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animereaderinsertwriter · 3 years ago

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Cupbearer (Eren/Reader)

Part III

Part I

Part II

Part IV (in progress)

Warnings: MINORS DO NOT INTERACT (im watching you, if you see this, begone!), vampire!eren, hunter!reader, fem!reader, smut, some amount of predator/prey dynamics but only kinda?? there is also a significant age difference but only cos eren is immortal and all that jazz. we're all adults here. there will eventually be smut.... and do i really need to say that there's gonna be blood in a vampire fic?

Description: A story of falling in love in 4 parts.

Eren is a bad man (well, a bad Creature) who has done bad things. When he meets the great-great-great granddaughter of one of his former friends in his favorite blood bar, however, he thinks it might not matter so much what happened in the past, so long as he can make the future something worth living to see.

Ao3 link here

After that night, it became increasingly hard for (Y/N) to leave, and for Eren to let her do so.

Something between them had changed. There were moments— when Eren would press feather-light kisses against her forehead, when he would casually leave a cup of her favorite tea where she would find it— where (Y/N) felt as though her heart might burst. It was all the little things that baffled her, all the ways in which he seemed to understand exactly how she felt; it was as though he knew her more than she knew herself. On the mornings that she would wake in his bed, sleepy and sticky and wholly content, (Y/N) wondered what it would be like to have this life forever.

Other days— on days like today— she was reminded exactly why that could never be, and it broke her heart.

Today, they had planned a romantic dinner in the park, an evening under the stars. It was supposed to be something special, a little getaway just for the two of them; they had wanted to leave as soon as (Y/N) was relieved from her patrol, so Eren had moved her things to his place, hoping that they could leave together from there for their evening alone.

In and of itself, that was fine… but when (Y/N) came in, covered head-to-toe in viscous Creature blood, Eren was furious.

“And you call me a monster,” he growled, looking her up and down with hate in his eyes. “I can’t believe you.”

He stood from his seat on the sofa, and (Y/N) began to back away, still wary from the fight she had narrowly escaped from unscathed. Her every instinct told her that she should run, fire a round of silver bullets into his chest, but she steeled herself, doing neither.

“It’s not my fault— they were attacking a civilian,” she told him as he stalked towards her, his face twisted into a horrific scowl. “I tried to stop them— tried to find out what was going on— but then they came at me with their claws, and I was left with no choice.”

“There is always a choice,” he snarled, and it was then that anger filled (Y/N) from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. "They were probably terrified of you— how could you possibly blame them for lashing out?"

(Y/N) grit her teeth.

“This, from the man who thought genocide was his only option to the same problem?”

Eren made a low, warning sound in the back of his throat, but (Y/N) pressed on.

“You would rather me have died?” she demanded, stepping into his space. “Would it have pleased you more for my body to bleed out on the pavement, ripped to shreds by an aggressive werewolf? Would you even care, or would you just find the next blood bag and move on with your life?”

“Maybe so,” he shot back, “Then I wouldn’t have to deal with your insufferable mouth.”

That stung— but if there was one thing (Y/N) knew how to do, it was to strike back twice as hard as she had been struck.

“Fine then,” she said, turning on her heel. “I won’t bother you any longer. I’ll go out and find someone who actually wants my company, someone who’ll fuck me good and proper over the counter at some hole-in-the-wall bar over on Easy Street, someone younger, with a nicer cock and less fucking baggage— ”

She didn’t get to finish the sentence, or even walk a single step further— Eren grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to him, his fist painfully tight against her scalp.

“Wanna say that again, to my face?” he asked, tilting her head back.

“I’ll go find someone else to fuck me,” she spat, struggling in vain against him. “I’ll spread my legs for the next available schmuck in the closest bar I can find, so you can hear me scream his name and not yours.”

It was a low blow, to threaten a vampire’s claim on something they had previously assumed had belonged to them, but (Y/N) didn’t care. She had almost died today, and she’d be damned if she was going to take shit from anyone about what she had to do to survive. If Eren wanted a fight, she would damn sure give him one.

“Like hell you will,” he told her, pulling her head back so that she had to strain to remain standing. “You’re mine. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood— you are my Companion.”

"I belong to no one!"

Those words ripped from her throat and echoed throughout the empty house, and it was then that Eren stopped, looking at her with calculation in his gaze.

"You're right," he said, releasing her hair. "No mortal can serve two masters, lest they love one and despise the other; an archaic religious concept, but an accurate one nonetheless. You've made it abundantly clear where your loyalty lies. I was a fool for thinking otherwise."

(Y/N) began to tremble. "Eren, what are you saying?"

"I release you from our pact," he replied coldly, his eyes so dull and lifeless that it sent a chill down her spine. "No longer are you bound to be my wine-press— I free you from me."

"Eren—"

"Go," he commanded, and (Y/N) felt terribly, horribly empty.

Once, he would have told her to come freely, go safely, and leave something of the happiness she brought him; now, he gave her a cold dismissal, and it frightened her more than she was willing to admit. Still, she went, feeling hollow and used, and she didn't bother to shut the door behind her as she turned to walk home, weary from the day and sick from fighting.

***

Armin had lived for a very long time, but even so, he had yet to meet anyone so foul of temper as Eren when the Hunger was on him.

"Eren, you have to feed."

The vampire, as ill in health as in temper, glared weakly at him. "I'm not hungry."

"But you are Hungry, and don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. Look, if this is about that girl—"

"I told you not to speak of her!"

Ah, so it was about her. By the looks of him, it had been two weeks since Eren had fed; Armin would bet that he hadn't seen her in the same amount of time.

"If I need to, I'll drag her here to make up with you myself," said Armin testily, "I refuse to watch my best friend starve himself because he refuses to feed on anyone else."

"You will not touch her."

Armin rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything further. He just patted Eren's arm in farewell and set about finding the little lady who was the root cause of his current consternation.

It took longer than Armin had anticipated to find the young woman who had, for all intents and purposes, completely unraveled Eren's composure; her scent, while thick and memorable in Eren's apartment, was hard to track otherwise. Armin spent two hours just wandering the city while trying to catch a breath of it here or there, and when he finally did manage to catch a whiff of her scent and follow it to her, he understood exactly why it had been so hard to track her down.

The girl was a Hunter, of all things.

When Armin found her, she was knee-deep in sewage, her knife embedded to the hilt in the skull of what appeared to be some species of winged reptile. Armin, having been a tad desperate and not actually having been expecting to find anything when he lifted the lid to the man-hole on 32nd and Main, was surprised to say the least— and when (Y/N) ripped her knife free and readjusted her stance into a defensive one directed at him, his surprise turned to intrigue.

“Er, hello there,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “I don’t suppose you’ll take my word for it that I just want to chat, will you?”

Curiously, the words gave the woman pause. She relaxed her stance ever-so-slightly, and then her eyes lit up with recognition.

“Armin Arlert?” she queried, craning her neck up to see him. “Is that you?”

This one grows curiouser and curiouser, he thought, but responded affirmatively.

“Can you give me a bit, then?” she asked, kicking the corpse of the Creature she’d just killed. “I’m not exactly fit for company. Perhaps we could meet later for a discussion over tea?”

“I’m afraid it’s urgent,” he said as she knelt to decapitate her prey— likely for proof of victory. “I think you know why I’m here, so you understand that time is of the essence.”

She didn’t look up at him as she replied.

“If this is about Eren, then I don’t have time to talk.”

Her tone was hard, bitter, and matter-of-fact, and it reminded Armin so much of Jean that it hurt… but just like Jean, Armin would bet that she could be won over by appealing to her inherent sense of human decency

“He’s suffering (Y/N),” he said, awkwardly crouching above the manhole so that she could better see the truth written in his eyes. “He won’t feed.”

“That’s hardly my problem.”

And oh, how well Armin knew that state of mind. If there was one thing Eren Jaeger knew how to do, it was push away the people who loved him most. Armin had dealt with that particularly lovely quirk of his for centuries, and it never got easier to deal with no matter how much time passed. If anything, it got more difficult the older they both got.

“When you’re the solution to a problem, you become a part of it whether you like it or not,” Armin replied, patient and understanding. “He cares for you.”

(Y/N) looked up at him then, fury in her eyes.

“He hurt me.”

Armin shrugged. “He hurts everyone he cares about. It’s just who he is. Nothing comes for free— least of all the love and loyalty of someone as old and as powerful as Eren.”

“Your heart may be toughened to his meanness,” she told him, the head of the creature she’d slain in her hands, “But mine is not, and I don’t like him well enough to willfully remain for him to use as an emotional punching bag.”

At that, Armin couldn’t help but let loose a wry grin.

“No,” he said, “I should think not; but I do think you love him well enough to make sure he doesn’t starve himself to death because he can’t have you.”

(Y/N) was silent for a long moment, then she crossed her arms.

“I won’t come crawling to him. He’s going to have to come to me.”

Armin grimaced. He wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

“Is that at all negotiable?”

(Y/N) shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

Well, there was nothing for it.

“And you will let him feed if he comes to you?”

(Y/N) thought, then nodded. “If he proves himself deserving.”

Armin couldn't help himself; he laughed. Eren might have met his match in this one.

"Very well. I'll work my magic, and you work yours."

She nodded and bade him farewell, but before Armin left, he paused.

"Hey, (Y/N)?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

With that, he left her, ready to take Eren by the ear and throw him at her if he had to.

***

(Y/N)'s heart was racing as she opened the door, knowing good and well who would be behind it.

After her little talk with Armin— and the near heart attack he had given her in the process— she had called in to Zeke and told him she needed to go home to deal with an emergency. A replacement for her patrols had been sent, and she had come home to wash the grim from her skin, making herself as presentable as possible with the time she had. (Y/N) was worried, so worried, that the filth she had been wading in earlier would have left a lingering stench, or even that it had affected the taste of her; she had scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was raw, hoping to erase every last remnant of her day from her skin…but as it turned out, she needn't have bothered.

Two, three, four hours later, and Eren hadn't shown— it was only now, right at the six hour mark, that he had decided to come to her.

Needless to say, (Y/N) was… less than pleased, but when she opened the door to find Eren pale and drawn, with dark circles beneath his eyes, her heart softened ever-so-slightly. It seemed that Armin was right; he had been suffering.

"You look like shit," she told him quietly, opening her door widely to let him in.

"I assure you, I feel worse," Eren grumbled, but stepped in as she closed the door behind him.

For a long, awkward moment, they just looked at each other, silent and unsure. It was unsettling how unlike himself Eren seemed; he was almost soft when he looked at her, and (Y/N) didn't know how to feel about it. Eventually, though, like two opposite ends of a magnet, they were drawn together, and Eren brushed a piece of hair back from her face.

"Hi," he said, his voice low and rough. (Y/N) caught his hand in hers before it could fall from her hair, and she pressed it against her chest, keeping it trapped there, touching the skin above her beating heart.

"Hey."

They watched each other a moment more before the dam broke between them, and they both spoke at once.

"I'm sorry."

A shared grin, a shy laugh— and then (Y/N) said what they both were thinking.

"You need to feed first, and talk later," she told him, her hand still clasped in his. "You're not off the hook, but I doubt we can have any real conversation with you like this."

Eren nodded gratefully, tugging at her wrist— his usual biting spot— but (Y/N) shook her head, indicating her neck. The thickest, richest blood, she knew, would come from there; and if there was ever a time to be generous with the placement of Eren's bite, she figured that it would be now.

The worst of it was over quickly. There was a brief sting at the intrusion of razor-sharp fangs, and then the vaguely uncomfortable feeling of having something poking down into places that decidedly should not be poked at all, but then (Y/N) quickly eased into the rhythm of the act, focusing wholly on the way Eren's lips felt against her skin. In a few moments, she would become pleasantly light-headed, and then Eren would pull away and look at her like she'd hung the stars. Oh, how she'd missed that look! (Y/N) found herself longing for it even before she quite realized it.

And then, without warning, a vision came, and (Y/N) was swept into another world entirely.

The evening sky rolled endlessly out towards the horizon; it seemed to go on forever, sparkling with more stars than (Y/N) had ever seen before. The full moon was so bright that it cast the whole world in what seemed like silver sunlight, and (Y/N) wondered how anyone could sleep on a night such as this. It was far too beautiful an experience to miss.

Alongside her— alongside Eren, through whose eyes she saw the world— strode Armin and two older-looking cadets who she recognized from previous memories as Reiner and Berthold. Eren was feeling anxious over something, and Reiner and Berthold were… well, they were kind. Reiner especially seemed to be like an older brother, and Eren admired him.

"You'll do just fine tomorrow," said Reiner, placing a large, warm hand on Eren's shoulder. "I'm certain of it."

The memory ended, and (Y/N) came back to herself as Eren's tongue laved over the wounds his fangs had left in her neck, sealing them.

"See anything?" he asked, his breath warm against her skin, and (Y/N) nodded.

"You loved them, too," she said softly, remembering the fondness Eren had felt as though it had been her own. "You loved the Hunters that tried to take everything from you, and— and I think they loved you, too."

Eren pulled away from her, and it was then that she saw the tears shining in his eyes.

"Yes," he replied, his voice broken. "We were children. How could we not love each other as God intended? Hate was never in our nature; it was an inheritance that we couldn't escape."

He paused for a moment, then spoke again.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he told her, cupping her cheek in his hand. "I lost my temper. I forget— I forget that you're not them."

And (Y/N) understood. She understood that no matter how many centuries passed, there would be wounds that just wouldn't heal for Eren. He would lash out at things that wouldn't make sense to anyone who hadn't experienced the horrors of war as he had. Suddenly, she felt petty for having lashed out as she had, and guilt threatened to rise up and choke her.

"You're forgiven," she replied, leaning into his touch. "It takes two to tango— I shouldn't have baited you like I did. I knew how badly that would hurt you, and that's exactly why I said it."

At that, Eren cracked a grin.

"I expect nothing less from a Kirschtein. Your grandfather would have punched me square in the jaw— and as big as that bastard got when we were older, he probably would have put me on my ass."

(Y/N) couldn't help but laugh, and Eren joined her, their combined joy swelling until there was nothing else in the world but their happiness.

How they started kissing, neither one of them would be able to say afterwards, but in the grand scheme of things, it hardly mattered. Their love was too large to contain, too much to hold back— and it was love, (Y/N) realized, though she hadn't quite put words to it yet. She loved Eren Jaeger, a Creature, a monster, as much as her grandfather before her had and more. She loved him with a desperation that felt like being knocked over by an ocean wave and plunged into depths where her feet no longer touched the sand. She loved him more than she had ever loved anyone before.

And, as he placed her gently on her bed that was barely big enough for two, divesting himself of his shirt above her, (Y/N) thought that maybe she didn't mind it so much as long as he loved her in return.

"I missed you," said Eren, dropping kisses by her ear as he unhooked her bra. "I missed this."

"Me too," she gasped as his mouth wandered to her nipple, her hands fisting in his hair. "Oh, God, I missed you too."

The time for words was soon gone, however; Eren's sinful, sinful mouth traveled lower and lower until he was kissing at the insides of her thighs, parting them to access what lay between, and (Y/N) threw her head back as he spread her open with his hands and sucked brazenly at her clit.

How long he spent there, worshipping her sex, (Y/N) had no idea; all she knew was that she came once from his mouth on her and a second time from his fingers inside her, and when he finally, mercifully withdrew, she was broken down to the simplest parts of herself; there was nothing left but an affection so deep that it threatened to overtake her if she didn't let it out, and she did the only thing she knew to do to release the overwhelming pressure that was building in her chest as Eren pushed his big, veiny cock into her.

She told him what she should have said a long time ago.

"Oh, Eren," she gasped as his cockhead shoved deep inside her. "I love you."

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Eren went unnaturally still. He looked at her with pupils blown wide inside emerald eyes, and his fangs slightly distended; in any other situation, (Y/N) might have laughed at how surprised he seemed, but it seemed as though she were frozen in time, unable to do anything but stare earnestly up at them, hoping he understood how much she cared for him.

"You… what?"

"I love you," she repeated, her body moving without her permission to roll her hips up into him, moving his cock even further inside her. "Please, Eren, I need—"

He cut her off with a forceful, bruising kiss, and his hips started making slow, deep thrusts inside her, her legs hiked up over his shoulders.

"Again," he said against her lips."Say it again."

"I love you."

Another thrust or two, a hand circling her wounded throat.

"Again."

"I love you, Eren."

"Again."

This time, it was only a whisper.

"I love you," she said, and Eren began fucking her in earnest.

"You are so fucking beautiful," he told her as he thrust hard and deep inside her. "You're every man's dream, a nirvana the damned such as myself were never meant to reach. (Y/N), you are everything, and I—"

He seemed to choke on the words, and (Y/N) kissed him as he tried to regain his composure.

"I don't deserve you," he said, shaking with the force of their passion. "I don't deserve your love."

It's not about deserving, she wanted to say, It never was, but then she was coming again, her climax contracting her walls around her lover, and it was all she could do to remain conscious as Eren fucked her relentlessly through it all, chasing his own high.

It was only later, after a shower and something to eat that they finally spoke again. They were back in bed, and Eren's arm was wrapped around her, as though he were afraid to let her go for even a moment; truthfully, (Y/N) thought he was asleep, but then his breath tickled her ear as he said,

"I love you, angel."

And that, (Y/N) thought, had been worth it all, in the end.

#aot x y/n #aot x reader #aot #aot fanfiction #eren x reader #vampire!eren jaeger #aot smut

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yyunari · 3 years ago

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nari as one of the younger kids on sfw enhablr (i’m assuming you’re around 05’ - 08’) how do you feel abt the current content for the maknae line? like ik it’s not always super sexualized or anything but sometimes i see stuff that’s just the way it’s worded really rubs me the wrong way ☹️ esp bc some of the kids on here like you are so young it makes me feel like if they see stuff like that , they might start think it’s okay for others to treat them the same or vice verse … whenever i see edits of niki on tiktok , i have to avoid the comments bc there’s almost always like a “daddy” , “how is he 16” or “you don’t know what you do to me” like wtf he’s a literal child ?? it makes me so mad and honestly so uncomfortable :( and i saw an article on kboo today too that said niki apparently has around 200 explicit or mature fics written abt him on ao3 … sometimes even the fboi trope (usually when it’s written abt minors) bothers me bc i see minors writing abt it (like 13-15 y/o) and i don’t understand why they don’t just use the term player or smtg … bc they’ll go out of their way to mention how the character has sex a lot an whatnot , even that feels way too suggestive for me personally for a minor too write let aline abt a minor too , sorry for the rant,, i was just wondering how you felt … omg also though tbh i noticed that some of the minors on here / blogs in gen seem way too comfy on here like they’ll be sharing where they live , their actual names and sometimes like giving a lot of personal info … like did they not learn abt internet safety or do they just no care? as one of the older kids , i kind of worry abt them :( i really hope everybody stays safe on here <3 & some reminders: never be afraid to block anyone ! bc i’ve seen a lot of minors on here get sent stuff from the p*rn bots or just weird dms :( & u don’t need to force yourself to interact with someone , make sure ur comfy with them first !

oh my god i’m so glad u sent me this because ive been wanting to talk about it for a while 🫶

im quite literally the same age as niki and seeing how many people are constantly sexualizing him makes me EXTREMELY uncomfortable. most tiktok edits of him are borderline sexualizing him too, when the songs people use are about sex and things like that. even if the intention wasn’t to sexualize him, they still do so by using sexual content for him. it pisses me off how people see that as normal and even comment weird things (like how u said ‘how is he 16’, i see that comment a lot and its SO weird. why do people think this is a normal thing to say?? its implications make me feel iffy.) when niki is still a child. he is a child. “how is he 16” because he was born in 05 that’s how.

also 200 mature fics on ao3????? the majority of writers on ao3 are adults so thats really fucking weird and honestly disgusting. fuck anyone whos ever written a mature fic about niki or even portrayed him in a mature light. i agree with ur point about him being portrayed as an ‘fboy’ or whatever, why would u put him in that position as a minor????? “hes aged up” “hes in college” so its okay to change a real person’s age when it’s convenient for you?? enhypen has a hyung line, write your fboy fic about someone else.

im not saying you have to baby him or only make cute edits about him, but what i am saying is if you can’t appreciate niki without borderline sexualizing him, then unstan him. and this goes for other idols who are minors as well.

and dont even get me started on jungwon and sunoo. from my understanding jungwon is a minor because legal age in korea is 19? koreans please correct me if im wrong. but regardless of whether or not jungwon is a minor, he’s still just barely an adult. it’s still weird to make sexual things about him when he’s in this place in his life. and when sunoo became legal, y’all were fucking rushing to make smut about him and it was GROSS. yes he became legal, but he was still the same person he was before. you can wait for a while after they become legal to write things about them. they need to go through the transition period from being a minor to becoming legal.

and yes, some minors on here forget that there are sex bots and just gross people on this app. i got one of these bots in my asks a few days ago and it grossed me the fuck out (i blocked the user, and if u ever get one of these u should too). this is why i share so little about my personal life, and if i do im very vague. if you are my age or younger, please be careful on the internet. p3dos are so fucking gross and are something you don’t want to risk being involved with. so as much as u can, hide your personal life. i promise you that your life is worth so much more than some stupid app :))

anyways i really like answering questions like these so u guys should ask more, i like speaking my mind 🤗

#me when i speak facts again #💌 ﹕ nari’s mailbox . . . !#📨 ﹕ anons . . . !

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katybirdy95 · 4 years ago

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The Spanish Princess (Season 2, Ep 1): My Thoughts.

Hello Everyone!

I guess it’s that time of year were we all collectively come together to roast another PG production. I know that a few others have already written their thoughts, but I have stayed away from them for the moment, until I have written my own opinions just so my perspective of the episode is more original.

I will try and write some things I liked and obviously things I did not and would love to hear everyone else’s opinions as well.

Warning: SPOILERS

Right! Here we go!

1) We start the episode off in 1511 - three years after the final of season 1. I guess they didn’t want to show Henry and Katherine’s wedding night (I can’t quite remember if it was shown in season 1), so we don’t see Henry’s reaction to Katherine not being a virgin. Although, it seems to me that throughout the episode, it’s hinted that Henry already knows that Katherine consummated her marriage to Arthur, but out of love for her, he’s keeping his mouth shut.

2) I think Mary Tudor is the first character in this universe that actually resembles her younger self. I feel like EF just casts any child actress and then the adult version looks vastly different.

3) I like that they have shown Mary to be an intelligent woman with a good knowledge for languages.

4) The costumes have been upgraded and some are actually really pretty, but they are a few decades too early - more Elizabethan and Katherine is sporting some Lucrezia Borgia inspired hair.

5) When Ursula Pole states that Charles V has very expensive clothes, I nearly laughed. His clothes are very plain in comparison to what Mary Tudor or some of the background extras are wearing.

6) I do like that the women in this season seem a lot more friendlier with each other, instead of seeing each other as enemies and trying to rip each other apart - I hope this continues.

7) King James has entered the building and poor Margaret looks like she’s about to jump out a window. Ray Stevenson’s accent is actually quite good and I don’t think I cringed once and being Glaswegian that’s good coming from me, but why did they make him so old. Although, I will say that the term “hen” is more what a father would say to his daughter, but given the age difference, I suppose it makes sense.

8) They are really trying to ham up that Scotland is full of uncouth barbarians, almost like the producers don’t know that Scotland is filled with varies accents, we don’t all have that gruff harshness to our voices and every city has its own accent.

9) Why would you bring a newborn to a jousting tournament, the noise alone would distress the poor thing and why is the baby the size of a six month old?

10) Oh God! Edward Stafford just tore his eyeball off, I don’t believe the real Buckingham lost an eye, I know that Sir Francis Bryan lost an eye, but not Buckingham, but I might be wrong.

11) I wish I was as calm as Buckingham when I burnt the skin of my left hand (don’t worry It healed), I mean this guy pulls his eyeball out and still has time to flirt with Katherine.

12) I guess the producers are of the opinion that eye patches are the fashion in Tudor England, although I would have been partial to a glass eye or a jeweled one.

13) Well, I guess my redheads are gone. Henry and Margaret are sporting their actors natural hair colours and Katherine’s seems to be a lot darker this season too. Why go to the trouble of dyeing their hair in the first season if they weren’t going to bother their arses for the second season and that’s directed towards the hair department and whoever made the decision to make Henry a brunette than the actors themselves.

14) Looks like not only was Isabella of Castile abusive towards Joanna, but Ferdinand of Aragon was abusive to Catherine. Can’t we just have loving, supportive parents like Jacquetta from TWQ.

15) The abuse is just lazy story telling because it has just now occurred, yet in season one, Catherine was shocked that Joanna had been abused, surely she would have been more sympathetic to Joanna given their shared experience, but they probably didn’t know they were getting a second season to develop that.

16) Katherine is breastfeeding her own baby, but I don’t know if there is a source that said she actually did this. I have heard that Anne Boleyn thought to feed Elizabeth and was told not to and after that decided it was for the best so that she could produce a new baby quicker. I wonder if we will see Elizabeth in this and see the contrast between Katherine and Anne as mothers and given how awkward the cast has been about Anne Boleyn, I’m guessing she won’t be shown in a good light, but who knows.

17) I do like that they are showing Thomas Boleyn as an adviser and friend to the king, usually Thomas only appears when Anne Boleyn is about to be introduced, but in reality Thomas was actually good friends with Henry and Henry trusted Thomas a great deal before Anne came onto the scene.

18) I actually liked the Scots scene when they are slagging off the English, it’s pretty accurate to how even Scots today feel haha. Although, I don’t like that they have reduced Margaret to a governess, but Georgie seems to have some chemistry with Ray Stevenson, but I doubt Margaret would have slapped James IV in front of his courtiers.

19) Why do productions always use the tool of having one part of the couple refuse to have sex with the other to show that they’re struggling, like most couples don’t have sex every night and it’s a sign of a healthy relationship that if one person wants sex and the other doesn’t - for numerous reasons - then the one that doesn’t, shouldn’t have to feel guilty for saying “not tonight love”.

20) I did think that Bessie Blount was going to appear from the shadows when Katherine left the room though.

21) Why would you put a newborn on a cold, dirty chapel floor. I mean what do you expect to happen.

Okay, I will say that I actually enjoyed this episode for what it was there was some good things and some not so good, but still it has potential. There seems to be more extras as well, instead of like eight to a room like the last productions have been and I liked that the actors had more than one costume change. Also, the couples are all in matching outfits, will we see the same happen for Henry and Anne when she comes on the scene.

The strongest actors in this episode would have to be Stephanie Levi John, Ray Stevenson (mainly for the accent) and Sai Bennett. I think that’s it, the other actors were good like Ruairi and Georgie, but didn’t stand out as much to me yet.

Sorry it’s not as funny, I was uninspired.

#the spanish princess #tsp #katherine of aragon #henry viii #bessie blount #thomas boleyn #margaret tudor #mary rose tudor #personal #my thoughts #edited

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neo-shitty · 3 years ago

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toffee!

hehe glad i could make you laugh, oooh that sounds awesome! yeah id love to be tagged it sounds great :)

YES the differences are so fucking weird. like, they do know they're the same age right? i feel like its just an exagguration of how much the persons role in the group matters, like we see chan being held up as such a mature, old leader while jungkook who is literally the same age, is still babied etc. like enha hyung line is basically the same age (if a bit younger) as chenle and jisung but somehow the rules are different?? as you point out, still legal but still bizarre. hehe yeah, i mean where else are we going to rant? quora lol. mmm, hopefully more people can just write less smut abt people who are barely adults

ah, no prob it didnt take long. yeah i think thats right (i keep forgetting you know my url lol) mmhmm :( i think if that happened irl there would be some major trauma going on. knock wood it never happens to you or me lol (/hj)

hehe same! oooh glad Redemption For Cheese was realised! yess we cant rllycomplain that theyve written/produced too much good music lol. yeah, ive dragged him into being a stay so *dusts hands off* mission accomplished. mmm yeah, they tend to have a certain vibe but tbh it couldve worked if they were any other group but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ahh ur one step ahead of me on the stages of listening to ssick i think, still not convinced but thats okay! hehe, it had to be said. yesss the itch in the back of my brain is very satisfied by sorry i love you, felixs vocals deserve to be appreciated! (side note i feel like hes trying to sing more like his speaking voice, sorta husky, but tbh i wouldnt be mad if he sang like in glow, his sweet honey vocals made my life lol. but i think ive heard him say he doesnt like singing like that cos it makes his normal voice less husky, so what can you do)

> YES SOMEONE SAID IT. seungmin rap KING, he sped thru that rap like it was nothing, he deserves more rap lines. i do like how they gave minho some melodic rap lines this comeback, my guy deserved to show off those skills that made him not be eliminated (flashbacks to stay collectively wanting to murder jyp) and we already know changbin can sing, my man murdered masked singer. hyunjin can obviously sing as can jisung and felix, and i want to hear chan rap more! i feel like he started as part of 3racha (as a rap unit not producing) and then just became a vocalist (which im fine with, but it could be nice to hear him flex his rapping skills) and was partially replaced by hyunjin. anywayyy

back to album talk. lmaooo sad music to twerk to PERFECTLY describes silent cry. yes secret secret is and will always be, a masterpiece. hehe glad i could make you laugh :) i just felt like they have similar vibes. putting off skz stuff bc of not having time to cry IS the kpop stan life summarised. oh my beloved track, red lights. ahh thats okay, we can have different opinions, but by god the lyrics are *chefs kiss*. *banging on table* TWISTED AU TWISTED AU TWISTED AU. yess id love to see ur take on it! sdfghjkl it would have been glorious

no no! not stupid, just able to predict my brainwaves. ooooh thats so cool! makes me want to go there (wherever there is lol) yeah the waves are pretty good here, but none of my familys a surfer, so we dont rlly enjoy the full potential lol. YES moving on to gone away, it is indeed a heartwrenching track, but the vocals and the bloody key change? makes me want to brave being sad just to listen to it. mmm yeah, good point :( i feel like ive just gotten used to overthinking so much so that it doesnt matter what mood im in, ill do it anyway, so might as well just do what i feel like doing anyway.

yeah i think ur right! it is quite comforting knowing that all the tracks will get the love they deserve. i feel like also people assume kpop is just one genre which is utter bs. there are so many different vibes and feels and songs, i couldnt get into kpop (of which i thought only the bright cheerful present day bts stuff existed smh) until i heard gods menu so... idk where i was going with this but yeah. :)

YES FUCK YG, theyre literally on the brink of being kicked out of the big three and they are holding their salvation hostage without letting them do ANYTHING. idek what thought process goes thru their minds but arghhh its so infuriating. yess lisa's cb will be awesome but ot4 is the gold standard here.

hehe, glad u could get to this point. no no! u dont sound like a cult member at all lol yeah, i loooove some of their songs but the whole 23 members thing is getting to me. thats prob a common problem with nctzens but what can i say? im a simple girl with a limit to how many korean boys i can give my money to. atm im just trying to get into ateez and finish memorising enhypen's faces. also kard is kinda sucking me into their fandom atm, as well as eric name lol. ah what can you do? ooh thats good!

hehe i love it too! its exactly like online penpals, that was rlly well put. aww ty! hmm im okay, recovering from a bad case of rsv so thats fun. im doing okay mentally, starting therapy soon (after having to convince my mother that its not just smth i can brush off). physically i wont go into, basically i should be doing stretches to help but they dont completely fix it so my lazy ass doesnt do them, plus i got told recently im going to be stuck with this condition for the rest of my life so thats fun! ah, before you type smth dw abt me ill be fine. the weather atm is cloudy but warm, its been raining on and off today which is good for the garden. uhh i just finished reading sunburnt veils and im in the middle of prom theory which is rlly good. ummm ive got a concert tonight? that i may or may not be able to sing in (bc of the whole rsv thingo) and uhhhh idk. my dog is cute? im drinking tea rn? ive got a school dance coming up?

wbu? hows ur day going, how are you? whats the weather like on ur end? done anything interesting lately? found smth that makes you rlly happy? just any random thing youve been dying to tell someone?

no no! dont apologise, i love these exchanges. i think im happy to continue them for a long time :) on the other hand, if you get tired of them, feel free to just not answer at any time. goodness gracious this was a long ask haha hope it isnt too annoying

<3 w.a. 🐺

sorry it took me a bit to reply, i was fixing my theme ;n;

yeah, i figured it was because of the roles too. my friends and i still get taken aback when 3rd gen idols are the same age as 4th gen ones. in my head it doesn't add up sometimes. PLS THE RANT AT QUORA SKJDK tbh tho it's just going to be normalized as the years pass? esp that the boys are growing older and the amount of explicit fics will just increase. i might have to start blocking tags.

i had to look up the previous ask to remember what we were talking about xd i hope the events in champagne problems never happens to anyone. realistically, it probably happens a lot. damn i really won't wish that pain on anyone. dragging your brother into being a stay i whEEZED JFKSA additional noeasy music enthusiast o.o and ALL I CAN SAY WITH YOU GUSHING ABT FELIX IS AHA WHIPPEEEED OML can't blame you tho, i also want to hear felix sing more in other shades (if that makes sense HAHA) i really hope they'll do the role exchange in the next comeback :( or like in the near future bc i know they can do it :( the day i hear seungmin rapping it i will respectfully pass away. minho was given more lines this comeback thank fUCK i could rmb my irl being vocal abt her frustration. i don't get why minho barely has center time/lines in title tracks??? like the line distribution in the past eras just made me ???? if seventeen can balance lines with 13 members why cant a group of 8 do the same? moving on. i haven't watched the stray kids show simply bc i don't want to cry HAJS but i've seen clips. imagine if skz debuted without minho and felix?!?!? i rmb another irl catching bias feels towards changbin bc of the masked singer only to find out that the man's a rapper. i love how skz's vocals were highlighted this comeback :c there were a lot of mellow tracks! i find it cute when chan sings/raps bc it gets kinda obvious that he's a foreigner? the accent (im not even sure if it's the accent) it just shows. "putting off skz stuff bc of not having time to cry IS the kpop stan life summarised." CORRECT.

abt the twisted au o.O i'll inquire my irl if she wants to write it or not. if she doesn't want to, i'll do it. i miss writing twisted aus <3___<3 and i also miss going to the beach with my friends :' ) but it's starting to get cold here and i don't think i'll be able to enjoy the beach as much as i would if i went beaching in the summer. so maybe next summer? gone away really has an sm-ballad vibe. the thing about skz being a self-producing group, their songs don't sound like typical jype songs? and i just appreciate that bc in all honesty im not a fan of jyp groups at all. PLS the overthinking. i wish i could mute overthinking.

anyone who assumes kpop is just one genre obv hasn't listened to a single track. if kpop was just one genre why do i like some tracks more than the others??? oh you've only recently become a kpop stan? tbh im not a fan of the bright songs of bts either. i liked their older ones *chefs kiss* really matched high school vibes. yg has good artists and they're just wasting the talent ~.~ that strategy they have will get tiring eventually. people will stop waiting on blackpink and move on to newer more active groups ://

HAHAHAH yeah the 23 members is pretty overwhelming! it was the reason i didn't bother stanning before quarantine started. i don't regret stanning tho, met my ult bias in that group <3___<3 i don't really purchase albums unless i like the tracks xd ohhh getting into ateez just in time for the comeback! let me know what you think about them! i was fond of them at some point but grew out of it. good luck with memorizing enhypen! it took me a while to distinguish to people there XD i haven't checked out kard yet but chan plays their songs during lives and they're sexc hype music me likey *u*

i had to look up rsv im sorry. i'm glad you're recovering! please rest more and don't stress yourself out. bro i wish i could go to therapy too bc i have weird issues i can't justify and i need a professional to tell me what's the reason behind it. stuck with what condition btw? what happened? i'm sorry in case i just forgot. yesterday was a bit rainy for me too :(( it's not the type of rainy that makes me anxious so B) oh concert! good luck and i hope you'll be able to sing but i also don't think it's best for you rn :c what's your dog's breed? and yes i just finished drinking tea too. AAAAA i miss school dances :(( the last one i was supposed to have was cancelled bc of covid.

i was less productive today and i'm teetering between being mentally stable and becoming a hermit again. i'm anxious with a lot of things atm so like : D not the best state. today it was a bit sunny but not hot hot which was nice. i changed my theme today bc i couldn't wait for sept. 1st. and no i haven't found anything that makes me happy HAHAHA shit like that's hard to identify. don't have anything to say too, i'm just thinking about why i'm procrastinating too much atm T_T and i'm listening to this rap song atm and one of the rappers sounded like han.

it isn't annoying! i enjoy the long exchanges but i do admit it takes me awhile to type down a reply. so if i get more busy, it'll prolly take a bit longer for me to reply.

#toff.asks #wild anon 🐺

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dawnhardn · 4 years ago

Text

INTRODUCING... DAWN HARDIN

stitch by stitch, i tear apart if brokenness is a form of art i must be a poster child prodigy

Name: Dawn Hardin

Gender: cis woman

Age: forty-four

Sexuality: bisexual

Height: 5'4

Home District: capitol

Status: stylist

TW FOR FULL BIO: infertility, loss of body autonomy, hospital mention, mention of bugs.

i. of growing up

The mystery that has plagued her entire life is this: Dawn doesn't know her beginning. She knows all about the day she was adopted, oh, that's the part her parents boast about; her entire childhood, all she heard about was how she was saved. Only a toddler when she was plucked from District Nine, with nothing but scraps for clothes and a small pendant on a necklace with Nine's symbol, she doesn't remember much. She doesn't know where her story begins, nothing before that fateful day when she stumbled into her new parents' arms, kicking and crying, a child begging to be loved. Sometimes, when it's really quiet at night, she thinks she can still hear the wheat rustling with the gentle wind.

They were fine folk, her parents, but they had a hard time differentiating between love and possession. She grew up having everything she could ever want when it came to money; the prettiest dresses, the accessories, the hairs, the coolest toys and all the books her arms could carry. And they gave her attention, too. They gave her tenderness, sometimes. They loved her, but in their own way. She always needed to prove herself to them, she was always scrambling for their acceptance. She was their shiny trophy, the poor girl who had to be grateful to be living such a luxurious life, the lucky one, out of so many other less fortunate orphans. They never let her forget that, and despite loving them, too, she was always aching for something more.

When she's young and they push her to work in the Games, she obliges, like she always does. The yearly horror show often makes her avert her eyes from the television, sure, but she can pull her lips back and offer a smile and lie her way through this. Styling was the easiest option to stay far enough away from the carnage, and although it protected her from having to consider some of the more dreadful aspects of the Game, it didn't keep her from mourning every single loss. Every kid that wore her creations was held so dearly to her heart, even when she was just starting. The motherly instinct she felt towards them was something she couldn't hold it in if she tried. The pain of loss never gets easier to face, no matter how much the pile of bodies under her grows.

ii. of loving

She grew up thinking love was a fighting game, one step out of line and you lost it. She thought love meant buying shiny things, and parading around parties, and choking back tears. She had partners in her teenage years, silly flings here and there that never went anywhere, and she thought that was it. Love wasn't unconditional, love wasn't for everyone.

Like a moth who couldn't find a flame, by her young adult years Dawn had accepted that she was destined to flap her wings around the darkness aimlessly until she tired herself out. And despite all this emptiness, she still carried her heart in her sleeve, a safety hazard as much as it was her biggest strength. Her hands always ready to help someone in need, she was always scrambling to give out the kind of unconditional love she never got from her parents, an empty cup pouring itself to fill others.

Then, she met Aeron. He was kind, and gentle, and he might as well be the Sun itself for the way he warmed up every room he walked into. The connection between them felt immediate, something sharp and undeniable, like the stars had always known their names. Dawn feels as if she can breathe for the first time in years.

She was born to be a mother, she knows this now. She'd grown up mothering every living thing that passed her way, and for a while there, she thought that would be enough; taking care of tributes, taking care of friends, taking care of fleeting lovers. But once she meets Aeron, she realizes the itch runs much deeper. It's a consuming desire, electric all through her body, how badly she wants to have children running around their house. Little ones to climb up the tree in their backyard, and draw on walls, and fill up the house with laughter. Aeron wants to be a father, too. Everything works out perfectly in her life, until it doesn't.

iii. of fighting

She can't dedicate herself to a family while she's still overworked by the Capitol, so when she puts in the request to retire, it's only because it feels fitting. She has an excuse to be let go, and they have an excuse to find a better stylist to put in her place. Someone more passionate, someone with more drive. She's already twenty-eight, she's sure there are handfuls of much younger, much more talented people out there they can choose from.

They don't let her retire. While at first, she thought she was offering them a perfectly balanced way out, now she realizes she was begging. And they hadn't obliged. She'll never forget the way Aeron's face fell when she told him the news, and the way he'd marched out of their house the very next morning, to fight for their future. To fight for her.

The next day, when she comes back home, exhausted and longing for her partner, she notices his coat isn't hanging by the door. There aren't any pots on the stovetop with dinner ready, waiting for her. There aren't extra shoes by the door, no notes on the fridge. She rushes to their bedroom to find none of his clothes in their closet, his toothbrush, his medicine, everything he ever touched, gone. Wiped from existence. She would've thought herself completely insane if it wasn't for the ring still on her finger, his initials written into it.

That's the message they send, to warn her never to stand up again. They send silence. No matter how many times she asks, they never tell her what they did to him. She can be on her knees, she can be pulling her hair out; she has barged into offices screaming until she had to be dragged away by security, and they still never give her anything. Nothing except a few more threats to remind her of the leash they have around her neck. They tug, and she follows.

iv. of giving up

There's no way around it, she knows, and once she understands that, something in her dies. She settles for the reality of never having her loved one back, and it kills her, too. If before she was a searching moth, now she has been caught by the capitol, her delicate wings pinned to an exhibitional board and drying out.

She continues working for them, and with every passing year, she's less and less inspired. The critics drive into her, looking to sink their teeth into easy prey, reminding her she's doing a terrible job any chance that they can. These jabs never work their way under her skin, because there's a state of numbness after she accepts the loss of Aeron in her life. Her dreams, her love, her everything, gone so quickly, ripped from her arms without notice. She has no hopes of him even being alive.

There's numbness, and it's almost uneventful because of it. She feels like she's barely living anymore, simply surviving to get by, pushing one foot after the other to keep moving. There's a spark of wrath somewhere, a flicker of red in the darkness of her chest that leaps around every once in a while, but her own dullness doesn't let it thrive. Another year passes, another Games she works on. That year, when she's sending her kids off to battle, her vision fails her.

She can't remember collapsing, but it must've been what happened. One minute she's within the Game headquarters feeling dizzy, the next minute she's waking up in a doctor's office. Her body shakes with shivers, her hands are as pale as the gown they have her wearing. The staff looks at her with pity, their eyes avoiding hers like they're hiding something. They speak in terms she's never heard of, and they're not direct when she demands to know what happened, but the gist of it is this -- there's more pain for her to carry in her life. She's been poisoned -- they don't tell her how --, and the substance has rotten her insides. She's pushed out of the hospital with the diagnosis of a lifetime of migraines, occasional shaky hands, and the inability to ever have children. That's when she understands the message they're sending.

And she feeds the spark in her chest until it turns into a forest fire.

v. of loving ii

When she loves these kids, now, it's almost out of spite. That's the one thing the Capitol can't take from her, the one thing they've tried beating out of her when they killed her spirits. They almost succeeded, too. They made her feel weak, hopeless, nothing more than an undead carcass dragging herself around without a goal. She won't let them do it, ever again.

So she loves the kids. She doesn't turn away from the screens anymore, she feels every splatter of blood, she cries for every death. She loves them endlessly, and without reservation, and without fear. She offers warm arms they can run into, and a shoulder to cry on, and a caring hand to push their hairs back. If the Capitol wants to kill her for this, then so be it.

She'll accept death knowing she went down with a goddamn fight.

#intro ;;#could not resist the urge to pick this dumb gif #tl;dr she's the local mom with a sad backstory!!!#still working on sliding into everyones dms pls hold!!

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ewritesthangs · 5 years ago

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Can you do 21. “Take your medicine.” with Conor Rhodes and a Halstead sister where she’s staying the night and has an asthma attack? Thank you!

The air felt like it was trying to suffocate you. An invisible entity wrapping its appendages around each bronchial tube. It was sudden, hasn't happened in the night since you were a kid. You jolt up, gasping for any repreive. Your boyfriend, Conor Rhodes, lay beside you sound asleep. You breathing is fast but shallow, audible wheezed upon exhale. Slapping your boyfriend awake as you struggle to breathe. With a groan, he opens one eye, ears clearing so he can hear your struggle. He instantly springs to action. Any sign of sleep dissipated.

"Inahle?!"

"B-bag." you wheeze out, the exertion of exhaling creating a sling pang in your ribs and chest. Conor scrambles over to your bag, almost falling over in the process. He finds it and chucks it to the spot on front of you. You inhale the sweet sweet relief aerosal, but to no avail does it help. It eases the difficulty only a smidge. Second puff, no relief. You are now in panic mode.

"Hey hey, littlest Halstead. Don't panic. Look at me." he sits in front of you and holds your cheek as he calls 911."Hello, this is doctor Conor Rhodes, I have a 32 female in acute respiratory distress brought on by a sudden asthma attack. I am at 54 Janet Lane, I will have the patient outside when the ambulance arrives. She is alert and oriented times 3. Please hurry." he hangs up the phone, and picks you up bridal style. Your lips were becoming cyanotic,your body growing fatigued with all the accessory muscle use to breathe." Come on little, stay with me. They're only a few minutes away. Hear them? Your team is coming."

"Rhodes! What happened?" The younger Dawson asks, as he lays you on the stretcher. An oxygen mask, that was hooked up to a duel neb treatment was placed on your face. You were slightly out of it, so you pushed it away, squirming and trying to get off the stretcher.

"Little! Stop. Baby this is to help you breathe. You need this. Take your medicine." looking up with heavy eyelids, you oblige. Laying back down and having Conor hold the mask to your face. The mist created by the oxygen mixed with the meds helped immensely. Your bronchial relaxed and started to open up again. By now, you were in the back of the ambulance on your way to Chicago Med. Your brother was on call tonight. So when he heard 32 female having an asthma attack over dispatch, he began to worry. You were rolled in, and were immediately bombarded by Will and Jay. Will must have called Jay. Or Conor called will who called Jay. Gabby pushed the boys back for you.

"She is stable. Let's get her into a room."

"I knew this heat would get to you." Jay sighed, not wanting to leave your side.

"Conor called 911. Why is that, little?"

"Can I... Breathe... Before you. Ask quest. Questions?" you say, still wheezy and short of breath. Will and Jay's expressions both soften at the sight of their baby sister laying in the bed. You looked so small, so weak. Jay walked in and laid next to you. Conor runs in, in scrubs, and yells for nurses to come help. Will was setting up an IV with a fluid challenge as well as another round of a duel neb treatment. Jay had changed you into a hospital gown. Conor places you on the monitor with a 12-lead, BP monitor, and an oxygen saturation finger thing. You were at 78 when the paramedics got you. You've improved to 90%. Heartrate is in the 190's (tachycardia with an underlying synus rhythm.)

"She is stable. Thank God."

"Told you." your small, raspy voice quirks.

"She seems to be feeling a lot better." will smiles, and places a small kiss to your head.

"She is feeling much better. OW! April, a little warning next time please."

"Sorry love, but I need my fix of your blood."

"Such a delicious commodity to you skeeters."

"You bet."

"So, can one of you tell me why my sister was at your house, Rhodes?" Will turns his head to his colleague.

"We've been dating for about 4 months. We were spending the night together in celebration. We were gonna tell you guys tomorrow at dinner." Conor stands his ground, arms crossing over his chest.

"So he's the friend you were bringing?" Jay asks, surprise written upon his face. You just nod, your brother will was turning red.

"William Patrick Halstead. I'm an adult. I can date who I please." you began a coughing spasm. Will turns to you.

"I just worry. I don't want you to get hurt and have to kill my Co-worker and have Jay help dispose of the body."

"I wouldnt even dream of hurting her. I love her more than I thought was humanly possible."

"He is the one who got me help and made sure I didn't die. I swear he was panicking worse than I was. Even saw a few tears."

"you saw those?" Conor eye buldged out of his sockets. "I was scared. This was the worst one yet. I didn't know if I was gonna loose you."

"But you did the right thing under the pressure. And I am so thankful you were there. If she was home alone, who knows what could have happened." will surprisingly said aloud.

"Has he ever done a 180 on us?" You whisper towards Jay.

"There's a first for everything."

"Just remember don't be silly protect the-"

"WILLIAM!" Conor shook his head as you slapped your brother.

#will halstead imagine #jay halstead imagine #jay halstead #will halstead #connor rhodes #Connor Rhodes imagine #chicago pd imagine #chicago med #chicago med imagine

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macmilllan · 5 years ago

Photo

“ i want to stay. i want to leave. i am three oceans away from my soul. ”

cis male / he/his. ┊ if you’re looking for FINNIAN MACMILLAN, you’ll probably find HIM in the HUFFLEPUFF dorm with the rest of the SEVENTH years. they’re the TWENTY-ONE year old PUREBLOOD who looks kind of like ROME FLYNN. they seem CURIOUS, QUICK-THINKING, & JUDICIOUS to me, but apparently they’re also IMPATIENT, DISTRUSTFUL, & RECALCITRANT. maybe that’s why they remind me of waking up early, so it feels like you have the whole world to yourself; the salty breeze off the sea; making up your own rules to board games; family photos and heirlooms locked in a trunk you don’t open; the adrenaline rush of thriving at the last minute; a feeling deep down that you’d never make it on your own. ( ooc: zoe, 22, cst, she/her. )

WARNINGS: parental death, car accidents, manipulation, underage alcohol use ADDITIONAL MATERIALS: finn’s playlist, stats page, & pinterest board

the macmillans were always a large family, sprawling and warm and bright. generations ago, they found themselves written up as one of the sacred twenty-eight and were, if not quite baffled (for they were proud to make and display beautiful family trees, and thought it made sense they were one of the stronger pureblood clans around), uncomfortable with the company that put them with.

for years they’d been more than content to exist as their own enclave, almost; existing in the wixen world and attending hogwarts and welcome members of society, but always, always happy to return home to ireland away from the larger wixen communities. it was rare to see a macmillan settle down in hogsmeade or godric’s hollow; they preferred to do business with muggles in their communities when they could, only went to diagon alley when it could not be put off any longer.

it was strange; but the sort of strangeness easily written off as eccentricity, that didn’t seem to ruin their standing in good pureblood society.

perhaps that was because they weren’t reclusive — for years and years, they made friends with other families, saw their children married off with greengrasses and abbotts and longbottoms and happily attended the large society weddings. they were proud of their various children and their various accomplishments.

augustine macmillan was only one macmillan out of many. he was the eldest son of an eldest son, going back several lucky generations that made him favored.

if the macmillans were the sort of family to call a certain child the heir over all the others, it wouldn’t have been a question: augustine was the heir. the golden boy. beloved not just by his family but by everyone who had encountered him at hogwarts, where he met his wife, briar shacklebolt.

no one was really surprised when they moved back to the macmillan family home. augustine’s father had recently died. his younger brother was also recently wed, and moved to spain to live near his wife’s family. it fell on augistine to keep up the old macmillan estate on the sea. he and briar were happy to take on the responsibility; they agreed that there was no better place to start their family.

and they did — they were, like, really good at starting a family, actually. they had their eldest son, shea, shortly after settling into the macmillan home, and five years later had lark and lonen, the twins. the twins were joined by niamh three years later, finnian three years after that; when little astrid was born a year after finnian, the couple finally decided they were done. they had their perfect, large family. the macmillan-estate-on-the-sea was loud, filled with love and laughter and a perfect amount of lived-in chaos. everything was perfect.

ii.

later, all the wixen gossip and newspaper tributes would call briar and augustine’s death a senseless tragedy, an unthinkable thing. plenty of muggles die from car crashes; but purebloods, from good families, heir to their names, just — didn’t. they died from well-earned old age or an illness that had them in st. mungo’s for months leading to their demise. from spell inventions gone badly, or from being on the wrong end of a duel. those sort of deaths made sense; they were noble or expected. strangers heard news of the macmillans’ death and found it shocking enough to reveal disdain.

it wasn’t altogether strange for a pureblood family like theirs to have a car. even the ministry used the muggle vehicles, charmed to weave through traffic with an ease everyone felt wixen had earned. briar and augustine didn’t have anything flashy — just a nice family thing, affixed with an extension charm so all six of their children could ride in it comfortably, if they needed to.

technically, the extension charm was illegal; but everyone who knew about it looked the other way. after all, the youngest macmillan kids attended a muggle school at the local town, so they could have friends and socialize before moving on to an intermediate academy. people whispered about that — the illegal magicking of the muggle vehicle, the fact that their children attended a muggle school — in the wake of the couple’s death. the macmillans had spent generations currying enough favor for people to willfully forget that, despite their perfect lineage, they were a little too comfortable with muggle things.

no one brought it up, at briar and augustine’s funeral. no one wanted to punish those six kids for what they knew were the sins of their parents, and their parents alone. little shea macmillan was only eighteen, barely an adult in the wizarding world and still at hogwarts; there was no way he would have a car, and charm it, and drive it around roads where muggles go like that’s at all safe.

no, people were quick to help him, and jump to his defense and his aid. because they were quick to want him to turn out different from his parents.

iii.

finn was seven when his parents died and suddenly everyone turned to his oldest brother like he was the head of the family now, the one in charge of the gaggle of macmillan kids. shea was still going to hogwarts. even the well-meaning strangers who wanted to meddle in their lives didn’t want to steal a hogwarts education from shea. he had three years to finish out; everyone knew he’d step up as caretaker as soon as he was done, because that was the right thing to do, and everyone was sure shea would do the right things.

an older woman, somebody’s grandmother, if she wasn’t theirs, came to stay at the macmillan-estate-on-the-sea with the kids during the school year. finn and niamh and little astrid were still too young for intermediate academies; so she took it upon herself to pull them out of the local muggle school and homeschool them.

she was kind and helpful, and shea was too grateful to wonder at how determined everyone was to keep the last of the macmillans away from muggle life.

she never stuck around during holidays and summers, when shea was back from school. finn liked her plenty, but he was happy when shea finished school and strongly encouraged her to stop sticking around at all. the macmillan home never really felt like it used to; finn was seven when his parents died and that was old enough to remember what life had been like with them around.

but it was amazing to have shea back for good. finn felt like things returned to normal, a little, when he had his brother around for good. their house was filled with love and laughter and a perfect amount of lived-in chaos. no, life wasn’t all around perfect anymore. but it was good.

iv.

their parents had left more than enough gold in the family gringott’s vault that life was always comfortable for the six macmillan kids. shea could easily fall into the role of guardian for his siblings without worrying about money. by the time shea was done with school, finn still had one more year before it was time for him to start at an intermediate academy. it was a golden year, him and shea and astrid, with lark and lonen and niamh coming home for holidays, everything feeling as right as it could.

all six kids remembered all too well how often people had popped into their home, trying to load their ideals off on them. those distant cousins and family friends never seemed to be around now that shea was back for good. finn, for one, was glad. he’d been raised to be polite, and kind, and so he’d sat and nodded and listened to all those adults like he knew they wanted him to.

but you could only take so much of hearing near-strangers try to disparage your parents without explicitly speaking ill of the dead. even the not-grandmother who’d looked after him and his sisters when their brother was at school had made more than one snide remark about the troubles that came with forgetting that wixen stood apart of muggles for a reason.

finn didn’t feel all that charitable towards the attempted correction everyone seemed to think he’d needed, grief-stricken at seven. pureblood society had seen the macmillan family floundering after a tragedy and leapt on them like vultures. the intent, he was sure, was to sway the kids back towards wixen society. it probably did the opposite.

the macmillans were still an upstanding pureblood family that no one would look down their noses at; especially not knowing now that the remaining family members were all orphans, deserving of canned sympathy even years removed from their parents’ deaths. people were kind to finn, and he was kind to them in return, polite in his careful dismissals and practiced brush-offs. he had his siblings and had learned at a very young age that he just couldn’t rely on anyone else like he could rely on them.

shea was protective of his siblings, especially finn and astrid who had been so little when they were thrust into his care like he knew what to do with them. he encouraged the two of them, and niamh and lonen and lark, to keep their distance from anyone who seemed too intent on getting them to believe a certain thing or act a certain way.

people had ulterior motives, and they were ruthless in getting children to believe those motives were right and just. the macmillan family had always been self-sufficient, and they were all determined to keep it that way, now that they didn’t need to rely on anyone for anything.

everyone had their job within the macmillan home — the thing they did for their siblings that kept things running smoothly, everyone useful, everyone loved.

finn had learned to cook at the elbow of lark and their brief not-grandmother; when he was home from school, first his intermediate academy and later hogwarts, his first stop was the kitchen. it was a huge, spacious room in the macmillan-estate-on-the-sea, the place where so many of his well-worn memories of briar lived. he felt most connected to his mother there and insisted, along with lark, to be in charge of meals. he and his older sister were a well-oiled machine.

it was no surpise to any of them when he followed her lead and was sorted into huffelpuff.

she owled him all the best spots in their common room and the best snacks to request from the kitchens, and her twin lonen wrote to him with old pranks he’d pulled as a gryffindor, in case finn felt like keeping up family tradition. niamh was at hogwarts with him, and rolled her eyes at how much everyone seemed to coddle little finn — but she had a mean right hook and promised her fellow slytherins would have finn’s back if anyone tried anything with her baby brother.

shea owled him, too. but just to say he was proud of finn. finn glowed with love at that one and decided he’d keep all three letters for the rest of his life. maybe it was a silly, sentimental sort of choice to make, when he was fourteen now and supposed to be a grown-up hogwarts student, but finn stood by it.

he’d had an early growth spurt and carried himself with the sort of well-worn confidence that made other people decide he was cool. he had a tendency to play his cards close to his chest and slap on the same practiced niceness with everyone — if other people thought that lent him a sense of mystery, that it made him cool, that was fine. it just meant everyone would leave him alone, for the most part. that was how finn liked things.

there was this potential in him to be soft — he was the youngest boy in the family, and for a while there, when he and astrid were the only ones not in any kind of school, everyone looked after them as the babies of the family. he used to need an army of stuffed animals on the bed at night to keep him safe, used to cry any time he smelled something like his father’s old cologne. it wasn’t just that there was a potential in him to be soft; he was soft, deep down, and always had been.

but that didn’t really serve him well, did it? all those well-intentioned strangers had swooped in on him and his family in their greatest moment of weakness. finn was a good guy, a sweet boy. that’s what adults always used to call him, when they were trying to weave their way into the macmillans’ lives.

but he could wrap all that goodness and sweetness in steel and wield it like a weapon if need be. it was safer for him and his family, that way.

vi.

finn loved himself a task. he wasn’t a believer that idle hands were the devil’s plaything or anything so brimstone-y as that, but he just didn’t like to sit doing nothing. some part of him always had to be moving, lest his mind take over and decide to race in the stillness. one summer, he and lark worked their way through julia child’s mastering the art of french cooking. it felt like a kind of fuck you to all the wholesome, magical, english cookbooks people had left them as gifts when they’d seen how many muggle ones were in the macmillan kitchen.

they owled their uncle, still living in france with his wife and kids, progress reports on each recipe. when he came to visit during christmastime, finn and lark cooked his family increasingly elaborate french meals until his wife laughed at them and snorted wine out of her nose. they just ordered a pizza from the muggle place in town, after that.

one summer, finn taught himself to play guitar. he was awful at it for a while, and niamh, whose room was next to his, cast a silencing charm on it until he promised to keep an eye on the clock when he was practicing so he didn’t keep her up until three in the morning. he got better, like, eventually. his siblings had never been under the illusion his peers were under, that finn was cool.

mostly they made fun of him for picking the guitar when the family had a perfectly nice piano in the living room he could have used, instead of the guitar he bought second-hand from a shop in the town next to the macmillan-estate-on-the-sea.

the six of them had elaborate board game tournaments, and games that weren’t quite board games with rules they made up themselves. exploding snap was an event at home, everyone tipsy on mulled wine and cider, well-fed on whatever finn and lark had made for dinner that night. they organized three-on-three quidditch games on the beach and yelled at anyone who let the quaffle fall into the water.

vii.

it was different, in school. finn was less himself at hogwarts than he was at home, where he could laugh with his siblings as they laughed at him and feel like not even his missteps would be looked down on. despite his years at school fully immersed in the magical world, finn still felt wary around people who weren’t directly related to him. it even took him a while to warm up to his uncle and his wife and kids, once they finally started coming around again.

finn couldn’t help but feel like he couldn’t fail in front of anyone he didn’t already trust with his life — and the list of people he trusted with his life was a very short one.

his peers weren’t as bad as adults were ( there was not a single professor finn had ever trusted. the ones who were nice and likable were worse than the ones who everyone else disliked ) but there was something about being simultaneously abandoned and conditioned by strangers when he was a kid that made him not want to let his guard down around anybody. it felt like both a personal failing and an act of survival.

making friends for him was both very easy and almost impossible.

people tended to like him. finn wasn’t sure what it was — maybe he just had a face, or his habit of being unfailingly nice to everyone paid off in unexpected ways, but there had never been a shortage of people willing to walk with him to class or sit with him at breakfast. he could talk to them, and joke with them, and even fall into something that looked enough like a friendship that he was never really alone.

but finn wouldn’t have cared if he was alone all the time, which — he was reasonably sure was not most people’s reactions to having friends. it was fine; he was fine. at the very least, it made it easy for him to satisfy that itch under his skin that said he had to keep moving at all times. people with friends never sat alone at quidditch games, and they always knew when there was something fun going on. there was always someone willing to play wizard’s chess with him, or go to the library to work on notes.

finn was technically thriving at hogwarts. his grades reflected as much, and he knew he’d have no trouble making it in the world outside of the castle. but he never really felt like he was thriving, and was mostly just happy thinking there was a world outside the castle.

viii.

shea and lark ganged up on him, sometimes. both of them thought he was doing himself a disservice by phoning so much of his life in. it was true that all of the macmillan kids had been messed up, in some way, by their parents deaths and the three years immediately following them. finn just carried it differently than any of them; and despite it all, he was still one of the babies of the family, coddled and looked after. finn preferred to be the one looking after things. it made him uncomfortable to be seen.

for them, only for them, finn promised he’d try to live more in his life; to not be so distant and practiced and kindly removed. it didn’t feel right on him, like a borrowed coat. he wasn’t sure anyone else would’ve noticed he difference. he’d gone through the motions of being involved, of being a friend, for years now — and he’d been good enough at going through the motions that trying for real felt more like faking it.

honestly, just this once, he wasn’t pleased his siblings were looking out for him. he’d coasted through most of his hogwarts career and then spent his last three years floundering, trying to act like a real person and then remembering it wasn’t supposed to be an act at all.

the world was changing, malleable and more malicious than ever, right outside the warm glow of his family home. during christmas break, the ministry made changes to the auror’s office that made all the macmillan kids look at each other with worried eyes. there were several warring forces shifting under the surface of things. their home was a safe enclave, and everyone felt he and astrid were protected enough within hogwarts’ walls.

but there was no denying that things weren’t going to sit peacefully for much longer, if there’d ever been any real peace. finn was just enough of a pessimist to think it was only a matter of time before the world boiled over, like a pot unwatched. it sure as hell felt like he had picked a poor time to try and give himself into feeling things for real.

#fallacyintro #this is like. way too long.#god i suck

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studentlulu · 6 years ago

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Disclaimer: Everything that I have written about is completely true and happened to me within the 2017-2018 year. I wrote all of this as not only a way of coping with what has happened to me, but to come to terms with and helping me understand the difficulties and challenges I went through in the past two years. I did not do this because I sought attention or for any other self-serving narcissistic purposes. If you have read through this completely and have any questions for me or want to learn more, please feel free to personally message me and I will answer your questions to the best of my ability. In addition, after you have read this through, if you feel like commenting, please leave only positive comments. Please refrain from leaving any negative comments.

My journey to college graduation has been a long and difficult one, full of twists, turns, and bumps along the way. I entered into the University of California Irvine (UCI) as a Freshman in Sept. 2014 and fully intended to finish in Jun. 2018. That would have been the plan if things had worked out perfectly well. However, as we all know, things never go perfectly well, especially not with life.

Sure enough, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer in spring during my junior year in 2017. It was devastating news beyond comprehension. I was so scared. I was only 20! There were so much things I wanted to do! I want to explore the world and I even planned to study abroad in Singapore that year! I want to eat different cuisines from around the world! I want to do so much more! Now with this news, all of this has abruptly stopped! Everything became dire uncertainty. What do I do? Do I have tomorrow? How long? How do I tell everyone? Who do I tell? Most of all, how do I cope? My mind went ballistic! My family was by my side when I found out, and we promised that we would get through this together.

We discussed treatment options with my doctors and decided that I should go through one round of chemo, surgery, recovery, and then one final round of chemo. Each chemo round was four appointments and would require me to come to UCSF Medical Center. Due to the rigorous treatment plan, it was decided that I would have to postpone school till I finished treatment and recovery. It was a very difficult decision, but it was the only way to deal with the condition. So, I contacted the Bio Sci School of Affairs Office and told them about my predicament, and requested to postpone my education and enrollment until further notice. Thankfully, they were quite understanding and informed me that they would readmit me back to school whenever I was ready.

Chemotherapy left me tired, nauseous, moody, and grumpy. It also left me very cold-sensitive and UV-sensitive. Starting with my second infusion of chemotherapy, my hair fell out. I slowly became bald and I hated my look. I loathed the fact of losing my stomach even more! I love food! Without my stomach, how can I eat? What can I eat? How can I go to school or go on with life without my stomach? Of course, not to mention the unimaginable constant need of going to toilet! After the pre-surgery chemo was done, I then had the surgery to remove my stomach in early October 2017. I was hospitalized for more than two weeks for that procedure. Recovery from surgery was extremely difficult. I was not allowed to eat what I wanted nor as much. I had to mentally force myself to ignore my hunger feelings as my brain needed time to adjust to the fact that there is no stomach to store food. I had to eat ¼ the portion of a normal adult meal. This proved to be arduous because I love food and love to eat. In fact, when I was healthy, I could eat as many portions as I wanted and sometimes, I would finish others’ leftovers. Wasting food is a crime, I believed that. In addition, in Chinese culture, it was considered respectful and a sign of appreciation to be able to eat as many portions as you could. I couldn’t do that anymore with a smaller stomach size. What if others who did not know about my condition became misinformed and thought I was eating less and being disrespectful? With this new body, I totally resented the fact that I could no longer eat as much because I equated it as I would no longer able to enjoy food! Recovery was very painful; and I hated the “heathy” but very bland food that I had to eat. What is there to look forward to when I could not even enjoy the most basic thing in life: eating? Life seemed bleaker at every moment passed. Only the constant encouragements from parents and others kept me going, but barely without passion.

Another chemotherapy soon went underway after surgery. This time around, my physical reactions were worse, and my mental stage sunk even lower. I developed dry heaving. I could not stop scratching my skin, I was extremely tired and fatigued, sometimes unwilling to leave the bed, and there were times I did not want to take in or even eat food because the mere sight of it made me ill. Then, on Dec. 19, 2017, during what was supposed to be my second fusion of chemotherapy during my final round of chemo regiment, something went terribly wrong. I went into anaphylactic shock due to negative reactions to chemotherapy. I could hear my younger brother (chemo treatment center only allowed one relative staying with patient) franticly calling me, and I could barely hear my nurse called out “Code Blue” before I lost consciousness on the treatment chair! When I faintly regained my consciousness, I felt heavy stuff on my chest. I believed that it must had been my unconscious will to live that kept me alive. Or perhaps the prayers from parents and my families had kept me alive. Or perhaps it was not my time to die yet.

I was extremely fortunate that I was under the care of the world-class doctors, nurses, and other medical professions at UCSF Medical Center, because they revived and saved me. I woke up in the emergency unit after 4:30 pm with my parents on my bedside. I had been out for at least six hours. I wound up staying in the hospital for observations and treatments for two days. IV chemo treatment was discontinued after that; and the doctors prescribe another form of chemo treatment for me.

I went back to school after completing treatment during spring break in April 2018. I wanted to go back to school so badly for a change of venue and for a more “hopeful” environment. A familiar place where I thought I had better control of life. After all, I had been in a school environment all my life. Ironically, as I started back to school, it was ending for many others. As everyone else was enjoying their spring breaks, I was slowly readjusting back to school. It felt weird to be returning to school towards the end of the quarter. School was so quite. I got new roommates who were very friendly though. For that, I was grateful for their kindness.

I found it very hard to stay off social media and see everyone else’s progress. I was supposed to be part of the graduating class of 2018 that quarter, but I couldn’t. Facebook was the worst place because many of my classmates and friends were posting their graduation pictures. I would read their posts or look them over and I would feel terribly inadequate afterwards because I was not to part of that graduating class which I had set my heart and my mind to be a part of. I felt like a big failure. I failed! That was the only two words that occupied my mind. I fell into darkness.

To prevent myself from feeling worse I tried my best to stay as far away social media as I could. I would call and text my parents, often in tears, asking whether I could have done better or been better to graduate on time like everyone else. They would often reassure me that I had (a) done my very best, (b) that everyone finishes college at their own pace, (c) there’s no rule saying that I had to finish college in four years, (d) that I went through something extraordinary that most people could not comprehend, and (e) that I could reach out to medical professions or my trusted relatives or friends to seek their opinions. To my parents, I stood up to cancer and I won! Such accomplishment and my life are worth every bit of celebration! I should be very proud of what I went through and had achieved. Sometimes their comforts worked and made me feel better; but more often they did not because I felt that my parents were not me and could never understand what I had gone through. Talking to my therapist and sometimes my cousin D (who was also a licensed therapist) temporarily helped me to sort through my feelings, as it seemed to be a safe place to open up and freely express myself emotionally.

However, no matter what, I still had to live with my new physical form. I hated this new me: missing organ, patched up body, and no amount of time would ever restore it!

Summer rolled in. It was much worse for me than spring. During the summer I was trying to find employment while living on my own. The long periods of unemployment dragged me down to spiral back into the same emotional depression I faced in spring. I started to question my self-worth and believed that because I did not finish school on time, I was stuck here as a failure, forced to finish school late, or attempted to finish school now, while my classmates graduated and moved on with their lives. I was stuck in a negative emotional spiral; and the worst part of it was that it was self-inflicted. At that time, I didn’t see it, and couldn’t get myself out of it. It was a negative self-hatred cycle, one that I found comforting and validating in its own twisted sort of way because it was the one thing that was being truthful to me in my life. I felt that everyone else, including my mom, stepdad, cousins, and friends, knew nothing about what I had gone through personally. I felt like they did not truly mean what they said about being proud of me and loving me. Even worse, I had forgotten what a champion and fighter I had felt like completing chemo and cancer treatments. What I had gone through no longer felt like an accomplishment worth celebrating, but a laborious task that anyone could have done or gone through. It was no longer impressive. Instead of saying to myself, You went through something terrible and came out of it a stronger person, I found myself saying instead, So what you went through chemotherapy and finished your cancer treatment? Thousands of people do that every day. You’re nothing special. YOU’RE not special but a failure!

The negative self-hate caused me to cut off contact with loved ones, even my immediate family. My mother tried very hard to keep contacting me and was concerned for my well-being. Once, when she called me to ask me why I hadn’t spoken to her in a long time, I finally managed to choke out, “I don’t want to talk to you because I’m angry and I hate myself, mommy. I hate myself and want to end it! I don’t want to talk to you about it or let you know. You would never understand!” My mother would respond, “Your feelings are always yours and no one can truly feel exactly. However, please note that you are loved and not alone. We are here for you, always! Just let anyone know that you are around or reach out to anyone you trust. That’s okay. You had been so brave to go through so much in your young life. Every bit of your life is worth in solid gold!” Of course, I could not listen to her. I cut her off and took her out of my contacts. That’s how deep I was in my own dark world! Without me knowing it, Mom never gave up on me and had clever ways to send encouraging words to me. Today, in my clear conscience, I cannot imagine the amount of anguish my mother must had in hearing her own daughter said she hated herself.

I ceased having social interactions with others because I did not want to be around others who, I saw and viewed, as not supporting me and my thoughts. The few times I did speak with others I sometimes got into emotional outbursts. I wound up treating my mom and others as emotional punching bags, venting out my angers or more negative emotions on them. At times, I would even text them to tell them that I found life unbearable and not worth living, and that I wanted to end my life. My behaviors were so reckless but I was not in the right mindset to realize them. I was in such a deep depression stage and only focusing on all the terrible things. I learned later that my suicidal threats made my mother go into emotional breakdowns and become physically ill. God, what hell I had put my mom through! I regret such awful behaviors! If only I knew what I know now. I am sorry.

What finally pulled me out of that negative spiral for good was my witness in person to my mom’s unconditional love. In September 2018, I came home for my follow-up doctors’ appointments. My parents sat me down and had a heart-to-heart talk with me. We talked about things and addressed my negative spiraling emotions. My mother looked me in the eye and told me that she could not believe what I had said or even considered giving up on living. “Life is precious,” she said, “please take good care of it, and always carry a grateful heart!” Especially since my dad went through the same thing and so much worse, yet he never gave up and fought to the end. He was a true fighter. In addition, my mother’s boss has a daughter, in my age, who went through the same thing, but she never gave up. In fact, she was now in Africa doing volunteer work. As we talked, I learned of the efforts my mom and stepdad made behind the scenes to keep me well. I could see and feel mom’s passions for life and for me as she held back her tears. I saw for the first time in person how my actions and words had deeply hurt her. I could see how much my life meant to her, and I will always be precious to her and a part of her. I could see how I had misunderstood my parents. My struggles were their struggles, plus much more. I’m a survivor and indeed I should be proud of it!

I decided that it was time to change. I changed how I saw things and decided that I would only focusing on positive thoughts instead. I changed my perceptions of my new body. I shifted my focus on the bad things happened to me to how I can use my story to inspire others. I changed my mindset about future outlook of my life. God has given me many chances to live, that’s got to mean something. I am intended to find my purpose in life. I will keep trying my best and never give up.

It’s been two years since the initial diagnosis and over a year since I finished treatment. I haven’t shared my story publicly until now because of many reasons, but mostly fear of criticism from others. However, it is my life, and it is my story. As time passes, I have gained more confidence and strength in myself. More importantly, I am here today because I have so many giants standing behind and supporting me. I owe it to them, all of those unsung heroes, to share my story as an upcoming UCI Class of 2019 graduate. And no, I did not graduate late, I graduated just right on time.

Acknowledgement and Thanks: I would like to thank my mom, stepdad, brother, and both sides of my family for their love and support during the difficult times in my life. I would also like to thank Dr. Korn, Dr. Nakakura, Ms. Renee Wang, Nurse Lana Taran, Dr. Jaime Cohen, and the rest of the medical teams and staff at UCSF Mission Bay Hospital. You are literally my life-savers! At UCI, I would like to thank the Bio Sci Student Affairs Office for being very understanding of my situation, allowing me to take time off to recover, and allowing me to re-enroll again after I regained my health. Thanks to Mr. Cheng Ko at the DSC Office for registering me with important resources on campus, as well as helping me get reacquainted and readjusted with school after I returned. Thanks to Ms. Sheena Danesh for helping me find important resources to use when I first got diagnosed, such as the DSC, and when I returned to school. Also, thank you for helping me with the multiple doctors’ appointments that I had to attend. I would also like to thank Ms. Adelí Duron and Jane Killer at the VSC for their support and understanding, as well as answering any questions I had about financial aid. I would also like to thank Dr. Eldridge and the UCI Counseling Center for seeing me for the past two years since my diagnosis and upon return from treatments. Thank you for providing me with a safe and secure place for opening up emotionally and tools to deal with my stress. Finally, to the countless unnamed friends, people, and others along the way who helped me or motivated me along the way. I could not have gone through this alone.

Thank you so much.

Love,

LuLu

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gisapot · 5 years ago

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In defense of Dionysus (written 12-03-2017, posted 12-03-2019.)

It is officially the anniversary of the last creative nonfiction piece I wrote.

I did not realize it has been two years since I wrote this piece, the piece that I consider my magnum opus; two years since my grandfather had passed.

Posting this today of all days was not intentional. I did not intend to post this here because I had bigger plans for this piece; a greater exposure than this tiny blog only my friends and students know and avidly read (not that I am ungrateful for your support). I wanted to see this in print.

I wanted to submit this to Katitikan for its ‘places and spaces’ issue, but to submit this means to remove a thousand words from this five-thousand-word monster, and removing a thousand words is an insult to the integrity of the story I want to tell. To remove a thousand words is to break the legacy of my grandfather.

Another reason why I wanted to post this is to address a comment my mother had received on a photo she posted on her Facebook of her and my grandfather. I do not know if that was their last photo together. She shared the post to share to her world that it is the second anniversary of her father’s death, and someone said, “maayo gyod an badlungon kay ma mis gyod sa tanan!”

Instead of posting a position paper in defense of my grandfather and his merits, looking only one-sided and biased towards the man who raised me, I want to show you this piece, in its entirety, in my grandfather’s entirety.

Who really was Antonio Gulane?

Dear Grandpa: A Story of The Kulafu Warrior.

Dear Grandpa, today is the third of December, twenty-seventeen. I am in the new house, the one you begged my mother to buy for you before you passed: the one-story house made of cement and stone. It has barely been a month since we got the house when you decided to christen it with your quiet passing, bringing in faces old that I’ve never seen in years, and new ones my mother insists I’ve met longer than my brain can recall.

Dear Grandpa, this asphalt house is the first permanent one we have had in a long time. How many houses have we lived in? I don’t know the number, but I know each and every one of them, complete with tiny slivers of memories that are distinctly of you, Grandma, your white chino shirts with her tie dye skirts and half-slips. I remember your loud insistent shouts and your ribs protruding through your thin brown skin as you sit at midnight half-naked, inhaling the smell of Mighty Red, Marlboro, or some lumboy leaves you roll on your own. The smell of it mixed with Kulafu has permeated every household we occupy, radiating out of your rotting yellow teeth as soon as the clock strikes one in the afternoon. Textbooks always told me these were signs of a broken home life, a dysfunctional family. To me, it became a sign that told me that I was home, no matter where I was.

I. Basement

I remember very little about the basement, but I do have pictures of it developed like pictures used to in those times Kodak and Konika were the epitome of photography technology, Richard Gomez’ face on the packs of the finished images. There were blue green walls, and it was constantly dark down there because there no natural light came in. The wooden jalousies were sealed shut and dusty, not really helping our cause. Our TV was a small black box always tuned in to ABS-CBN, and one picture showed it frozen on an old Colgate commercial along with my memory of my first Christmas. You were there with Grandma, candid shots of you making me laugh so that I would smile for the camera. I was a chubby child with skin as pink as the girls endorsing Pond’s for a healthy pink glow, a vast contrast to your dark lumad skin, even more elaborated by the harsh automatic flash of the film camera. Grandma always shied away from the light of it with a bashful grin that took on not only her face but in the lift of her shoulders, carrying me up to cover her face. You, however, were not afraid to show your grimace to a device that immortalized your state: displeased that your photo was taken, but not mad enough to be violent.

I am thankful these photos exist to give me a sight of my childhood that I remembered better through scents. I remember nothing, no experiences and no objects, but I do remember the smell of a very big pink bottle of Johnson’s baby powder, your alcohol, Tatay’s aircon-scented laundry, pungent socks, and your cigarettes.

II. Village

There is always this notion that when the word ‘village’ is present in the address you write on forms, you were someone with money and stability enough to live in a place that had security guards stationed at every entrance. We were renting this house, and I do not remember what it looks like nor do I have the pictures to actually believe that we lived here. There must be a gap in my memory, but I forgave myself long ago for not remembering anything. But I do hear stories from you and Grandma about my childhood: I liked Uncle Dennis’ Lucky Me mami noodles – the one in the blue packet (is it still in production anymore?) – because it smelled like gas. I didn’t eat it, I just smelled the smoke coming out of it. Every afternoon at five, Uncle Dennis and Grandma would take me for a walk to ‘get some Fita’, which was a codeword for fetching Nanay from the corner. You recalled that I never went with them if there was no Fita involved, so my mother resolved to buy Fita before she got to the corner leading to our house so I would greet her by sunset.

It was a quaint village but we had to move away for reasons I still cannot understand to this day, but know well enough that what happened made my mother lose the face to show to her in-laws. Just because she was a tiger does not mean she held the power; her in-laws were kings of the jungle. Grandma maintains we were nothing at the time. We had no one to our defence. We were ants next to them in the grand scheme of things, we could not talk back when the perpetrators had money and we did not, ruling the gated compound as they did. I never believed you to be one to run away from a fight. It did not seem like you or Nanay to be quiet or behaved when mouths start running the way they did towards us, but you just let it happen like it did. We moved houses before I could remember anything constructive of it, or take any pictures to remember it by.

III. Pardo

There is something in Pardo that always drew me in. It seemed like a place that was alive, crowds of people coming in with the setting and rising of the sun every day, judging by the plethora of jeepneys that headed that way. I know that because of my constant commute to school, a small Montessori school, girls in bright red uniforms and at least one boy per batch in grey t-shirts. Other than that, I remember nothing that had to do with what was outside the house except the potted plants lined up by the patio that you sat next to, where you were supposed to be smoking your afternoon away. But you were not there, not at the house, not in any of the pictures. I never saw you in that year. I think you hated the place, or the stampede that came with it, or something else. All I know is that you were never there. Your sister stayed with us instead, a skinny woman with short hair who took orders for empanada from Nanay’s friends. I don’t remember you, but that does not mean I have no recollection of whether or not you were there. It means that I know for sure that you were not there, so I had nothing substantial to remember you of, unless it was Christmas.

I remember you distinctly during our only Christmas in that house, hiding in the darkness of the alley behind the back door where a big blue tank stood. You crouched there, smoking while Nanay and Tatay took pictures of me posing in front of the Noche Buena. I have a picture of that moment, smiling cutely while Grandma stood with her back turned away from the camera facing the door that led to the blackness. I remember she was scolding you in harsh whispers to turn the flame of your cigarette off and come inside to join the festivities, to not be a Grinch on Christmas. Once the photo was taken I got down from the chair I used as a stool, towering adults walking past me – both uncles, Nanay’s younger brothers – who tried talking you out of sitting outside. If you did not feel like socializing, there was always a TV. Your indifference towards Christmas was evident.

The concept of time is longer the younger you are. I look up at the clock as they plead you to come inside and eat some bread or ham, or an apple, whatever; it was eleven in the evening. You finally got up at three minutes later, but it felt like three hours. I wonder how that is so. When you walked past me, I wanted to ask – something, nothing, I don’t remember what I wanted to ask from you. But you just moved me aside and did not give me attention, and you sat on the sofa and I just stared, and I brushed it off. You were offered alcohol, and you asked for a bottle of Kulafu. I did not move. The moment I write this is when I remember that was the first out of two times where you did not make time for me. You always did.

IV. Sugar Apple

Since I was a child I always amused myself with the thought that Tisa backwards was ‘atis’. Of course, now that I am older I have come to realize that this is not true. But it also entertained me that this presupposition of mine was proved true with the sugar apples growing by the barbed wire fence right outside our house that closed the compound in. We were renting a bigger house this time, in a compound of three houses owned by a nice drummer amputee named Tony. I remember the whole town calling him Tony Kimpay like it was his full name. The house had light blue walls and a smooth ground floor that required a whole box and three-quarters of red Starwax and two coconut husks to shine. There was a second floor (a second floor! Only rich people had second floors, thought three-year-old me) where the floors were made of wood, and it was in this house where I learned that you never slept at night.

You sat outside from ten at night until six in the morning with a box of cigarettes, a mug of Nescafe coffee and three bottles of Kulafu, guarding the house in lieu of a dog or a security guard. You would entertain yourself with the ducks Tony owned, chasing them away once they started quacking at four in the morning along with the crowing of the chickens. It was from you where I learned to not fear ducks. And when Nanay’s cousin Dinah came to live with us while she went to college and told me to stay away from ducks because they bite, I did not believe her. They always run away from me because you taught me that I was bigger and more terrifying than any bird.

Sometimes you plucked the sugar apples and cut them in half to share with the family, but I never ate them. Instead, I was interested in the eba that grew next to it, eating it raw and with no salt to neutralize the taste. I loved how sour it was. I have pictures of me giving eba to my cousins who visited the house. Behind the camera, you turn your nose up away from the eba, because you did not like that I like them and preferred that I ate sugar apples instead because at least that is a fruit that made sense.

My first brother was born by then, and I did not remember an instance where you touched him. By then, people from the neighbourhood or Nanay’s friends from work came by to visit and coo at him. I would get jealous and insecure, because there is a baby stealing my mother’s attention, like all three-year-olds would feel when they have a new sibling. Because of the afternoon crowd on the second floor of the house, you woke up from your afternoon nap and went outside for a smoke to calm down to avoid snapping at someone. I followed you outside because I hated how Nanay did not give me any attention, all given to that stupid baby. An adult grabbed me, I don’t remember who it was but I know I insisted on going with you. You took a seat on a plastic stool Grandma uses for the laundry, and told me to go back inside once you lit the cigarette stick. I obey. I walked towards the door when I accidentally kick over last night’s Kulafu bottles. I turned around to pick them up, but you told me to leave it and go inside in that annoyed tone you spoke in when everything is not in order. Despite that, you crouched down and picked the bottles up without further complaint. Irritation was a trademark on you, a trademark I have come to not just learn, but to inherit.

V. Parrots

From the house with the ducks and the star apples and eba, we moved to a white house with a gate. It was not that far from the previous house, it was on a hill right behind it. The house was white, the inside also white except for the master bedroom which was decorated with faded yellow wallpaper. A few months after we moved there, Tatay bought me a pair of birds – a boy and a girl – for no reason at all. He just thought it would be nice to have a pet. They were yellow-green birds and I thought they were parrots and insisted that they speak after me. Under the cage of the birds was a wooden stand for your own rooster. It was then I learned that you liked cock fights, you bet on it and joined it even with the constant reports on the radio that these betting games were illegal because it went against animal rights or some random reason I thought of as a child that would rationalize the world.

I still do not know if the birds Tatay got me were parrots or not, but it is an appropriate analogy for you and K: at the age of three with a head as big as a basketball, he admired you for everything you did to the point that he copied your every move, especially your skill in many types of martial arts. Now as I am older and I look back, I think of the credibility of your claim, if you were really an expert as you said you were. But at the impressionable ages of seven and three, we believed you to be the Filipino Bruce Lee as you introduced yourself to be. You taught K how to use nunchucks and a bit of arnis with a stick you conjured out of nowhere, and I wish I had pictures to prove that you really did teach him and he learned well from you, but all I have are pictures of K alone carrying his nunchucks obsessively everywhere he went. He threw a fit every time he was told that he could not bring them to social events or inside malls because it was ‘unfair’ and he really wanted to show off what he knew.

He was so much like you. He copied almost everything you were. You two were so alike in the shortness of fuse and how you both wanted everything to go your way or you would have to resort to violence. K would wrestle anyone who said no.

Despite the contrast – K a pale milky white while you were a reddish brown like Kulafu – you taught him to be like you and he had grown so attached to his childhood hero that it no longer looked adorable to me as the older sister, but scary. This turned terrified the moment you took an afternoon nap and started kicking in the air like you were fighting someone, asking if your enemy in your dream was going to fight back. K thought you were so cool.

Nanay always tells me that she understands because she is always at work that K was imprinted by you and grandma instead of her and Tatay as the actual parents, but I could not understand what she meant. It just did not reflect the families on textbooks, where the children were close to their parents and their grandparents lived in a separate house. How close he became with you and Grandma was beyond me. He insisted to sleep on your bed, eat out of Grandma’s hands, and sang the lyrics you whispered in his ear before he ever learned how to read. There was no doubt in his mind that you were invincible, and you were the best example.

VI. Dog

We lived a year in that white house. Half of that year I dazedly spent in hospitals because of a severe case of dengue. That year was a bad year for us, it was some sort of bad omen. Nanay decided to move us to Mandaue, a whole city over, because it was safer there from mosquitoes and it was closer to her workplace. Other than that, Tatay was an architect for a new private elementary school that was just erected there, and he decided to send Yelcin and I there. It was in a big compound owned by a chubby old man with droopy skin that made him look like a wrinkly dog. He looked even worse with his constant frown. You did not like him. You liked his sons instead because they drank with you Kulafu with you at two in the afternoon to stay awake instead of being so uppity like their father.

We got a dog too, a female golden retriever we aptly named Goldie. You did not like her at first because she was a non-human creature that came into the house and chased after me because she liked me. You got very angry with her because she wormed her way to the bedroom I shared with Nanay and Tatay, but then insisted she sleep at the foot of my bed to watch over me, and suddenly I see you sneak out chicken leftovers from my breakfast to her dog bowl in the morning. That is when I knew you started to like her.

You sat outside with her in the afternoons. With that you brought some noise, you talked to her and told her to behave and you would give her a dog biscuit shaped like a bone whenever you got bored. You were not quiet anymore. You would bathe her religiously on Saturday mornings before I woke up, and fed her strange things for her meals like fish and some malunggay leaves. She ate them gratefully, like it was not dangerous for her poor dog stomach to eat such things.

You did everything for Goldie. You treated her like your own child, spoiled her with all the dog treats in the world and reprimanded my mother if she did not bring home any more treats for the dog when you ran out. You built her a cage made of metal grills and spare raw coco lumber that you demanded Tatay to bring from his site visits in Catmon, the plastic flooring for the only thing authentically pet-shop about that cage. You made Dennis buy some metal roofing from the construction supply shop around right outside the corner of the street, and you built her a home with your bare hands. When it was done, you put Goldie inside, locked it, and hid in your bedroom with Grandma without a word and took a happy nap.

VII. Protection

We had a house. It was in Opon, it was bound to PAG-IBIG housing loans, but we had a house. It was in a middle-class subdivision whose houses all looked the same, so our minimalist white and brown and green house with a terrace and an outdoor garden with Bermuda grass stood out. We had our own rooms, mine was pink and V’s was blue with a bunk bed since Nanay was pregnant with her third child and we were preparing for him. Nanay and Tatay’s room was a bright yellow with brown furniture. And yet you refused to see us sleep in our own rooms, us kids having to sleep in our parents’ room, on the floor with some mattresses, so that we do not get too hot in our own rooms. It was apparently better in the air-conditioned room, and it was so you could keep an eye on us all together.

We had a car too. It was a secondhand blue Nissan Terrano with a spare wheel on the back that we bought from your cousin who married into a rich family. We did not use the car much, but you took it out for spins around the subdivision so that it would not ‘gather dust’. I still do not know if that really is a valid concern for cars.

Your habits did not change: you still sat outside the house at midnight with your coffee and Kulafu and cigarettes, except now people stop in front of the house to take pictures, and you ‘shoo’ them away to keep them from plagiarizing my father’s work. (I will find in later years that they still succeeded in copying my father, what with subdivisions being erected that now use the same color scheme and the same layout and plan. It irritates the both of us. Whatever happened to intellectual property rights?)

You hated the location, however. You hated that it was an entire city away from where we went to school and we did not get enough sleep. We passed out in the car the moment we get inside, to catch up on some sleep, wake up dazed and lost in school, then come home tired and lethargic to do any of our homework anymore because of how tired we were. We were practically in hell.

Location was always the problem, wasn’t it? We just moved to the new home that was finally ours when it struck: Nanay was laid off of her job and had nowhere to go. With piling debts and deteriorating health and a baby who had more needs than her grown children, Nanay decided to work overseas.

You were so violently against it. You were so mad. You did not want the family to be separated. Everyone should stay in one home, together, no matter the circumstance. It was all or nothing for you. But Nanay had already made up her mind, bought a ticket out, found a job that was waiting for her, all that was left was to leave for it. You did not look her in the eye that day she left, staying outside right in front of the car, like you were a boulder that could stop it from moving.

VIII. Following

I remember very distinctly the moment K cried at the airport as we left Singapore after our first Christmas there. He was crying terribly hard, hating the fact that the family he grew up in, his own universe of discourse, was pulled apart into two different fabrics of time and space. It was difficult to be together now. He rolled on the floor of the then-existing budget terminal of Changi Airport, causing a scene, asking why we could not stay with her and be a happy family like those families in textbooks. He wanted to be with Nanay, with Tatay, but also with you and with Grandma and Uncle Dennis and Uncle Julius and their wives Elsa and Janice respectively, both parents and parental figures. K used to be the type that got so attached. I cannot say the same for now, however.

When Nanay said she was working on our immigration to follow her to Singapore, K was excited. You, however, did not say anything. I think you have learned from when Nanay left the country, but you made us promise to call you by Skype every day while we waited to start schooling there. You could not bear to part from us, you and Grandma, but when was the best time to leave the nest, to be honest? And we belonged with our actual parents.

And every day like clockwork since we left, we called you through video call, your brown skin a bright white like the shirts on Tide commercials, asking how we are and what we are doing, same as yesterday. The call sits for two hours as we watch you nap on the wooden floor of the rest house, and when the computer overheats, you tell Dennis to shut it off and you slither away on the floor to your room, not showing that you are crying because of how you miss us. But it is okay, I know you console yourself, because Janice is pregnant, and you are sure this kid is not a kid you will let go.

When we left the country, you had no reason to stay in Cebu anymore, so you loudly declared to the entire family that you were all going back to Medellin where they grew up and where you raised them. There was a rest house there that Tatay constructed for us; somewhere we can sleep in whenever we visited Medellin for the weekend. It was a hut, brown with nipa leaves weaved together for the roof. Everything was made of wood except for the foundations and the bathroom, the cement wall painted green on the outside. Inside was tiled and decorated with seashells Tatay paid your nephew to collect from the beach behind the house. You spent your days there lying on the ground like a dog, never breaking your afternoon-nap-and-Kulafu-at-Midnight ritual like always. Sometimes you got bored and killed flies, made your own barbecue, and even built an extended hut for Grandma that you used as a convenience store. You would participate in secret games of masiao that another one of your nephews is a runner for, you and Grandma arguing about the how she calculated her own numbers and why yours is different, until the tumor in your stomach you kept joking about started hurting too much for you to laugh about it anymore.

Dear Grandpa, throughout these homes we have come into, you repeatedly made me promise throughout my childhood to build you a concrete house that you can call your own. You called our constant moving a hassle and the hut that my father made for you not sturdy to withstand storms. You told me you were tired of the city, and asked me to build you a house in your hometown of Medellin, as big as I want, as long as it was strong and brave and could shelter you from the heavy storms.

Dear Grandpa, we have a home now. It is a bright yellow house in a subdivision a little ways away from the park that displayed an old train from Central that used to carry the sugar cane. The time is one-forty in the afternoon; I am sitting in front of your white coffin with a towel in my hair, and if I move to tilt my head rightwards I can see the bottle of Kulafu I bought for you as an offering. I am alone, save for the people passing by to get food, more ice cream, beer, or arguing about the wi-fi connection. Your Photoshopped portrait sits on top of your viewing glass, staring at the flurry of movement with your intense judging glare and thick eyebrows. You look angry in the photo, but Uncle Dennis says you were about to laugh as the photo was taken, and if I stared hard enough, I can almost see the moment that you do.

Dear Grandpa, you were powerful and strong-willed and loud for all the right reasons. You were never weak, and you never allowed people to spread nonsense about our family. I pretend not to know that the reason for your loss is not deterioration, but a dangerous formation. I pretend not to know that your every day habits are the cause of your passing. I pretend that you’ve never participated in vices in your life; it is in the Filipino culture, Nanay says, that once someone passes, he is an angel.

Dear Grandpa, I miss you very dearly. As I write this I keep erasing words and adding some more, getting distracted by the noise from the children and doors opening and San Miguel bottles tinkling against each other. This is the sound of our family, even as the shape of our living arrangement changes like the sky when it nears a storm. Dear Grandpa, in the years I have grown under your care we did not have a house whose deed was truly ours, but you have shown me the meaning of home and helped me remember it as my own now, as part of who we are: we are fighters, the heat of your Kulafu blood flowing through our veins – we are warriors.

Dear Grandpa, we might be so far away from each other, even further now that you have passed, but as I grow older and help Nanay and Tatay finish this house in your name, I will remember the way we have come, and how much further I have to go. In front of your coffin, I bow my head to mourn, but my blood boils hot under my skin – I will stand like you on this ground and do what I can, defending your name.

And if I can help it, Dear Grandpa, we will not move again any time soon.

#cnf

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angrylizardjacket · 6 years ago

Text

ask you destiny to dance [7] {Roger Taylor}

[masterpost]

“What did you do? Ash is more pissed at you than usual.” Brian’s looking covertly between Ash wiping glasses at the bar, and Roger, adjusting the height of his high hats a few weeks after he’d confronted her about August. She hadn’t spoken to him directly since then, but the other band members were starting to catch on.

“I didn’t do anything-” Roger tries to protest, but Freddie’s laugh cuts him off.

“He made a comment about Pocket Rocket’s dear friend.” Freddie adds, having adapted to the nickname with ease, an amused smile on his face as he looks at Roger over his shoulder.

“You mean her boyfriend.” Roger snaps, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ash tense at the bar, giving away her eavesdropping, though he didn’t call her out on it.

“Ash isn’t dating that guy, he’s like forty.” Brian laughed, but Roger caught the way Freddie’s expression darkened, though he didn’t dwell on it, and Roger’s own smile became knowing and bitter.

“Yeah, listen Bri, I know what I said.” He responded venomously, and the mood around them sobered considerably. “I don’t like him, okay, he’s too old for her,” after a beat, he wrinkled his nose, “got a dickhead aura.”

“You’ve met him once.” John points out, trying to lighten the aura. Roger just bristled at the statement.

“Rog is just fond of her,” Freddie cuts in, voice a little condescending, smile mischievous, “let him be jealous, it might take him down a peg or two.”

“I’m not bloody jealous of that creep!” After a beat of feeling particularly hurt, and Freddie’s commenting hitting a little too close to home, he hears himself lashing out, “And how low do you think my standards really are, Freds?” And that shocked Freddie into silence, eyes wide and disbelieving, his eyebrows raised, as he turned away, jaw clenched.

“You really are just trying to burn that bridge while we’re standing on it, aren’t you?” Brian shook his head, sighing heavily as he went back to his guitar.

“Roger,” John said carefully, coming over to speak quietly to the drummer, as the rest of the band turned away, uncomfortable, “let me get the drinks tonight.” And it’s not what he expected to hear, but when he looks to John, John’s looking over at the bar. Ash is making direct eye contact with him, her customer service smile looking mostly threatening as she keeps polishing the same spot on a glass. “Because that woman is going to spit in all of your drinks and make you watch.” John explains, now looking to Roger, who’s expression was carefully neutral, trying not to betray his own anger at himself. “And as much as I love our dear Pocket Rocket, it’s not something I particularly want.”

She’s definitely gone back to hating him, and he didn’t realise how much it would hurt.

The worst part is that she’s so damn happy around everyone else, and he hates himself for being hurt by that. He’s angry, but not at her (never at her, not for something like this) he’s angry because he sees the way she smiles at him from behind the bar, and he sees the way August spends more time looking at the girls in the crowd, though she can’t even tell from where she’s standing. Roger’s angry because she fucking gushes about August - “He’s just made tenure!” - and yet he won’t even touch her if there’s someone else around. He’s livid because she’s so clearly in love with him, but she still can’t bring herself to tell the others his name because she knows - knows - something’s up with August, even if she doesn’t want to admit it, even if the others can’t see it.

Except that’s not the reason she doesn’t say his name.

“He’s here at every show, we should say thank you.” Brian tries after a gig, talking mainly to Roger and John, as Freddie had been giggling with Mary, the two of them in their own little world. Ash is nowhere to be seen. Roger takes another drag of his cigarette.

“Heaps of people are fans of us, it doesn’t mean we have to personally thank them every time.” Roger scoffed, but Brian made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like he disagreed.

“It’s a show of good faith, we should at least shake hands with-” and he paused for a moment, brow furrowing, “what’d she say his name was again?”

“Doctor Reid, if I recall.” John piped up, and Brian shifted his weight, crossing his arms.

“Yeah, but what’s his first name? That sounds so formal, like, ‘Oh, can I grab you a beer Doctor Reid?’” He put on a voice, laughing at his own joke, looking to John, who just shrugged helplessly.

“August.” Roger’s voice is very quiet, hunched in on himself sitting in the back of the van. Brian frowns, leaning in a little, confused as to both how Roger has kept this for so long, and what the name actually was. “His name’s August.” Roger repeated, voice heavy but louder this time. Freddie freezes. “She calls him Gus.” He adds.

“You’re joking, right?” Freddie says into the uncertain silence, and that’s the moment that the back door comes crashing open and Ash comes out, grinning, hands in her pockets.

“Hey guys,” she grinned, nodding at them, not even sparing Roger a glace, “could I have my jacket back? You can drop the pants back tomorrow if you like.” Freddie turns to her, eyes wide, disbelieving smile still frozen almost painfully onto his face, not removing the oversized, blood red velour button down shirt Freddie had been wearing over a black singlet.

“Is that man we keep seeing Gus?” He asked, voice scarily neutral. None of the others had ever heard him like this, had barely heard Freddie genuinely angry like this, and Ash’s expression dropped.

“I’ve gotta go.” It’s not the answer any of them expect, nor is Ash turning on her heel and heading back into the pub before the door had even swung fully shut. Turning back to the band, they could all see that Freddie was livid.

“I’m going to gut the bastard. Gut him like a goddamn fish, I swear I will.” He seethed, hands curling and uncurling into fists, staring at the gravel. It was as if the air around him was snapping with the electricity of a storm. Looking up, all Freddie could see was how shocked the others were, even Roger, and he clenched his jaw, forcing himself to calm down.

“That’s the bastard that ruined her life.” He admitted through clenched teeth. “Roger’s fucking right, the man’s no good.” And Roger couldn’t even take the moment to bask in the vindication that would have usually surged through him at being told he was right, instead, his blood runs cold.

“He what?” Mary asked softly, and Freddie’s expression softened, looking finally between all of them, realising what he’d said.

“He’s the reason she was expelled from her last university, and...” Frowning, Freddie shakes his head. Brian, John, and Mary all took a moment to process this new information, shock written all over their faces. “It’s not my place,” and he started on a new strand of information, “he was her teacher, he started a clandestine affair with her when she started university, and,” pausing again, he sighed, the anger still clearly flowing through him, though it had simmered down to a bitter rage, “not my place.” He repeated.

“Doesn’t he have a wife and family? How old was she?” Brian asked, a little aghast, and Freddie sighed.

“She was eighteen.” Freddie sighed.

“She was a kid.” Roger breathed, anger bubbling up inside of him.

“Hey, that’s only a year younger than me.” John pointed out, but Roger turned on him.

“Oh, I’m sorry John, are you having an affair with one of your teachers that we need to stage an intervention for?” He snapped, and John’s face fell, and he looked to the ground.

“I’m just saying she was an adult is all, doesn’t make it right, but she can make her own choices.” He paused. “She seems happy.” Both Freddie and Roger deflated at that, they’re all quiet for a long moment, and without a word, Freddie heads inside.

“Ash.” When he says her name, she looks up with an expression that tells him she’s ready to fight.

“He’s different now, Freddie.” She tells him, already defending herself and the man who she knows in her heart probably doesn’t deserve it. Freddie was ready to fight him the moment he heard August’s name, and he didn’t even know the full story. Sure he could gather the impact it had on Ash, but he never really truly realised the effect August had on her.

“What does that mean, Ash? What exactly is keeping me from coming over here and beating him bloody with my microphone next time we play here?” Freddie asked, voice very serious. Pulling off her apron, Ash told Maureen, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation, that she was knocking off for the night, which Maureen agreed to, and Ash walked around the bar and took Freddie’s hand.

“We’re not having this conversation here.” She hissed, pulling him into the staff bathroom and locking it behind them. “I love him.” She said through gritted teeth, crossing her hands over her chest, looking away. “And after everything I did, I think he still loves me too.”

“After everything you- Ash do you hear yourself?” Freddie takes a deep breath, steadying himself, holding her shoulders, “He start an affair with you, his student, refuse to be seen with you in public, and used his power within the faculty to kick you out of school when you wanted to stop-”

“I only wanted to stop because I found out he was engaged when his fiance found out about me!” Ash cried, as if it were somehow her fault. Freddie actually stepped back.

“Found out about you- He was engaged?!” He whispered, eyes wide and horrified. “Darling that’s nowhere near being your fault. He had a whole town calling you a slut and a homewrecker; he didn’t love you, he ran you out of Scotland.”

“He ran me out of Fife.” She spits back the correction. “I would know, I was there.” But she doesn’t seem to connect to the words he’s saying, it’s as if she’s replayed the events in her head so many times that she’s become desensitised to it. “But he’s changed, I was practically a kid last time, I’m different now too. And if he didn’t love me then,” she looks a little hurt as she says it, and Freddie doesn’t know if he wants to hug her or shake some sense into her, “well I think he does now.” After a beat she ducked her gaze, voice becoming a weary sigh as she leaned against the counter. “Listen, Freds, I’ll keep him out of the bar, you won’t have to see him, but this is my life.”

“Don’t make the same mistake again-”

“He’s told me that Kira’s his ex-fiance, so I don’t think she’ll be a problem.” Ash rolled her eyes at Freddie, who opened his mouth to protest that that wasn’t the point, but she added. “Can you get Roger to shut up? I’m sick of hearing him bitching.”

“Did something happen between you two?” Is what Freddie finally finds himself asking.

“I could get used to this.” Roger grins at her when she brings him a cup of tea in the warm light of the late morning, a book under one of her arms. She keeps using the mug with the cat faces on it for him, he’s started calling it ‘his mug’ and maybe she’s started calling it that too in her mind.

“Yeah, well don’t. You can get your own tea next time.” Ash laughed, sitting up beside in bed, cradling her own tea in one hand, pulling out the book with the other.

“Just show me where everything is, I think I could manage.” Roger chuckles, putting his free arm around her where she’s sat back against the headboard. “What are you reading?” Looking at him with a little surprise, Ash smiles slightly, taking a big gulp of tea, putting the mostly full cup on the bedside table before tucking herself against him, opening up the book.

“I found it in the common room, it’s one of those trashy romance novels,” after a beat, she closed the book, keeping her place with her finger, showing him the cover, where a woman was posing sensuously with a hand on a beautifully painted horse, “but I think she fucks the horse.” Roger snorts at that, his arm tightening around her just a little.

He doesn’t have an answer, just laughs, reading with her when she opens the book back up. It’s soft and domestic, her head on his chest as they both read the novella, sipping their tea on occasion. The blinds are down, but there’s still stripes of light peeking through, hitting the floor with golden light and the room feels warm and hazy. They stay like that for a long while, Roger actually becomes rather engrossed in the story, and when Ash shifts to lean over and take a sip of her tea, he takes the book to read ahead a few lines. When she turns back, she just watches him for a moment, a fond smile slowly spreading over her face, and when he finally looks up, realised he was caught, she leans forward, pressing a kiss to his lips, sweet, her hand coming up to cup his cheek, and when she pulls back, he’s smiling back at her, a little confused.

“What was that for?” He grinned, and Ash shrugged, ducking her head to hide her blush.

“I dunno, maybe the book got me going.” She lied easily, and Roger’s expression turns a little unreadable, though it’s clear he doesn’t believe her.

“We weren’t even up to the hot part!” He countered, and Ash laughed, taking the book from him, but he stays holding it, lets himself be pulled with it until he’s meeting her for a kiss, his hand on her wrist when he lets go of the book to move up her arm and start sliding off her dressing gown. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Yeah, Ash had thought, I could get used to this.

“Hello, Ash?” In the present, Freddie waves a hand in front of her face. Ash’s expression soured as her chest began to ache.

“No, okay? Nothing happened between us, Freddie. Roger’s just being a bitch.”

the ususal suspects: @deakydickfanpage @hollyissuchahoe @laueecakee@smittyjaws @crystalshines2909 @i-am-sarah @legendsaresooftenwarnings@2ptonpt @benhardy24-7 @maiilovely @mickey-yr-a-goner @butter-times@heyyouitskay @tired-eyes-fairy-lights @yepimthatperson @missieluvsmurder @ironqueen98 @ceruleanrainblues @banhbao329 @fantasticchaoticwho @ko-kitty @seven-seas-of-hi @mimisfangirlfantasy @aadjuric @rogmobile @cardybenhardy

#roger taylor #roger taylor imagine #roger taylor x oc #bohemian rhapsody #borhap #bo rhap #freddie mercury #borhap imagine #brian may #bohemian rhapsody imagine #queen #queen imagine #john deacon #ask your destiny to dance fic #mary austin #the angry lizard writes

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mimik-u · 6 years ago

Text

Flower Child (Chapter 12): Monday

AO3

Monday morning found Yellow Diamond in her study, watching nothing as dawn slowly drew itself around her like a pinkish cape. The shadows under her eyes pooled in the soft light, and the crow’s feet edging them became stark, black, defined. (God, when was the last time she’d had a full night’s sleep? When was the last time she hadn’t stayed awake—fighting and chasing away and courting sordid demons? When was the last time she’d seen a proper bed?) Even still, she was already impeccably dressed for it to not even be seven yet. Her golden hair was swept upwards in a coiffure sharp enough to cut yourself on, and she wore a black suit in the matter-of-fact way that the sky wore the sun. Her heels were perfectly practical (thank you very much), her face meticulously painted on.

Put together but not quite, she stared at nothing.

Maybe the wall.

Maybe the minuscule crack in the door.

And could not bring herself to think about the three meetings she had today, so consumed by the thought of Blue.

Blue was getting out today.

She would assume the stage.

She would get into a town car and not go to the cemetery where their dead daughter lay.

The world would spin on, and for once—for the first time in four years—her wife would spin with it.

It made Yellow so damn happy.

And it made her so damn sad at the same time.

Blue was moving… not on, never on… but forward.

And it wouldn’t be because of Yellow.

She took an impulsive drag of her coffee and half-hoped it would scald her.

(She hadn’t been enough. They hadn’t been.)

When the analog clock on the wall unwillingly dragged her into the next minute, the CEO finally slid her golden gaze from the door to the intercom panel propped next to her lamp. She pressed one of the buttons, eliciting a crackling noise at first, before the line was abruptly snagged by a voice that was equal parts panic and equal parts sleep: “Yes, Mrs. Diamond?!”

“Did I wake you?” Of course, Yellow knew that she had, but she at least had enough courtesy to feign otherwise.

“No, ma’am!” Poppy gamely lied. “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to do a favor for me,” she said, biting her lip. She could have added please to let the maid know that she was serious, but reticence was this particular woman’s both strength and weakness.

“Anything, Mrs. Diamond!”

“You can knock that off now. We’ve already established who I am.”

“Of course, Mrs—” Poppy caught herself with a little squeak. “O-of course.”

Yellow sighed—quite dramatically in proportion to the circumstances really—but pressed on anyway. “I need you to call up to the flower shop and send an arrangement to someone in Empire City Hospital. I’ll leave my credit card on the desk.”

It wasn’t a particularly unusual request. Yellow was sending flowers and champagne bottles to business associates all the time. Even through the staticky transmission, she could hear Poppy scribbling these directions down on paper.

The scratching stopped. “And whom shall I direct the flowers to, ma’am?”

She inhaled sharply.

Oh, hell and shit.

She only knew the kid’s name and approximate age (older than five but certainly younger than twenty).

“His name is Steven,” she sniffed haughtily (to disguise her ignorance, of course). “Young boy. You should be able to locate him.”

“A-ah, yes, ma’am.”

��Good.” Yellow leaned back in her chair and looked quite pleased with herself until she just as suddenly didn’t; with a sudden thought, her dark brow depressed into a frown over her eyes. (When was the last time that her mouth and eyes and chest unbent in a smile? When was the last time worry didn’t transform her entire physiognomy, didn’t make her appear ten years older—ten years more grim and demanding and cold?)

“And, Poppy?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Make it anonymous.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

ii.

Monday morning found Poppy on the verge of hysterics as she called three different extensions in Empire City Hospital trying to inquire after a sick boy named Steven.

No, she didn’t know his last name!

No, she couldn’t tell you a room number!

No, she most certainly was not pranking them!

Gah!

iii.

Monday morning found Priyanka Maheswaran nursing her third tumbler of coffee as she surveyed Steven’s guardians from over its rim. In Room 11037, they stood in the empty space where Steven’s bed had once been. The technicians had just taken him down for a couple of scans for UNOS, but even though the five adults in the room objectively knew that, the absence of the boy unnerved the air. Abandoned wires spilled across the scorchingly white floor. The heart monitor on the wall was a flat black, leering at them with its emptiness.

Pearl’s hair seemed to be positively standing on edge.

They were all in shambles—each of them, in their own ways.

The doctor gathered herself into some semblance of professionalism and half-wondered if such posturing was but an exercise in pointlessness. Surely, these people could see through the cracks, the holes in her carefully constructed facade.

Surely, they knew that she cared.

“I’m going to be blunt with you—”

Amethyst cut across her with a wry smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “You always are, Dr. M.”

“True,” Priyanka conceded with a sigh, “and so I see no reason to be anything else with you all.”

She was as sharp as one of her surgical instruments and equally as direct.

Greg’s eyes bore her down, were haunting in their worn sockets.

It was his damn child.

It’d once been his damn girlfriend.

(At the funeral, he pressed Steven against his chest and wept in place of a eulogy.)

“Even with dialysis,” she said, clutching her cup like it was a lifeline, “and even with the extra support we’re giving him here in the hospital, we’re still racing against the clock. His heart is working harder to compensate his kidneys, and his lungs are working harder to compensate his heart.”

He was dying.

That was the cold and hard truth.

Priyanka did not say it, for she didn’t need to—the unspoken words landed in the room anyway, striking precisely, like bullets, the carnage written all over their faces. Pearl’s hands on her stomach were gored with it. There was a third eye on Garnet’s head where her troubled brow met in the middle.

(At the funeral, Pearl had to be lightly pulled away from the casket. She stared at nothing. She said nothing. She stared at Rose.)

(At the funeral, people whispered that Garnet was callous for looking so stoic, so put together, so tearless. They didn’t notice her hands, how they trembled by her sides.)

“Ya gotta say something, Doc,” Amethyst said when the silence got to be too much, when the room started to feel too empty. The air around her was frenetic, charged. She looked liable to be both the predator and the prey trapped in a corner. “That’s what’s wrong. Now what’s the solution?”

(At the funeral, Amethyst cried openly, viscerally, and yet, still found the strength to pull Pearl away from the casket, to squeeze Garnet’s hand, to hold Steven when Greg had to bury his face in his hands.)

(At the funeral, Priyanka made herself notice all of these little things, forced herself to carve them into her memory, one scalpel incision at a time, as both a punishment and a reminder. Somehow, someway, she could have done better, could have been better. Moving forward, she would, dammit. She would never attend another funeral like this.)

“The solution, of course,” she sighed, “is a viable kidney, and I know you don’t want to hear that. I know that it’s the same thing I said last time and the time before that, but dammit, that’s what it’s going to take.”

If anger seared the edge of this proclamation, it was not an anger intended for the broken people standing across from her. It was for the woefully inadequate transplant system where eighteen people across the world died every day because they couldn’t get the organ they so desperately needed. It was for the unfair fact that neither Greg nor Amethyst nor Garnet nor Pearl were matches for the boy they would all give their lives to protect. No hesitation. No blinking. It was for the incredulous idea—ludicrous, absurd, preposterous!—that even if they did find a kidney, that this family wouldn’t have the means to pay for it because health care was so screwed up in this damn country.

If Priyanka was angry, it was for the utter insanity of it all.

The madness.

There was no rationality in a fourteen-year old dying.

“It’s so perverse,” Pearl whispered into the silence, “that we’re here again.”

It was a familiar stage, a familiar scene.

Just someone else in the bed that had once contained a woman with kind eyes and a warm smile—a brilliant, compassionate heart.

Garnet looked away, clenched her fists by her sides.

“It has to end differently, though,” Greg said, a plea in his voice and his eyes. It was scratched across his entire body. It was a scar. “I… I can’t… do that again. I can’t lose him.”

It was wonder that he didn’t shatter where he stood, that they all didn’t. Amethyst reached up and placed a hand on his back.

(This was a familiar image, too.)

(Hell, it was a memory—simply transplanted into the here and now.)

“Greg… all of you—” She began and abruptly stopped. Priyanka Maheswaran was as sharp as one of her surgical instruments and equally as direct, but for once in her life, she didn’t want to be. She wanted to tell this family that their kid was going to make it, that they’d find him a kidney, that the surgery would go well, that love and joy and peace would win at the end of the damn day. She wanted to give them hope; she desperately wanted a modicum of the sensation for herself.

But what could she say?

What could she possibly fucking say?

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice cracking, “but this is all I have.”

iv.

Monday morning found Connie Maheswaran unfolded across the backseat of her dad’s cruiser, scrolling through another medical journal, only occasionally stopping to jot down notes in a tab-marked, dog-eared, well-worn, well-loved composition book. When he wasn’t pretending to be interested in his heretofore very boring stakeout, her father’s wire-rimmed glasses peered at her from the rearview mirror.

“You’re sure looking studious for it to be a sunny day in July,” he quipped lightly. Some old alternative band warbled through his ancient cassette deck as he said it, lending him an inadvertent lyricalness. Connie, penciling down donor qualifications in her neat handwriting, mmm’d in distracted reply.

“Oh, I get it,” he shrugged playfully, feigning hurt. “You’re busy. Alas, I’d forgotten the singleminded passions of youth so removed am I by the passage of time. Woe unto me!”

“You’re such a dork, Dad.”

Donors must have a compatible blood type with the patient.

“Oh?” He raised a bushy eyebrow in the mirror. “Is that a polysyllabic response I hear?”

Donors must be in good physical and mental health before consenting to the surgery.

A master of irony, Connie sparred back with a nice and succinct, “Yep.”

Donors must be at least eighteen-years old to qualify for surgery.

These six words were logical, reasonable, were only to be expected—and yet, ice dropped through the twelve-year old’s stomach anyway; a burning sensation pricked the corners of her eyes. She wiped at these feelings furiously, scrubbed them away with the back of her hand.

“Touché,” her dad sighed.

Monday morning found Pearl dragging her feet against the wooden deck, her overnight bag dripping carelessly from her shoulder, a world and a boy and a boy who was her world pressing against the column of her spine. Her fingers shook as they fumbled first with her keys and then with the handle of the screen door.

The hot, July sun taunted her pale neck one last time before she finally escaped into the dark house… only to be immediately swallowed by its emptiness.

God, it was desolate.

So wrong and so vile.

Gray light wept onto the wooden floors.

To her left, there was no Steven in a bed that was left unmade from the last night he’d slept in it. M.C. Bear Bear dangled halfway off the mattress, deserted and derelict without the boy who brought him to life with a smile and a laugh.

To her right, the reading nook in the corner of the room almost looked untouched, betrayed only by a slight crookedness skewing one of the cushions. Steven had knelt there, and Steven had fallen, and now Steven wouldn’t be leaving the hospital for a very long time if… if… if?

(If ever again.)

The dull thud of his fall echoed in her head.

It dropped into the pit of her stomach and ruined her.

(“I’m sorry,” Priyanka Maheswaran had said, and Priyanka Maheswaran never said sorry, "but this is all I have.”)

Pearl clutched her rumpled shirt and tried not to shatter as she limped further into the living room, where a lump on the couch caught the corner of her eye.

The lump, of course, was Peridot, wrapped in a blanket and snoring slightly. Without her glasses on, she looked particularly young—vulnerable. (Though, ferocious as she was, she’d claw someone’s eyes out before ever acquiescing to such gooey epithets.)

Pearl didn’t necessarily want to wake her, but she didn’t want to leave her on the hard couch either, so in the end, she approached quietly and skimmed her knuckles lightly against the girl’s exposed shoulder.

Emerald eyes flew open with a jolt.

A startled cat tore from under the blanket and streaked out of the room.

“Nyeh!”

“Sorry,” Pearl apologized as Peridot scrambled to find her bearings and her glasses and a little shred of dignity, too. Once her frames were adjusted on her pointed nose, she looked positively scandalized—which was fair, of course. “Just wanted to let you know I’m here. I’m going to nap for a few hours before my shift, so you’re welcome to go home for a bit or crash in a bed if you’d like.”

But scandal turned into realization turned into somberness in the other’s face.

Pearl found that she wasn’t ready to face it; her duffel bag slipped slightly on her shoulder.

“Where’s Lapis?” She tried quickly, but Peridot was quicker—intuitive and stubborn, a deadly combination.

“Swim practice. Never mind her.” Peridot waved a flippant hand. “How’s Steven?”

She knew the litany of lies by heart now.

He’s fine.

He’s stable.

He’s resting.

He’s fine.

And she tried to summon one on her lips for Peridot—she tried so damn hard to stay together—but how could she?

How could she fucking do it?

“… Pearl?”

"Peridot, I... I—" Tears leaked from her eyes.

And dripped down her beaky nose.

And splattered her sweater with their ruin.

Something was building in her stomach, in her chest, in the column of her throat.

And she tried splaying her fingers across her mouth, tried damming up the carnage, but—

"Pearl!"

—she was falling apart.

Or she'd already done so.

And this was just the explicit proof:

Pearl collapsed to her knees and wept.

vi.

Monday morning found Greg Universe on his metaphorical knees. He was desperation reconciled, a man not really sitting on a bench, so much as he was a man being supported by one. A phone was in his hand; there was an exhaustion on his shoulders.

“Ya could have called me sooner, y’know,” Greg’s cousin said on the other end of the line. There wasn’t admonition in the sentence, just resignation.

And concern.

And grief.

Andy had just met Steven a couple of months ago, but like all people who came into his son’s orbit, found it impossible not to love him, not to care. Andy had taken him up in his old plane and shown him the stars, and Steven had shown that cantankerous old coot that he didn’t have to roam the world looking for home.

Greg spidered his hand across his forehead and looked down at the concrete between his feet—the minuscule cracks in the pavement, the imperfect rubble. He burned all over; he wanted to burn the world to the ground; he wished the ground would swallow him whole; his son was sick.

“I didn’t want to face it, Andy,” he whispered, his voice strained tight, on the verge of breaking. “I’ve already lost Rose… I didn’t… I couldn’t—”

But his cousin took pity on him and quickly cut him off. “—I know, kiddo… I know. Listen, I’ll go get tested and get back to ya, okay?”

“Okay.” He closed his sagging eyes. “Thanks.”

“Tell Champ that I’m gonna bring him something cool the next time I fly down there.” Andy’s thick Jersey accent was slung with emotion (or whiskey one), all the hard consonants broken and slurred. “Ya got that, ya bald bastard?”

Greg chuckled lifelessly. “Yeah, I hear you loud and clear.”

“Good man,” and the phone clicked off just as warm hand landed quietly on his shoulder, drawing him back from the darkness. Of course, it was Garnet, who had been his companion in exhausting their contact lists and asking friends and family to get tested. Of course, it was Garnet who always knew exactly what he needed in the moment that he did.

She was steady like that, dependable.

Somehow, he found it in himself to wonder who was the same for her? Who was steady? Who was dependable? Who was the shoulder she leaned upon, if she needed to lean at all?

She’d always been so self-sufficient, so contained and in control.

Or was it Steven?

The possibility hit him suddenly, like a train.

(He thought on it; he chewed; he concluded: it was probably Steven.)

“You can’t beat yourself up, Greg,” she murmured. Sunlight glinted across her sunglasses, eradicating even the suggestion of her eyes beneath them. “We didn’t think we’d be here this fast. We thought we’d have more…”

“…time,” he finished quietly and choked a little at the end.

(“I’m sorry,” Priyanka Maheswaran had said. He then waited for the blow, and she promptly delivered. “But this is all I have.”)

There wasn’t any more time.

There was only waiting and hoping and waiting and hoping and—

They’d been waiting and hoping for eight months now.

Garnet’s fingernails dug into his shirt.

“S’not that I want to be hard on myself,” he mumbled, swiping clumsily at his snotting nose. “It’s just that I feel like I’m failing my kid, y’know? He’s in there fighting for his life, and I… I can’t do anything about it!”

The concrete mocked him with its gray, blank face; he wished it would rise up from the ground and strike him; he’d give anything if it would clock him cold; he deserved it; or maybe he didn’t; maybe everything was all screwed up, and he just didn’t really want to feel a damn thing—for hours at a time, for days.

“But, Greg,” Garnet whispered, her voice tight around the edges, her grip on him tighter. “Look at you. Look at that phone in your hand. We’ve been calling people all morning. We’ve been fighting for him for months.” She almost sounded angry, which was a rarity in and of itself for this particular woman who so masterfully boxed all of her emotions down and away. “That isn’t nothing.”

But then, suddenly, without warning, further complicating everything he knew about her, Garnet balled her free hand into a fist and knocked it hard against the bench. Her knuckles came back imprinted with the striations in the wood.

“It can’t be nothing,” she growled. “All of this can’t be for nothing. He can’t just—” But she stopped short, apparently choked, and Greg closed his eyes again.

Steven could just die, and that would be that.

It would be their entire world.

It would all be for nothing.

The sun was so damn bright today; it burned, and it burned, and it burned.

vi.

Monday found Amethyst teetering beneath a hella big flower arrangement as she stumbled into Room 11037.

God, the container was almost as huge as her head and just as full of crap—which was to say, beautiful sunflowers whose golden petals unfurled symmetrically around dark anthers. The strain of carrying it reddened her fingers as she did well to deposit it on the moveable tray Steven ordinarily used as a table when he ate.

(Not that he did eat.)

(Not really.)

The thud of the vase hitting the table jolted Steven from what had been a half-lidded gaze to a well-alert panic.

“Wha—?”

“Sorry, Steven,” she apologized, still panting from the exertion. She then leaned against the foot of his bed, wrapping one of her newly sore arms against the frame. “Didn’t mean for that to be so loud. Stupid thing was just so heavy.”

Encumbered as he was by wires, he couldn’t really move his head to take a closer look at the arrangement, but all the same, panic softened in his eyes—became appreciation and awe in a blink.

It hurt Amethyst to look at him.

(She would never look away.)

“Ohmygosh!” he croaked in one impressive breath. “These are so pretty. Who sent them?”

“Beats me,” Amethyst shrugged, quite unfortunately exacerbating the soreness in her shoulders. “Nurse said that your secret admirer wanted to stay anonymous.”

“Aw,” he grinned, “I have a secret admirer?”

“Ahahaha, somethin’ like that. Could it be the old lady?” Not that anyone was asking, but she thought it was quite admirable of herself to show restraint enough not to go with a more colorful moniker. “She’s rich enough to send something as fancy-schmancy as this.”

Steven thought on it for a moment—lifted his dark eyes towards the ceiling and hummed tentatively. The fluorescents overhead crowned his black hair with a harsh halo and illuminated the deep grooves beneath his eyes, the hollows in his face, the yellowish pallor of his skin.

Jaundice was setting in, making a fine mockery of his youth.

(God, would it hurt to just look away just once?)

“Truuuuuue,” he eventually conceded, “but I don’t know why she just wouldn’t bring them with her.”

Oh, yeah.

That was something that was happening.

It was a hella good thing Pearl was working today.

“Oh, yeah. She’s coming later, isn’t she?”

“Yup. Two o’clock.” Amethyst glanced over her shoulder at the clock on the wall—it was nearly one—and then turned back to him, a small frown puckering at her lips.

“That isn’t a long time from now.”

“And?”

“And, buddy, my pal, my friend,” Amethyst smiled bitterly, “I hope you know what you’re gonna say to her because you look like shit.”

“Rude!” He stuck his tongue out and approximated some semblance of a faux offended expression, but his brow furrowed above his bruised eyes all the same.

These past three days had done their number on Steven, and he was a far cry from the boy who bounced in the elevator ride up to Blue Diamond’s opulent penthouse suite, and he was absolutely the ghost of the kid he was eight months ago.

(He used to pounce on Amethyst’s back and demand that she fake wrestle with him.)

(He used to play on the beach for hours.)

(He’d been so vibrant and alive and present and capable, and God, how was it even fair that he wasn’t anymore?)

“Just tellin’ the truth,” Amethyst sighed. “I dunno much about her, but going off the bathrobe and smudged mascara alone, I wouldn’t guess that she’s got a strong constitution.”

Steven batted back with a worldweary sigh of his own.

“I know,” he murmured, “but, also, like, I dunno, Amethyst—I think strength for her might just be wandering around in a bathrobe, you know?” On top of his blankets, he softly skimmed his thumb across the knuckles of his other hand, careful to avoid all of the intravenous lines. “Honestly, I think… she might struggle with even that.”

The translation was clear in his face: Blue Diamond struggled to even be.

At that very moment, Amethyst was simultaneously irritated and sympathetic, understanding and unkind. She began to pick viciously at one of the loose threads in Steven’s blanket; her long bangs fell unceremoniously over her right eye.

“If that’s true, then she might break just seeing you, Steven.”

He thought on this, too, closing his eyes and settling his thumb across the ridges of his knuckles.

She hated when he did this.

Hated how still he looked.

(And yet, she still couldn’t bring herself look away.)

“Maybe”—he opened his eyes—“but maybe not… I want to help her, Amethyst. I think she needs it.”

You're the one who needs help, she wanted to say.

(He looked so sincere as he said it, so kind and warm and believing in the idea that a broken, old lady could be saved by his smile alone.)

You don’t owe a damn thing to this lady.

(He didn't owe a damn thing to all of the other people he'd helped, but he still did it anyway.)

Take care of yourself.

(What more could he do?)

Fight for yourself.

(What more could any of them do?)

For me.

(I can't lose you, buddy.)

For us.

(We'd be lost.)

But those options would fundamentally be unSteven, and it was so Steven to be so damn selfless, to extend a flower to a grieving woman in a cemetery, a hand and his stupidly big heart to what was clearly a person in need.

“Yeah,” she finally said, her voice thick with emotion, “I gotcha.”

On that tray that he used but didn’t use because he couldn’t hold down solid food anymore, a flower head leaned towards Steven, as though it was itching to say hello.

vii.

Monday found Blue Diamond standing at the threshold of the exit (and the beginning), her long hand pale against the handle that she had been gripping for hours now—weeks, months, years.

(It’d been minutes, but time swallowed her up and spit her out back again. She was here in her penthouse suite preparing to visit a boy in the hospital; she was in that fatal night from all those many years ago, screaming.)

She was coming, Steven Universe.

Her silvery hair swept down her back in its signature braid; a dress, not a bathrobe, unfolded down her curvy frame.

In just a moment or hours from now—weeks, months, maybe years—she would walk out of the door.

(It would be a few minutes; it’d be a near panic attack; it would be bravery.)

She was coming.

#flower child #yellow diamond #priyanka maheswaran #steven universe #blue diamond #connie maheswaran #pearl #garnet #amethyst #greg universe #yellow pearl #s: steven universe #mimik-u #oh boy - i'm whipped

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