge of succumbing to the Infection. Both Bretta and Sly are unhappy: Bretta is a lonely, anxious bundle of abandonment issues yearning for someone to sweep her off her feet; Sly misses his pupils and loved ones who’ve left him in death (we never learn who Esmy is or what they were to Sly, but we sure can tell they’re not around anymore). The temptation to dream away those sadnesses seems to play a part in their vulnerability to the Infection, and also why Ghost’s interruption brings them back to reality.

Not so Myla. She appears to be blissfully unaware of her fellow miners’ fate, and most of her dialogue prior to her infection (besides the song - we’ll get to that later) is about how much fun she’s having at her job and how much she enjoys Ghost’s occasional company.

Yet she still winds up infected when Ghost’s back is turned. Why?

Not to discard the possibility that Myla’s got her own issues too, but in her case there seems to be another likely cause at hand: The crystals. If hit with the Dream Nail before infected, she mentions that she can hear them “singing” and “whispering”.

Under the The Hunter’s Hot Takes section of the Hunter’s Journal entries on various Crystal Peak enemies, we can learn more about the crystals - particularly in the entries for the Husk Miner and Crystallized Husk.

Crystal Peak’s crystals were thought of as particularly precious in Hallownest and harvested en masse for use in luxury items and the like. To do so, the mining operation was set up throughout most of the mountain, though the area around its peak still remains largely untouched. However, there’s more to the crystals than just that. Like Myla, the Hunter notes that the crystals can be heard to sing very very softly if one listens closely enough.

Perhaps of even more interest than that is this particular comment he gives us, from the Crystallized Husk journal entry: “There is some strange power hidden in the crystals that grow up there in the peaks. They gleam and glow in the darkness, a bright point of searing heat in each one.”

I don’t think it’s a particularly revolutionary idea to point out that there’s some connection between the crystals and Radiance’s power; this is something many players have intuited just based on Myla’s dialogue. But, in order to understand what Myla is demonstrating about the game’s world I think it’s important to think about what that connection is.

Speaking of which, the local Whispering Root has two important clues for us: The phrases “light refracted” and “energy contained”.

The very top of Crystal Peak is one of the only places in the crater where the moths’ architecture has escaped Hallownest destroying it, and is the only place in the entire game setting where their religious iconography remains fully intact. There are stone monuments covered in their language (which has been destroyed with the rest of their culture) and the statue of the Radiance - this is easier to see in the Wanderer’s Journal tie-in book, but the huge stone arches upon the Crown represent Radi’s halo and its rays and encircle her when viewed head-on or from a distance instead of the side view we get in the game.

The crystals grown here were used by the moths to store and cultivate Radiance’s light. It’s impossible to know what sort of architecture/infrastructure existed inside the mountain before Hallownest stole it from the moths. But between the massive scope of her statue and all the texts at the Crown, and the fact that the moths were working with their literal actual god’s freely given power here, it can be safely asserted that Crystal Peak was a holy ground to them.

Hallownest didn’t care about the mind-boggling level of spiritual significance Crystal Peak must have had to the natives, though. To the Pale King and his people, the crystals are just a natural resource to be harvested for personal profit.

This is unfortunately a conflict that still plays out in colonized countries today. If you’re American, #NoDAPL probably comes to mind; Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are filled with these sorts of horror stories too. Settler disrespect for indigenous sacred grounds is a huge problem that needs addressing. If you’re looking at the story of Crystal Peak and thinking it’s very on-the-nose... maybe it needs to be.

Anyway, Myla is nowhere near as miserable as Bretta or Sly, but she still notices that something’s up with these crystals. She hears the voice coming from inside, and she’s curious, and she tries very very hard to listen to it... so she DOES end up hearing Radiance’s voice. Radiance’s real voice, not the songs and whispers inside the crystals: The voice of a frightened, angry, grieving god who knows there’s a new vessel running around in Hallownest, and doesn’t want any part of that. A voice that’s pleading for someone, anyone to kill this dangerous creature, and save her from the threat Ghost poses.

Between how freaked out Radi is to know Ghost is poking around, the tendency we see in her boss battles for her to panic and kneejerk blast things at full volume/vibrance when she’s panicking, and the way her dream broadcast seems to be only a one-way communication line while she’s in the Black Egg... naturally this spells disaster for poor Myla.

Similar to the Moss Prophet, this small tragedy is a demonstration of the eleventh-hour state the conflict is in: The Pale King has escalated this situation so far, and Radiance is so traumatized and isolated, that bystanders who might in a kinder timeline have become Radi’s allies instead get caught up in her AOE. Myla’s definitely not as aware of the overall situation as the Moss Prophet, since she’s a Hallownest bug and not an indigenous one the way they are. But she noticed things were not as they seemed, and she was curious. Who knows what new possibilities could have opened up, if Radiance was able to truly communicate with bugs in the outside world?

Small side note before we move on, but I’ve noticed a tendency among some folks who notice the missed connections to come down extra hard on Radiance and chalk Myla’s infection/Moss Prophet’s death down to deliberate cruelty on her part. I’d like to gently push back against this.

Living in a post-colonial world we all absorb some level of prejudice from our surroundings, and it’s important to take a look at our first assumptions about people (or, in this case, fictional characters lol) to examine whether these prejudices we’ve inherited have influenced those assumptions.

So, if your first instinct is to look at this situation and say the problem is that Radiance is being too harsh and too angry where she should have stepped back and softened her emotions for others’ benefit to gently persuade them to her side... Please think about how when people of color and non-Christians express anger or hurt at our treatment, or even so much as calmly assert our boundaries, white/Christian viewers often view us as much more aggressive and threatening than we actually are. The “angry black woman” trope is a good example of this stereotype. You may want to look up the HuffPost article “Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” and its discussion of white fragility to further understand this phenomenon.

It is absolutely essential to remember the complex power dynamics in play in Hollow Knight and that the Pale King deliberately imprisoned Radiance (who had at this point already gone through an extreme amount of trauma) in a way that would compromise her ability to communicate with others. If you can extend compassion to characters like Ghost or the Pale King and empathize with their motives/feelings when their actions cause harm, but you are not willing to do the same with Radiance... it’s important to sit down with yourself and examine why that is.

THE MEANING BEHIND MYLA’S SONG

Okay, let’s switch gears and take a look at the lyrics to the song Myla sings, since it’s got some interesting things to tell us too.

The first verse, which you can hear from Myla the first time you meet her/before you acquire Vengeful Spirit, goes:

Bury my mother, pale and slight Bury my father with his eyes shut tight Bury my sisters, two by two, And then when you’re done, let's bury me too

There’s not much particularly story-related going on here except foreshadowing that Myla may in fact wind up dying. Most of what we get here is that a) this is a song about burying the dead and b) it’s morbid as fuck.

Curious, a new player might think of the mention of burying the dead; there are a lot of corpses just lyin’ around all over the ground - something that might lead one to believe Hallownest didn’t have such a custom. Later players will discover the Resting Grounds, confirming Hallownest did bury its dead... and that the gravekeepers are all dead too.

Let’s look at the second verse, which Myla remembers and will sing after you pick up Vengeful Spirit:

Bury the knight with her broken nail, Bury the lady, lovely and pale Bury the priest in his tattered gown, Then bury the beggar with his shining crown

This right here is where it gets interesting. The first verse describes the singer’s family as dead or dying, but the people we’re burying now sure do have some parallels to Hallownest's ruling body, don’t they?

Among Hallownest’s Great Knights, three of them - Dryya, Isma, and Ze’mer - were women. They are also very dead or might as well be: Dryya was killed by Traitor Lord’s resistance, Isma is a tree spreading acid through the kingdom’s waters to cut off access to the City of Tears, and Ze’mer hung up her nail after her mantis girlfriend’s death and only lingers on as a revenant.

While there aren’t any characters who are described in-text as “priests” in Hallownest, the idea of a tattered gown might bring Lurien the Watcher to mind, or perhaps the Soul Sanctum’s magicians before they went rogue.

The lovely, pale lady in the song can only refer to the White Lady, Hallownest’s queen. And there’s only one man in the game who has a shining crown: The Pale King. The lyrics are particularly derisive towards him in a way they aren’t to any of the other figures listed, too.

So, it seems like whoever came up with this song didn’t think much of Hallownest. With that in mind it’s hard to think that it originated from any sort of faction loyal to the king.

We’re missing a line from the third verse, which Myla sings after you’ve beaten Soul Master and she’s beginning to become infected. But what we do see of it is Huge in terms of lore:

Bury my body and cover my shell, [...] What meaning in darkness? Yet here I remain I’ll wait here forever ‘til light blooms again

So. The “protagonist” of this song’s family has died, and they expect to die as well, but even unto death they're waiting for Hallownest to fall and the light to return.

The moths became Hallownest’s gravekeepers after the Pale King forcibly assimilated them. Under the Pale King’s light, the moths forgot Radiance and most of their original culture, but Seer tells us in her final monologue that a few individuals remembered just enough to pass bits and pieces down through the generations. This secret resistance among the moths was what kept Radiance alive and prevented her from being sealed away entirely.

This song Myla sings comes from that moth resistance.

Code songs amongst oppressed ethnic groups are very much a real thing, especially when groups have to communicate or signal each other within hostile parties’ hearing. Since I’m American (and had a big ol crush on Harriet Tubman as a little kid lmao!) the first thing that came to mind for me when I made this connection was the working songs escaped Black slaves used in the Underground Railroad.

These have another point in common with the moth gravedigger song Myla sings, in that they enter the general cultural consciousness through out-group people who don’t know the true context. If you ever pick up a book of American baby songs, you’ll probably find some Underground Railroad code songs in there - often because generations ago white kids heard these songs from Black slaves or servants, and went on to sing the same songs to their children with zero awareness of what the songs were really for.

So some Hallownest bug somewhere probably heard the moths’ song and liked it and sang it in a context totally divorced from its original one, and it got spread around and passed down to become one of Myla’s old favorites, with her seemingly not realizing the meaning behind the lyrics. The moths’ song of devotion to their lost god survived them as a people.

This is some VERY realistic and layered worldbuilding. There is so much to glean from just one NPC’s dialogue when put together with other clues. Of course all of it is SAD and DEPRESSING, but Hollow Knight is a tragedy with a super unsubtle point to make about the unsustainability of Western imperialism.

What happens to Myla is awful, and upsetting, and unfair. So was what happened to the moths and their sacred ground, and to Radiance too. It’s important to understand the scope of the conflict that led to all this happening, trace it to its roots, and lay it at the feet of the ones responsible for engendering all this tragedy in the first place: Hallownest and the Pale King.

*A NOTE ABOUT MY USE OF THE TERM “GENOCIDE”

This is a tangent, but since there’s some debate about whether it’s appropriate to define the Pale King’s actions towards indigenous bug nations as genocide, allow me to cite the official definition of genocide here.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention for short) defines genocide like this:

Genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group, as such:

A) Killing members of the group

B) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

C) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

D) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Among the abovelisted, Hallownest is guilty of A (Deepnest and the moths), B (Deepnest physically/the moths vis a vis brainwashing), C (the mantis tribe and the hive), and E (the moths, which we know from Marmu, and possibly the mosskin also - Isma is mosskin).

Then there is cultural genocide, i.e. acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group's way of life. Let’s look at the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) and how it defines cultural genocide:

A) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities

B) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources

C) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights

D) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures

E) Any form of propaganda directed against them

Hallownest is guilty of every item on this list. A: The moths, attempted with Deepnest. B: The moths, the mantises, the flukes, the mosskin; also attempted with Deepnest. C: The moths, the mantises, the flukes. D: The moths; attempted with the mantises and Deepnest. E: The mantises and Deepnest.

Any sort of discussion of the wide-reaching harm Radiance caused MUST include the context that the Infection is her response to multiple levels of genocide. Discussion that does not include this context loses nuance and simplifies the conflict and power dynamics portrayed in the game in ways that reflect real-life racism and Christian supersessionism.

Now, this is NOT some sort of holier than thou Fandom Purity dunk to say that it’s Bad or Wrong to care about Hallownest’s nobility. Like, one of my favorite characters in this dang game is the White Lady, who spent a long ass time enabling her husband’s actions before she finally walked out on him over the mass infanticide thing. You can, and it is okay to, love TPK and want rehabilitation for him while acknowledging that the dude has done objectively bad things.

I just feel that it’s important to keep things in perspective so that we don’t wind up stirring a bunch of real-world bigotry into our fandom funtimes. A lot of us don’t have the luxury of turning our brains off and simply Not Seeing It, because these same sorts of dynamics are behind a lot of the hardships that threaten our everyday stability.

It’s pretty hard to have conversations about those things in real life if one can’t even recognize them in fiction. So, this might be a good opportunity to start practicing anti-racism so we can better utilize that ideology in real life, where the stakes are much higher.

[dalliscar]

i was tagged by @bowiepop ty darling 💌

who was your first favourite artist? depeche mode, bowie, duran duran, omd, rush

who are your current favourite? soda stereo, blur, virus, tokyo, lush, inxs, a-ha

are you into musicals? which ones/why not? a little bit. grease, hairspray and west side story are cool

are there songs you consider so special you only listen to them very rarely? many!! i'm lazy to list but there's songs that i listen just when i'm feeling really sad or extremely happy. i just believe that music helps change our mood, thats all.

what’s your preferred way of listening to music?  (time of day, medium, situation) all day, if not on spotify, then my record player

what would you say is the most niche music you listen to? idk really kskrjejjfh

what’s your favourite music related movie/tv show that’s not a musical? uh,,, i love almost famous, a few biopics of my fav musicians and documentaries about music in general

albums or playlists? albums!!!

favourite albums? oof, i think i could pass hours talking about each one ksjdjsjdn

is there an artist you’re trying to get into? theres a lot!! i already made a list of albums to listen, the thing is: im always lazy, when i start listen to music, i just think about recent recomendations friends gave me or my current fave songs,,, so yeah i need to explore more bands and genres

whose music do you find overhyped? idk if its because i used to listen too much and today is not my thing anymore, but hair metal. i do like a few artists but theres other ones that is just too boring or more of the same. i still like the genre tho

what’s an underrated song? such a tricky question skdjjsjd i dont know it depends

what’s a thing a bunch of songs do that you love every time? bass solos!! and really strong drums. recently i've been loving guitar solos too!! and i wont even start talking about synth solos cause i will not shut up

what song is better acoustic? to be honest im not a fan of 'acoustic versions', maybe one song or other but it's not my first option

what’s the worst song of all time? depends of the point of view, right? cause theres few songs i see people saying that its an anthem and stuff and i go like 'uhhhhh dude i have bad news for u, this ones bad !'

do you put individual songs on repeat? if so, for how long and how often? yes!! honestly, if i really enjoyed the song, i'll put it on repeat for 50 or 100, but im boring, soon i get tired if i listen too much so i give a break to not ruin my hype for the song

do you make your own playlists? if so, what’s your most entertaining playlist title? for sure!! i've made almost 50 playlists, but just 8 are open on spotify because im insecure lmao. im not good to playlist names but theres one called 'and she was a runway model' that is just my fave songs to listen while i do my makeup and other called 'br wave' thats just brazilian new wave/post punk songs.

headphones or earbuds? earbuds!!

do you always sing the lead vocal or do you harmonize sometimes? if you harmonize, do you ever invent your own harmony? sometimes i try some lead vocals but i rather harmonize cause i find my voice embarrassing

a musical confession: i've tried a few times create a acc on rateyourmusic or medium just to do some reviews, but i just cant, i mean, i am too sentimental that i cant make a long article with clever words saying what i thought about the song or album. i never see the technical side, but just the feeling the album caused in me, if was good or bad... i envy people who can do a review without sound a complete idiot who dont know how to talk (aka me)

now i tag: @musicacuantica , @andypartridges , @dedicatedfollowerofrock , @thischarmingjaz , @eleventh-earl and @carlpalmer if you guys want to 💓

[bringmoreknives]

tagged by @awsugar and @iero to do this!! i’ve never done this one so ty :’)

1. Why did you chose your url

when i REALLY got into mcr in like january 2020 (i’d been a fan before but pretty much only listened to about half of revenge and then tbp and dd) sorrows was one of the very first songs of bullets i got into specifically the knives/sorrow demo on mdnsy. i was checking for canon mcr urls and i saw that this one was taken and i was DESPERATE to have it (also because it’s a bit more ~niche~ reference to our lady) so on the off chance i dm’ed the blog and its owner just happened to check tumblr for the first time in years a few days later and let me have it :) akdjfhksdjhf that was so long

2. Any sideblogs?

technically THIS is a sideblog because @wakemeupbeforeyouvangogh is my main (i didn’t understand how accounts work when i made this blog) but i also run @seaborns (tv, mostly criminal minds and the west wing), @njolras (les mis), i used to run @vsuvia (the arcana) but it’s inactive now, and i also make gifs and content for @daily-cm

3. How long have you been on Tumblr?

it was my ninth anniversary on my birthday ;____;

4. Do you have a queue tag?

yeah, it used to be #still into queue but now i don’t wanna use that bc ch*d so it’s #drain the fantasy of queue which is from pool by paramore aka THEEEEE song. i try to keep a pretty active queue but i forget a lot

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

my friend sarah had a blog in sixth grade and it was all about superwholock (of course) i can still so clearly picture the photo of the eleventh doctor she had in her sidebar. but my parents were super strict on the internet (and also i had just recently had someone creep on me on instagram) so they didn’t let me get a blog until i was 13 and it had to be about something educational (hence the van gogh theme for my main). until then i checked a few blogs like the morning paper. and i made this blog because my dad didn’t know how tumblr worked and i was getting into bandom and bored of not posting about it

6. Why did you chose your icon/pfp?

love of my life

7. Why did you choose your header?

it’s not the best picture of it but i really love the brand new eyes stage setup with the picture frames and it goes with my icon

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

it’s this hayley edit with almost 40k which is so embarrassing because i didn’t properly source either of the pictures and i think the second one is actually someone else’s edited pic that i just slapped a sepia filter over...... i was 14 i didn’t know better

9. How many mutuals do you have?

it’s really hard to tell bc mutual checker doesn’t work since this is my sideblog

10. How many followers do yo have?

3,160 <333

11. How many people do you follow?

okay please don’t lose your minds but 2,308..... a ton of them are inactive it’s just genuinely too many to unfollow with inactivity checker

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

yeah lasjfhlaskdjfhh a ton i think my best shitpost is the compilation of star wars actors trashing kylo ren

13. How often do yo use tumblr a day?

it really depends and it’s kind of less rn because i work a lot but i’m assuming i’ll be more active when im home in a few days with nothing to do but i tend to try to at least queue some stuff before i go to bed

14. Have you ever had an argument/fight with another blog?

yeah jdfhdkjfh multiple times. when i was younger it was dramatic but now it just tends to be arguing with reposters

15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

if it’s like political or about something going on in the world then i’ll probably reblog it, if it’s one of those old-fashioned “LISTEN HERE FUCKERS LET ME EXPLAIN U A THING” then i will ignore it. unfortunately reblog bait (i.e. reblog this for good luck or you’ll have the worst day of your life) gets me because i have ocd

16. Do you like tag games?

yeah i love them i’m just so bad at remembering to do them

17. Do you like ask games?

YES i absolutely adore them but for some reason like EVERY time i post one i have to go do something else but i want to do more

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i honestly have no idea. mack and kay both have a lot of followers but idk if that counts as tumblr famous... is tumblr famous even a thing anymore

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

i am in a healthy loving relationship with my polycule the bandom creators server <3

20. Tags

hm i tag: @dangersday @smileandasong @raytorosaurus @lolalovesu @girlfriend-frank @adamlazzara and @mikeywayinc! sorry if any of you have been tagged before i cannot read <3

[kayliemusing]

21

1. Is there something you have been trying to learn lately?  - There’s kind of a few, because I feel like they all tie into one. Self acceptance is a big one, self-discipline, productivity, and trusting in God (which has proven to be the hardest thing. It hurts to trust in something you don’t see the outcome of, but it hurts too much not to trust in God.)

2. If you ever feel like you are different from your extended family, in which ways is this?  - My dad/s side of the family is really toxic. There’s a lot of hypocrisy, drama, mental illness, drug addictions, and religiousness on that side (and when I say religious, I mean shame-y religion which I don’t agree with at all.) But my dad was really different from them. He was very kind, open to council, very steady and stable despite coming from such a dysfunctional background, and he loved God so truly that a lot of that pure ‘religion’ that exists within his family was broken off of him, and then I have my mom too, who is very fun, kind, caring, etc, so I grew up around more normalcy than my cousins did. My parents just parented me well and they talked about God to me and my sister a lot in such a good way that I never grew up around pure, shame-y, rule-bound religion which I think is the explanation why I (and my sister) are very different from our extended family. My dad died when I was fifteen so I don’t see that side very often, especially because they’re just entirely chaotic and dysfunctional so when I am around them it’s way more noticeable how different we are. (Sorry for big explanation. I’m in a super reflective mood lol.)

3. When you think about your future career, do you envision yourself becoming the head honcho or CEO? If not, why not?  - I’ve always kind of wanted to have this leader-esque feeling to my career, but no, I don’t see myself being a CEO. I really just want to be an author so I guess I would have some level of being a leader to my own business, but not quite on a CEO type level. Right now, I’m trying to focus on fiction but I’m easily overwhelmed by it so I have been considering other mediums of writing. I just don’t know what that is or what fits right.

4. Is there something that you are sort of weird about talking about? Like, a thing that other people find casual, but you feel uncomfortable when the subject comes up? - Sex, is the first thing that comes to mind, but not sex in general. More like the conversations that are too much, you know? Lol. Some people go really into detail or can be graphic about their sex lives and I’m just like, please don’t. I don’t mind generically talking about it, but there’s a line.   5. Can you think of a time when you seriously misjudged a music artist based on their name?  - I don’t think so. 

6. Do you ever make negative comments about other body types? How does it make you feel when you see or hear negative comments about your body type, or a physical trait that you have (even when it’s not directed at you)?  - Sometimes I have the tendency to judge other body types (i.e. I really don’t like the thigh gap look), but it’s never malicious and I’m always trying to be aware that others can’t help what they look like and if they’re happy in their body, that’s what matters. I struggle with disordered eating and kind of sit on that line between having an eating disorder and not having one so I’m very sensitive about my body and its type. I have a chubby tummy and I’m so insecure that it’s not flat that when I hear anyone say anything negative about not having a flat stomach it’ll ruin my day or I’ll just feel really ashamed.

7. If you are in a situation where you feel like you are being attacked or not respected, how easy or difficult is it for you to stay and keep your head rather than leave in a huff?  - I’ll usually leave the conversation. Maybe slam a door lol. I’ll usually stand my ground until I finally feel like I’m not heard or no one cares and then I’m out.

9. When you think about how attractive you feel and your favorite features, are you comparing yourself to a societal ideal?  - Yes. I happen to be well-acquainted with the comparison game.

10. If you have a favorite song right now: What is it? How did you first hear it? Why do you like it so much?  - My favourite song is probably Coney Island by Taylor Swift right now. It’s from Taylor’s new album Evermore, but I have a couple on that album that tie for my favourite song right now (Honorable mentions: Willow, Cowboy Like Me, Tis The Damn Season). I absolutely love how poetic this song is and I think one of my all time favourite lyrics she has ever written is in that song: “If I can’t relate to you anymore then who am I related to?” This song for me just feels like I’m reading a poem and I just sink right into the story she’s telling. 

11. Have you ever had someone that has been your friend for a while come to you and tell you they had romantic feelings for you? How did you respond, and did the friendship survive?  - I did have a friend of mine tell me they had feelings for me. We had become friends in the eighth grade and then he confessed his feelings for me in the ninth grade, I told him I didn’t feel the same way but we stayed friends and it didn’t ruin anything, and then he confessed again in the eleventh grade and I said no to him again. After that final rejection, we never really made it back to being friends for a few reasons a) We stopped being in the same classes, b) I think he was really hurt and c) his friend (who is most dramatic than a girl by the way, and ironically dating one of my friends at the time) stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and gave his two cents and that was kind of when it fell apart. I didn’t really know his friend so it was weird that he had this narrative of me that he said “was leading X on” when I was just trying to be his friend but it’s whatever now. That was when I was like sixteen lol. 

12. Hypothetically speaking, if Hillary Clinton were running for President as a democrat against Chris Christie as a republican in 2016, who do you predict would win the election?  - Well, since it’s 2021 now, I would predict that Trump would win and divide America. 

13. When you are getting to know someone new online (particularly someone male), how cautious are you of the possibility that they are serial killer/kidnapper? - I honestly never think of this, mostly because we live in such an online world now and I’m an adult. I don’t really know how much of this still happens, but you just don’t hear about it anymore. Not to mention, if it is a male, it’s most likely a pedophile (which is still gross) rather than a killer or kidnapper.

14. If you are talking to someone that you want to get to know, what are your go-to conversation topics? What subject makes you disappointed when another person isn’t interested in or knowledgable about it? - Tbh I feel like I’m really bad at conversations and I don’t know how to lead them because I’m quiet and scared of looking stupid. I know I really like deep conversations more than basic questions. However, it’s very important that I know their opinion on Taylor Swift because if there’s a chance they don’t like Taylor Swift, I already know that the person is probably not worth my time. For real though, if I’m having a conversation with someone, I usually get disappointed if I find out they’re a partier or drink a lot, because I’m really not into any of that stuff so it’s immediately like playing the Sims and having the minus sign appear above my head.

15. Say you have a lot of free time and want to join a club or class. You are browsing postings on local bulletin boards and online. What sort of group would you be interested in joining (e.g., book club, game group, crafts, golf lessons, etc.)? - A romance-only book club, DIY club.

16. Have you ever kissed someone that you didn’t really want to kiss (not assault, just indifference)? Why did you go along with it and how did you feel after?  - Nah I’ve never been kissed

17. Have you recently learned anything about your personality? If not, have you ever consciously tried to change your personality? - Sort of recently, it was something I discovered last year which is that I’m a neurotic perfectionist and what I mean by that is I’m a perfectionist in a very self destructive way. I’ve always known I was ‘particular’ or others would say ‘has high-standards/expectations’ but I realized that it’s literally just perfectionism.

18. Are you or any of your friends in a sorority or fraternity? Would you be interested in belonging to one?  - No and I don’t really understand what they are or why they’re a thing.

19. Can you recall a recent time that you were surprised, but in a bad way? - Yes. When my job eluded that they thought I was stealing from the registers. This happened around September 2020? Basically they didn’t flat out say that’s what they thought, but they made comments that the tills were either short or over at the ends of the night whenever I would be working and dead ass said “it looks suspicious”. I think it was surprising because I’ve worked there was two years and really felt like they should have known my character. (I literally am afraid of getting in trouble for the smallest things and they seriously thought I was capable of stealing from them lmao)

20. Do you feel uncomfortable when you receive praise for doing certain things? If so, does this make you less likely to do those things?  - No totally the opposite. I really struggle with validation and I never feel good enough, which is something I’m working on, but it feels almost like I thrive on praise. Maybe it’s because my love language is words of affirmation?? I just always like/need to know when I’m doing a good job so when I don’t get praise or validation my self esteem plummets. 

21. Do you make spontaneous purchases often or rarely? When you are upset does it make you temporarily happier to buy yourself something new?  - Spontaneous purchases, often because I have no self control lol, but lately I’ve been working hard to try to save more. And yes when I’m upset, it does make me feel better to buy things.

22. If you have to wake up early for something, what time is just TOO early for you to be there and be presentable and sentient? Have you ever had to be somewhere that early?  - 5 am. I think I can manage 6 am, but anything before that is a no from me. I used to work at 5 am when I worked at Chapters, but it was a nice shift because I finished work at 10 am and then went home and napped for two hours and then had literally the entire day.

23. Have the majority of your romantic relationships started with a physical attraction or a deeper connection? - I’ve never had a romantic relationship oops. But at least I read romance novels every day (and I write romance too!) I’ll try to answer this based on what I think would happen. I think it would start as a physical attraction and I think a lot of relationships start that way but they become something when you have a real connection. I think there are relationships that can start the other way though too, but I’d say for me it’ll probably be physical attraction first. 

24. Do you ever catch any of those conspiracy shows on Animal Planet, like Bigfoot hunting or proof of Mermaids? Do those shows make your more or less likely to believe in the existence of such creatures?  - No, but I DO watch ghost conspiracy theories/”REAL GHOST CAUGHT ON CAMERA” videos on Youtube for fun. But no I don’t believe in any of that stuff. 

25. Did you ever write a fan letter to a celebrity? How about submit something to a magazine? - I’ve never technically written a fan letter to a celebrity but I wrote a post on tumblr to Taylor Swift a couple years ago that she’ll never see lol. And I’ve never submitted anything to a magazine, but I’d like to one day. 

[fraink5-writes]

From Darkness Into the Lantern Light - Chapter 5

Another day, another chapter...? Along with the Crux Fleet, another exciting arrival!

I’d like to thank @leio13 for her editing prowess!

Summary: Once upon a time, there was a cold-hearted queen. Although the Tsaritsa, as she was called, possessed her own divinity, she coveted the powers of the other Archons. Aiming to steal the Geo Archon’s gnosis, she sent her strongest warriors to Liyue Harbor. But just when Rex Lapis was almost defeated, he escaped to another vessel, that of a powerless baby, and was swept away to a hidden tower for his protection.

Many years after the great fight, the young and ambitious Harbinger, Childe, arrives in Liyue to grant the Tsaritsa’s desire, but, on his search for the Geo Archon’s gnosis, he ends up tangled in a mysterious man’s dreams to see Liyue Harbor’s Lantern Rite.

This chapter can also be found on Ao3 here. Without further ado, please enjoy!

The door of the Crux Tavern slammed amid the loud chatter. “What’s going on here?”

“Captain!”

“Captain Beidou!”

“We have guests!”

“Guests!”

The Captain marched in, carrying a big barrel over her shoulder. “Guests?” She laughed. “I brought more beer for our entertainment tonight, but it seems like you guys found something much more interesting!” Putting down the large barrel, she strode up to the crowd, quickly eyeing Zhongli and glaring at Childe. “Juza, come explain the situation to me. You guys, open the beer and make sure our ‘guests’ have enough to drink.” Leading Juza outside, she was gone in a flash, but from her brief appearance, it was clear she was a formidable woman. Six-feet tall and with impeccably toned muscles, she wore everything from her right eyepatch to her broadsword with great confidence. As worthy an opponent as she would make, Childe could not fight her if he wanted their trip to Liyue Harbor to go swimmingly. 

After another toast of beer from the crew, the Captain returned, conversed quickly with a few others then pulled Childe and Zhongli to the side. “So, you guys want to stay here? Did you come here thinking that the Crux Fleet would let you go because we have ‘so much in common?’” She stared incredulously at Childe.

“Because we all have dreams!” Childe tried to deflect her hostility with optimism.

“Huh—”

Childe sent several desperate side glances in Zhongli’s direction.

“Yes, exactly!” Beidou suddenly smiled. “If you want to go to Liyue Harbor, we won’t stop you. And we can provide you a place to stay.” She called the nearest member of the crew. “Yinxing, show this man to the ‘Guest House.’ It’s not much, but a roof’s a roof. And our crew will be standing guard. You—” She turned to Childe—“are going to have a little chat with me first.”

“I’ll catch up with you shortly.” Childe waved and smiled at Zhongli, although he didn’t feel much hope behind it.

When Zhongli was out of earshot, the Captain’s amicable face disappeared. “I know who you are, Childe, Eleventh Harbinger of the Fatui. And I know what you’ve been up to recently in Liyue Harbor. But do you know who I am?”

“Captain Beidou of the Crux Fleet.”

“At least you know that much. But what you don’t seem to realize is that I am quite familiar with the Qixing, and I can hand you over at any moment.”

Childe gulped.

“Relax.” Beidou cracked a grin. “I won’t. Right now. Thanks to your friend. I just wanted to ask a few questions.” She inspected her gloves thoughtfully. “He doesn’t seem to be one of you. Where did you find such a specimen?”

“Zhongli?”

“My crew says ‘he’s almost as powerful as Captain Beidou’—almost. Are you sure he even needs you?”

“I’m beginning to doubt that myself.” Childe sighed. “But I hope that I can stay by his side.”

“Good answer!” Beidou took a swig from a mug of beer. “The crew has taken quite a liking to him, so as long as you stick by him, we will help you. Do anything else shady in Liyue, and it’s over for you. Got it?”

Childe just nodded.

“Alright, well, don’t leave him alone for too long now! But I would change your act if you want him to need you~!” Beidou called out with a chuckle. 

***

The "guest house" was nothing more than a neighboring dilapidated building. The wall planks only provided 50% coverage, and the floor was simply the cold, hard ground with a carpet of overgrown grass. But a roof was a roof, so Zhongli dared not complain. This would be his first time sleeping outside of his bed, outside of his tower. He wrapped himself up in a bundle of his own hair for a little more comfort. 

"Hey!" Childe popped in with the same cheeriness as usual. "Did ya miss me?"

"Welcome," Zhongli muttered as Childe plopped down onto the dirt next to him.

Childe chuckled briefly then, acting seriously again, said "Sorry that you have to stay in a place like this."

"It can't be helped. At least there's a roof."

"Are you scared?" Childe asked.

Zhongli had been thinking and rethinking about that question all day, and he finally decided upon an answer: "It's my first time away from home, so it would only be natural for me to be frightened. But you're here, and the Crux Fleet is posted outside. I've learned so many interesting things today, and most people aren't as malicious as I feared they would be. So, I predominantly feel relieved."

Childe stared thoughtfully before grinning. He stretched out on the grass. "You were quite something back there. That must be some workout regimen you have."

"It's nothing special."

Childe raised an eyebrow. Though he looked quite comfortable, his head resting on folded arms, his guard was probably up.

Zhongli inhaled. "Can I ask you a question?"

“Depends.”

“Why did you lie back there?”

“Lie?” Childe rolled on his side to face Zhongli.

“I know that you are not looking for love. So, why did you lie?”

“Ohh that. I simply thought a lie would be more agreeable than the truth.”

Zhongli’s face soured.

“You’re not a fan of lying, huh? Sorry then.”

“I want to know the truth.”

“The truth…” Per contract, Childe had the right to ignore Zhongli’s curiosity. But instead of his deflective grin, Childe’s face lacked any emotion whatsoever. Underneath all his superficial decorations, this face was the truth: an emotionless slate. Perhaps it was due to the dark room, but Childe’s eyes were more lightless than the deep ocean. “The truth is that this body of mine has no dreams of its own. I live to serve my goddess, the Tsaritsa of Snezhnaya. Her wish is mine to fulfill. That’s all there is to it. That’s why I just smile and lie.” Childe’s smile was haunting.

Zhongli averted his eyes. Was it the truth or the lie which he feared? “Then, why did you decide to serve her? Surely there was a reason in that.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What kind of person is she?”

Childe sighed. “I guess that doesn’t go against our contract, so I’ll tell you. The Tsaritsa has a bad rep in Teyvat, but she’s actually a gentle soul. She wishes to create peace, even if her methods are frowned upon. But the world is unforgiving, so she had to harden herself. That’s why, Zhongli, no matter what people say, no matter what happens, I’m going to fulfill her wishes.”

For the first time, Zhongli heard earnestness in Childe’s voice. Perhaps then she really was the only thing that remained in Childe’s heart. Zhongli had thought Childe to be completely incomprehensible, but if he shared such a devotion to one woman, then maybe he would understand, after all…

“Say, Childe. If you discovered something important to you, something which speaks to your core, but it contradicts the will of the Tsaritsa, what would you do?” Would you betray her?

“That’s a meaningless question,” Childe laughed. “That would never happen.”

“You’re right. It was a foolish question.” This time Zhongli was the one to turn away, curling up on his side. He had mistaken Childe’s character a second time. They really were completely different people. 

“Zhongli.” Childe whispered gently. Zhongli shouldn’t have trusted his tone, but he wanted to believe in this warm lie at least. He couldn’t turn around, lest Childe’s lifeless eyes betray the truth to him. “I’m sorry for not having the right answer.”

“There’s no need to apologize. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Cold silence wafted into the building and settled on the hard ground between Zhongli and Childe. What kind of face was Childe making? A smile? A detached frown? Neither option reassured Zhongli, at whom curiosity and fear gnawed. 

A yawn followed by a tiny grunt interrupted Zhongli’s plummeting mood. “Sorry… I’m more exhausted than I thought… g’night…” Childe’s voice trailed off into soft breaths. "Agh—" He winced again.

Zhongli remained completely still until Childe's breathing had an even rhythm. When he rolled around, he found Childe sound asleep, clutching his head. On closer inspection, he had tiny bruises all over his body. Throughout the day he had taken countless blows for Zhongli's sake, including several to the head, in which Zhongli was not entirely blameless. It wouldn't be fair for Zhongli to leave him like this. Zhongli could at least treat the head without it being obvious.

Zhongli tenderly cradled Childe's head, watching for any signs of waking. His parted lips were still, minus the occasional grimace. Underneath his long eyelashes, surely there were dreams. But what kind of dreams did the Tsaritsa's knight—No, Childe—see?

Zhongli grabbed some of his own hair and tucked it behind Childe's head. "Sweet dreams."

[inarichi]

WIPs 1.2: Here is a continuation to my angsty wip “Dead Roses” Posting for fun ^^ the endgame is kaisoo.

Prologue | Chapter 1

Dead Roses (Chapter 2)

1.7k w.

Morning comes with a glint of the sun shimmering through a crack beige laced curtain. Jongin’s eyes open to a still sleeping partner. 

He blinks as he rises from the bed and Baekhyun turns from his back onto his side, getting more comfortable within the sheets. Deciding not to wake him, Jongin applies his clothes and grabs his pack of cigarettes before heading outside. 

He walks and walks to clear his mind. The sun is out but not an ounce of warmth touches the atmosphere. It’s beginning to get colder with the winter drawing near. 

In his palm, he fiddles with the small box before shuffling a cigarette out. A flick of his thumb over the lighter ignites a flame and soon wisps of smoke file into the air forming small clouds of their own. 

Jongin’s walk goes further than usual. He doesn’t mind however, he enjoys his time away from it all; away from his failing band, away from his broken relationship. 

Being a high school drop-out has got him nowhere in life. With a society that hinges on those with higher education, it’s left him with no way to get a decent paying job. He’s scraped by in the past with odd jobs here and there, never truly finding an occupation which suited him well. But that’s all in the past now as his band is his top priority. 

It’s a random ragtag team of individuals who came together to form his band. Three guitarists, a drummer and vocalist. Jongin’s memories take him back as he strolls along the sidewalk and into a nearby park. 

There, he finds someone lying on a bench. Typically, Jongin is one to ignore these things, but with his interest piqued, he decides to move closer. 

The man is in a deep asleep. It doesn’t take a moment for Jongin to figure out why. The flask within his hand makes it fairly obvious. 

He doesn’t linger for too long, catching a glimpse of the man’s face before continuing his walk, but what catches the tip of his nose is an odd smell. 

The smell of roses.

⸻

“No, no that doesn’t sound right. Let’s take it from the top.”

“What the fuck Jongin, this is the eleventh time.” Chanyeol says. 

“I don’t care how many times it’s been, you keep fuckin’ up the tempo and you’re the damn drummer.”

“Shut the hell up. Everyone has their off days.”

“Only it feels like it’s everyday.” Minseok chimes in. 

“Why don’t you stay in your lane and in the back, where no one cares to see you like all other bassists.”

“Are you looking for a fight?” Minseok begins to remove the strap for his bass from around his shoulder.

“Why don’t we all just take five.” Yixing says to ease the tense atmosphere. 

“Whatever.” Chanyeol stands and leaves, thrusting his body against the door and allowing it to slam close after his exit. 

“You really have to stop provoking him. He has a bad temper sometimes.” Yixing directs his words to Minseok. 

“Are you always going to be on his side?”

“I’m on no ones side, but we just have to work together as a team or we won’t get anywhere.”

“And how do you expect us to get anywhere with a vocalist who doesn’t even show up to practice.” Minseok turns his head to look at Jongin. 

Jongin sighs, “I’ll talk to Baekhyun and get him to come next time.”

“Next time?” Minseok clicks his tongue, “You always say that, Jongin.”

“You’re quite on a roll today. Care to get anything else off that chest of yours?” Jongin purses his lips. 

“Fine. I’ll back off for now. But we can’t keep going like this.” Minseok exits the practice room after his statement, leaving the other two behind.

“He has a point you know.” Soft and unhurried, Yixing speaks while sitting down into a gray folding chair. “If we’re going to practice right, we need everyone.”

⸻

It’s dark. 

“Kyungsoo?”

Someone’s calling. 

“Get up, wake up!”

What?

“Freddie’s gonna fuckin’ flip if you don’t get to work tonight. You skipped last night, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Who?

Cool, wet specks of water spatter onto his skin, chilling as the wind when hitting his face. Groggy eyelids raise to a blurred outline of a man’s silhouette, someone he knows--someone he doesn’t want to see. 

High shoulders, large and broad trailing down into muscular toned arms. To add, a ruffle of dirty blonde hair sitting atop of brunette edges. 

Ah, it’s someone I really don’t want to see.

The person responsible for drizzling water over his face steps a bit closer. “You’re crazy. Why are you sleep on a park bench? And did you drink again?”

Kyungsoo slowly rises with realization drawing into his mind. His limbs fall loose against the bench and his head tilts back. He laughs loud with a humorless lilt that echoes across the vast empty lot until it becomes a mere whisper behind the swarm of trees. 

The man startles, dropping his foam cupped coffee onto the pavement. “Fuckin’ crazy ass drunk.” He mumbles as he reaches down to remove a cigarette from his pocket and places it between his lips. He lights it and before having a chance to inhale, Kyungsoo reaches up, flipping the cigarette from between the man’s lips and instead inserting it amidst his. 

Kyungsoo’s eyes slant with a seductive pull as he inhales and spills out a ribbon of smoke. “Masa, you’re here to collect me, huh?” He leans back becoming comfortable.

“I’m your handler. Of course I am.”

“Handler?” Kyungsoo’s eyes sharpen, glinting dangerously. “I don’t believe I have one of those. But if you were to say slave master, then I’d be inclined to agree.” From his words, puffs of smoke wisps into the air, falling down onto pale tinged cheeks. 

Masa leans forward, placing an open palm on the back on the bench. His face moves in close; alarmingly close—close enough to feel the brush of Kyungsoo’s breath against his lips.  

“Your work starts tonight. But if you insist on doing this now, I will have to use force.”

Kyungsoo smirks, “Then, please do.” He says with a quick lift of his head to meet the man’s lips, however Masa withdraws before the moment they kiss, and it makes Kyungsoo’s insides boil with rage.

“Stop fooling around, you know you can’t seduce me with that, so let’s go. You need to be there by 7 p.m. and its already 2.”

“Masa, you’re no fun.” Kyungsoo flicks the cigarette before standing to his feet. 

“I’m not here to entertain you. I’m here to make sure that you entertain others.”

⸻

Slippery finger push the nozzle down and the rush of water stops. Barefeet step from inside the shower onto the soft pearly blue rug below. His steps carry him forward to the sink. 

Inside the mirror stares emptiness; hatred battling against competence. In his expression there’s a semblance of a smile, it’s practiced, he tells himself, and there's no emotion behind his eyes. None at all. 

His gaze lies. How anyone is fooled by these dead eyes of his, Kyungsoo doesn’t understand. When will someone know, when will someone see who he truly is? When will someone save him!?

The emotions he so desperately tried to hide stare back at him, so pristine and clear that it’s almost unbearable. They reach deep inside of him through such a gaze, a clear unfound gaze that speaks of nothing but the utter turmoil spurning within. Before he knows it, his palm slams down onto the sink. Pink throbs, light bruises burning onto his skin but it’s not enough. His eyes flicker, they search, they yearn to find the glinting sharpness of a blade. 

There’s nothing to cut him here. Not anymore. 

Suddenly, his shoulders shoot up and his feet stutter as three bangs startle him. 

“Are you done?” Masa’s voice rings, and Kyungsoo doesn’t reply. 

He mumbles under his breath to calm himself. He speaks hushed tones until his words are drifting along the past, disappearing into the void of emotions as everything else does. 

“Almost.” He yells in a light tone, an easy tone to appease his handler who stands not three feet away; the door being the only thing separating him from seeing the true dread on Kyungsoo’s face.

This daily routine now comes naturally; repeatedly—disgustingly. 

He washes himself, brushes his teeth, then applies clothing for the evening. All the while, Masa’s comfortable within his apartment, resting on the couch while he readies himself for “work.”

Should he consider this work? No. Never. This is an excuse for “work.”

“I’m done.” He yells, and Masa enters the bathroom to have a look at his transformation. 

“Hmm.” His eyes rake over Kyungsoo from head to toe. “Looks good. Should we apply the makeup now? I’ll call Laura to do it.”

“There’s no need I can do it myself.” Kyungsoo bites his lip as he turns to look at the mirror. He lowers his head, and as he reaches for the small makeup kit on the sink, his fingers begin to shake.

Unexpectedly, a soft, unhurried palm falls onto Kyungsoo’s head and moves with gentle strokes through his hair. It’s warm, his touch, but Kyungsoo would never admit it aloud.

“I really like the way you look without it, Kyungsoo.”

He could never have anything more than this, because he is someone tainted, soiled—someone who is not worth loving. 

Kyungsoo raises his head to look inside the mirror and those dead eyes stare back at him. “Who is Kyungsoo?”

“Oh, I’m sorry...I meant,” he swallows. “D.O.”

[let-them-eat-rakes]

RED REALITY (part 1)

(my longest post yet.)

Item #: SCP-3001

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: To prevent further accidental entries into SCP-3001, all Foundation reality-bending technology will be upgraded/modified with multiple newly developed safeguards to prevent Class-C "Broken Entry" Wormhole creation. While knowledge of SCP-3001 is available to personnel of any level should they wish to learn about it, research and experimentation with SCP-3001 and its associated technology is strictly limited to personnel of Level 3 and above, with special clearance designation granted from Sites 120, 121, 124, and 133.

Description: SCP-3001 is a hypothesized paradoxical parallel/pocket "non-dimension" accessible through the creation of a momentary Class-C "Broken Entry" Wormhole.(1) While believed to be an infinitely extending parallel universe, SCP-3001 is almost completely devoid of any matter and has an extremely low Hume Level of 0.032,(2) contradicting Kejel's Laws of Reality with the relation between Humes and spacetime. This phenomenon causes matter inside it to decay at an extremely low rate, and damage that would otherwise prove fatal does not impede any biological/electronic function; simulations suggest an organism can lose more than 70% of their body's tissue and still operate normally, as long as at least 40% of the brain remains. However, prolonged exposure will cause said matter to gradually approach SCP-3001's own Hume Level, resulting in severe tissue/structural damage as the matter's own Hume Field begins to disintegrate.

SCP-3001 was initially discovered on January 2, 2000, at Site-120, a facility dedicated to testing and containing reality-bending technology. Dr. Robert Scranton and his wife Dr. Anna Lang were Head Researchers at Site-120, and were developing an experimental device, called the "Lang-Scranton Stabilizer" (LSS).(3) Dr. Scranton was transported to SCP-3001 after unexpected seismic activity damaged several active LSS in Site-120 Reality Lab A.

Initially presumed dead, Dr. Scranton has survived in SCP-3001 for at least five years, 11 months, and 21 days. During this time, he was able to record his experiences and observations within SCP-3001 through a somehow still functioning LSS control panel, which was also brought into SCP-3001 with him through the Class-C "Broken Entry" Wormhole. These recordings were later recovered upon the panel's sudden return, an unexpected side effect from testing improved reality-bending technology; these logs are the basis of SCP-3001 study. Despite new technologies being developed, retrieval and re-integration of Dr. Scranton has been unsuccessful. His current physical and mental states, if he is still alive, are unknown. [Further information on Dr. Scranton's possible retrieval is under Ethics Committee review.] Transcripts of Dr. Scranton's logs are below.

[No discernible/coherent dialogue can be heard from Dr. Scranton for the first eight days. He cycles through periods of panic, confusion, and anger throughout, and it seems he was attempting to navigate SCP-3001 to find a way out. He finally moved close enough to the recording log on the eleventh day, though did not notice it was operating for several more hours.]

…

Name, Robert Scranton. Age, 39. Birthday, September 19, 1961.

Favorite color, blue.

Favorite song, "Living on a Prayer."

Wife… Anna…

Anna…

Name, Robert Scranton. Age, 39. Birthday, September 19, 1961.

Favorite color, blue.

Favorite song, "Living on a Prayer."

Wife, Anna. She has green eyes. I love her very much.

Name, Robert Scranton. Age, 39. Birthday, September 19, 1961.

Favorite color, blue.

Height, 178 cm.

Weight, 85 kg.

Wife, Anna. Anna, I'm sorry.

Name, Robert Scranton. Age, 39. Birthday, September 19, 1961.

Favorite color, blue.

My wife's name is Anna. We got married August 12, 1991.

I hope she got out okay.

Please let her be all right, please let her be all right.

Robert, Scranton. 39. Anna, blue, wife. Please… please, God, please…

Anna… Anna… Anna bo banna… Anna bo banna…

What the… what the hell is that? [It is assumed at this point Dr. Scranton noticed the flashing light of the recording module.]

What the fuck, this thing's actually recording?

[Metallic clang heard.]

[Voice is highly agitated and panicked.] My name, is Robert Scranton. Yeah, yeah, my name, is Robert Scranton, former researcher at Foundation Site-120. It has been… I don't know, actually, I… I can't remember. I… I estimate it's been ten days, but, I-I-I don't, I can't… Oh God, can anyone hear me?! I-I-I don't know what's happened, I-I don't know where I am, and-and, please, please is anyone there?! Hello?! Anyone?! ANYONE?!

No one can hear me. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.

Why the hell is this thing even working, it can't be working, it SHOULDN'T be working, so what the hell?! I need to — God, I need to, I need to… see, how… long can I talk here, I think there's a-a-a cap or something on the recording log, and I-I-I can't see anything, I can only see the red light blinking on and off, I can't see any of the switches next to it…

I'm really hungry.

Thirsty, too. I think I should be dead from dehydration by now, but… I don't know.

Hi, little red light. Can you talk to me? Can you talk to… Anna, for me? Hello?

I found the controls.

Two weeks, three days, forty-seven hours, and fifty-eight minutes.

Two weeks, three days, forty-seven hours, and fifty-eight minutes.

Two weeks, three days, seven hours, and fifty-eight minutes.

Two weeks, three days, seven hours, and fifty-eight minutes.

Oh… Jesus.

ERROR WITH PLAYBACK, ERROR WITH PLAYBACK. ERROR WITH PLAYBACK.

Wherever the hell I am, I'm pretty sure now that… I don't need to eat to stay alive. It hurts… a lot, but… at this point I don't think I'm gonna die… So… I'm gonna… I'm gonna take my time… I guess. I… Maybe some sort of miracle will happen and I'll get out. Heh. Keep dreaming, Robert. Yeah, I'm… I'm tired, I'm gonna sleep.

Three weeks, four days, nineteen hours.

I have a picture of Anna in my pocket. I almost forgot. Little red light, let me see her face, please? Just a little bit, I just… I just want to see her a bit.

Hi, Anna, I'm still here, I'm still here. I'm coming back, okay?

Two months, four days, three hours.

… Hi. Robert here. Yeah, I-I haven't really recorded much to hear in the past few weeks. Ha. Hahahaha… Hahaha… huh… huh…

Sorry, gotta keep it together. Breathe.

I've been… I've been busy. Trying to learn more about the place I'm in. My prison. My kingdom all my own. Heh, King Robert. God, I stink. Is there even air in this goddamn place? Stinky King Robert, king of GODDAMN NOTHING FUCK.

…Sorry, sorry. I, I gotta keep this professional. I'll… I'll come back when I'm feeling rested.

… Okay, here goes. [Inhales then exhales deeply.]

My name is… Robert Scranton. I am a former Head Researcher of Site… 120, a Foundation facility dedicated to studying various reality-bending SCPs, for the purpose of developing more advanced countermeasures towards such threats.

For the last… red light, speak to me,

Two months, eight days, sixteen hours.

What red light said. I have been trapped in what I believe to be an empty pocket dimension. Alone. Yeah… alone. All alone.

I'm calling this place SCP… I don't know, I can't remember where we are, screw it. I don't know what's happened in the past… red light, please, again.

Two months, eight days, sixteen hours.

But… no one else is around to argue, and at this point… I'm just talking into this control panel to keep myself together. I… I need to keep a record. There might be some poor bastard in the future who ends up like me, and… if this ever actually makes it out… maybe, maybe I can help stop that from happening. That's all I have going for me right now, and I really need something to go for, hahahaha…

…So, yeah, Robert… Scranton… documenting a new SCP for… future research purposes. That'll have to do. Here we go!

- Close.

…

Two months, eleven days, ten hours.

Item number, SCP I don't fucking care.

Object Class, Euclid, I guess, but I don't know, I might update this in time. I need to explore more.

Special Containment Procedures, god I sound so much like a shrink right now… Um… I don't know if we could… contain wherever I am. It's… definitely not on Earth. To be honest I don't know where it is. I… I think it has do something with the Stabilizer prototype… I'll explain that more later. Okay… um… yeah, wherever I am, I don't think it can be contained much as… created. No, no, that's not the word I'm looking for. Um… entered. Yeah, entered is better. I came into this place because of some really bad reality-bending accident and… no, no, Robert, don't be like that yet, you don't know if there's no exit yet. Ooooh… livin' on a prayer… halfway… there. Ahem.

Two months, eleven days, eighteen hours.

So… wait, no, Description, Robert, stick to the format… This place… It's some sort of reality gap, I think. It's dark. Really dark. As in, this little red light that shows my words are actually being recorded is the only visible light in this entire place. I can't see my hands, and I can barely see the control panel here. I've had to basically use the light as a center, and remember how many steps I take and in which direction. I haven't gone past a hundred yet. I'm too… I'm too scared to. Heh. I wonder if my hair is turning white, right now? I can't even see what color it is anymore. Speaking of which, my head has been a bit itchy recently. If I don't concentrate on it, it's fine, but I feel this… tingling all over my face. I'm not sure why.

Two months, fifteen days, four hours.

Okay… hoooo… I-I need to relax for a minute, Jesus, god, shit. Holy… shit, shit, shit… I… just discovered a new property of this place. All this time, I've been thinking I might be walking on… some sort of… flat ground, if you will. I kept eye contact with little red as far as I could see, and it seems I could walk in a straight, flat path. Jesus, my head is buzzing right now, I think the adrenaline is still kicking… But, if my hypothesis is correct, and this really is some sort of reality… void, then there shouldn't be anything to walk on. Now that I think about, the whole time I've been in here, it's felt like… I'm walking, but I'm also swimming through something. And this something is thick, and form-fitting, it has this… pressure, which I know isn't the correct term, but goddamn it, this place makes no damn sense and I'm doing my best to understand it, okay?!

God… Sorry.

So, the best analogy I can come up with is… it's like I'm walking through really thick black gel. There's enough tension to keep me on a… "surface", but if I… imagine myself pressing down hard enough, I can descend. Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I think… I think I need to test this more, I'll be back.

Two months, seventeen days, two hours.

Navigation is largely affected by… conscious impulses to travel in a certain direction. So, this definitely isn't a complete reality gap, at least according to mine and Anna's theories. If-if it were I wouldn't have been able to move at all, since space wouldn't have existed. Holy shit, okay, okay, this makes a lot more sense than it did before, great, great job, Robert, you're getting there. …Come to think of it, I should've realized that sooner when I was able to move in a flat plane to and from little red. It also explains why I'm not dead from dehydration or hunger yet, time barely passes in here. Okay yeah, so, I stood right next to little red, and went straight… "down." Okay, from here on out, imagine little red as the origin of a 3D space. I went straight… down, right, yeah, and then… and then I was then able to come back "up" to little red again. I've also been able to "fly" above red. Movement in here is slow, like I said, gel analogy, best I can describe it by.

Two months, twenty-two-days, three hours.

Reporting back for another update, red, SIR! Hahaha, come on red, lighten up. Ha! Pun not intended… Come on red, crack a little smile, it's funny!

…

… Fine, whatever. Ahem.

This place still seems like it barely follows Kejel's Laws of Reality Parameters. And by barely, I mean, really just barely. I'm pretty sure my math is right, but… hold on, I'm gonna check again…

Jesus. Yeah, yeah, pretty sure it's good still. Okay, this place… if we're using the standard Hume scale, I'm pretty sure I'm in a reality where the Hume Field is… point zero… four… ish. Yeah, really, really, really fucking low, so… Like I said above, space-time exists on a very minuscule scale, so my biology is not getting shot to hell and back because of any malnutrition, but that also means… I… I'm actually not sure what that also means…

…

Adding on from the last entry. I'm… I'm not sure how my biology will react in such a low Hume concentration, actually. I mostly worked with higher than average Hume Fields, and the reality benders we tested never had a Field lower than 0.8. This… this is gonna be a first. An all-time first. I remember Site-133's "Prommel Killer", they called it that because it broke the previous theory about the lowest limit of Hume concentration. Really expensive, really weird machine that brought down a small area to 0.4. 0.05 is… yeah.

I was lying. I was lying, last log… I… I'm lying to myself. My own body, and… little red here too… We're about the realest things in this place. And that means… over time… the Hume field's going to want to… equalize, and… I'm… I'm gonna go for now, I have some… some calculation to do again. Red, Anna, take note I'm using Kejel's Second, Third, and Fourth Laws, got it? Use… use 0.05 as the surrounding, my external field as… somewhere in between 1 and 1.4, use the Second Law's error estimation correction, and my internal as… as… as… shit. I'm not done yet.

I am real. I am super-real. Super duper real. Ultra real, the realest guy in a world of no-real.

You have no sense of humor as usual, red. I'm talking about the LSS, red. When we got sent here, I think… I think our reality got cranked up a notch. Red, didn't you pay attention in class? Hey, don't get fucking smart with me, red. Okay, the point is, the LSS surge got us up to… to…

Two months, eighteen days, seven hours.

No, red, not even fucking close, you must've converted Kejel's Third Law equation wrong. Because of the malfunctioning LSS we got blasted by, we're somewhere in between 2.2 and 3.6. Yes, that's good red, that's very good, because that means we have more time than we thought to… to… yes, red, before we fucking DIE, okay?!

Two months, twenty four days, five hours.

About three years. Four, if… If I don't interact too much. If… If I had had an LSS here, I could maybe stretch it out to… eight, maybe, that's best case scenario… But I have… I have to… I… know… but… but… three years. Three years, then it's past the point of no return. Ha. Hahahahaha. I should… I should definitely figure something out by then. I think I still should be pretty good for a while… At least… no, no, I won't be in here that long… I'll definitely figure something out…

Anna, what would we do with a case like this? I need your help, honey. That… that tingling I've been feeling… That's my Hume Field diffusing… My… my reality fading… Three years. I need to stabilize myself within three years.

I've been thinking… Anna and I, we had this theory… Even though the Hume Field is low, it's still a Hume Field. And precisely since it's so low, Hume diffusion should take quite a while. Now if… if I could… contain… recycle the fields, keep the diffusion from spreading too thin, I could… And I could also maybe… it's only a theory, but… It's worth a shot. But that means…

Hey, red. I… I'm gonna have to go for a bit. I want to test something, and you can't come with me. I… I'm sorry. No, no, red, I'm really, really sorry, I want you to come, I do, but… if we're together the diffusion will increase faster… We both need as much time as possible. I need to figure this place out more, and you need to make sure you keep all that info in your head. It's… red, come on. You- you'll be fine red, I know you will, you're tough. A lot tougher than me… it'll only be for a bit, red, but I need to see if I can find a way to keep us alive a bit longer. Maybe even get us out of here. If I can contain enough field, I can… I can maybe even get us out. No, no I'm not sure, but I need to find out. Red, we're talking about possibly escaping, okay? Yeah, it's a gap. A gap should have an end, like a… like the walls of a canyon, understand? I need to find a wall, and then, and then I can…

…

I'm sorry, red, I hope we're still friends when I come back.

…

I'm… I'm going now… I'll see you soon.

…

- Close.

Six months, ten days, five hours.

Hello again, little red. It's been a while.

You know… thinking back… I don't know what the hell I was so excited about. This place is… god, this place. This place is is fucking… hell.

There's no end. It just goes on. And on. And on.

I traveled in one goddamn direction for two, damn, months. God, I'm so fucking stupid, why did I think I could get out? I'm thinking like those old European shits that thought the end of the world was at the horizon. Fucking stupid, Robert, stupid, just-just- GAAAAAAAAAAAH—

If I let myself fall down long enough would I eventually hit a bottom?

Ten months, 28 days, 15 hours.

There's no bottom. And fuck you, red.

I'm sorry, red, don't go out, I'm sorry I turned you off, come back, come back, please—

… I turned 40 today. Happy birthday, Robert.

I was adopted, did you know that? Yeah, my parents left me in a box on the side of a street. Got picked up by some American couple, which explains my not-so-Chinese names. I don't even know my original last name. Just thought I'd share. How about you, red?

Anna and I met on-site in 1988. God she was beautiful. She still is. It was our eyes. She has beautiful eyes. My eyes are grey, they're boring, but hers… God they're beautiful. Do you think… Do you think she's still worried about me, little red? Is she looking for me?

You know, red, you're a great listener. But I never hear you talk about yourself. Come on, don't be shy, there's no one else around, right? Hahaha, right? Hahaha… hahahahaha…

"I'm sorry, Robert, I'm afraid I can't do that." Hahaha, red, you're hilarious.

Were you married? Kids? Any family at all? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Come on, red, I won't judge, just… talk to me, please. God, my head hurts. And my feet feel like they've been asleep for forever.

I worked at a comic store as a kid. So much cheaper back then, and I got free stuff at the end of each week. I liked Spiderman the best.

I was in a box, side of the street.

I… what the fuck… no. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, red, have you seen my picture? The picture red, Anna's picture, where is - come on, come on, where-where- Anna! ANNA! ANNA! Where did - no, no, no, no, no, please, please no, anything but, PLEASE.

It's fading, she's fading, she's fading, please, Anna, no, please, come on, sweetie, stay here, it's too soon, it's TOO SOON, my math isn't wrong, it's NOT WRONG, YOU SHOULD BE FINE. ANNA, ANNA, I can't hold you, come back, Anna, sweetie, honey, Anna please, I need you, I need you, please, please, don't go, I'm here, I'm still here. RED GET HELP. Anna, please, please, don't go, don't -

Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. Black hair, green eyes, 160. [Dr. Scranton repeats this for three hours.]

Anna and I got married in '91. We couldn't really get the nicest suit and dress we wanted because of work, but, damn, we both looked great. Anna looked better, of course. We just danced, and danced the whole night, got the whole week off. Even a job like mine lets you enjoy your honeymoon… So, come on red, open up, put 'er there, high five. Come on. Come on, red.

One year, two months, twenty-seven days.

…

…

AAAAAAA—

[The next recordings only play the control panel's automated voice giving times, with intervals of one to three days, with several month-long gaps in between as well; also intermixed are Dr. Scranton's sobbing, screaming, and mumbling. These recordings continue until the time reading reaches two years, seven months, and 28 days, after which they cease to pick up any sound until two months later.]

[pikapeppa]

Fenris/f!Hawke feels: Standing Still

In which Hawke duels the Arishok, and Fenris finally gets his head out of his ass... but the timing is less than ideal. 

A longer one, again (~6600 words). Here is a clumsy link to the AO3 post, since I don’t want the fancy new Tumblr anti-porn-bot algorithm to hide this post from tag searches: tinyurl.com/fenhawke 

**************

Fenris did not consider himself a particularly fast learner.

Hawke would heartily disagree, and he supposed she was right when it came to some things. Fenris was a skilled combatant, and he could master a weapon in the space of a few sessions. And Hawke had said he’d learned to read even faster than she’d thought possible.

Even so, when it came to life-changing realizations - things that shifted his way of thinking like an earthquake, tilting the ground beneath his feet and forcing him out of the confines of his own beliefs - Fenris was unforgivably slow on the uptake.

Revelations. They always seemed to bash him in the face with the devastating force of a Qunari warhammer. Escaping Danarius had been like that; it wasn’t until Fenris had looked upon the aftermath of his own horrific mass murder that he realized that he couldn’t live under the yoke of Danarius’s control anymore.

And it wasn’t until he was clutching Hawke’s crumpled body on the ground outside the Viscount’s Keep that he realized he couldn’t live without her.

*****************

A few hours earlier... 

“Should’ve stopped by the Hanged Man and grabbed a bottle of whiskey,” Hawke panted as they ran up the steps to the Viscount’s Keep. “I could use a drink right about now. A little liquid courage never went amiss, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s probably best we didn’t,” Fenris replied. “Falling over drunk is not a defensive strategy I’d recommend.”

“But we could have offered some to the Arishok!” she said. “Friendly drink to loosen him up, persuade him to change his mind about converting or killing everyone… It’s a classic negotiating strategy, right?”

“I think we’re a little past the talking-over-drinks stage by now,” Varric called breathlessly from behind them.

Hawke paused at the doors to the Keep and threw Varric a rueful grin. “And that, my friend, is what’s really wrong with politics. Hardened enemies become fast friends with the power of a drink.” She pointed playfully at him. “You can quote me on that for that damned novel of yours.”

Fenris smirked and shook his head, but beneath his amusement, he was worried about her. She’d been cracking jokes nonstop since they’d found Isabela’s farewell note on Wall-Eyed Sam’s body. To Fenris’s eyes, her incessant humour was a clear indication of how upset she was about her best friend’s abrupt disappearance.

Hawke took a deep breath, then raised her eyebrows at their little group. The whole crew had insisted on coming this time, despite the obvious danger. “All right, kids,” she said. “Last chance to go home and hide under your beds. Anyone having second thoughts?”

There was a general murmur of negations and readiness, and Hawke grinned at them all. “Oh good. Then you lot can go on in for me, because I’m definitely going home to hide under my bed.”

Aveline shot her a desperate look. “Hawke, we have to hurry-”

Hawke laughed brightly, then shoved open the doors to the Viscount’s Keep.

They were instantly set upon by a small contingent of Qunari warriors. Fenris immediately phased through the nearest one, materializing inside of him and blowing his innards apart in a shower of blood.

The next few minutes were a blur of clashing weapons and explosive magical attacks, of battle roars and shrieks of pain. Once their final enemy was felled, Fenris straightened and looked around the room.

It was a scene of blood and disarray, but his gaze skipped carelessly over it all until he spotted Hawke, upright and hale at the top of the stairs. Her face was as serious as it always was in battle, but when she met his eyes, she smiled and blew him a kiss.

He shook his head in mock exasperation, then jogged up the stairs with the others to join her. Panicked screams were emanating from the grand hall, and Hawke jerked her head in the direction of the ruckus. “Let’s join the party, shall we?”

They all ran toward the grand hall, and Hawke didn’t hesitate this time before pushing open the doors.

They stepped into the room, and a familiar face stared up at them from the base of the stairs - a face that was separated from the rest of its body: the Viscount’s decapitated head.

Merrill gasped.

“Maker save us,” Sebastian breathed.

“Shit,” Varric muttered, and Hawke huffed. “You can say that again,” she whispered.

Fenris merely twisted his lips in rueful acknowledgement of the Viscount’s death. Frankly, he was unsurprised. It was only logical for the Qunari to dispense of the existing authority before imposing their own.

“Shanedan, Hawke. I expected you,” the Arishok rumbled. He slowly made his way down the stairs, ignoring all of them except for the dark-haired mage. “Maraas toh ebra-shok. You alone are basalit-an.” He opened his arms expansively and glared at the assembly of terrified hostages. “This is what respect looks like, bas,” he announced. “Some of you will never earn it.”

Then he returned his austere gaze to Hawke. “You know I am denied Par Vollen until the Tome of Koslun is found. How will you see this conflict resolved without it?”

Hawke offered the Arishok a sickly sort of smile, and Fenris suppressed a wince. He could practically see the quip gathering itself at the tip of her tongue, but he had to agree with Aveline: this was not the time for jokes.  

Before Hawke could speak, a sardonic voice called out from the door.  “I believe I can answer that.”

Hawke’s face slackened in surprise for a split second before lighting up with joy. “Bels!” she exclaimed.

Isabela sauntered over to Hawke’s side with an enormous tome in her arms, and Fenris watched her approach with no small amount of surprise himself. He’d been just as shocked as Hawke at Isabela’s abandonment, given how close she and Hawke were, but he was even more surprised at her return. Isabela had many fine traits, but it was clear from her antics with this blasted relic that loyalty was not among them.

After a moment’s hesitation, Isabela handed the huge book to the Arishok. “I’m sure you’ll find it mostly undamaged,” she said.

The Arishok took the book reverently, and Isabela shot Hawke a small sideways look and rubbed the back of her neck. “It took me a while to get back, what with all the fighting everywhere,” she said with a shrug. “You know how it is.”

“You fucking tart,” Hawke said happily. “Showing up at the eleventh hour. You trying to steal my place as the heroine of Varric’s book?”

Isabela folded her arms. “This is your damned influence, Hawke. I was halfway to Ostwick before I knew I had to turn around. It’s pathetic.”

“Yes, coming back to help your dearest and most attractive friend in the whole wide world,” Hawke retorted. “How very pathetic.”

Isabela tutted and rolled her eyes, and Hawke beamed at her until the Arishok spoke again. “The relic is reclaimed. I am now free to return to Par Vollen.” He turned his stare to Isabela. “With the thief.”

Hawke stiffened, and Isabela instantly dropped her confident stance. “What?”

Fenris couldn’t help himself. “You thought you could strand them here for four years without consequence?” he drawled.

Isabela glared at him over Hawke’s shoulder. “Hey. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

The Arishok ignored them and addressed Hawke. “She stole the Tome of Koslun. She must return with us.”

Hawke folded her arms, her face and posture now utterly serious. “Sounds like you have something very specific in mind,” she said cautiously.

“She will submit to the Qun and the Ben-Hassrath,” the Arishok said. “More than that, I will not say.”

Hawke narrowed her eyes. “Well, I don’t like the sound of that, whatever that means,” she retorted. “You have your relic. Isabela stays with us.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” The Arishok lifted his chin, then proclaimed, “I challenge you, Hawke. You and I will battle to the death, with her as the prize.”

“No!” Isabela blurted. “If you’re going to duel anyone, duel me!”

The Arishok finally deigned to look at her - a very quick dismissive glance. “You are not basalit-an,” he said. “You are unworthy.”

Isabela opened her mouth to protest, but Hawke held up one hand. “I accept your challenge,” she said.

“Oh no!” Merrill squeaked, and Aveline took a concerned step forward. “Hawke, wait-”

Fenris stepped away from Hawke’s side and gestured for them to back away. “Don’t interfere,” he said, primarily to Aveline; the Guard-Captain looked ready to pounce on the Arishok herself. “It will be fine.”

He took his place among the other spectators that lined the walls, and Anders stormed over to him. “How are you all right with this?” he hissed. “She’ll be killed! You would just stand back and watch her face off against that - that beast?”

Fenris didn’t bother to look at him. “She will be fine,” he repeated firmly. “Hawke is strong. Unlike some mages I know,” he added waspishly. He folded his arms. “Besides, it is her choice. She wishes to resolve this with as little bloodshed as possible, then I am happy to stand here and watch.”

“I can’t believe this,” Anders snapped. “You argue with her at every turn, yell at her for every other decision she makes, and now that she decides to face off against a two-meter tall horned warrior with battleaxes in both hands, now is when you just stand back and watch?” He leaned away from Fenris in disgust. “Why do you even follow her? Do you even care about her at all?”

“Shut your mouth,” Fenris snarled. “You know nothing of this kind of respect. You are unworthy to follow her, not me.” He stared venomously at the scowling mage. “Don’t speak to me again unless you wish to have your heart torn out of your chest,” he spat, then stalked away from Anders to stand beside Sebastian instead.

And then Hawke’s battle with the Arishok began.

Fenris had been fighting at her side for years now, but as he watched her fingers tapping slowly on the smooth handle of her staff, he realized that he’d never really had a chance to watch her in combat before. He was always at the forefront of a fight, while Hawke threw up barriers and rained fire and lightning on their foes from behind.

This was different from any other fight Fenris had seen her in. A single foe in close quarters, one who wouldn’t be tricked by some of her more discombobulating magical attacks: it was a duel in the truest sense of the word, and despite his confidence in her skill, Fenris was curious how she would adjust.

Her posture was tense and nervous, but her first dodge was perfectly timed when the Arishok lunged at her, and the fireball she threw at his back was swift and unerring. Fenris relaxed slightly as Hawke played to her strengths, maintaining a careful distance and striking from behind when the Arishok couldn’t deflect.

And then she didn’t dodge quickly enough, and the Arishok ploughed into her with a powerful lunge.

Fenris flinched as Hawke slammed back against a pillar with a sickening thud. She slumped to the ground and sat frozen for a second, then drew in a gasping breath and clenched her fist.

A glow of green healing magic shivered over her skin, and she was on her feet a second later, rolling clumsily away from the Arishok’s swinging battleaxe.

Fenris released his breath, then continued to watch her intently, feeling a bit more nervous than before. The battle went on for minutes that seemed to stretch like hours, and Fenris tried to quell his growing anxiety as she took a number of strikes from the Arishok, recovering each time with the help of her own healing spells.

She struck the Arishok multiple times as well, and soon he was limping from a bleeding wound to the thigh. But Hawke was slowing down. Her dodges and evasions were becoming less timely. She didn’t have a warrior’s stamina, and if Fenris could see her fatigue, then the Arishok certainly could.

That’s when the Arishok grabbed her by the neck and hauled her off her feet.

Fenris’s entire body went tense. Everything was frozen: his lungs, his heart, his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth - he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as he watched Hawke kicking her feet ineffectually, scrabbling to grab hold of the Arishok’s armoured wrists, then his bare forearms -

Smoke began to rise from the Arishok’s skin where Hawke grabbed it. Finally he snarled with pain and released her, and she dropped to the ground like a rag doll.

Fenris moved - a slight step forward, he knew he shouldn’t but he couldn’t stop himself - but someone was holding his hand and keeping him in place.

It was Isabela. She looked just as horrified as he felt, and her fingers were clutching his own in a death grip.

Hawke drew in a desperate scraping of air, and Fenris whipped his head around to look at her. She was on her feet again, the glow of her healing spell fading already and her lips drawn in a snarl.

She twisted her left hand in a vicious gesture, and the Arishok was encased in a cage of pure magic.

The huge Qunari warrior tried to slam his way out of the cage, but the snapping bars of light threw him back. Hawke heaved a huge exhausted sigh and ran a hand through her hair. “Friendly drinks would have been the way to go,” she said, her voice rough with fatigue. Then she slammed her staff on the ground.

A crackling pattern of ice appeared on the Arishok’s belly, crawling and thickening across his abdomen, and Fenris held his breath, knowing what was coming next -

Hawke jabbed her staff in the Arishok’s direction, and his frozen organs exploded along with the magical cage, scattering grey-and-red chunks of frozen flesh and viscera across the floor.

The Arishok fell to his knees. He lifted his eyes to Hawke’s face. “One day, we shall return,” he rasped. Then he collapsed on the ground with a limp finality.

For once, Hawke didn’t instantly reply with a clever quip. She bent over, hands on her knees and her long hair falling forward to hide her face.

In silence, the remaining Qunari began to file out of the room. Fenris pulled away from Isabela’s grip and strode toward Hawke, but she was standing upright again already before he could reach her side.

She smiled tiredly at him. “Remind me to bake them a cake if they do return,” she said to him. “A chocolate one. With icing. Everyone likes chocolate.”

Fenris gripped her arm and peered at her face. “Are you all right?” he demanded. She certainly looked fine; tired, of course, but there wasn’t even a hint of bruising on her neck, thanks to her healing magic.

She nodded. “I’m fine. Really, I’m fine,” she repeated hastily as the others all hurried over with worried faces. “Let’s just get out of here before-”

“Is it over?” A ringing, authoritative voice cut her off, and Hawke pulled a little face. “Too late,” she muttered.

Meredith strode into the room with a handful of Templars at her back, and Hawke squared her shoulders before turning to face them. “It’s over,” she replied. She gestured at the Arishok’s half-frozen body. “One chilled Qunari, as ordered.”

Her irreverent words seemed to break the tension in the room; someone laughed, and then the noble hostages were cheering and applauding.

Hawke cringed slightly, and Meredith narrowed her eyes. “It seems Kirkwall has a new champion,” she said.

“Oh Maker’s balls, please don’t call me that,” Hawke begged. “‘Champion’ is such a heavy word, it carries so much responsibility…”

But it was too late: the nobles were already calling her name, calling her the Champion, and Hawke rubbed her face and shot Meredith a half-hearted smile. “Thanks for that,” she said.

“I look forward to seeing how you will serve your city with this new… title,” Meredith replied, her tone positively dripping with subtext.

“I’ll be serving myself a drink or three first, if you don’t mind,” Hawke quipped. “Now if you’ll excuse us…” She edged around Meredith cautiously and headed for the door at a brisk pace.

Fenris and the rest of the group followed at her heels. Once they’d stepped out of the clamour of the grand hall, Varric chuckled. “The refugee mage from Lothering defeats the Qunari chief in single-handed combat,” he said, with much relish. “Oh, this is good. Nobody will believe it. That’s what will make it so compelling.”

Hawke groaned. “Please, Varric, give me one single day without having to make…” She trailed off and rubbed her face. “...without making editorial comments,” she finished faintly, then headed for the stairs.

“Hawke?” Anders’s voice was sharp as he called her name from the back of the group.

She didn’t reply, reaching instead for Isabela’s arm as they approached the stairs. “Now you,” she said pointedly. “I can’t decide whether to punch you or hug you. I knew you’d come back, you know. I knew you wouldn’t really leave.”

Isabela rolled her eyes. “You’re reading way too much into this.”

“Wrong,” Hawke said as she tottered down the stairs. “I know exactly why you came back. You know you love me, you tart. You wouldn’t really-”

She stumbled on the bottom step, and Fenris and Aveline grabbed her arms. “Kaffas,” Fenris swore. “Hawke, are you-”

“I’m fine, I promise I’m fine! I just need some air, let’s - we’re nearly…” She seemed to run out of breath, and her feet were dragging as she tried to keep on walking.

“You’re not fine!” Aveline exclaimed, her voice tense with worry. “Are you hurt? Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not,” Hawke insisted. “I’m just… need some air.” She tried feebly to twist away from Fenris and Aveline’s hands, finally wresting one arm away from Aveline to push open the door to the Keep.

Fenris kept a steady hand on her arm, and it was a good thing; as soon as she took two steps into the smoke-scented nighttime air, she seemed to lose control of her legs, and Fenris caught her before she could hit the ground.

“Venhedis,” he hissed. Her eyelids were at half-mast and her eyes were unfocused as they drifted vaguely across his face.

“Fenris,” she murmured, “you’re so… Have I ever… told you…?”

Her smile was lazy, and he glared at her. “Hawke, what’s wrong?” he demanded. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not,” she mumbled. “I’m…” She trailed off into silence, her body going limp in his arms.

Fenris stared at her stupidly, struck dumb by her sudden stillness. She couldn’t be - no, it was impossible. Hawke was never seriously hurt. She was too lively, too full of vitality and optimism. She couldn’t be…

A yawning terror suddenly opened inside Fenris’s belly, a pit of sucking fear the likes of which he’d never felt before, and he fought to breathe as he stared at her precious face. Wake up, he thought with rising desperation. Wake up, or nothing will ever be right again.

The words sat frozen in his brain. He was unable to speak. He was paralyzed by this new and petrifying terror. Then suddenly Anders was there.

“Move, you idiot,” he hissed, then shoved Fenris roughly until he shifted aside. Anders hovered his hands near Hawke’s temples and closed his eyes, muttering under his breath as a cool green glow emanated from his palms.

“She’s overextended,” Merrill whispered tremulously.

“What does that mean?” Isabela demanded.

“She pushed herself too hard without help,” Merrill explained. “No lyrium, no blood magic to supplement -”

“Her mana is almost depleted,” Anders interrupted brusquely, his hands still glowing with restorative energy. “Please, be quiet while I…” He trailed off, and the rest of the group fell into a tense silence as he worked.

Fenris was completely still. He could barely breathe, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Hawke. Her magic force was almost depleted - that force that he hated on principle, but which Hawke controlled so well and which was such an integral part of who she was. Of course Fenris didn’t hate that part of her, because it was her, it was Hawke, and he didn’t hate Hawke. He hated nothing about her, not a single thing, not her constant flirting or her pro-mage tendencies or her teasing the Templars or her inability to take most things seriously - he didn’t hate anything about her, of course he didn’t, because he loved her.

Andraste save him, he loved her. He fucking loved her, and if she died…

An interminable eon later, Anders leaned back opened his eyes. “She’s stable now,” he said, and Fenris’s heart thudded with a painful squeeze of relief. “She needs to rest. And she needs lyrium supplements, carefully controlled. But she’ll be all right.” He looked at Aveline, his manner brisk and clinical. “Aveline, will you-?”

“Of course,” Aveline said, and she carefully lifted Hawke into her arms.

They made their way to Hawke’s mansion as quickly as they could, ignoring the disastrous mess that the evening’s battle had made of the city. Fenris ran at Aveline’s side, oblivious to everything except the knowledge that Hawke would be all right.

She would be all right. The world wasn’t a complete ruin.

Sebastian banged on the door to Hawke’s mansion, and Fenris wasn’t sure if it actually took longer than usual for Bodahn to come to the door or if it just felt like it, but by the time he opened the door, the entire party was so impatient that they poured inside like an unstoppable tide.

“Guard-Captain Vallen? Brother Vael? I - what has - Serrah Hawke! Is she - what’s happened? The Qunari, did they-?” Bodahn was completely flustered, and Fenris was vaguely aware of Sebastian pulling him aside to explain the situation while the rest of them followed Anders and Aveline up to Hawke’s bedroom.

Aveline laid Hawke tenderly on the bed, and Anders immediately began issuing orders, sending Merrill to fetch some lyrium and Varric to get some cloths and a basin of water before resuming his treatment.

Fenris prowled restlessly at the foot of the bed, his eyes scanning Hawke’s face and body almost compulsively. She was so limp, her breathing so slow and her face so pale, and he couldn’t stop staring at her as though the force of his gaze alone would revive her.

Anders said she’ll be fine, he reminded himself firmly. He didn’t trust Anders’s ethics or motivations or his companionship, but he did trust the man’s healing skills.

“Would you stand bloody still?” Anders snapped at him. “You’re distracting. Stay still or get out.”

Fenris narrowed his eyes, his temper rising instinctively at Anders’s tone, but he forced himself to comply. If standing still helped Anders to help Hawke, then he would do it. He would do anything.

Merrill eventually returned with an armful of bottles from Hawke’s medicine cabinet, and Varric came back with the basin and the cloths, and Anders continued to tend to her, giving calm and quiet directions to Merrill and Varric as needed. Aveline, Sebastian, and Isabela stood at the sides of the room, waiting and watching as Anders worked. Orana drifted in and out, bringing extra chairs and glasses of water as they all settled into their sickbed vigil.

Finally Anders sat back on his heels with a tired but satisfied sigh. “All right,” he said. “I’ve done everything I can for tonight. The best thing for her now is rest, so I’d suggest you all go home.”

“Are you staying?” Merrill asked shrewdly.

Anders frowned. “Yes,” he said. “I have to monitor her, check on her every hour. But you should all go.”

Merrill folded her arms obstinately, and Varric chuckled. “I think you’ll be finding yourself on the losing side with that order, Blondie,” he drawled. “No one’s going anywhere.”

Anders scowled more deeply. “Well… You all need to leave this room, then,” he said severely. “Give her some space.”

There was a general grumble of protest, but eventually everyone drifted out one by one, with Bodahn’s fervent promises to set up accommodations for them in the other rooms of the mansion.

But Fenris refused to move. He remained at the foot of the bed where he’d stood for the past hour.

Anders frowned. “Go on, get out of here,” he said. “You’re not helping anyone by standing there.”

“No,” Fenris said simply.

Anders gave him a hard look, but Fenris calmly returned his stare. “I am not leaving,” Fenris said quietly. He shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other before speaking again. “You should get some rest. You… worked hard tonight.” He broke off and swallowed hard. This was the closest he could get to expressing his appreciation for Anders, and he hoped that the mage would accept it for what it was worth. “I can rouse you if she seems unwell. But you deserve the rest.”

Anders stared at him for a moment longer. “Fine,” he finally said, then rose to his feet. “If she spikes a fever, or stops breathing, or does anything at all except for sleep peacefully or wake up peacefully, then you fetch me immediately. Do you understand?”

Fenris nodded, and Anders gave him one last suspicious look before heading for the door.

“Thank you,” Fenris said, to his own surprise.

Anders frowned. “I’m not here for you,” he retorted, but with a little less heat than usual. Then he left the room.

Fenris returned his gaze to Hawke’s sleeping form. She looked peaceful and comfortable now, less like an unconscious invalid and more like her usual sleeping self. For the first time in hours, Fenris felt his muscles starting to relax.

Slowly and cautiously, he approached the bed and pulled up a chair, then sat close to her head. He’d been in this exact position a mere week ago, sitting at Hawke’s side after her mother had died. How strange and terrible for them to be here again so soon, and under such dire circumstances.

He gazed at her tenderly. Anders and Merrill had removed her armour and cleaned her face and neck of the majority of the night’s dirt and sweat, but her long dark hair was in disarray, a mass of sweat-dampened waves that smelled of acrid smoke. As Fenris studied her, his eyes tracing the delicate lines of her cheekbones and her lips, he realized he wasn’t alone.

He turned toward the door and found Isabela standing there, looking deeply uncomfortable.

She caught his eye, and they stared at each other in silence for a moment.

“Would you really have given me over to the Qunari?” she asked suddenly. Her tone was belligerent, but she was holding herself very still, like a rat in a cage.

Fenris frowned. “No.” He turned his eyes back to Hawke.

“But you said… that thing you said,” Isabela muttered.

“I don’t think you should have gone with the Qunari,” Fenris said. “But maybe you should act with some forethought on occasion.”

Isabela scoffed and took one step into the room. “Oh, like you should be giving advice.”

Fenris tore his eyes away from Hawke to scowl at her. “What are you on about?”

“Fenris, look at you!” Isabela exclaimed. She waved an exasperated hand at Hawke’s sleeping form. “You’re in love with Hawke,” she said bluntly. “Everyone knows it. You’re the only one who won’t admit it. Just do something about it already, won’t you? It was kind of cute two years ago. It’s not anymore.”

He didn’t bother to reply, because she was right. Silence settled over the room again as he watched the comforting rise and fall of Hawke’s ribcage.

After a long, quiet moment, he spoke. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

He raised his eyes to Isabela’s face, and she glared at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “I know you almost left after you dumped her.”

Fenris flinched at her scathing words, then calmly replied. “I was not judging you. I was just… asking.”

Isabela looked at him for a long moment, the defensiveness melting from her expression until she dropped her gaze to her fidgeting hands. “You’ll look after her, won’t you?” she muttered.

Fenris nodded. “I will be here,” he said. There was nowhere else he could imagine being than by Hawke’s side. It was a truth he’d been fighting for years, but the possibility of losing the chance - of losing her...

Fenris was a slow learner, but he’d learned this much: his life would mean nothing without Hawke in it.

Isabela lifted her eyes back to his face. Then she gave him a small smile. “I won’t be gone forever,” she said. “Just until this all… you know… blows over.”

Fenris nodded a silent acknowledgement. Isabela took a tentative step closer, then leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “You two had better be fucking again by the time I come back,” she said playfully.

He studied a lingering smudge of dirt on Hawke’s cheek. Isabela was waiting for a lighthearted response, he knew, but his heart felt so damned heavy, weighed down by the night’s revelations, and he didn’t quite have it in him to dig up the expected reply.

Isabela sighed. “Oh, Fenris. Someday you’ll get that pretty head out of your ass and then you’ll be happy, I’m sure of it.” She shifted, then made her awkward way toward the door. “I’ll… I’ll see you, all right?”

“Safe travels, Isabela,” he replied. Then he smirked. “I hope you do not die.”

She scoffed at his use of the Qunari farewell, then threw one last regretful look at Hawke’s slumbering body before leaving the room.

Fenris returned his attention to Hawke. Her hair really was a mess, and it was sure to get even more tangled if she moved around in her sleep.

He wanted to stroke it. Run his fingers through the dark mass of waves and rinse it clean of the sweat and smell of battle.

No, that was the least of what he wanted. What he really wanted was the reassurance of her heated and hedonistic body in his arms. He wanted the privilege of crawling into this bed and curling around her like he had when her mother had died, when his unconscious body had deigned so boldly to hold her when they’d both been asleep.

Fenris dragged his fingers through his own sweat-matted hair. Did he dare to admit, finally, that he wanted something? To tempt the cruelty of his life into taking something more away from him?

But this felt like so much more than wanting. This - her, the woman in this bed, Rynne Hawke - she was what he needed. He needed her as badly as he needed to be free of Danarius. Hawke had torn a hole in the fabric of his life, patching the tear with levity and humour and trust, and worst of all, with hope - with blasted, poisonous, fucking hope.

The realization was blinding: bright and bruising, brilliant and difficult to look at directly. Acknowledging that he loved Hawke - he, Fenris, loved someone: it was like tearing away a blindfold he’d always worn, like breaking the shackles he’d always maintained around his heart. It was another kind of freedom: freedom to want her, to need her, to… to feel something other than anger and hate and resentment.

But Fenris had never been particularly good at making the most of the freedom he already had. He’d run away from Danarius only to trap himself in the limbo of the present. For years he’d sat in a precarious kind of balance, with Hawke on one shoulder and his unknown past on the other. He’d refused to take any risks, refused to tip the uncomfortable but familiar balance of his stagnant life by launching himself wholeheartedly into either his past or his future, and thus he’d simply… stood still.

For the second time in his life, Fenris was free. And for the second time in his life, he didn’t quite know what to do with this freedom.

Suddenly Hawke inhaled, a deep draw of breath through her nose, and Fenris snapped out of his roiling reverie to look at her. Her eyelids were fluttering, and as he watched, breathless with anticipation, she lifted one limp hand and rubbed her cheek.

Finally she opened her eyes, her gaze roving slowly over the canopy of the bed as she slowly came awake. Then she turned her head and met his gaze.

She blinked at him with those beloved bronze eyes, then smiled slowly. “Fancy seeing you here. Yet again.”

She was cheeky as always, with a smile on her face as always, and Fenris thought his heart might thump clean out of his chest if it beat any harder.

He released an unsteady breath. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “You are devastatingly unlucky.”

She chuckled tiredly, then stretched her arms. “Well, I don’t know about that. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

It was true. She was alive, and Fenris had never been more vehemently grateful for Anders’s healing abilities than he was tonight.

Almost as though she’d heard his thoughts, she suddenly lifted her head and looked toward the door. “Was Anders here? He must’ve looked after me, didn’t he? Is he still here?”

Fenris nodded. “He is. They’re all - well.” He broke off, then decided against telling her for now that Isabela was gone. “The others are sleeping here tonight,” he said carefully. Then he hesitated before going on. “Do you want Anders? Should I fetch him…?” Fenris didn’t want anyone else to interrupt this time with her, but he would if it’s what she wanted.

Hawke shook her head, then rolled onto her side to face him. “No. Let him rest. He’s probably almost as exhausted as I was. I…” She grimaced. “Damn, Fenris. I was not prepared for that fight. The bloody Arishok, for fuck’s sake?” She shook her head in wonderment, then smiled at him and tucked her hands under her cheek. “See, this is testament to how lucky I am.”

He returned her smile, his throat throbbing with a potent combination of fondness and retroactive fear and incredulity. She’d almost died multiple times tonight, and her mother had died a mere week ago, and she called herself lucky…

Of course she did. That was Hawke. Her pain was inked on her back in twisting black lines so she could maintain that beautiful smile.

Fenris swallowed hard. He had no idea it could hurt to love someone this much. “Yes, well,” he said gruffly. “Anders said no more adventures for at least a week, so your luck can have some time to recover.”

She groaned. “Bedrest? Not having to run from Lowtown to Sundermount to save everyone? What a pity. Shall I gnash my teeth and wail in despair?” She yawned deeply, covering her mouth with her hand to hide the yawn.

Fenris smirked. “Go back to sleep, Hawke. You need it.”

She smiled again. Her eyes were drifting closed already. “Bossy,” she slurred. “You can use that bossy tone with me anytime.”

He huffed with amusement, but the smile was already slipping from her face, her cheeks relaxing back into the easy rest of slumber. Moments later, she was asleep again.

Fenris quietly studied her sleeping face, that residual smear of dirt on her cheek, the tangled ropes of her hair that coiled around her head and neck. A few minutes later, when he was sure she was deeply asleep, he reached toward her.

With this thumb, he carefully wiped the dirt from her cheekbone.

He hesitated. Then, very carefully, he lifted a lock of hair away from her neck. Gently, so gently, he ran the edge of his thumb along the delicate line of her jaw, then reluctantly lifted his hand away.

Fenris had to be with her. There was no question about it. But that meant that he had to act.

There was no excuse anymore for the suspended state in which he’d lived his life. If he wanted to be with Hawke, he had to know everything about his past. He had to make sure he hadn’t left any skeletons behind - figurative or literal - that would rise up to steal his future. He had to know if he’d once had a family, if he’d once been capable of caring for someone without hurting them constantly the way he’d done to Hawke.

Fenris had to be whole and good and strong, so he could stand beside Hawke and support her the way she supported him.

And there was only one way to find out everything he needed to know.

He had to find his sister.

[thenightling]

I deleted a post earlier I wish I hadn’t listing five or six things that have gone wrong for me this week until I broke down crying last night.

Shortened version.

1. I found out I was on a list of “undesirables” in the IMVU community posted on Tumblr. (my CountVladDracula IMVU account).

2. I got a suspicious private messages about said list trying to coax me to post the personal information of the page owners. It was very suspicious.

3. When I asked a friend of mine to look over the log of the conversation mentioned above I asked her what E-mail address to send it to. A day later she said “Not to start a fight but why would you need to know my E-mail address? It’s been the same for years.” I answered that she had changed it a few times over the years and told me she doesn’t check that one much anymore.

Instead of accepting the answer she gave a two paragraph rebuttal that felt like it was searching for a better answer. I told her it felt hostile and she said she was “crying.” The next day she admitted to being on the defensive but only because “we always argue’ and she proceeded to blame me for just about everything wrong in her life. I told her to just walk away if our relationship was that bad for her. She started to throw around phrases like “You’re invalidating my feelings!”

How do you validate someone essentially saying you ruin their life (only with less kind words)? I figure the best validation to that is acknowledge that’s how they feel and leave their life.  Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is leave the stage.  But apparently that’s not what she wants and I am too emotionally broken to try to figure out what she wants of me.  I’m not some abusive boyfriend whose going to beg “I can change!” when I don’t even know what the Hell I did.  

Also I'm tired not being allowed to be the one who needs emotional support.  I am tired of being the strong one. Never once has she been there when I have emotionally shattered and i fear the friendship is dead.  I don’t think I WANT to mend it. 

4. I’m worried because of a loved ones medical issues.  This one is actually probably 1 on the list as it’s the base of this stew of stress.

5.  That time of the month hit.

6.  My Insomnia is bad again.

7.  Two shirts I happen to like very much have random tears in them.

8.   Vertigo comics (the DC imprint) shuddered. Petty, I know, but it felt like the end of something important.

9.   This morning (before dawn) I discovered my uncle had destroyed at least two pumpkin plants I had planted on the side of the garage.  He knew I had pumpkins in the back but somehow “forgot” I had several on the side and they were coming in nicely too. How do you not recognize several large flat, wide pumpkin leaves when you’re hacking away with a weed whacker in bright sunlight?!  I had deliberately planted them right after the snow thawed because I had planted them too late last year. (Last year I planted them on June eleventh). So now it’s too late to replant those and I broke down crying. It’s silly to cry over pumpkins, I know, but I think it was everything else built up.  The strange, two-year-old IMVU blacklist, my own fears and anxieties, the lost friendship of over twenty years... The pumpkins were just the tip of the iceberg.       

10.  The Router is behaving strangely and every so often the computer won’t detect its there even though it’s lights are on and appears to be running.   

11.   Someone on Tumblr was debating with me about comics.  First about the theoretical physics in Endgame and then the lore of Fables.   But here they got very defensive of the lore and  why Bigby smokes.  This is a topic I will never justify. I apologized to them when they started to get upset with me. They said they wanted a “Real” apology. Now it got weird. They started to aggressively describe negative traits of my personality like they were someone I knew and had a falling out with in the past.  I was shaken by the strange familiarity but I told them I was sorry I hurt their feelings. And they responded with something along the lines of “Now say it like you mean it!  And don’t try to defend yourself.” It was getting really weird.  I was no longer feeling contrite.  I was feeling wounded, broken, and tired of the sense of being attacked from all sides.  So I called them an egomaniac and said I would not “bend the knee” for them and blocked them.  This person felt far, far too familiar to be comfortable. 

Trust me when I say it was weird"You never apologize for anything, do you?" (after I had already said I was sorry I hurt their feelings) "Like it or not you're a very MEAN person!  That wasn't a REAL apology.  Now say it again like you mean it!  And don't defend yourself!"  I was like "All this over my not liking the excuse for Bigby's smoking?!?”  It was REALLY strange and I was getting uncomfortable and fast.  

It was disturbing.  They started to attack my personality like they knew me and were angry at me for some old slight.

What the Hell is going on lately!??

[shreddedparchment]

The End of the World Pt.6

Thor, the Truth, and the Great Ocean Road

Pairing: Thor x Reader

Word Count: 2,342

Warnings: I guess this one has fluff? Romance galore, angst, glorious sunset

Masterpost

A/N: I feel like I’m churning these out too quickly. Am I churning these out too quickly? I can’t help it though. I get the idea and I just have to get it down and then I’m super impatient to see if people like it and so I post it. Should I slow down? I don’t wanna. This story is also kinda writing itself. I have ideas for parts 7-10...possibly an eleventh...Anywho, I hope you all love reading this as much as I love writing it. xoxo Let me know what you think!

The security you feel, cradled in Thor’s arms as you both soar through the blue and orange evening sky, is unlike any feeling you’ve ever felt before. Though the wind rushes by your ears, deafening you to anything but the vacuum of the warm air, you take solace in the feeling of Thor’s strong heart beating against his chest. And even though you’re happy in his arms, you’re also still reeling from your encounter with Tony.

His words had not been wrong. You are a liability and nothing more than that. You aren’t useful. Not to Thor. Here you are again, taking him away from his mission to find his people so that he can comfort you because someone had hurt your feelings. You shut your eyes against the wind, clutching tightly to his shirt, hiding your face in his chest in embarrassment and disappointment with yourself. He doesn’t seem to notice as he extends his arm a bit more and Stormbreaker allows you to fly faster.

Your skin prickles and the small hairs on your arms and behind your neck stand on end. You can smell the charge of the electricity coming off of both Thor and Stormbreaker, the crackle of that charge the only other sound mixed in with the overbearing wind.

Suddenly you feel yourself surge downward. You don’t even slip in his arms he’s got you so tight. Gravity pulls you down faster than it would if it were just you. With Thor’s added weight and Stormbreaker’s lead you all but careen towards the ground. The sound of the wind begins to get closer as the ground approaches. Before you crash your stomach is sent into a dizzying upset as Thor pulls you two out of the dive and you somewhat gently touch ground. He holds you up so that his feet touch first and the carefully he lowers you.

Once you’re on your feet you begin to take notice of where you are.  Beneath your feet is yellow sand, coarse and warm from a day of endless sun. Behind you stands a tall cliff made of limestone. It burns orange in the evening sun. The rush of the jade water fills your ears propelling you to a beach only half as beautiful as this one but more beloved because of the memories it holds for you. You miss your family suddenly and you feel just a little bit worse.

“What do you think?” Thor wonders. He sets Stormbreaker down in the sand where it glistens in the light.

He moves towards the water, his body relaxed and a pleased and peaceful smile on his lips.

“What do I think about what?” You ask trying hard not to let your mood taint your tone, but you can hear the regret in it and in your attempt to keep it from showing your voice is too quiet. Barely above a whisper.

“This beach.” Thor clarifies. “It’s my favorite of all Earth’s beaches. The road nearby is a memorial built for fallen soldiers in one of Earth’s World wars. It’s admirable that the humans wanted to honor their fallen warriors with such a beautiful sight.”

Ever the warrior.

“It’s nice.” You agree and let yourself look at its beauty with untainted eyes. The limestone pillars of rock that protrude from the shallow waters is particularly beautiful. The sun makes them burn as it slowly begins to turn the water to fire and the sky up above darkens, speckling slowly as the stars come out to also enjoy the coming night. The sand turns to a burnt orange, you look down at your feet and reach down to pull off your shoes. You let them fall and spread your toes, burying them in the sand. It really is beautiful.

“I’ve wanted to come back to see it for quite some time. I found it when I was last on Earth. I came with-”

“Jane?” You don’t mean to say it, but it comes out anyway. Tony’s words have you focused on her. Concentrating on your jealousy when all you want to do is forget it. To move on. To grow up.

Thor finally turns to look at you, he seems to suddenly realize that you’re not in the same happy place he’s in. His smile is gone, his brow is furrowed, and his blue eyes are searching your face for some sort of clue as to why you aren’t really here with him.

“I was going to say, when I came with Vision. It was a short trip but one that I greatly enjoyed. What is the matter?” He turns and casually moves towards you. His arms swing at his sides, his shoulders are relaxed, and the only indication that he’s vexed is his expression. Concern etched all along the corners of his slightly narrowed eyes as he continues to search your face.

You bite your lower lip, a bitter huff of a laugh escapes you, and you shake your head. “Sorry.” You whisper. You know he can hear you.

“Why?” He stops five feet away, leaning back on his right foot.

“I’m just, not myself today.” You look up at him and attempt a smile but only manage to grimace.

“Yes, I can see that. What has upset you? Was it me? Did I say something wrong? Or was it what happened with Hulk in the lab? He’ll come to like you, Y/N, do not worry. He will soon see how amazing you are.” He takes two steps towards you, but you take one back. He freezes. Real worry drowns his eyes as he looks down at your feet then back up at your face.

“If I have upset you, please tell me what I can do to make it better and I will do it.” He’s certain now that it’s him and you know he’s not exactly wrong, so you don’t deny it.

You lick your lips, tilting your head to the side slightly as you swallow hard. Honesty was the best policy, right?

“I finally got to meet Tony Stark.” You say. Your voice is surprisingly strong as you say it.

“Okay?” He urges you to continue but he doesn’t move closer.

“You’ve never told them about me. Any of them. I’ve known you since Sokovia, Thor. Why haven’t you told them about me?” You didn’t intend for your hurt to seep into your words but it’s there and he hears it.

“I had nothing to tell. At first.” He admits.

“Nothing?” You repeat in a disbelieving whisper as you take another step back. Thor moves one step closer in response to maintain your current distance.

“I meet so many humans when I visit Earth. I don’t tell my friends about all of them. That would take hours.” He laughs once at the silliness of telling the Avengers about all the humans he meets and though you know he isn’t laughing at you it feels like he is and you look away again, biting your lip. “And at the time-”

“I was no different?” You finish. “Just another human. I get it. Please don’t elaborate anymore.”

You turn as if to leave but Thor was your ride. Where will you go? You realize this and stop both because of this and because Thor suddenly rushes forward, taking hold of your wrist to slowly, gently, turn you around. He’s always so gentle. His hands are strong and can break bones and metal and other things so easily. His fingers glide gently along the length of your forearm, up past your elbow, and stop to rest on your lower bicep where they gently caress you. His other hand follows suit and he lowers his head as he tries to catch your eye.

“What else did Stark say?” You’re sure he can sense that there’s more to it, but you shake your head. “Fine, do not tell me. It does not matter.”

“Why can’t you just call me your girlfriend?” You spit it out because it’s been on your mind every time he’s introduced you to someone and though defining what you have with Thor has never been very important before, something about being thrown in with his friends seems to make it matter so much more. You hate that it does, but there it is.

“Is that what you’re upset about?” He half laughs as he speaks, still ducking his head to try and catch your eye which you keep glued on his chest. It would be so pleasant to listen to, his laugh, if your heart wasn’t aching and pounding. You feel the rush of blood in your ears as your fear mounts.

He laughs genuinely this time, a chuckle, deep and light. Pleased and happy. It makes your own heart ache. He pulls you close suddenly, pulling you into his arms as he rubs your back slowly then leans down to kiss your head. When you don’t speak he renews the distance and even increases it to about two feet so that he can look at your face which you finally let him see.

You’re crying. You didn’t mean to. It just happened. And your embarrassment grows. His own expression sobers as he observes you and the pain you must be feeling.

“Y/N, calling you my girlfriend has never felt right. I have known from the very beginning…well, no not from the very beginning. From the second time that we met I knew that you could never be my girlfriend. It’s such a human term. Trivial. It has always felt wrong to call you so because you are so much more to me than a girlfriend.”

He lets that simmer and though at first your heart had ached; his explanation begins to lessen your grief. You blink, trying to clear your eyes of tears, and attempt to read beyond his words. “What?”

“The word ‘girlfriend’ has always seemed so temporary. It’s not a word I want to use when I refer to you.” He clarifies.

“Then…what? ‘Lover’?” You wonder. Which to you sounds just as temporary as ‘girlfriend’.

“No, that’s just as temporary as ‘girlfriend’. Anyone can be a lover.” He agrees. “How about ‘Queen’?”

Your heart stops and skips a beat. Then stops again. Your mouth falls open and you finally bring your eyes up to meet his where his own electrifying blues are beaming at you.

He chuckles again at your, no doubt, ridiculous expression and reaches for your arms, once again taking hold of your lower biceps to pull you closer but not too close. “If I’d know this is what you were stressing over, I would have told you of my intentions when we were in your apartment. Were we on Asgard, I would seek out your family and ask for their blessing. They would have accepted me, of course, being a Prince of Asgard and I would only have needed to express to my mother that without you I would know no happiness. I would have told her the story of how you offered me shelter when I was wounded by a leftover Ultron bomb and how the kind and sweet woman who buys herself flowers asked for nothing in return. She would have accepted you, loved you as a daughter, and my father would have admired your strong will of heart so much that he would have had no choice but to accept you.”

You’re crying again but this time your tears are your joy escaping. The unbelievable miracle happening before you must be a dream!

Thor smiles that goofy smile that you know and love, wide, eye crinkling, and unabashed. He reaches up with his right hand to wipe at a tear on your left cheek.

“Since we do not have families to speak of anymore we can forgo the ceremony of my people but if Banner and Pepper are to be believed, I do have one observance that I must abide by.”

Without warning, Thor suddenly drags his right leg back and gracefully lowers himself onto his knee. He pulls you down onto his lap so that he can wrap his arm around your waist as his right hand rifles through a pocket on his pants.

“Oh my God.” You utter in disbelief as tears continue to stream slowly down your face.

“Yes.” He agrees. “I am, forevermore, your God of Thunder.”

Thor finally produces the ring; a thin band which ends in a Celtic knot, on which sits a solitary yellow diamond.

“What do you say, Y/N?” Thor sighs, seemingly as nervous as you are. You’re so dizzy that you think you might pass out. You went from sheer emotional torment to an extraordinary emotional high in the span of a day. “Will you be my Queen and rule New Asgard by my side as my wife?”

You stare at his soft, nervous smile, unwilling to believe that this God has chosen you to be his life’s companion. After what for him must feel like an age, you nod.

“Yes.” You whisper, unable to speak any louder for fear of passing out.

Thor chuckles heartily, his laugh sending vibrations into your chest.  He holds out the ring and you let him slip it onto your left hand. You look at his face, admiring it once more before you grasp the collar of his shirt and slowly pull him closer. You feel the scruff of his beard first as you lean in and touch your lips to his for a soft kiss. For the second time in your life, the world melts away in a blur of blissful haze.

As his left hand slides along the length of your spine and the right moves up your calf, along your knee, and finally comes to rest on your thigh, you can’t help but deepen the kiss. He pulls you closer, squishing as much of you to his body as he can.

Bathed in golden light, on the sands of a beautiful beach, you and Thor seal your engagement with a kiss.

@bionic-buckyb @mdgrdians @ulired @biawol @markusstraya

[blueyesandleatherjacket]

Ghost of you, 17/?

Volume: 1.

Number of parts: 17/?.

Pairings: Human!Nine x Rose; Human!Ten x Jack; Clara Oswald x Olivia Baxter (OC).

Synopsis: “Be thou spirit of health, or goblin damn’d, Bring thee air from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such questionable shape That I will speak to thee.”

A/N: I've started writing this fiction last year after I had a particularly weird dream (as usual) and after I wrote the prologue, I've put it aside to work on other stuff. I've gone back to it not so long ago and decided that it would be the fiction I would post next, after not posting anything for a while. I must have watched I am legend and Game of thrones way too much to come out with something like this but I hope you will like it. I am not a scientist, nor did I have a particular knowledge of sciences. I do my researches on the internet like everyone to make sure everything is as close to the reality as possible. I have a literature degree only. Writing is what I do and it makes me explore next fields, and learn new things.

“Prithee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo! How say you? / Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. / If charnel houses and our graves must send / Those that we bury back, our monuments / Shall be the maws of kites.” - Macbeth, Shakespeare.

CHAPTER 17:

Eleventh day of October. Day 1755 since the infection. Jack Harkness video log. Our researches are finally leading us somewhere. We have all this different information scattered and we’re trying to make them fit together like pieces of a huge puzzle. The noctiagus isn’t a simple deadly virus like the pest or the cholera. Unfortunately. We have the necessary weapons against those. The noctiagus is more like a cancer. A corrupted cell corrupting everything around it until the body gives in. It seems like nothing since we can’t cure most of the cancers yet but knowing how the virus works is a huge step still. We can adapt our researches to it. That’s what we’ve done already. The doctor Clara Oswald and myself are currently trying to find a way to fix the DNA and stop it from changing to the contact of those corrupted cells. This would be a great improvement for the sick people. And for our friend. The doctor Martha Jones helped us synthesising this sort of temporary cure. It has the form of a tiny pill that can be swallowed with a bit of water. Nothing too complicated. Except we’re afraid of testing it. Our only living subject is Maxence and the latest report on his health isn’t great. Testing it on him can be too dangerous. I don’t want him to suffer more than he does at the moment. And none of us wants him to… we want him to hold on. It wouldn’t be fair if he was dying now. The thought of Maxence dying forced Jack to stop speaking for a moment. He didn’t turn off the recording. He just needed a moment to breathe deeply and pull himself back together. He looked down, moved away, took deep breaths. Maxence being infected was a hard blow on him but there still was that hope to save him. Maxence fighting the virus had been a good thing at first but now… he was dying and Jack couldn’t handle that. He was putting his brave face on when he had to face everyone but deep down… deep down, he wished for this nightmare to be over. With all the geniuses gathered in this place, how could this cure still be unreachable? Jack ended up turning off the recording. This entry to the video log was over. He couldn’t say more. There wasn’t anything more to say anyway. The main information was inside. He sent the video to their common server. He didn’t mind what would be murmured behind his back for being so emotional. They could say whatever they wanted. They could even go to hell. His friend was dying for fuck’s sake! His best friend, the man who saved him from the consequences of after war. It couldn’t end like that. It couldn’t end before Jack found a way to thank him for this. He let himself fall on his desk chair and rubbed his face. It was hard to focus and worry at the same time. He hated this situation as much as everyone else in this building except for Colin. Colin who couldn’t harm anyone anymore thanks to Tegan. “Last time I’ve seen you looking so defeated, you were refusing my job offer.” For a second, Jack thought he was hallucinating, that the lack of sleep had finally gotten to him, but his brain was telling him that Maxence was speaking to him. He raised his head. His boss was sat on the chair on the other side of the desk, his legs crossed, and was observing him. Jack was a former soldier. Consequently, he knew that hallucinations came to him in his moments of weakness and guilt. The guilt to still be alive, the guilt not to have been able to save the men and women and children around him, the guilt to have killed in order to survive. Right now, he was feeling guilty for not working faster, for not finding a concrete answer, for not being able to save his friend and he was beyond exhaustion. All he needed was damn good news and days of sleep. Which he wasn’t gonna get this time again. He was clever enough to ignore the image of his boss. Last time he had spoken with an hallucination, he was in the psychiatric unit of a military hospital. Weeks after he was sent back home, he had lost his mind. He had broken down and his boyfriend at the time had had to have him locked up for his own sake. They had broken up because of that decision but Jack now had forgiven him. It had been the best decision at the time and he couldn’t see it. After that, he had gone back to his first love: sciences. That’s how he had met Maxence, how he had arrived here today. “Good thing I’ve insisted.” “What are you here for this time?” The words had blurted out of his mouth before he could hold them back. He stared at his boss straight in the eyes and folded his arms on his chest. He was aware that he was talking to someone that wasn’t there but it was too tempting to answer, to have a proper response to his questions. However, this time, Maxence remained silent and his image flickered. He looked at his hand that was almost translucent and frowned. A usual reaction when something wasn’t going the way he thought it would. “I came to say goodbye, Jack.” The former captain felt his heart furiously beating against his ribcage as if it was gonna come out of his body at any time. It was painful but the physical pain was nothing compared to the psychological one these words caused in him. ‘I came to say goodbye’ could only mean one thing and Jack didn’t like the meaning of it. He didn’t wait for the next sentence this fake Maxence could say. He jumped to his feet and rushed out of his office. He ran to the underground part of the lab, to the place his painful heart and the stabbing alarm resounding through all the building was leading him: where everyone was gathered to watch the worst happening under their eyes…

x

Tegan had thought that now that he had figured out who was behind this worldwide mess, things would be easier. He just needed to transfer the information to his team and they would be able to work harder on the noctiagus. With a copy of all the researches done by Myrtle Appleton that he had found in Colin’s computer, they had everything in hand. They couldn’t fail now. He was done typing the mail. The attached documents were done charging in the mail. He clicked on the ‘send’ button, closed the messaging service window and moved from his chair to his couch. He barely had his eyes closed for a bit of rest that he was getting a call on his phone. He groaned, pressed a pillow on his face and tried to ignore the call. How was Maxence doing this job? Worse, how was Harvey dealing with this whole building so well? The phone stopped ringing and he felt guilty for being so relieved. What he wanted was just a little bit of rest. Like the rest of his team, he was way beyond the exhaustion. They were all holding on to the nerves to find that cure and it wasn’t a good thing. Saving Maxence was becoming very urgent – more urgent with every minute – but working in these conditions was pushing them to make mistakes. Or to miss someone who was sabotaging their researches. Tegan was still feeling like an incompetent idiot for almost killing his boss. His boss… The words felt strange now that he was the boss and Maxence was a simple patient in his special unit. A patient with very worrying scans. The virus was winning but Maxence refused to let go. This was killing him, and Tegan wondered if the mistake he had made hadn’t sped up the process. His phone rang again and he couldn’t ignore it anymore. It could be important. It could be a life or death question. It could also be nothing. There were still blokes who thought that they were funny by calling people and scaring them. The communication means were almost all down. The CRCD had its own aerials that were giving the whole building a constant access to internet and phone lines. It was a real blessing in times like this. They were rarely getting calls from the exterior but it sometimes happened, especially through radio frequencies. Usually, they were coming from survivors that were looking for loved ones or for help. Everything was written down in a notebook and transferred to the appropriate security services. The normal police had long lost this battle and Tegan ignored if the messages they were transferring were helpful to the persons who launched them. He finally picked up his phone on the third attempt of his caller to reach him and mumbled something in the speaker. He hoped that it was for something important because he wouldn’t move from this couch if this was just for a fight that had occurred somewhere in the building. It was up to the security to deal with that. He had had enough to do with Colin already. The news he was given was far more interesting though. He sat up quickly. “Say that again.” The man on the other side of the line repeated his words. “Let her in. Lock her in a crate and take her to one of the sterile rooms.” He ended the call and pushed the pillow away. He also pushed the fatigue away. It wasn’t time to sleep. Not anymore. Myrtle Appleton had decided to come into his realm and it was his duty to go and welcome her in person. She was infected but, unlike Maxence, she had all her abilities. It was another sort of sick person and he was willing to work on this. He would take care of her case personally. Scans, blood tests, saliva tests. Everything that would enable him to find the answers they were all craving for. If he hadn’t lost his trust in Adam, he would have taken him as his assistant. He would have learnt a lot but he had chosen Colin and Colin had ruined him. Now, Adam had been transferred to a lesser job and he had been advised to shut up about Maxence’s case or worse could still happen to him. Being fired, having this behaviour mentioned in his file and he was done in the job. He stopped by the lockers room and pulled on a hazmat suit. He wouldn’t lose any time. He would start working as soon as he got there. He was closing the door of his locker when he heard someone behind him. He jumped and turned around to find no one. Once again, he called himself an idiot for being so easily scared of a small noise, for being paranoid. “I’ve always known you would make a great boss for them all. You just needed someone believing in you and the necessary push.” This time again, Tegan jumped and turned back around. A pale image of Maxence was leaning against the lockers and looking at him. He had that smile a father would have after his kid told him about an achievement they would have done. Tegan was a scientist and didn’t believe in spectres. So, he just rubbed his eyes to get rid of their fatigue and passed through the ghost as if it wasn’t there. When it appeared again before him, he thought that maybe some help for this new case would be needed because he was really tired. “Be thou spirit of health, or goblin damn’d, Bring thee air from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such questionable shape That I will speak to thee.” Tegan was quoting Hamlet in the beginning of the Shakespearean play when the young prince faced the spectre of his father for the very first time. His own ghost, the ghost of his mentor, seemed amused by the reference. If Tegan had believed in supernatural stuff, he would have been terrified by this. He had read enough Shakespeare to know what spectres could push you to do in their names, or just because they were the manifestation of a deep guilt. The Macbeths once experienced it and it led them to madness and death. “I am thy mentor’s spirit, Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin’d to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purg’d away – Are you a man?” “Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that Which might appal the devil.” From Hamlet to Macbeth, there was only one verse and they had crossed the line. Tegan thought that he might have fallen asleep in the end. This was too unreal for his liking. He had no time for such fantasy. He needed to wake up and quickly! “I’ve got no time for this.” “I’m proud of you, T. Keep up the good work.” “What?” The image faltered and, with a bright smile, it disappeared and Tegan was left alone in the corridor he had stopped in. For a couple seconds, he remained still, unable to move or think. Until the alarm went off. An alarm that made his blood speed up in his veins and fear crush his heart. He completely forgot about Myrtle Appleton, about her researches, about everything that wasn’t Maxence and he ran, ran like crazy toward the current disaster of the building.

x

Amy was standing in front of the wall of pictures. She was still in Maxence and Rose’s room but she was alone now. Rose had thought that taking a shower would do her a world of good after this failed nap – for her at least – and she had left Amy to observe her surroundings. The therapist wouldn’t say no to a shower. After such a deep sleep, she felt rested but she needed to refresh herself and to change clothes to feel even better. Rose had allowed her to have that shower here when she would be done and she would also lend her some clothes. It felt weird to Amy to have a friend willing to do so much for her. From what she could see on this wall, Rose was quite the popular girl. Her childhood might not have been one of the best but she had managed to beat fate and to build herself this life she could be proud of. These pictures were showing the story of Maxence and Rose’s life. It almost looked like a fairy tale to Amy. There was so much love between those two human beings that she was almost jealous. Her husband never loved her the way Maxence loved Rose. He never did any of the things Maxence had done for her. The scientist seemed like the perfect man that every woman was dreaming of. He wasn’t as handsome or sexy as those photoshopped playboys you could find in magazines but he had something. Charisma. Gentleness. Intelligence. A rare combination in a man. Rose had found the rare gem and everyone could be jealous about it. She hadn’t let the opportunity disappear thankfully. She had grabbed it and kept it and her knight in shining armour was now the damsel in distress. Funny how things could change quickly. Her eyes stared at another picture. A friends’ picture that looked almost like a family picture. Taken around Christmas time. Maxence and Rose were gathered with Allegro, Jack, Tegan, Clara and Olivia around a small barbecue on the balcony of some flat. Maxence was roasting some chestnuts on the fire. Amy regretted not having friends like this to share such a moment. Her last Christmas… When was it already? What had she done? Probably gotten drunk and been sick for the next few days. She used to love this celebration so much before. She was always overexcited when Christmas time was rolling around. But with William’s death… “It was our last Christmas.” Amy jumped. She hadn’t heard Rose coming out of the bathroom. She turned to face her. Her brown hair that she was usually colouring into blonde or red were falling on her shoulders, wet. She had pulled on clean clothes but hadn’t finished with her hair yet. That was why she had a towel around her shoulders so it wouldn’t soak her T-shirt. “Sorry. Thought you’ve heard me.” “It’s okay. I’ve got lost in your story.” “Almost a fairy tale.” “Definitely a fairy tale.” Rose sighed and sat on the bed. She used the towel on her shoulders to dry her hair the best she could without using a hairdryer. She would just do a quick ponytail. No need to do anything fancy for work. She needed to go back to Maxence. She needed to find this cure. “You can use the bathroom. I’m done with it.” She grabbed the brush on her bedside table and started brushing her hair slowly. She would dye it in any colour Maxence would like to if she managed to save him. If it was the contrary… She would certainly die. She wouldn’t have the strength to keep going. Amy didn’t move. Not yet. Her eyes were still on the pictures. She wished she had such a wall, such memories. It was never too late to start. Maybe when the virus would only be a bad memory. Maybe Rose would take her in that sweet band of friends. She turned around when she heard Rose gasp and drop her brush. Her face had gone pale and her eyes were wide open. She was staring at something beside Amy. The therapist looked at the wall but couldn’t see what was scaring her patient so much. “What do you see?” “Not in the mood for therapy,” retorted Rose. She suddenly was up. She walked to the spot right next to Amy and raised her hand much to the therapist’s astonishment because she couldn’t see what Rose was seeing: the pale figure of her husband standing there with an apologetic look. He avoided her touch. “I’m just an image,” he declared sadly. Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks silently as her hand fell back by her side. She never saw a ghost before but she knew how to tell that what was before her was real. His voice was distant, almost like an echo of lost words, and he was so pale she could see the wall and the pictures through him. As if he was nothing but a veil before her eyes. “Rose?” hesitantly called out Amy. “Why?” The question came out of her trembling lips. She had read enough books and myths to know that ghosts only appeared to the persons they loved. They were coming to say goodbye. A one last goodbye. There were people down there. They could save him before she even left this room. What were they doing? “I’ve never been that strong. My brain went through a lot when I was a boy. It couldn’t handle the virus any longer.” “You can’t…” Rose couldn’t form full sentences and Amy was watching her patient talk with a wall. Her attitude was clear enough: she was seeing her husband. It was her exhaustion and her anxiety playing tricks to her, making her hallucinate. She put her hand on her shoulder but Rose shrugged it off. She had no time to waste. Once again, she tried to touch Maxence. His image flickered and almost disappeared. She swallowed a sob. “I’m sorry, I wish our song wasn’t ending this way.” “I…” “I love you, Rose. In this life and all the others if they ever exist. Be strong for me, my love. Find this cure. Become the hero I’ve always known you were.” He bent over and she closed her eyes, thinking she would feel the ghost of his lips pressed against hers but there was nothing and when she opened her eyes, he was gone. She could have collapsed and cried but she swallowed the sobs again and rushed out of the room. She didn’t want this to end like this. Amy would have followed her if she hadn’t been facing the very same spectre Rose had been talking to. She opened her mouth but considering that he was barely visible now, that the image was fading away, she wouldn’t have time to say anything before he disappeared. He had one last thing to say and it was for her. “Take care of her for me. She’s the best woman you’ll ever meet.” “I will,” Amy promised. The next words he pronounced struck her. They were like a stab in her heart but in the good way. If a stab could be good in any way. ‘William wants you to know that he misses you and he’s happy you’re making friends again.’ Was he…? Her son… Was he around like Maxence? Could he see her and watch over her? She wanted to ask but Maxence was already gone and, the weight of these new words on her heart, she followed Rose’s path.

x

Liv was in Allegro’s cage when the alarm went off. Both of them raised their heads. Liv rushed to the interactive wall and checked Maxence’s vital signs. They were almost inexistent. She glanced at Allegro and mouthed a sorry before she rushed out of this cage to go to the other one. She dragged Maxence away from the broken bowl and spilled food and turned him on his side. The fall hadn’t hurt him badly but it was clearly not the matter now. She didn’t have time to lose. His heart was giving up because his brain was suffering from a severe pressure. The reason was unknown at the moment but they would find it later. Right pupil blown, cerebral fluid flowing through his nose. How had they missed the signs? They should have seen it long before this happen. She ran to the airlock and grabbed the medical bag she left there earlier. It would be very needed. She hurried back into the cage and knelt down beside him. She pulled out disinfectant and cleaned the area she was gonna work on. She hated this. She wasn’t a neurologist but she knew the process. She took the medical portable drill and cleaned it off quickly. Then, she pulled on latex gloves above the gloves of her suit and took a deep breath. Three fingers above the ear, two on the side of the blown pupil. A quick vertical cut. Ignore the blood. Place the drill in the middle of the cut. Drill a first hole. Behind the hairline, a bit off the midline. Second hole. Drill around the hole. Remove as much blood as possible. It was the process but she didn’t know what to do anymore now that the holes were pierced, now that the brain pressure was relieved. Tegan would know. That was his specialty. And she was just a simple doctor. Her eyes were clouded with tears as she was taking off as much blood as possible with gauze. Maybe a derivation would have been the best way but she hadn’t had time to do things properly. She was trembling. The life of her friend was between her hands and she was lost. “You can’t leave, Max. Not now, not when we’re so close. You gotta hold on. For Rose, for me. What will happen to us if you die?” She sniffled. Her tears were flowing. She didn’t hold them back anymore. “Rose will survive. She’s strong, she can do it but me? I need you. I need my friend. I need the man who saved my life and got in troubles for helping me. I need the man who gave me a second chance, the man who healed me with his kind words and hugs and support. I need to hear you tell bad jokes and I’ll laugh along even if it’s not funny. I need to see your smile again to think that the world is a good place. I need your presence to stop thinking that I’m unworthy, to think that I have my spot in this world. I need you to keep me above the water because I can’t do this without you, Max. Do you know how many times I’ve thought about dying and you’ve just come around and get this out of my head? Do you know how many times I’ve told myself that I couldn’t disappoint you after all you’ve done for me? Now is not the time, Max. This is not your time. I won’t let you.” She wiped away her tears. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t see a thing because of them. She was still cleaning that blood. There was too much, way too much and she was afraid that she might have done wrong. What if she had killed him instead of saving him? Rose would kill her this time. She would be so angry and devastated that she would kill her for ruining her husband’s last chance. “Please,” she begged. “Please, don’t die on me now.” Maxence had come to her too but she wasn’t seeing him. He was standing beside her, beside his wrecked body and was sadly looking at the scene, at his friend. She couldn’t see him because he was too translucent, couldn’t hear him because he was too weak but he was there. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I believe you’re stronger than you think you are, Olivia.” He was the only one able to use her full name, a name she hated for reasons only Rose and him knew now. “I believe you will go on with your life without me. And it’s gonna be fantastic.” He gave a small sad smile at the scene. He wished she could have heard him. He wished she could see how strong she was. He had been their cornerstone for so long and now, they were gonna have to learn how to live without him. It would be hard at first, but with time, it would be okay. He would find a way to stay around them, when he would be less tired. He closed his eyes. Now was his time to go…

To be continued...

Ghost of you © | 2017 - 2019 | Tous droits réservés.

×××

In the next chapter:

She could hear his voice now but she didn’t react to it. It was her grief speaking. Just a memory in a spectral form. It was no way to remember this fantastic man. She preferred keeping the precious memories of him smiling and laughing, the priceless image of the man who took her out of the orphanage when she was sixteen, the picture of him bruised after he got involved in a fight with his biological father who was responsible for her rape, for her miscarriage and her now inability to carry children. She remembered the many nights spent on the phone with him because she couldn’t sleep without nightmares, the many times he came over so she wouldn’t be alone and do something she would regret later.

×××

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English version:

AO3 || FF || TS || Wattpad.

[bazookapussy-stankhoe-5000]

BMC Headcanons

I have literally been thinking about this all day so

Christine knows sign language and taught Jeremy and Michael some and now they wont stop signing “i love you” at each other

(Rich doesnt know sign language and thinks theyre pretending to be at a rock concert)

Christine loves Disney and makes references all the time but Rich doesnt understand them bc hes never seen a Disney movie so she makes him watch a bunch of them

(his favorite it “Tangled”)

Michael drinks weed tea bc “I’m a refined stoner”

Rich is a musical buff so he and Christine sing musicals all the time together

Christine is also a history buff and her favorite musical is “Hamilton”

Rich is actually really good at sewing/cooking/etc bc his dad wont do any of that so he had to learn himself

Michael cronches bathbombs

(like if he and Jared existed in the same universe they would bond over cronching bathbombs)

sometimes Jeremy cries himself awake bc he misses his mom

Christine spends her weekends volunteering at the animal shelter and she spends so much time there they keep offering to pay her but she wont let them

Jake is actually really good at school he’s just kind of a ditz

(like he’s a complete math whiz and can recite the entire Constitution w/o hesitation but he forgets things like the role of Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet”)

Michael plays the saxophone

Brooke drinks five cups of tea per day

(during midterms and finals she pours monster into her tea)

Brooke and Michael are really good friends

Jenna has a bunch of hamsters and has dedicated almost her entire room to them

Chloe is a cat person and her parents got her a ragdoll kitten for her eleventh birthday and they are literally inseperable

(she taught it little tricks and everything and it likes walks and baths but it will literally only listen to her)

Brooke is totally more of a dog person and her family owns a chihuahua and a newfie

(they like to sit on her lap specifically chihuahua on top of newfie on top of Brooke)

Rich is a complete nerd and loves things like “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter”

Rich has a bearded dragon named Voltron and he likes to put wings he made himself on it

(Jake thought Voltron was a band)

every Halloween the squip squad gets together to go trick-or-treating and watch “The Nightmare Before Christmas”

(Jake refuses to throw anymore Halloween parties)

despite burning his house down Jake doesn’t care and he and Rich are still best buds

when the squip squad has sleepovers Brooke and Chloe do everyone’s makeup

(the guys get more excited about it than the girls)

Jake wears crop tops

Rich exclusively wears tank tops even in the winter

Rich also almost exclusively listens to 2000s bops and literally prays to Beyonce

Christine’s favorite scents are citrus

Chloe writes faster in cursive than she does in print

Michael has terrible handwriting whether it’s cursive or print

(like to the point that even he cant read it)

Rich and Michael watch anime together (especially “Voltron”)

Rich is terrible at video games without his squip

Jake calls Michael “Mike” even though he initially told him not to

“Michael’s gotten so used to it that he doesn’t care anymore and is actually surprised if he calls him anything else)

Christine and Jenna get really really excited about the holidays and buy everyone gifts

everyone celebrates Hanukkah with Jeremy

Rich absolutely hates eggnog because he only knows about the alcoholic kind that his dad drinks and he’s actually a little scared of it

once Rich becomes friends w/ the rest of the squip squad he celebrates the holidays with them every year

(before he didnt really celebrate bc his home life kind of sucks)

(also after he first celebrates with the rest of the squip squad he lovesthe holidays as much as Christine and Jenna)

without his squip Rich has no idea how to flirt of be in a relationship so he is incredibly awkward

Jake doesnt know how to dab and cant seem to get it right

(like this vine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4Hl6Rx-n_s )

Chloe insists on Brooke carrying her and it’s to the point that she’ll just lift up her arms and Brooke will pick her up

Jenna and Christine are the groups’ moms

Rich and Jake play Wii Sports together

if Michael and Jeremy are playing a game against each other Michael lets Jeremy win sometimes

Jenna runs a blog and is working on starting a project to save the bees

Chloe plays soccer

Brooke sometimes insists that she and Chloe have a movie marathon

(their marathons can span days)

Jenna and Christine are the Platonic Power Couple™ that everyone thinks is dating but really theyre just good friends

(both of them are hella ace)

(Christine is aro/ace and Jenna is an ace lesbian)

the group would go to pride together

(Rich would wear the bi flag as a cape)

(Brooke would paint everyone’s faces w/ their flags)

Jake’s the kind of person that would casually mention he’s not straight and then be surprised that youre surprised

Jake would fist fight anyone who made his friends upset

(except for Rich because Rich would have already fought them)

Rich wants to open a bakery when he’s older

Brooke wears a pan-colored beanie

(even at school bc the teachers dont care enough to tell her to take it off)

Jake has his left ear pierced

Brooke is really good at drawing and runs an art blog

Brooke is very empathetic and acts as the group’s counselor

Mr. Heere’s first name is Greg

(don’t ask why it’s mostly cause he reminds me of Greg from “Steven Universe”)

on father’s day everyone gives Mr. Heere a little gift cause he acts like everyone’s dad

Jenna is a fanfic writer

sometimes the squip squad gets together to play Kahoot

(it gets really competitive and friendships are tested)

Jeremy understands that grades are meaningless in the long run but still gets really stressed when he’s not doing well in school

Michael likes to quote really obscure movies that no one knows

Jake owns a melodica

(he also knows how to play the piano really well)

Michael insists that he and Jeremy take pictures together to put on holiday cards and send them to all their friends

(Jeremy wears a Hanukkah sweater and Michael wears a sweater that says “HO HO HOMO”)

Rich likes to stand on top of things to feel taller

Michael wears light-up heelys

Michael always forgets which is left and right but instead of making Ls with his hands he checks his headphones

Rich believes in leprechauns

(every St. Patrick’s Day he makes Jake go leprechaun hunting with him)

(Jake anticipates it every year and keeps the day free so they can)

Jake is actually really bad at using electronics

Rich insults Jeremy affectionately

(one of his favorite’s is “noodle-boy”)

(at first Jeremy was offended but now he doesnt care)

Jake has owned his jacket for a really long time and it’s falling apart but he refuses to get rid of it

whenever Michael has to say the word “squip” he purposefully mispronounces it (ie squemp)

Rich calls people “godfucker”

the squip squad celebrates the fourth of July and Jeremy’s house because Mr. Heere likes to grill hamburgers and hot dogs for them

(Rich likes to help him cook)

Brooke has two moms

Michael drinks milk straight out of the gallon

Jeremy keeps buying new patches for Michael’s hoodie

Christine has an obsession with button pins so everyone pitches in to buy her a button maker for her birthday

the girls like to go to the Ren Faire

Chloe makes her own incense

Rich has Jake help him make snowmen in the winter because he always makes the bodies too big for him to reach to put its head on

Jenna runs a joke tumblr blog that posts cringey facebook memes

Brooke taught Chloe everything she knows about makeup

Christine stays up late sometimes to surprise her friends with gifts she made

Rich asks Michael to teach him curse words in Spanish

Jenna basically lives in Barnes and Noble

(Christine would but she doesnt have as much spending money so she lives in the library)

Michael likes “Undertale” because it’s got a cool storyline and he adores the animation

(he and Jeremy do voices for it when they play)

Rich bakes cookies for everyone during the holiday season

everyone has gifted Michael a new hoodie at least once but he only ever wears his red one and no one can figure out why

Jenna is in the color guard

after joining the play that one time Brooke found that she actually really likes acting

I am so sorry for such a long post, but feel free to add on if you want

[miasesame]

“I am okay, I swear” pt. I: Reminiscing

To have the audio playing while you read, press "watch on Youtube" and then switch tabs to read.

Below is my playlist that I created post-breakup. The phase of where you are over them romantically, but miss the memories and the idea of that person.

This is for you. These are all the things that went through my head.

Ding! My ICal brings up an alert, a reminder that in two weeks, you and I will be breaking up. I hover my cursor over the event and click dismiss. Why do I do this to myself? Even one of my best aspects, my organization skills and tidiness, has its faults. So much for being a rational thinker. So much for thinking that a two weeks’ notice will initiate my post-breakup mode when I feel more emotion now than I have in my whole nineteen years of existence.

But do I say anything to you? Surely, your feelings have only grown stronger too. At least you act as you do. You laugh at my jokes and when you do, your head tilts back every single time. And every single time, I feel warm. We talk about our past, our lives running in parallel until this summer. For 19 years, we were in the same hometown, our houses a two-minute drive apart, the same ninth and eleventh grade English class, only tables apart, but no interaction other than the occasional “hi” or group discussion. Perhaps to you, I was just another friendly acquaintance in high school. But what about now? Who am I to you now? Who will I be to you in two weeks? Another friendly acquaintance. It seems backward.

Two weeks later. Ding! Another Ical alert but this time it’s final. There will be no more notices after today. There is a storm warning today. How fitting, I thought to myself.

We are spending the day together, the last full day. I try to gauge how you feel, but I cannot read your kind eyes and smile. Our footsteps are in sync: right-left, right-left, right-left. You put your hand around the small of my back as we pass a bunch of people waiting in line for the movies. The movies- a cliche first date. Too bad it was our last. I didn’t want the night to end as we drove around our hometown. We passed by our school and the Methodist church across it, the pottery place where we painted mugs, the cafe where we talked about our feelings for each other on a Wednesday afternoon in May. Our last date was perfect, so who was I to bring up wanting more, wanting long distance when we both agreed that was not the route for us? It's not rational to start a relationship with someone who is 3000 miles away. And so I didn’t say anything. I watch your head tilt back one last time.

It’s been three months, and the semester is almost over. There were a few polite yet strained conversations over text and Instagram. I am not even a friendly acquaintance to you anymore. I get one more two-week Ical alert: “Going Home!” I am going back to the place where we live a mile apart, not 3000, but now, we might as well be.

~M

[lunawho47]

Inside Straight -- DW/Fringe Xover Snippet

I find interesting things on my hard drive when I’m putting off writing my final papers for grad classes, lol.  I came across this old idea I had of an Eleventh Doctor fanfiction that had a teenage Olivia Dunham as the companion.  The plot was going to have something to do with the Master messing with time lines, and Eleven was going to run into Rose Tyler at the Bad Wolf Bar and have to try and conceal his identity so that she wouldn’t know the term “the Doctor” when she met him a couple of years later.  And Olivia was going to come across an on-the-run con man named Peter Bishop and get into all sorts of craziness when the mob boss turns out to be the Master.  

This following portion was the only bit I managed to ever write of it, and it was the opening scene between Olivia and the Doctor.  Rose is not physically in it, but to anyone who has watched five minutes of the show and knows how to read between the lines, she is very much present.

Enjoy!

The Doctor sometimes despaired of ever succeeding in getting Olivia Dunham to smile.  She had been travelling with him for nearly nine years — a long time for a companion — and in that time frame, she had smiled exactly three times, and he had initiated NONE of them.  Oh, she had responded to him, but it was usually with eye-rolls, a glib comment or notable cold shouldering.  Apparently, Olivia’s smiles were restricted use only for small children, classic screwball comedies and B grade science fiction films.

The teenager in question was currently studying the TARDIS environmental readouts, her eyes taking in his native Gallifreyan language with unceasing interest.  It was a daily ritual with the two of them.  She would study the odd lines and circles, looking for some certain pattern, and he would tell her its meaning.  They were usually quite mundane — pick up dry cleaning, need milk, clean out stabilisation rotor and wormhole refractors, save Earth from scheduled invasion by Vogons — but the language still seemed to intrigue and confound Olivia, to the Doctor’s never-ending amusement.

The Doctor watched with pride as his young companion’s green eyes got that spark they harboured only when she had spotted a pattern in the madness.  “It’s my name!” she proclaimed, and the Doctor’s answering half smirk told her wordlessly that she was right, but not completely.  She was as correct as her alien driver would allow her to be, but no more.

“Alright, what am I missing?”

The Doctor’s smirk moved from one-sided to a full smile, and he quickly turned from being her friend to being her teacher.

“It is your name, Olivia,” he began, urging her closer and putting his arm around her shoulder to bring her closer to the symbols she had spent the previous nine years learning to decipher.  “But it’s so much more than a mere mess of sounds.  This particular line of shapes encompasses everything that you are – your whole life story (as far as I know it), all your personality and your potential to the universe.  These marks are your soul.”

He patted the post-it note fondly, and quickly scrunched his nose in disgust when the ink smudged.  On impulse, he went to wipe the residue off his fingers on Olivia’s jacket, but she wisely moved out of the way, her mouth going downward into a familiar frown.  

“Will the writing change as I get older?”

“Of course!  The story isn’t finished yet, after all.  Every writer has to make some edits.”

“And what about punctuation?  Is there a Gallifreyan equivalent of a period?  What mark do you make when my story ends?”

The Doctor felt one of his hearts stutter at her words.  Nearly 2000 years (although he often told Olivia he was only 1400, which she never believed anyway), and 300 of those in his current from, and he still couldn’t find it in him to happily accept endings.  While he had known some companions a long time – Romana, Leela, Sarah Jane, River, Ace, Amy and Rory had never been able to quite give up their love of adventure after leaving him and all had come back to travel for a while longer after *officially* moving on with their lives – Olivia was one of the few to stay for so long without leaving at all.  He often offered to take her to her mother’s to visit, but she always refused.  Her green eyes, a much darker shade than his, but with an identical sense of burden attached, always got hard at the mention of family.

It was why he had invited her along – a nine year old girl sitting on a Boston street corner, her teeth chattering with cold and not a friend or parent in sight. He had been following readings on the sonic screwdriver, but had lost the signal (the explanation for which he never did discover), but had found her instead.  When he had offered to help her get home, she had insisted that she didn’t have one.  When aliens had gotten the drop on him (as they always seemed to do, especially in his current body), Olivia had saved his life.  When it appeared she truly did NOT have a home to go back to, he had invited her to come with him.  

Over the years, he had managed to extract some little titbits from her as to her previous life.  She had a younger sister named Rachel, an absolutely perfect and wonderful mother, and a drunken, alcoholic and abusive step-father.  Something had happened (Olivia never said what), and she had been thrown out and could never go home again.  The Doctor was positive there was more to this story, but he refrained from asking.  When he had come across her in Boston, he had been desperate for something akin to friendship after losing Amy and Rory, and he was just selfish enough to not ask questions that would make him give up the one person he had come to care about in the seven years since he’d lost his only family.  And in the intervening years, he’d come to care too much for Olivia herself to want to delve too deeply into things she obviously didn’t want to think about anymore.  This selfishness would come back to bite him sometime in the future – of that he was positive – but after nearly a decade with Olivia Dunham by his side, he was too attached to give her up so easily.  She was one last piece of family that the universe would not take from him without a fight.

The Doctor took a deep, yet silent, breath and forced himself to answer her. “No, there’s no punctuation.  The story of a person never ends; not even when the person’s life does.  The universe carries it on.”

Olivia pursed her lips, and the Doctor could practically feel her scepticism without her saying anything at all.  “Careful, Doctor.  You’re starting to sound religious over there.”

“Everyone believes in something, Olivia.  Even science is a kind of faith.  Rules, principles, axioms, postulates, theories – they all require that we accept something as truth.  Because even something that’s a law – that’s proven with empirical data – all of it has exceptions to the rule.  Nothing is a law one hundred percent of the time, but we believe that when we jump gravity will catch us, even though we know that there are plenty of places where gravity doesn’t exist.  Now, I may not believe in gods or demigods or devils or anything like that, but I have my own faiths.”

“And what are they?” she asked, coming around to him from the opposite side of the console and staring at the monitor screen where a single Gallifreyan signature was circling on the screen.

“I believe in *that.*” He gestured to the symbol, which was a series of interconnected circles and lines that formed so intricate a pattern that the Doctor knew Olivia would never be able to read it.  Olivia’s name had been complex in and of itself, but there was a distinct pattern to it – her time lines were diversified, but had a central point. The signature the Doctor was currently showing her was far more elegant.  The time lines shown through it were twisting and turning, and the signature looked different from every angle the monitor used to present it.  It was both a work of art and a headache for the Doctor himself to view.  He couldn’t even imagine how difficult it was for Olivia’s eyes to take in.

“And what is ‘that’?”

“It’s just another name, Olivia.  And, just as with you, it’s so much more than a name.”

“Is it your name?” she asked, her voice taking on the curious tone it so very rarely donned, and her green eyes grew impossibly large.  The Doctor laughed at her almost childlike wonder.

“No. That would be ridiculous. Something as powerful as that; do you think I’d leave that lying around for just anyone to read?  No, this is something very different.”

“Now you’re just being intentionally enigmatic.  Let me guess: some long, boring Gallifreyan name that sounds even more pompous than the title of Time Lord?”

“Nearly, but not quite.”

The Doctor smiled.  Olivia wouldn’t stop guessing until she knew, even if it took her ten more years to guess it. But that was alright.  Olivia could keep guessing; after all, faith was supposed to be a private thing.  He’d been praying to the same goddess for 600 years, and it had been 300 since she’d last answered him.  But he kept on believing in her – in that name that stretched through time and artwork and endless museums throughout the galaxy – because he couldn’t do anything else. In his mind, that name was out saving the universe, even 300 years after he’d last said her name out loud, because if he believed otherwise it would all be over.  His faith would be lost.  And he was just selfish enough to hold onto it.

[shitizsrivastava]

TB#10 || How Facebook Marketing is changing the face of business and why you should delve in it too.

Gary Vaynerchuk opened one his seminars asking people whether they have heard the name of a company called Wish.com. No hands were raised. It was then he told them that this company’s turnover is more than 6 Billion dollars. Then he waited for few seconds to note their reactions and they were spot-on what he was expecting.

Wish. Com is an e-commerce company like eBay and Amazon started by two young programmer friends at google and yahoo, which sell products directly to its customers and the most astonishing fact about that company is that it spends nearly 98% of its marketing money on Facebook advertising.

I reckon that when Facebook was opened to people in 2004 anybody literally thought that it would become such a giant marketing tool.

As of 2018, it boasts of more than 2. 3 billion active users. When Myspace died a few years after the advent of Facebook, the active users of myspace literally emptied by 2012. Orkut suffered the same fate. People thought maybe in a few years Facebook will face the same destiny.

Facebook proved them wrong. In fact, the destiny of Facebook is on ever-rising slope ever since they came into existence. The recent scandals like the Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal that maligned the name of Facebook briefly did not affect its user base, instead, it just kept on growing.

That is where the genius of Zuckerberg comes in. He didn’t start gloating in the glory of his billions of dollars in the bank and neither he got immersed in the intoxication of his massive popularity, instead he invested his time in researching, data finding and changing Facebook to make it better and better year after year, something that Orkut and Myspace didn’t do and you know what happened to them.

Facebook has become the premier marketing tool for business companies, top fortune 500 companies too, to promote their websites, products, values, contents and what not.

Earlier it was difficult to market your product as there were no absolute means. Companies hired marketing teams, advertising teams, research teams, analytics team which would cost them millions of bucks with no guarantee of sure shot results.

But today, all that team of hundreds of people have got concentrated to just one person whose only qualification is that he knows how to do facebook. Anyone on Facebook can open his page for free and do his own marketing, advertising, research, analytics and get done with all the work in few hours, costing him only a few hours and literally no money.

The old concept of opening an office and operating from there so that you meet people and impress them with your team, work and infrastructure has gone in the past and is now well replaced with a Facebook page where you can show your entire infrastructure, team and work where both the parties can see it from the convenience of their home and do business in their pyjamas.

Social networks earlier were just social networks but today nearly every social network has turned itself into a marketing tool and is helping thousands of business and startups to sell their ideas, profiles and products.

I pity people who are on facebook and yet avoid talking to people on it, refrain from adding friends on it and protect their profile like it has some secret information when the entire premise of social media is to share your life with other people. If it contains personal stuff, it is your fault so you better not put it there. It is as simple as that.

I use Facebook for my personal benefits. not for sharing my personal life. These days meeting people in their offices is very difficult so I contact most of the people on Facebook and nearly every time they would reply to me without ever asking where my office is.

I don’t have to take appointments anymore and I don’t have to bother calling their secretary again and again and bombarding them with my resume and visiting card. My profile is now my resume and my profile is now my visiting card.

Most importantly I have used Facebook to arrange workshops, seminars and inform people about my work. Imagine this — earlier I had to make DVDs and CDs of my work and force people to watch them because there was process attached to it on their part also. They had to take the DVDs out, put it on the DVD player and watch it but they would close it if the first few seconds were not good. Most of the time they would not even watch it.

Today however they will at least take a look because they don’t have to do anything. While scrolling their feed if my video pops up, it plays automatically and no matter whether they chose to watch it or not, they get to at least know about it.

I also use Facebook as a means to update myself on what is going in the world and in the lives of people. I am a filmmaker and facebook updates me about who is doing what in the film industry all the time. My entire knowledge of the film industry and whos who mostly comes from Facebook. Facebook is my magazine, my directory and my newspaper.

When Facebook realized that marketers are using its users to promote their products through profiles, messages and pages they started offering their own services.

Now you don’t even have to own a website to become influential on the internet. All you have to do is make a facebook page, post content and start increasing your followers so that you can shout about your products and work on it.

Yes, I do understand that with due course of time the digital marketing on Facebook and other platforms have become complex and now there are courses offered to teach people how to reap the maximum benefits from it.

Institutes like IIMs and other top universities all across the world now have Digital marketing as a major in their curriculum. Philips Kotler has even written a book about Digital Marketing. So yes, the abundant case studies and the analytics is a little complex, but then it is an only a little complex. I can assure you that if you will watch only ten videos on any digital marketing topic, you won’t need the eleventh video to find yourself expert in doing it. It is not obvious but at the same time, it is not that difficult that only people with a certain degree can understand it.

However, let me make it easy for you. No one still knows exactly how the digital marketing works and the more rules and case studies they are creating every week, more exceptions to those rules and case studies are popping up every day on the internet. They are guessing in the guise of chapter names and specific works, that’s it.

If you meet a digital marketer, he would throw heavy words on you like CPC, CPA, CPM, CTR, organic views, backlinks, bounce rates, crawler and many more but when you get to know what they mean you will realize that they are just random jargons and means the most obvious thing. Like CPC means cost per click. How difficult it is to decipher it? Backlinks are links to previous articles in the current articles that take you to other articles which helps in increasing user time on your website. Was that difficult to know? I don’t think so.

Facebook is pretty easy and simple to use. Just remember this one rule — show, don’t tell.

Put a lot of photos on Facebook to attract people to your page. There might be things which you think are not very important which you can put in simple text and post it as a status but try to avoid that. Try putting texts on photos and ahem, try to attach a human face next to it. It affects people psychologically and makes them want to read it. The mind thinks in terms of images and the more images you will use to define your ideas, the more successful you will get.

Facebook does not have too many restrictions on their posts like many other social networks. Some websites only allow photos, some allow mostly texts but Facebook allows everything and the interface it uses is really simple which makes it all the more useful for people, even people who haven’t handled internet before. My parents who are not tech savvy can use only Facebook and WhatsApp on their mobile. I tried introducing them to other social networks but they just don’t get it. There is a reason why more than 2 billion people are using it every day.

You don’t have to employ yourself in posting content every day. The best part of social media networks these days is that they are very friendly to marketing people and inviting more and more people to use their platform to promote their products. Making it complex will limit its use too few specialized people. The interface of Facebook is designed simple because they want more and more people to feel powerful and not helpless. If they find you suffering from a problem and simultaneously they find more users suffering from the same problem than they will introduce a new algorithm to make it useful for you. That is why they keep collecting data from users, their browsing patterns and keep asking them for their reviews. Constant updates on their interface is what makes facebook stand out.

Use Facebook wisely and it can turn your business into an overnight success. There are numerous courses like LinkedIn Learning, Lynda, Udemy and myriads videos on YouTube to teach you everything you want to know about it. Start working.