#know how i know? every adoptee i know was at the very least abused for half their childhood | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

five-rivers · 5 years ago

Text

Adoption

Based on a prompt by @fabnamessuggestedbytumbler for the Phic Phight! An excuse for Lost Time fluff? Don't mind if I do...

The Ghost Zone had a legal system. A court system. A prison system. A police system. A set of established rules. There were even lawyers.

In theory.

In reality the courts (Observants) refused to look at anything that wasn't world ending. Every group had their own, private prison. The police made up their own rules and, even then, broke them regularly. The actual rules had gone several hundred years without an update and referred to places, organizations, and customs that no longer existed. The lawyers were all clinically depressed. That's what happens when there's no active, unifying head of state for hundreds of years.

Still. Every so often a sufficiently foolish ghost, possessed of a brave purpose, would attempt to navigate the ruins of the legal system. Few made it out alive.

(True, being ghosts, they didn't necessarily go into it alive, but it's the thought that counts.)

But those who did make it out (metaphorically) alive, did so with prizes... well, not great enough, but something enough to convince others to make the attempt. Hence Clockwork's current location and headache.

"Sign the paper, Walker," snapped Clockwork.

"That would be against the rules," said Walker, leaning back in his stupid chair. Clockwork's nonexistent spine hurt just from looking at it.

Maybe he should give himself a spine, just so he'd have a reason to feel this way.

"How," he began, "would it be against the rules? This form needs to be signed by a law enforcement official that has seen or witnessed conclusive evidence the child in question being abused by their natural parents. That is you."

"Yes, but the law enforcement officer must first get a warrant approved by an appropriate court in order to collect such evidence," countered Walker.

"Not if the official came across the evidence or act of abuse while pursuing a different case or simply following standard operating procedure. You saw them shoot at him. His mother put a gun to his head. Have mercy, Walker. I know you don't like him, but he is a child who needs guidance. Not a criminal."

"He's a criminal in my books," said Walker.

"What he did was hardly a crime."

"Jailbreak is a crime!"

"Not if one is unjustly imprisoned," said Clockwork. "He was attempting to remove the foreign object." No matter that possessing material-plane items wasn't an actual crime.

"He let others escape!"

"And what were they imprisoned for?"

Walker grumbled. "Some of them are dangerous, and even he knew that," said Walker, nodding at the file spread over his desk.

"Consider it a cry for help. While you were watching him," stalking him, Clockwork did not say, "on the material plane, did he really strike you as criminally inclined? Or perhaps he was simply confused and scared? One thousand years is a very long time in human terms. The targets of his Obsession would have died. Even if he did commit a misdemeanor, he would have rightly been granted clemency, or at least had his sentence deferred."

Walker frowned.

"That's not what this is about, is it? You covering up a mistake?"

"No," said Walker.

Clockwork blinked, quickly running through potential futures. "No one will care that you crossed the veil without authorization. No one who can do anything about it, in any case."

"There'll be an investigation if I sign that there piece of paper. What's the big deal, anyway? Like you said, humans don't live that long. Just wait fifty years."

"They almost ended him," said Clockwork. "He's a child. Do you really want that on your conscience? With the knowledge that you could have stopped it?"

Sighing, Walker picked up his pen.

Danny went to school. Mainly, he went because he didn't know what else to do. He needed the routine, even if the routine was a lie and he felt like trash.

"You could have stayed," whispered Sam, as his hand inched towards the bandages on his chest for the fifth time that morning. "They wouldn't have noticed you."

Danny shook his head. His hand shook more. He put it back in his lap. "It wouldn't have been right. Besides, I need a passing grade in this class, right?" He couldn't get another F, or his parents would kill him, except- except- except-

They had already tried to kill him.

Everything had gone so much worse than he had ever imagined- No. That wasn't quite right. It had gone- It had...

At least he hadn't been cut open.

(Much.)

"Mr. Fenton?"

Danny jumped, banging his knees painfully on the underside of his desk. He looked up, wildly, tensing himself to flee, only the fact that he was currently human keeping his powers from activating.

(Well, that and... what had been done to him.)

When had Mr. Lancer gotten there?

"What?" he asked, breathlessly.

"Are- Are you alright, Mr. Fenton?"

"I'm fine," Danny said. He wasn't. His ghost half was urging him to go find a nice, dark, quiet, safe corner to hide in, preferably one in the Ghost Zone, his heart was hammering out of his chest, he'd spent the night not-sleeping in one of the guestrooms in Sam's house, and that was before even touching on his injuries.

He forced a smile. Mr. Lancer was one of the few teachers who hadn't given up on him, which was alternately touching and frustrating.

"You look sick," said Mr. Lancer. "Are you sure you don't want to call home?"

Danny's heart stuttered, his core painfully cold. "I'm sure," he said.

"Today is a project day," said Mr. Lancer. "You wouldn't be missing anything in this class, and I can talk to your other teachers."

"No, I'm fine."

The legal clerk for the family court was the kind of ghost who seemed to have fused with her role. The sleeves and collar of her shirt melded seamlessly with her skin. Her nails were brass pen nibs. The lenses of her glasses were part of her face.

She lived in either the basement or the attic of this particular building, depending on how one oriented themselves, among barely-organized stacks of books and papers. There were parchment scrolls and stone tablets, too, the later often re-purposed as elements of the room's furniture. Green-marbled filing cabinets grew out of the walls, and electronic somethings glittered out of the shadows.

The clerk had been reviewing Clockwork's paperwork for literal days. Rather, she would have been, if Clockwork hadn't surreptitiously dropped a time medallion around her neck and stopped time.

She hummed, thoughtfully. "In this document, you are using the pronoun tsai to refer to the adoptee. Are you certain you don't mean tusui? Or perhaps chahe?"

"Absolutely," said Clockwork. The intimation that he wasn't fluent in nchabhatsi was insulting. On the other hand, the requirement for that particular piece of paperwork to be in the language was also, in his opinion, rather ridiculous. Many ghosts, especially the recently dead, did not know nchabhatsi.

"The adoptee is liminal?"

"Yes," said Clockwork.

"Hmm." She stood up and flew from her desk to an inverted bookshelf anchored to the ceiling. From a box she took a huge sheaf of papers, and blew an amount of dust from them that was unhealthy even to a ghost. "It has been a while since we used these," she said, giving Clockwork a faded-ivory smile. "You'll need to fill these out and have them notarized by the proper officials before you can proceed. Liminal spirits are so rare, after all! They require special care. Oh!" Her hands fluttered. "And I'll have to get in contact with our liminality expert. That may take some time."

"If you can give me their name," said Clockwork, "I will take care of it." He gingerly took the stack of slightly-decayed paper. Had it really been so long since a partly-human child had been adopted? Probably.

"Oh, you're such a dear," said the clerk, not noticing the sudden absence of the medallion around her neck. "But that paperwork won't do itself, and-"

"It's done," said Clockwork. Fulfilling some of the new requirements had been more challenging than others and avoiding a paradox had taken considerable self-control, but what good were his temporal abilities if he couldn't use them for personal gain now and again? None at all.

"Ah," said the clerk.

Familiar, and very loud, voices spilled from the hallway near the office. Danny, one hand on his locker, trying to remember his combination, froze like a deer in headlights. His heartbeat picked up, his core buzzed frantically. He couldn't move. Grey crept in along the edges of his vision.

"... not him. It was never him! He's dead-"

"Mrs. Fenton, Mr. Fenton, I'm not sure what you're getting at, here, but your son has been at school all day, and we-"

"A ghost killed him and took his place! It's been playing a sick game with us this whole time!"

"Danny would never have gotten grades like this. We should have noticed the lower intellect right away, if nothing else."

"That's-" spluttered Mr. Lancer. "You- Daniel's work is exemplary, what little of it he turns in. I'm going to have to ask you to go back to the office-"

"No! Not until that piece of ectoplasmic scum is wiped from the face of the Earth!"

"Danny," said Tucker, much closer. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Right. Ghostly super hearing. Tucker and Sam, staring at him with concern, couldn't know.

"They're here," he managed, the words like sandpaper in his throat.

Sam uttered a word that would have sent her mother into a screeching fit. "We need to get you out of here," she said putting a hand on his back and pushing him down the hall.

"I'll run interference," said Tucker. "Make sure they can't follow you in the GAV."

"Good thinking," said Sam.

"Call me when you're safe," said Tucker, peeling off, presumably to hack the GAV.

"Danny, breathe," ordered Sam, as she propelled him through the double doors at the back of the school. "We're going to get you through this."

Clockwork had resorted to trapping the legal complex in a massive temporal bubble. Not the neatest solution, true, and it seemed to encourage the various functionaries, regulators, and bureaucrats to take even more time to process even the simplest request, but at least it would keep Daniel's suffering in the meantime to a minimum.

However, that didn't change the fact that he had been bouncing back and forth between the various floors of the building like a ping-pong ball, never getting closer to the solitary family court judge, for well over a subjective year. He was exhausted, frustrated, and he missed Daniel.

"You will be able to provide steady, stable access to the adoptee's preferred haunt?" asked his present interviewer.

"Yes," said Clockwork, dully. The room was ringed with runes that prevented deception of any kind.

"You will be able to provide shelter adequate for both his ghostly and human form?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He had answered these questions so many times before.

"You have taken the mandated class on liminality?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He was beginning to understand why other ghosts just gave up and sought extralegal solutions.

"You are aware of a liminal spirit's developmental and emotional needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. This was just so boring.

"And are you able to satisfy those needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. If only it would end.

The interviewer nodded. "Then we're done here," he said.

"Ye- What? Does that mean I can see the judge?" asked Clockwork, hopefully.

"No. That means that your adoption motion can move on to the next stage," said the interviewer. "Our liminality expert will examine your arrangements and determine whether or not they are sufficient, and we will contact law enforcement to follow up on your claim that the adoptee is being abused."

Clockwork bit back a groan. At least he was making progress.

They cut through the empty field behind the school, angling back toward the surrounding neighborhood. The grass came up to their chests, except where there were holes, mounds, and gouges from ghost fights. When there was one in the school, Danny tried to bring it out here, so people wouldn't get hurt.

He wasn't often successful.

Sam led the way. Danny felt- He felt ashamed. If his powers were working, he would be able to fly them away, or at least turn them invisible. This would all be so much easier. He could have taken care of himself, and Sam and Tucker wouldn't get in trouble, because they would definitely get in trouble for this. But he couldn't.

He couldn't even convince his parents that he was himself. He had to screw that up, too.

Before, he had thought, worse case scenario would be that they'd try to 'fix' him, to remove his ghost half, or maybe they'd think he was overshadowed. At least, he'd convinced himself of that, convinced himself that dissection would be off the table if he ever told them, that they would still love him. Maybe they might still want to do tests, but they'd love him. They wouldn't want to hurt him.

But he had been so, so wrong. They didn't believe him. They thought he had killed himself, replaced himself.

They had tried to cut him open.

(They succeeded.)

His core shuddered at the memory.

At least, though, there hadn't been any ghost attacks today. He wouldn't have been able to fight anything stronger than the Box Ghost. Heck, he might have lost to the Box Ghost. Like this, he would have to leave the ghosts to his parents, Valerie, or the GIW, none of which were particularly good options for the hunters, the ghosts, or the innocent bystanders of Amity Park.

His core pulsed uncomfortably at the thought of any of them getting hurt, including his parents.

He flinched. His core had been very jumpy, very active ever since... it... happened. Usually it only did this while he was in ghost form, and was otherwise almost dormant.

"Are you okay?" asked Sam. "Is it hurting?" She was the one who had bandaged him up last night.

"We can't stop now," said Danny.

Sam flattened her lips. "That isn't an answer. As soon as we get somewhere quiet, I'm checking you out, okay?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

When they reached the short fence, Sam gave him a boost to get over and they made their way into the suburb. There was a small library branch down the road a ways. It had a small family bathroom that Sam and Tucker had patched Danny up in before. It would be a good place to regroup before trying to put as much distance between them and Danny's parents as possible.

"We could take the city bus, I think," said Sam. "There's a stop outside the library. Maybe we could go to Elmerton?"

"Maybe," said Danny.

"Any ETA on Jazz since last night?"

Danny shook his head. "She couldn't get a flight. She's taking a Greyhound. Won't be here 'til-"

There was a beep. Danny stopped breathing. That could have been anything, a phone, a watch, a car, something from a building, but something about it tickled at Danny's brain as wrong.

"There is a ghost twenty feet in front of you."

The whine of a charging ectogun-

Sam slammed into his side, and they both fell. Danny felt the cut on his chest begin to bleed again, and he curled around it protectively. It hurt so much more than it should, and Danny wondered if that was because ghosts were ultimately shaped by their minds and his was in so much pain right now.

His parents had just shot at him. From behind. Not ghost him, Phantom him, either. Human him.

They hated him. All of him. Not just half of him.

His ghost sense went off. Because things could always get worse for Danny and the universe apparently hated him.

He struggled into a sitting position and blinked, confused. There were people surrounding him, protecting him, standing between him and his parents. Sam was shouting. Danny couldn't make out what she was saying, what anyone was saying, not with his heart pounding in his ears.

"Kid," said one man, shaking his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Danny considered that. "No," he said, finally.

The man pulled a phone from his pocket and began saying something about calling the hospital. Normally, Danny would be worried about that, but he was looking for the ghosts. It was possible one of the more benevolent spirits that haunted Amity Park had happened across the scene, but, somehow, Danny doubted it.

His ghost sense went off again. He whimpered.

His people were in danger.

Ghosts usually came for him (he was leading them here, an evil ghost, causing all this trouble, murderer), or at least attacked him first, to get rid of him as a threat. He staggered to his feet. He had to get away. Still clutching his chest, he turned and bolted.

Almost at once, he was surrounded by ghosts in police gear. Walker's goons. Definitely stronger than the Box Ghost. Still, he was going to at least try to fight. He put his fists up. Maybe some of them would be dumb enough not to phase out of the way of his stupid human punches.

Then Walker himself descended from the sky.

"Daniel," he said, stiffly.

"Walker," returned Danny. A small part of him was grateful that Walker hadn't called him Phantom and spilled his secret. It was strange, but no ghost had ever seemed particularly inclined to do that, despite how easy it would have been.

"We have a court order to take you into custody," said Walker. "Someone wants to ask you a few questions."

Danny decided today's mood was 'pointless bravado and defiance.' "And why would I want to come with- whoa."

As Danny talked, Walker had taken a piece of paper with strange symbols written on it in green ink out from the inside pocket of his jacket. The symbols made his head spin... Or maybe that was just his injuries catching up with him. His left leg was trembling, and he wasn't sure how much longer it would hold out.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and focused on Walker. "I have no idea what that says."

Walker sighed. "Just come quietly, son. Make it easier on yourself."

Danny swallowed his discomfort at being called 'son.' "You won't hurt anyone else?" he asked.

"I'm just here for you."

There really wasn't much of a choice. Whether he went quietly or got himself beaten up even more, Walker would win and carry him off. Anyone could see that. Besides, ghost prison might be a better alternative than getting dissected by his parents.

He raised his hands in front of him, wrists together. "Go ahead, then," said Danny, flatly.

Walker nodded, and the goons converged on him. The cuffs they put around his wrists glowed green, but they had weight in a way most purely ghostly things didn't. Danny doubted that he'd be able to phase his way out of them, human or ghost. Then they picked him up and the whole swarm started to fly away.

"Yes, this is my lair," said Clockwork. "I can, however, duplicate and be both here and at the secondary residence I acquired expressly for the purpose of ensuring continuity of Daniel's human life."

The 'liminality expert' grunted. "He's still been here, though, hasn't he?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. "He has."

"And he might be here again in the future."

"Yes. I do plan to have him here, for short periods of time."

"And later, when he sheds his human life?"

"Perhaps."

"Then I need to know, are these up to OSHA standards? Your entire lair needs to be up to OSHA standards."

"They're time viewers and tools for unraveling paradoxes. OSHA, even the OSHA of the far future, does not regulate these items," said Clockwork. "Why, in the name of time, do you even need to know? Surely, OSHA didn't even exist the last time a liminal child was adopted."

"Well," said the expert, slightly sheepish. "No. But regulations state that all residences must be safe for children by both human and ghost standards."

"Then OSHA is not what you should be using," said Clockwork. "OSHA is the set of rules for occupational health and safety."

"Ah," said the expert. "Then we can move right along to the next check mark, shall we?"

"Hi," said a cheerful voice.

Danny looked up from his contemplation of the examination room table and glared balefully at the ghost who had just entered the door. They didn't seem to be affected. But then, why would they be? Danny was handcuffed to the table and clearly not a threat.

"I'm the interviewer," said the featureless ghost. "Do you know why you're here?"

"No," said Danny.

"Well," said the interviewer, "I work for the eighth authorized family court of the Infinite Realms, we're actually the only one right now, but there used to be more, and a little while ago, an adoption request was filed on your behalf."

Danny blinked and made a face. "You mean, someone stole my identity in ghost court?"

"No, no," said the interviewer, waving one amorphous hand. "Not at all. I mean to say, I ghost filed a request to legally adopt you."

"Who?" asked Danny. "Not Vlad?" Vlad was the only ghost he could think of who had demonstrated any interest in adopting him.

"No, that's not the name listed here."

"Plasmius?" asked Danny, still cringing internally.

"No."

"Then who?"

"Clockwork."

"What, seriously?" Danny liked Clockwork, and he liked to think that Clockwork liked him back, that they were friends, but the older ghost always seemed somewhat aloof.

"Yes, he was very serious. Now. I have a number of questions I need to ask you." They took out a small, glowing crystal, and set it on the table. "Do you know what this is?"

"No?" said Danny.

"It's a record crystal," said the ghost. "But one of its other functions is that it can sense deception, and record when in an interview it is being used. Go ahead, say something you know is false."

"I... like toast?"

The crystal's glow dimmed slightly before returning to its previous level.

"There, see? Very useful, don't you think?"

"I guess," said Danny. He didn't know how to feel about this. Any of this. What would ghost adoption even mean? He trusted Clockwork, but this felt like too much, too fast. He hadn't even properly processed what had happened with his parents a few hours ago.

"Right. So. We'll start with an easy one, then. Is your name Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom, also known as Danny Phantom, or simply Danny or Phantom?"

"Yes," said Danny, eyeing the crystal warily.

"And what would you prefer to go by, for the purposes of this interview?"

"Phantom," said Danny.

"Alright then, Phantom," said the interviewer, "could you please tell me where you primarily reside?"

"Fentonworks," said Danny, "in Amity Park." So far, he hadn't really had a reason to lie. All of this was common knowledge for both his human and ghostly acquaintances.

"And what would you consider to be your haunt?"

"My what?"

"Your haunt. The territory that you have metaphysically claimed."

"I- I don't really understand."

"Is there an area that you feel compelled to defend against hostile persons? An area in which non-hostile ghosts defer to you?"

"I- Yeah. I guess. Amity Park. And some of the bits around it, too."

"The entire city?"

"I guess? I don't know," said Danny. "Is that weird?"

"It would be unusual," said the interviewer.

Danny really wished the interviewer had an expression he could read. Or even just something approximating a face.

"Now, do you feel safe in your home? In 'Fentonworks?'"

The correct answer to that question would be no, but he wasn't sure he should answer. What if this was some kind of elaborate trick?

"We can come back to that," said the interviewer. "Are there any other places where you do feel safe?"

"I mean, sure?" said Danny. He fidgeted.

"Would you please share some of those places?"

"School, I guess?" Except that he got beaten up there all the time and his parents had hunted him down there and he had to escape and... Yeah.

The crystal dimmed. Danny grimaced.

"Ah," said the interviewer. "Anywhere else?"

"My friends houses," said Danny. "And the Far Frozen." To his relief, this time, the crystal stayed bright.

"Have you ever been to Clockwork's lair?"

"Yeah," said Danny. He slouched in the chair as much as possible. He wasn't sure he should be answering these questions, but he was. Maybe he should stop.

"Do you feel safe there?"

"Not at first, but now I do."

"I see. Why not at first?"

"Clockwork and I didn't meet on great terms and we sort of got into a fight." Maybe that would get the interviewer to stop. They'd decide Clockwork couldn't adopt him and leave. Did Danny want that? He wasn't sure.

"That's more common than one might expect. But you feel safe with him now?"

"Yes."

"Alright, moving on. How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

There was a long, drawn out silence that managed to be skeptical despite the interviewer's lack of a face.

"I know I'm small," said Danny, insulted, "but I am sixteen."

"Excuse my indelicacy, but... how old were you when you died?"

Danny flushed. "Fourteen," he bit out.

"Then you're fourteen."

"It was two years ago. I'm sixteen."

"Fourteen is your natural age," said the ghost. "A ghost's natural age is the age they died at."

"Yeah, but I'm still half human. I'm still aging. So I'm sixteen."

The interviewer shook their head. "As a liminal spirit, your apparant age range is likely larger than a normal child's would be, but your natural age, your true age, is still fourteen. Based on records of liminals, the highest extent of your age range is most likely to be either twenty-one or twenty-eight. That's part of the reason we investigate official adoption request so thoroughly. The relationship may very well last for thousands of years, if not forever."

"Wait, are you saying I could live forever?" asked Danny, incredulous. This was not how he wanted to find out he was immortal. Heck, he didn't want to be immortal.

"I'll admit, my understanding of liminality isn't perfect, but I believe that is the case. Why? Is that problematic?"

"The results of the law enforcement investigation have come back," said the bureaucrat to whom Clockwork was currently assigned. "As well as an inquiry as to the opinion of the mortal law enforcement arm."

"And?" asked Clockwork. "Their findings?"

The bureaucrat, who had up until that point not displayed evidence that xe possessed any emotions whatsoever, made a face of extreme disgust. "When the officers found the child, the human parents were openly shooting at him. Other humans intervened for long enough for law enforcement to pick him up. Of course, they then felt the need to arrest him and carry him away in handcuffs... I have no idea why I keep at this job, really I don't."

Clockwork's core shifted in worry. His first impulse was to leap up and go comfort Daniel, but he suppressed it. If he left now, he would lose his place in line and have to start over.

"The public nature of the event means that the human police are now investigating the child's circumstances and may recommend that the child be removed from his human parents' custody. If you have a human identity and you are able to gain custody of him there, it will aid your case here."

"I am aware," said Clockwork.

"Well, then," xe said. "I believe this is all in order. Here is your ticket to see the judge. Just show it to the door. You know where it is?"

"I do," said Clockwork, rising.

He had walked by the door several times in his dealings with the various clerks and notaries. The room behind it lay directly in the heart of the family court building, all the other rooms and residents armor for this one.

The door itself was made of dark wood full of eye-shaped knots. As Clockwork approached the door, the eyes opened, watching him. He held up the ticket and the doors swung inward.

Inside was a courtroom, complete with benches, tables, a witness stand, a courtroom recorder, a judge's box, and a judge.

The judge was a one-eyed ghost in pale purple robes. She examined Clockwork.

"We had not foreseen this," she said. "Not until you filed the first motion."

"You were never able to see me clearly," said Clockwork, hoping this would not turn into a power play between himself and the Observants. "Did you receive the relevant paper work, your honor?"

"Yes," she said. "Take a seat, Lord Clockwork."

Clockwork flew to the front of the courtroom and settled himself in the applicant's chair.

The judge leaned forward. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I love Daniel, and I believe he deserves more care and protection than he is currently receiving from his biological parents."

The judge waved a clawed hand. "Yes, yes. But you didn't have to go through all of this and get to me in order to do that. You could have just taken him. That's what most people do, nowadays. Ever since the King was sealed and our systems of governance began to decay."

"I believe it is the only way Daniel will truly be safe," said Clockwork, meeting her one eye calmly.

"You want to prevent us from 'interfering.'"

"That would be nice, yes," agreed Clockwork.

"You want this to be binding," accused the judge.

"You say that like it is a bad thing," said Clockwork. "But what else could induce him to fully remove himself from that situation? You see how they treat him. Have you looked at the medical report, yet?"

"I have," said the judge, looking at her desk. "Very well. All the paperwork is in order. I am approving you for a one-month trial period. At the end of the trial period, the status of the child will be assessed. If his state is found to be acceptable, the adoption will be approved and bound. If it is not, this court will take custody of him until such a time as an appropriate guardian can be found." She scribbled something on a piece of paper and then hit it with a stamp. "The probationary bond should be active. You may go."

"Thank you, your honor."

After the end of the interview, which had become much more distressing than Danny wanted to admit, one of Walker's goons showed up and took him away, to another room.

This room was different than any of the other rooms he had seen in Walker's prison. For one, the walls were a soft, pastel green with purple accents, not the harsh, neon pink of elsewhere in the facility. The chairs looked soft, and were arranged almost randomly, clustered in little groups, or around tables. There were colored pencils and crayons on and occasionally floating over the tables. A large basket sat in one corner, overflowing with toys of various sizes.

Alright. Danny was confused.

He let the goon- the... officer?- guide him into one of the chairs and put a stuffed rabbit on his lap.

"I- I don't understand," said Danny. "What's going on?"

"Didn't that interviewer guy tell you?"

"He said I was being adopted," said Danny, who still hadn't wrapped his head around that particular tidbit of information. "But I thought- I was under arrest?" He raised his cuffed hands. "You arrested me?"

"Those're just so you don't run away," said the ghost. He ruffled Danny's hair. "You're not under arrest. We're just waiting for the court to decide what to do with you."

"And what if they don't do anything with me?"

"Then it's up to the boss."

"Oh," said Danny, not liking the sound of that at all.

"But, if it helps, I think that the court probably will decide to do something with you."

It didn't really help, no.

"Do you want a lollipop?"

"Sure," said Danny. It wasn't like this day could get much weirder.

The ghost handed him a lime dumdum. Yeah. That was about what he expected there, honestly.

The sensation of a thick, weighted blanket being draped over his mind hit him with such intensity that he looked around, trying to see if someone had just wrapped him up in a blanket without him noticing. Tension bled out of his muscles, and his core finally stopped the angry/depressed/frightened/pained dance it was doing in his chest.

He felt... protected. Which was wrong, because he was in Walker's prison, and Walker would use any excuse he had to keep Danny imprisoned for a thousand years. Danny was not safe here. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet, that feeling remained.

He brushed his fingers over the bandages over his chest. What was wrong with him? His parents hadn't even cut all the way through, but he was so messed up. He didn't understand.

This feeling... This 'safety'... It felt like a cruel joke more than anything else, only it was one he couldn't escape from because it was coming from inside him and he was calm but he was also crying.

"Oh, heck, do you not like lime? I think I have some green apples-?"

The door to the room opened, and Danny looked up. Before he could register who had come in, he was swept up into a hug.

He blinked into silky purple cloth. "Clockwork?" he croaked.

"I'm here," said Clockwork. "It's fine. You're safe now, Daniel."

Danny pushed away. Clockwork let him. "You're adopting me?" asked Danny.

"Yes," said Clockwork. "Unless you don't want me to."

"Why?" asked Danny. "I don't understand. I didn't think you liked me that much."

"I like you very much," reassured Clockwork. "I want you to be my family."

Danny sniffed. "Okay," he said. It wasn't as if he really had anywhere else to go. "Okay. But what about," he made an awkward gesture with his cuffed hands, "Amity Park?" The idea of leaving hurt, even worse than the cut on his chest.

"You won't have to leave," said Clockwork, soothingly. "You can still have your life there."

"I'll have to go back?" asked Danny, in alarm. Back to Fentonworks, where even the walls had it out for him with how much anti-ghost weaponry they had packed into them? He couldn't. Not after what his parents had done.

(A small part of him knew that wasn't what Clockwork had said, and that he was being irrational. That part of him was ignored.)

"No, no," said Clockwork. "I have a new place, just for you. If you'll let me show you?"

Very hesitantly, Danny nodded.

"Alright, good," said Clockwork. He turned to the police ghost. "Do you have the key for these? We really must be going."

"Yeah," said the ghost, producing the item. "The boss says that he expects you to teach the kid how to respect the law."

"Appropriately," said Clockwork, neutrally, unlocking the cuffs.

Danny felt an urge to hug Clockwork. So he did. Clockwork hugged him back, and rocked him back and forth, gently.

"Are you ready to go?" asked Clockwork.

"Yeah," said Danny.

With a gesture of his staff, Clockwork opened a portal.

Clockwork wanted custody of Danny. He wanted full custody of Danny. Legally. In both worlds.

This posed a bit of a challenge, as he did not legally exist on one of those two worlds. Thus, Clockwork had to establish a legal presence in the human world.

On the surface of it, this did not seem too difficult. Between his temporal powers, his minor shapeshifting abilities, and overshadowing, simply creating an identity was easy. The hard part was creating an identity that Daniel would not have encountered before, in order to avoid a paradox, while making it plausible that Daniel had encountered the identity before, for the purposes of dealing with mortal law.

In one timeline, the hill to the west of town stood empty of habitation, owned by the county but rendered unusable due to a dangerous failed mine on the site. In this timeline, however, the mine had never been built, and the property was instead owned by a reclusive hermit who went by the name of Charles Worth. The property had passed through many hands in the years before Mr. Worth had purchased it in his youth, and a stately, if somewhat faded, mansion sat at the hill's crest, overlooking Amity Park.

Charles Worth went to Amity Park only rarely, and for good reason. He was an albino, with red eyes, white hair, and even whiter skin, and superstitious people often thought the worst of him. In recent days, he had even been mistaken for a ghost.

'Mistaken.'

He rubbed Daniel's shoulders, and the child startled, pulling away from him again. Daniel had missed Clockwork's, admittedly minor, transformation, and now blinked up at his newly pale face, confused.

"Do you like my disguise?" asked Clockwork.

Daniel's eyes flicked up and down Clockwork, assessing, processing. He gave a tiny nod, and reattached himself. "Where are we?" he asked.

"Hickory Hill," said Clockwork.

Danny frowned, mouthing the words. "Isn't that owned by... Charles Worth. Charles- Oh. I get it."

Clockwork gave Danny a little squeeze. "Would you like to see inside?"

"Okay," said Danny.

The house, Danny had to acknowledge, as they approached the front door, looked haunted. As if some pale, frail, spirit might look out one of the lace-draped windows on the upper floor at any moment. As if there was a Gothic mystery just waiting to unfold. A murder mystery, maybe, full of forbid love and jealous lovers. Or the tale of a sickly heir to a great fortune.

Or that of an ancient ghost and his adopted half-living son.

Even before they stepped inside, Danny's ghost half had decided it loved the building.

The door, as Clockwork opened it, creaked in a loving sort of way, the tone low enough to be comforting instead of annoying. The entrance hall's floorboards did not creak under the weight of the ghosts, but Danny could tell that if a human tried to cross them, they would. He hoped the rest of the floors were like that.

He padded forward, daringly leaving the protection of Clockwork's cloak, examining all the dark nooks and crannies, the odd architectural choices arising from generations of additions, smiling at cold spots. Clockwork shut the door. Even then, there was a draft, curling around his ankles, cool and refreshing.

Danny smiled. It was small and strained, but it was a smile. "It's perfect," he said.

"Don't you want to see your room before you say that?" teased Clockwork.

"Yes," said Danny.

Clockwork led Danny to a staircase with an elaborately carved banister and began to climb. Danny followed eagerly. He had never thought his core would be so happy simply to have somewhere safe to exist.

It almost was enough to let him forget what his parents had done to him. He stopped, hand on his chest.

"Daniel?" said Clockwork. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," said Danny, automatically.

Clockwork frowned, the expression both familiar and foreign on Clockwork's falsely-human face. "Why don't we take a look at that, once we get to your room, alright?"

Danny nodded, swallowing back his irrational fear.

They went up, and Clockwork opened the door to a large room, much larger than the one he had back at Fentonworks. The bed was similarly large and equipped with curtains and enough blankets and pillows to turn it into a nest at a moment's notice. The walls and ceiling were painted a deep blue, with tiny green-white dots picking out a star map. The room also contained a number of carefully curated hiding places, areas where the dressers wardrobe or desk created blind spots and deep shadows. The floor was carpeted, but still icy.

It was an excellent room for a ghost (or half-ghost) like Danny.

He was too nervous to enjoy it.

Clockwork pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. It was a little strange to see Clockwork actually sitting and not floating or coiling. Actually-

"Can you have legs in ghost form?" asked Danny.

"I can," said Clockwork. "But typically I don't bother." He patted the bed. "Let's take a look at you."

Danny hesitated, holding his hands clasped in front of his chest. Clockwork's face went soft.

"I just want to make sure you are healing. I know this is difficult, but neither you nor I want things to get worse."

"I'm fine," said Danny. "I heal fast. It was just- It should be gone now. I've gotten worse."

"Is it?" asked Clockwork.

Danny could still feel it. "I don't know," said Danny.

Clockwork patted the bed again. Danny sat down and started fumbling with the hem of his shirt.

"Would you like help?" asked Clockwork.

"No," said Danny. He pulled his sweater off. Taking off his t-shirt was harder. Then there were just Sam's bandages. He bit his lip a the red and brown blotches staining them.

"Would you like to talk about it?" asked Clockwork, taking one end of the bandage and starting to unwind it.

"I don't know," said Danny. "I just- It's so stupid. I shouldn't have- They saw me walk through a door and- They don't even know I'm Phantom. They just-" Danny hiccuped. "They tried to cut me open. They pretended."

Clockwork pulled free the last layer of bandages. The long, shallow cut was still there, straight along his breast bone until the end, where it curved sharply right and tapered off. That was when Danny had jerked free of the restraints and ran.

"Why isn't it healing?" asked Danny.

"It isn't just a physical wound, Daniel. Ghosts are spiritual creatures."

"Oh," said Danny. It made a sick kind of sense. "So my core is really hurt? I thought I was just... That it was in my head."

Clockwork raised a hand to touch the bottom of the cut. "Your parents are important to you, and to your Obsession, your existence as a ghost. Of course their rejection would affect you." The cut began to knit itself together underneath Clockwork's fingers. Danny's core thrummed strangely at the touch. "I can heal your physical injuries."

"But not the mental ones, huh?" said Danny.

"You need time for that," said Clockwork, reaching the top of the cut.

"Good thing I have you, then."

"It is," said Clockwork. He leaned forward and kissed Danny on top of his head.

Danny ran his fingers up and down the newly healed cut. "So my powers aren't going to work until, what, I get over this?"

"That is one possibility," said Clockwork. "But everyone heals differently."

"Can't you tell?" asked Danny, reaching for his shirt.

"The more involved I am in an event, the more difficult it becomes for me to see its future," said Clockwork. "The timeline branches and splinters as I look at it. Also, it may surprise you, but you are fairly difficult to predict on your own."

"Oh," said Danny. He pulled his shirt on, ignoring how it caught on the dried blood on his skin. "So, what now? Should I just, I don't know, hide out here? I mean," he shifted, uncomfortably, "It's fine if I can't let anyone know I'm here, I get that, but I'd like to, um..."

"Live your life?"

Danny flinched. "As much as I can, yeah." He licked his lips. "Sam and Tucker didn't get in trouble, did they? They're fine?" He'd been so wrapped up in how miserable he was, he'd barely spared his friends a second thought, and now that guilt from that rained down on his head.

"They're fine. Due to the circumstances, they haven't gotten in any trouble at all, so stop that."

"What?"

"Feeling guilty. I know for a fact that the safety of others was your first consideration." Clockwork patted his shoulder. "As for your continued presence here on the mortal plane," Clockwork smiled, "would it surprise you to learn that I am in fact registered as a foster parent? I have even had a few children here, although not many stay for long."

"Really?" said Danny. "But... Wait, um. What about- What about Mom and Dad?"

"They were seen shooting at you in public after insisting that you were a ghost. They've been arrested."

Danny swallowed. "Are they going to be alright?"

Clockwork sighed and shifted so that he was sitting on the bed next to Danny. He put an arm around Danny's shoulders. "They'll be fine," he said. "But we should come up with a story about how you wound up here, hm? For the social workers."

During Daniel's periodic visits to Clockwork's lair, Clockwork had noted how tactile he was, how much he enjoyed hugs and other physical expressions of affection. After Daniel got past his initial hesitation concerning his new situation, that particular personality trait multiplied.

Clockwork suspected the Fentons were ultimately to blame. Their hostility towards Daniel's ghostly identity and their tendency to carry objects that could hurt Daniel precluded him from seeking comfort from them, and his friends and sister, while very remarkable, were children themselves. Their relationship with Daniel was different.

This meant that Daniel could and would spend long periods of time laying against Clockwork. Usually, he would be doing homework during those moments or talking to Clockwork about various ghostly things that he had never had a chance to learn about before.

Today, however, he was just sitting there, quietly, almost dozing.

"I'm not keeping you from doing things?" asked Daniel, abruptly. "Am I?"

"No," said Clockwork.

"You don't have to do time stuff?"

"I can make duplicates and also time travel. I can be wherever I need to be. But if you want space-"

"No," said Daniel. "This is good." He snuggled closer and startled as a ring of light flashed around his waist. He was, for the first time since before his parents had attacked him, a ghost. Clockwork, in turn, shed his human guise.

Daniel was blinking down at his gloved hands.

"What?" he asked.

"I think you finally relaxed," said Clockwork, ruffling Daniel's hair. The smaller ghost leaned into the touch, purring. "Your transformations might be a bit unpredictable for the next few days."

"Good thing it's a weekend, then, huh?"

Danny jittered nervously as he and Clockwork passed through the large, eye-covered doors. This time last week, strange ghosts had been in and out of Clockwork's house, asking questions, poking things, and staring. Clockwork said they were checking to see if everything was in order, if the adoption could become official.

Danny didn't really see why it being official mattered. The Ghost Zone didn't really have a government to speak of. Families that Danny had seen just sort of decided that they were families, and that was that. It seemed important to Clockwork, though, and Clockwork claimed that there were certain benefits, like strengthening connections... Danny didn't get it. Wouldn't their connections be strengthened anyway?

Clockwork guided Danny with small nudges, directing him to a seat in front of the judge, who stared down at them with her one enormous eye.

"I have decided to approve the adoption request regarding Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom," she said.

Danny felt Clockwork relax incrementally beside him. He smiled. The judge's pronouncement felt a little anticlimactic to him, but, well, whatever.

But the judge wasn't done speaking. "The child's familial bond with his biological parents will be severed. The familial bond will be established with his current guardian, known as Clockwork. On all levels legal, physical, metaphysical, metaphorical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, Clockwork will be the sole parent of Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom. Due to the child's status as a liminal spirit, the memories and associations stored in his human brain will not be altered, and he may still experience feelings, especially those of nostalgia, towards his former parents, however, this is expected to fade with time. Questions?"

Danny had rather a lot, actually. Clockwork hadn't quite explained it like this. "Wait, are you saying I'll forget my parents?"

"No," said the judge, in a rather condescending tone.

"You won't forget them," said Clockwork. "But your core won't recognize them as your parents anymore. It's so you'll be able to defend yourself." His tone was almost pleading. "Your relationship with your sister will, of course, be unaffected."

"Okay," said Danny. They clearly didn't see him as their son anymore, so... It wouldn't really change anything. He didn't like the idea of ghosts he didn't know messing around with his core, but he trusted Clockwork. Even if he was apparently really bad at explaining ghost adoption. "What about the other stuff? The physical, metaphysical part?"

"The severed bonds in your core are replaced with ones to your new parent. Similarly, new bonds will be established in your parent's core," explained the judge. "Are you satisfied?"

Clockwork gave Danny an encouraging smile.

"I- Yes. I'm satisfied," said Danny.

"Very well." The judge waved forward a seven armed bailiff who had been waiting in the corner of the room.

The bailiff carried two tall glasses and a large, covered pitcher. He set one glass each in front of Clockwork and Danny and poured a thick, white, faintly glowing liquid into each of them.

"What is it?" asked Danny.

"It is a potion designed to stop our cores from fighting the changes that are about to happen," said Clockwork.

Danny looked at the potion dubiously. "Like an anesthetic?"

"Like an anesthetic," agreed Clockwork. He had already picked up his cup. "Together?"

"Okay," said Danny, still doubtful.

He picked up the cup and brought it to his lips, watching Clockwork carefully over the rim. Clockwork tipped his cup back, and so did Danny.

The potion reminded him a lot of eggnog, except that it was thicker, heavier, sweeter, like it had been mixed with honey. Almost at once, that heaviness settled into Danny's bones, weighing him down, a sensation just to the left of sleep settled over him. He lowered the cup from his face, his grip on it going gentle. The bailiff caught it as it tipped over.

Clockwork reached over and gently, slowly, pulled him close. Then he went as limp as Danny.

Inside, Danny's core became open. Not open, as in vulnerable, but as in receptive. Listening. He felt soft. Malleable. Like someone could press their thumb into him, and it would leave an impression when he hardened again. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation.

The judge sighed with something like disapproval. "So mote it be." She raised a stamp up off her desk, brought it down, and things changed.

Or, at least, Danny did.

Clockwork, being the elder ghost, recovered faster from the potion than Daniel. There was no reason to stay at the court, so, after bidding a goodbye to the judge, he picked Daniel up and left, flying a polite distance before opening a portal back to their home outside Amity Park.

He settled Daniel down in his bed, phasing him beneath his covers and tucking him in. Daniel would need to sleep off the potion, as well as take time to adjust to the changes to his psyche, however minor they might be.

"I love you so much," said Clockwork, brushing Daniel's hair out of his face. Getting here had taken subjective years of work and planning but it was worth it, because now Daniel was his child, in every way that mattered.

Forever.

Yes, that ending line was a little bit ominous, but they're ghosts. They wouldn't be happy if it wasn't ominous!

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2020

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beatrice-otter · 2 years ago

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This is puzzling to me because ... it’s not how adoption works. Do the people making that argument just ... not know anybody who’s ever been adopted? How many people in real life get adopted and then later in life find out who their biological parents are and change their name back? Not many!

There are a couple of instances where it happens in real life:

1) The adoptive family is abusive, and the adoptee wants to escape that toxicity in a public way. This does not apply to Leia. From what we can see, Bail and Breha were great parents.

2) Cultural genocide. The adoption was at least partly a manifestation of the dominant culture trying to destroy a marginalized culture, and the adoptee felt alienated from the dominant culture that they were supposed to assimilate to. Reclaiming their birth name can be a way of reclaiming the culture that was stripped from them. This also does not apply to Leia, unless we’re counting the marginalized culture as the Jedi being destroyed by the Empire, and even then, considering that her father is the one who did the lion’s share of the killing, taking his name would not be a very good way of reconnecting with that culture.

I know quite a few people who were adopted as infants or small children, who reconnected with their family later in life. Their reactions range from “holy shit, these people are awful, I wish I’d never found them” to “interesting, but we have nothing in common and no desire to get closer” to “I like them, they like me, we are building a relationship as adults, this is good” to “holy shit, this is what was missing all my life, I fit with them in a way I just didn’t with my adoptive family, this is amazing and wonderful!” But even in the latter cases, when they’re showing up to every family event and deeply enmeshed in their biological family, I don’t know anyone who actually changed their surname.

why there's people who thinks that Leia would change her last name after finding out who her birth parents were? she was adopted by Bail and Breha Organa, they were her parents and she was their daughter, they were not only the people who took her in, they were her family, they raised her, nurture her, they were the people she ran to every time she had a nightmare, they were the people who kissed bruised knees, they were the people who carried her through endless hours of work, they were the ones to turned upside down the entire galaxy to keep her safe, they were the parents who watched her sleep praying for her safety, they were the ones to teach her everything and make her into the woman she is, why would she change her family name? Anakin may have been redemed, and Breha may have thaught Leia about Padme, but they never meant anything important to her, neither Leia forgive Anakin for what he did, and with all the right of hers, it sounds like nonsence to me for Leia to take her birth names, for me it's nonsence for people to be willing to throw Breha and Bail's legacy and big part of their story and characters just for Padme's and Anakin's memory

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parabcllums · 5 years ago

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⧼ phoebe tonkin, cis female, she & her / mr rattlebone by matt maeson + oversized t-shirt containing the entirety of the ‘cool girl’ monologue over a lacy black thong, sheer black tights that have been pulled at all the seams with a shadow of ouroboros inked high on pallid thigh, chipped nail polish and fingers covered in dirty bandaids and stubbed out cigarettes in an overflowing ashtray & the best fake orgasm a man could hope for. ⧽ ━━ let me tell you a thing or two about MONICA LAUREL “NIKKI” BARTON. the TWENTY FIVE year old child of BARNEY BARTON is a UNDERGRAD at paragon academy and WAITRESS in town, and has sometimes been referred to as THE AMY ELLIOT DUNNE. they’ve always seemed very SELF RELIANT & RELENTLESS, though i’ve heard that they can be pretty SARDONIC & REACTIVE, too. it’s common knowledge that they have the ability of VIOLENT SELF DESTRUCTION & WICKED SEXUAL PROWESS ; guess we shouldn’t get on their bad side, huh? redirect to her stats page HERE and her pinterest board HERE.

what did you EVER do to deserve THIS? in all PROBABILITY, something terrible.

SECTION ONE OF TWO: BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warnings: talk of alcoholism, drug abuse & dealing, death, murder, jail, physical assault / abuse and attempted sexual assault

only daughter of barney barton aka trickshot ( a barely functioning alcoholic ) and jacqueline taylor ( a barely functioning addict of whatever she could get her hands on quickest ), MONICA LAUREL BARTON was born on the fifth of october, 1994, in waverly, iowa.

up until she was three years and two months old, monica lived with both her mother and her father in a rundown farmhouse on the edge of town that had most certainly seen better days. it was never perfect - but in those first few years that flew by far too quickly, there was a kind of balance. it WORKED. barney had his issues. jackie had hers. but they were TRYING. jackie had been clean for six months. barney was more on the wagon than he’d been in twenty years. and then - like so many addicts before him, and like many more that would come after - he fell off of it again in a spectacular fashion, going on a weekend bender that didn’t come to an end until he stumbled in on the tuesday morning right before monica was supposed to be dropped to playschool. he toppled into and knocked the rickety kitchen table and proclaimed, LOUDLY, that the baby could have a day off and spend it with her pops - and as jackie tried to hold her out of his reach ( and the range of his alcohol soaked breath ) she had an epiphany. SHE COULDN’T DO THIS. monica deserved better.

she had two bags packed with essentials just an hour later, and after loading up their shared car, left with monica in tow - never stopping to look back or reconsider. they settled in iowa falls.

she’s four, five, SIX, and her memory of her dad is dim, if not completely gone. she’s growing up, FAST, and jackie can barely keep up - and sometimes, barely keep it together. a prescription pill here and there takes the edge off enough to get by. monica is walking and talking and conversing now and she asks sometimes where her dad is and why he’s never come to her recitals - she imagines, like every little kid in her situation would, all the things her dad would do, and all the things she’d show him, and yet when he turns up out of the blue in a wrinkled old suit, a court order in his hands that says he now gets supervised visitation - she’s suddenly struck shy.

it takes a lot of those supervised visits for her to open up to him. he’s not exactly what she always imagined her dad would be - he doesn’t always know how to respond and never has any ideas for the games they can play in their few hours together - but she makes do. she realizes that he doesn’t know the rules of monopoly or the life game so she asks him to read to her instead, and over the next few years, they got through a lot of books that way, TOGETHER. it was nice.

she was eleven when her mom died. she came home from school early, and she didn’t get a reply when she shouted her greeting. she searched all of their tiny little house, jackie nowhere to be found, and when she came to the bathroom door that wouldn’t budge, she KNEW she had to call someone. the first person to come to mind was her dad. she remembers sitting on the steps out front, while he broke down the door that was locked from the inside - she remembers hearing his shout, and then his cries, and then, a little while later, the ambulance sirens as they approached the house, but it was too late. when she thinks back now, she understands the word OVERDOSE. at the time, it didn’t really click.

a lot of things had to be smoothed over following that. she couldn’t just go home with her dad - no matter how much she had cried and begged as the cops had led her to their car, KICKING AND SCREAMING AND BITING, to wait for social services. over the months that followed, monica was shuffled from foster home to foster home while barney fought the courts. she wasn’t a prime adoptee, so he had THAT in his favor - but there was a lot of hesitancy in allowing him full custody when he hadn’t had that sort of access to her since she was three years old. too much hesitancy, in fact. not a single person he came up against thought he would be a suitable guardian, and no amount of appeals were overturning the initial NO.

monica was old enough to understand, when her dad turned up in the middle of recess and urged her to leave with him, that it probably wasn’t a good idea. but he was the only familiar thing she had left. he was her DAD. so of course she went with him - against court rulings she didn’t have any knowledge of - and after an extended stay in california ( she remembers the beaches, and the ice cream, and how it was the last time she and her dad were really HAPPY ), they made a triumphant return to the now uninhabitable barton farmhouse, in waverly, where she hadn’t lived in YEARS. as they had pulled up in their tiny little car, he had turned to her with a bright eyed smile and said they could fix it up together again - just like he and her mom had, years before. the caravan out back was only supposed to be temporary. it WASN’T.

in spite of that, they had a few months of perfect serenity. for a while, barney held it all together, and monica got to just be a KID. then he fell off the wagon again - LIKE CLOCKWORK - and things changed. they always had a couple of months peace before a great many more months of chaos, and over time, monica learnt to be the grown up. she was old enough now to know that wasn’t right, but young enough, and with just enough experience of the system, to know that she didn’t want to go back to it - and it wasn’t great, but at least she was with her dad, right? and sometimes, SOMETIMES, she’s lucky enough to be sent away. sent to the OTHER barton’s.

the weeks and months that she would sometimes spend with the other side of the barton family are now memories that monica holds close to her heart. they’re something that she SMILES at, when remembering, in spite of herself. they welcomed her with open arms. uncle clint was always kind, and aunt bobbi…- at a time when monica needed an older woman in her life, aunt bobbi was everything she could have wanted and MORE. she wishes she could have been better, for them.

she wishes she hadn’t ruined things.

fast forward again. she was a bratty fifteen year old with a tongue sharp as a knife and a new name, now, given to her by her new favorite cousin - NIKKI. it was meant to be a name of love, but it fit the image that she had cultivated for herself. more out of school than she is in it, she’s a party girl. AT FIRST, she drank at them to be a part of the IN CROWD that never really did accept her, and then, she started to take a little bit of something stronger to help her have a good time, and then a LOT of something stronger when she realized it would help get her through the sleepless nights and days when she was taking care of barney and making money i the last deadend job she had instead of going to school. she was far too young to be so exhausted and taking on all these roles that she shouldn’t have had to, just to get through life, and they didn’t really have all that much money, so when a friend of another ex tells her about a job she could do INSTEAD of waitressing or delivering newspapers, she was ALL over it.

the first time she meets CALLUM MAARX, it’s in a denny’s parking lot. he’s easily TEN YEARS her senior, but she’s flattered by the attention that the overly charismatic man she shakes hands with gives her, honored when he calls her PRETTY, touched when he says he knows that she’s a SMART girl. she was. but not smart enough to say no to waverly’s most DANGEROUS drug dealer.

SHE wasn’t dealing. that was what she told herself. it wasn’t so bad when SHE wasn’t the one working a street corner and waiting for people to come on by. she was just moving his gear from place to place for him - delivering the sales wherever they needed to be. sometimes that meant skipping school for a couple days to catch a bus across the next state. sometimes it meant feigning interest in visiting the other barton’s, just so she could be nearer to whoever it was she needed to see. sometimes it was the guy next door, and she didn’t have to go ANYWHERE. she never knew, for sure, where she was going or what she was doing until she got a text to say she was needed, but she didn’t want to know, either - something told her, even then, that the less she knew about what she was doing, the BETTER. she was sixteen, when she decided to drop out of school and quit her small town jobs to start working for callum FULL TIME.

she realized, at a point, that callum got paid a whole lot more than she originally thought based on her ‘wage’ for each bag she delivered. she had been grateful, of course, at least at first. the huge amount of money coming in meant she had been able to fastrack some of the ‘never completed’ renovations on the house - she and her dad were able to move in, in that first year, and out of the caravan that she had been BULLIED for over the previous few years. but she got greedy. she was trusted, by then, enough that she thought she could get away with skimming a little powder off the top in lieu of paying for her own growing habit - and she got a BLACK EYE for her efforts, and a tarnished reputation that would come back to bite her, later.

she was a MULE and an ADDICT. she wasn’t trailer trash, anymore, wasn’t the girl that she had always been TEASED for being, but in a lot of ways, she was WORSE. back then, though, she still had HOPE. she believed the best of people. when her high school invited her back for prom, nikki knew it was a mistake to go, but she had never been to a DANCE - and she really, truly, thought that it would all be OKAY. she goes in a dress that probably cost a lot when it was new but was a hand me down, and she facetimes her aunt to show her what makeup she had done, and when she gets there, she flies under the radar - keeping to herself, and really attempting to ENJOY the night. she gets voted prom queen. she protests, but the crowd is impossible to push against, all the fellow students she had left behind making her head towards the stage where the head cheerleader, the SHOE IN, declares her WHITE TRASH QUEEN and shoves a scepter made of beer cans into her hands while her friends place a crown made of the same atop her head. she had always been quick to RAGE. always had trouble, keeping herself in line. her first instinct was to throw both back at the girls who had given them and exit for the nearest bathroom, to cry. her second, as discovered an hour later, when the would have been prom queen went looking for her boyfriend, was to bang the prom king in the backseat of his car. her third, ejected from the prom once and for all, was to head to CALLUM’S PLACE and ask for something STRONGER. something she had never TAKEN before. that night is the first night she tried coke. it’s not the last.

she turned nineteen. it felt like every weekend, she was bailing barney out of the local jail. she was running drugs across a couple towns, or even a couple STATES, and during the days when she WASN’T being a MULE she was working as a chef in a shitty two star restaurant that hadn’t seemed to care she had no qualifications to be working around food. she had received her GED, and she was taking online courses because a part of her was hoping she could still make something of herself, but she was acutely aware, now, of the fact that she was living a life no one would have been proud of. and things got worse. somehow, they still could.

she realized what her dad did for a living for the first time when his “friends” turned up one afternoon, while she was trying to nap on the couch. she’d only seen them a few times before, and had always been told to leave when they were visiting. more often than not, her dad would disappear with them for a couple days and come back with more money than she could make in a year - but it was always gone quicker than she’d ever have spent it. something must have changed. she wasn’t being told to LEAVE.

instead she sat in and she listened to them talk about their next heist. SHE WEIRDLY WASN’T SURPRISED. they left and came back the next day, and this time nikki served them food, and when there was a break in the conversation as they all went quiet, trying to work out how they could get past a certain level of the security that had them BAFFLED - she dropped a suggestion. it was a good one, and she was allowed, if not ENCOURAGED, to make more. before she knows it, she’s fallen down the rabbithole and pulling off the rare heist with them - all the while continuing to run drugs and doing all the shitty stuff she’s always done, pulling herself in every direction to make things work.

and then she had just turned twenty one and she had a moment of epiphany, not unlike her mother had years before. as she’s looking down at the plans for the next job and whittling the time away until she has to go and pick up her next delivery from callum, she realizes, blankly, that something had to give. she was doing jobs more often now with her dad and his “friends” ( she learned there were airquotes around that word the first time one of them put his hand on her ass during a meeting, as she went around the room with a cheap cheeseboard. no friend of your dad’s would ever do that ) but she’s built up quite the reputation for herself, running drugs for her OWN “friends” ( she’s always known the airquotes that are there. ever since that first and last time, callum had been suspicious of her - and every so often over the years, he’d get it in his head that she must have stolen some of the product to fuel her own habits or even taken some of the money for herself, and she had broken ribs and fingers and bruised eyes and chipped teeth aplenty to show for what had happened each and every time ) - and something would have to give. at this point, she knew she was tempting fate, and eventually … fate was going to bite, hard.

even now - nikki can’t believe she was wrong. she thought it would be shield, or another government branch, who’d catch them out on one of the heists and haul them all to jail. there’d been times where they were only two steps ahead and had almost been able to TASTE the shitty prison food, they were THAT close to getting caught. she’d always sort of believed that was going to be what happened, and she’d let her guard down back home. she was waverly’s best drug runner - she’d stopped thinking that that part of her life, and CALLUM, were even a danger to her. that was a mistake.

here’s the truth: a guy in iowa city, a loyal customer of nearly eight years, had finally hit the bottom of what had seemed like an endless supply of money to waste. he had 180,000 of a 200,000 bill - meaning he was 20,000 short. nikki didn’t realize. it wasn’t her job to count all the money she was being given - she just had to get it from a to b.

here’s the truth that callum convinced himself of as he drove to her farmhouse at 3:40 am that same night, FURIOUS: she had obviously been given the 200,000 by his loyal customer, and she’d taken twenty thousand and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

her dad was out, drinking somewhere in town, or maybe already safe in a jail cell for the night. she didn’t know. a part of her didn’t care, either. she was asleep on the couch when he pulled up outside. when the furious banging had started on the door she had assumed that it was her dad, after forgetting his keys again. him, or the cops, hauling his ass home.

sleepily, she had gotten up and went to open the front door - but as soon as the lock was undone, it was pushed VIOLENTLY into her, and she couldn’t regain her balance in the time that it took for callum to launch himself at her. they fell, him on top, his weight CRUSHING. he had always had a temper. a BAD ONE, like HER. she hadn’t always known - had once thought him CHARMING - but all the injuries she had ever been given at his hands, all the times she had found herself in a&e over the years since she had started working for him, they could all attest to the truth. this was different, though. this was MURDEROUS, a kind of rage that she had NEVER seen before, and it was obvious that before they got to the finale, he had thought of one OTHER way that he could make back the money he thought she had stolen.

nikki wasn’t much of a fighter. she had never been formally trained, sloppily using her fists to solve her problems, but never really knowing how to land her shots PROPERLY. but she was a SURVIVOR. that had shown itself clearly enough throughout the years. she had survived the system for the three years she was in it. she had survived her dad, and her life, and she had pulled together SOMETHING out of nothing for herself. even SHITTY, her life was her own. she struggled beneath him and he hit her, over and over, but between it, he was finding a way to begin tearing at her clothes - making his way THROUGH them - and gods, she wasn’t going to let this happen. she REFUSED. there was an old iron doorstop in the front hall, that had been in the house since her grandparents had owned it. things were happening FAST, he was already at her underwear, she could barely move, but she stretched her arm as much as she could, grimacing through the pain, and she REACHED, and REACHED, and strained her fingers as far as they could go -

she was a SURVIVOR. she wasn’t going to die. she wasn’t going to let him get what he wanted, either. she doesn’t remember actually hitting him with it. she doesn’t remember how she KEPT hitting him with it, tears streaming down her face, until he fell away from her and she was able to move away. he wasn’t moving. a half an hour later, she was sat on the front steps of her house, just like she had when she was eleven. WAITING. except this time, she was drenched in blood and tears and waiting on the cops that she had called, not her dad, and the person that was dead inside wasn’t her mum, but CALLUM.

she didn’t get much of a fair trial. it was far too cut and dry. on the stand, everything came out - all the things that she had been involved in with him, all the things she had done without - and since he couldn’t face HIS crimes, she DEFINITELY needed to face hers. she was sentenced within a month to seven years, minimum, without a chance of parole.

she served three and a half. then, in january this year, the door to her cell swung open and she was told that she was being handed over to SHIELD custody. some sort of a new SCHEME. nikki hadn’t signed up for any - and knew she wasn’t likely to have been considered, even if she had - and naturally, her survival instincts kicked in. she kicked and screamed and kept telling them she WOULDN’T go -

and inside the room she was lead to was a shield agent. they wanted information on TRICKSHOT - still at large, under the radar ever since his daughter’s arrest. they figured she would have everything they needed, and they told her she could WALK FREE ( or, well, more free than she was at present moment - she would have to stay at PARAGON ) if she told them what she knew about charles barton and his associates. she would have been a fool not to agree.

SECTION TWO OF TWO: POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS / WANTED

foster families she lived with for a time, between ages 11 and 13 ! she bounced from home to home a lot, so she’s prob.. stayed w a lot of ppl.

a tutor !

party squad ! i have a wc for four ppl i think that she parties with, but.. gimme.

old clients ! people she would deliver to, people she rubbed shoulders w cause they knew callum. if ur character is ANY sort of a gang member, then we could prob work smth out where callum.. worked w them or smth!

flings ! current, previous, whatever

i think it’d b super fun to have that guy she slept w at prom sksk he was prom king , was dating the girl who crowned nikki ‘white trash queen’, and ,,, kinda lowkey got used , but like , it’d be FUN .

hmmm ANYTHING.

#sidekick.intro #⌜ ･ﾟ ☆ ･ * parts of her died in the house she grew up in ― biography. ⌟ / barton.

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corkcitylibraries · 4 years ago

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Book Review: Colum McCann’s Apeirogon

by Dr. Sorcha Fogarty

The Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher Martin Buber states, “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.” Colum McCann’s new novel, Apeirogon, embodies Buber’s sentiment, his novel elucidating the very essence of Buber’s philosophy: If we can’t avoid the abuse of power, may we at least love powerfully and embrace all. With Apeirogon, a hybrid of fact and fiction, McCann focuses what has been referred to as the world's "most intractable conflict," with the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Based on a true story, McCann’s remarkable work centers on two fathers - Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian - who each lost a young daughter to senseless violence. The novel explores how they form an alliance, becoming friends and working together through an organization called Parent’s Circle, a group of the fellow-bereaved who unite in their sorrow to press for a peaceful resolution to the conflict: “This became their jobs: to tell the story of what had happened to their girls.”

Regarding the unusual title of the book, McCann explains,

“An apeirogon is a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. It sounds crazy and impossible and beautiful all at once—and it is. You can be part of an infinite shape and land on any finite point within it. You can be at home and you can be everywhere. And you can, in fact, be lost too. I think it’s a word that suggests the modern condition. It's a strange word too. And sort of clumsy. But it sticks in your mind.”

Apeirogon is structured as 1,001 individual chapters, in an homage to One Thousand and One Nights, (first translated in 1704), the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. The chapters are diverse; traversing the present and the past, from memories of Rami and Bassam’s childhoods to the migratory patterns of birds, the make-up of bullets, the mechanics of the human eye, opera, architecture, weaponry and history. It is also a novel full of strange but true anecdotes, which McCann expertly weaves into the narrative, as critic Ben Libman identifies,

“Did you know that François Mitterand’s final meal was an ortolan, cooked whole — a traditional French dish thought to be so shameful to eat that the diner must cover his head with a napkin while chewing? Or that, when a suicide bomber activates his vest, his head usually separates from his body, a phenomenon known as the mushroom effect? Or that a frigate bird can stay aloft for two months without touching down?”

In many of McCann’s 1,001 unique chapters (some merely comprising a few sentences, others simply blank pages), we follow Rami and Bassam in something like real time. They attend meetings, give lectures, and worry about crossing border checkpoints. McCann also refers back to earlier points in the men’s lives. It is essential not to lose sight of the fact that these are real people, two fathers from opposing sides who became united in grief. Speaking of his first meeting with Rami and Bassam, McCann recalls,

“These two men were sitting there and they introduced themselves as Rami and Bassam. Ordinary men in an ordinary place - or so it seemed. And then they began to tell me about their daughters, Smadar and Abir, both of them lost in the conflict. I have to tell you, they pinched every ounce of oxygen from the air. It seemed to me like it was the first time they had ever told the story. Of course it wasn’t. They had told it hundreds of times before. But I was deeply moved and forever changed. It’s a little embarrassing to admit but I cried my eyes out that day. They told me that I had to harness the power of my grief which is what I hope the book does.”

Having spent seven years in prison for a failed grenade assault on IDF soldiers, Bassam is the walking image of the effects of the Occupation. When he is released, he desires nothing more than to marry and have children, seeing in family the promise of a kind of liberty. Rami, a descendent of a Holocaust survivor, and a second-generation adoptee into an old Jerusalemite family, was an apolitical graphic designer. As a young man, he participated in the violence of the Yom Kippur War, and learned what it meant to kill someone. From multiple angles, we witness the events that led to their daughters being killed. These multiple angles directly relate to the title of the novel. The apeirogon, as noted earlier, is an extension of the definition of regular polygon to a figure with an infinite number of sides. Thus, McCann takes the geometrical symbol of the apeirogon and makes it an allegory for the limitless nature of the novel, where meaning is infinite and every angle that is explored simply gives rise to the need for further exploration.

On the unusual structure of the book, McCann states,

“The structure found me. It seemed like the right way to tell the story. The situation in Israel and Palestine is confusing to most of us. And I replicated that a little by trying to confuse the reader in the beginning, not in any malicious way, but in order to say that confusion is okay, confusion can be embraced, confusion can bring us to the edge of understanding. And I wanted to write a very contemporary novel where we jumped and jumped and jumped, but always came home to the story of the young girls.”

Much of the text at the literal centre of the book comes directly from the source material; in the note that precedes the novel, McCann tells us they’re “pulled together from a series of interviews in Jerusalem, New York, Jericho and Beit Jala.” Indeed, bits of these chapters can be found online in articles from The New York Times and The Guardian. In positioning these most intimate recollections of grief at the centre of Apeirogon, McCann indicates their primary importance in the novel. They are also the most harrowing moments in the book; agonizing to read, but essential as a means of understanding the personal tragedies which arise from all political conflicts,

“I still sit in that ambulance every day,” Bassam tells us. “I keep waiting for it to move. Every day she gets killed again and every day I sit in the ambulance, willing it to move, please move, please please please, just go, why are you staying here, let’s just go.”

Rami, recounting the moments before he learns for certain that his daughter Smadar is dead, says,

“You find yourself running in the streets, in and out of shops, the cafe, the ice cream store, trying to find your daughter, your child, your Princess — but she has vanished. … You go from hospital to hospital, police station to police station. … You do this for many long hours until eventually, very late at night, you and your wife find yourselves in the morgue.”

From the formation of this unlikely friendship, the two men have made it their mission to talk to anyone who will listen so that the tragic loss of their daughters may help to prevent this unbearable pain for others, and to give a space for grieving to those who have suffered similar tragedies. By taking on the challenge of writing Apeirogon, McCann has created a formidable book about war, death, pain, grief, healing, and friendship. It is not an easy book to read, as McCann acknowledges, but that is what makes reading it all the more essential. As he states, “Please, let it dwell in the back of your mind for a little while. And please allow it to disrupt you. And then give it to others.”

Sources

https://www.mcmp.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/students/math/basic-set-theory.pdf

Pellicer, Daniel & Egon Schulte. “Regular Polygonal Complexes in Space.” Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. Vol. 362, No. 12 (Dec 2010), pp. 6679-6714 (36 pages).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40997221

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/also-about-birds-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-in-colum-mccanns-apeirogon/

https://www.theirishworld.com/the-power-of-grief/

Available now on BorrowBox

#LoveReading #CorkCityLibraries

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ilygsd · 6 years ago

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odfidk: 140818 - 1

ok so i really want to talk to a therapist but i wont be comfortable explaining my life story if theyre white. i just want help cus im always so tired but no one helps. ive been angry, fighting my whole life but no one cares. i came as an angry anxious baby. i was furious when i was adopted. i was screaming all the time, abandoned multiple times just to be bought by these white foreigners i didnt even understand. but no one cared. no one knew how to handle my loss and pain, and my dad’s emotionally abusive as it is, making me grow up, feeling like theres smth wrong with me. that im just an annoying angry kid by default or smth, while my sister was the perfect one. thats why i always protected her. thats why i always stood up against his accusations, guilt tripping and anger. because my little sister was too afraid and i was already labelled as the problematic kid. but im tired. she’s fkn 15. after all the things ive done for her the least she gan do is ask me how im feeling fromt time to time. my whole family knows ive been depressed for like 2 years and the only one who cares is my mom who just survived a 7 year old long ptsd. i hear from her that my sister appreciates it but i never get anything from her. i dont feel appreciated in this family at all. im still the angry annoying sjw and nothing i say will ever be taken seriously by our dad cus hes a master of making both me, my sister and mom (probably brothers too but they fkn abandoned us a long time ago those pussies, leaving 10 year old me to fend for me and lil sis all on my own while our parents were divorcing, mom was suicidal, dad abusive and economy crashing) feel like shit. their divorce was probably my first trigger factor. it took me 2,5 years, i was 4 the first time i dared to let go of my parents. first time they could leave me out of sight without me being ”annoying and screaming” aka having a fucking panic attack. their divorce was another abandonment, another trauma and i never learnt how to get over that either.

yesterday i was crying in the bathroom for 2 hours straight bc my family doesnt love me, i get out and no one cares. i literally told my dad he wouldnt care if i died yesterday and he didnt react. he fkn closed the balcony door bc he didnt want the neighbors to hear me ”so angry and upset”. i yelled at him that when i commit suicide its going to be his fault but hes so narcissist and dumb he doesnt understand. so i threw smth and destroyed smth and tHEN he reacted. i love having to use unhealthy techniques like suicide threats and murdering threats to get a reaction. i once did that and this ex friend threatened to report me to the police for murder threat. her mom even called my boyfriends mom to warn them of me but she didnt even call my mom??? she didnt care abt the fact that next to my ”i want to kill everyone. dream of murdering my family” i also wrote ”i want to kill myself”. dont remind me of this though. im not proud of it. i know its weong to manipuqlte like this but no one teached me how to deal with my feelings and avandonemnt issues in a healthy way. and so i’ve took after my dad and turned into this controlling emtoionally abuser, all bottled up, constantly angry and sad, guilt tripping and manipulating the people im supposed to love in fear of them abandoning me. and i will always hate the world for making me suffer like this.

i just want to rest. im tired of always fighting for something as basic as love and safety. i never got over the loss of mom and culture and people. and i lost every sense of safety i had built up during my adoptive parents divorce and older brothers leaving. and im unhappy, im always unhappy because i miss my mom and culture and people so much. i feel misplaced and lost. the only thing keeping me alive being the thought of one day going back to china. the only thing keeping me alive is the thought of being able to actually help people with my experiences and knowledge, to help other international transracial adoptees or maybe fight for chinese womens rights or smth. thats the only thing. if my life turns out like.... nothing i’ve been suffering in vain. if im never going to be happy ive been suffering for nothing. ive tried so hard in my life but nothing works. im cursed. i really am cursed but not only do people leave me im also incapable of feeling other peoples love. i cant feel other peoples love because the only love i want is my mothers. my REAL mother, my ACTUAL mother, the chinese mother society loves to shame and make me forget because you all see her as a threat to my white parents claim over me.

the only difference between me and all those other ”normal” adoptees (aka my little sister) is that they’re whitewashed to death by their family, probably even more emotionally abused than i was and also they’ve repressed their feelings and trauma and I AM THE VERY REASON ADOPTEES DO THAT. ME AND ADOPTEES OVERREPRESENTATION IN SUICIDE STATISTICS ARE THE REASONS BECAUSE ITS GOING TO KILL YOU. my abortion and friend-break up was the last trigger before i exploded but believe me, it would have happened sooner or later anyways. my whole life has been a trigger. however many adoptees live their whole lives without ever waking up from this pretty little perfect sunshine story their parents and society had told them. there’s a reason so many adoptees are whitewashed to death and hates your disrespectful nosy questions. its a survival technique. we know that if we want to survive a life with our background conditions, then we have to repress our feelings concerning our adoption and everything associated with it. its not conciously, ITS A DEFENSE MECHANISM. and we get so much shit for it, which is understandable because many adoptees are fucking racist asshats. but you need to fucking understand that its because they’ve learnt to hate themselves and their own people. they’re TERRIFIED of being associated with immigrants and people of color because they know their white racist parents secretely hate them and actually secretely hate them too. all they want is love, they dont know anything else. it sucks to argue with a 40 year old adoptee of color though who’s still racist and whitewashed af, thats just sad and i would love to focus more on younger adoptees and help and support them through their ”awakening”. the awakening is much like learning about sexism or racism and how its ingrained in everything and practiced by your family and friends. just 100x worse cus you realize your family isnt even your family and you’re all alone in your thoughts, feelings, experiences and eventual search.

and adoptive parents and adoption organisations need to take fucking respnsobility for once without blaming everything on our traumatic past. you’re not ready to adopt non-white kids with trauma. you’re not educated enough and you placing us in all-white countries and neighborhoods, with problematic and abusive parents will not help. and im not speaking for myself, im speaking for ALL international transracial adoptees. im tired of hearing ”but your sister”, ”but my daughter is not”, ”my son doesnt care” WELL AS I SAID THEY DONT CARE BECAUSE YOU’VE NEVER GIVEN THEM THE CHANCE OR REASON TO CARE. IVE SACRIFICED MYSELF FOR MY SISTER. IVE FOUGHT OUR PARENTS, IVE TOLD THEM I HATE THEM, IVE DONE EVERYTHING I COULD TO TEST THEM, MY MOM WAS SUFFERING FROM PTSD AND I WAS THE MOST ANNOYING PROBLEMATIC KID EVER BECAUSE 1. I DIDNT KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH MY PAIN AND 2. TO SEE IF THEY WOULD FINALLY HAVE ENOUGH AND LEAVE ME. I DID THAT BECAUSE I COULDNT LIVE WITH THE CONSTANT FEAR OF ONE DAY HAVING THEM GROW TIRED OF ME AND ABANDON ME. I WANTED THEM TO BECAUSE THEIR DIVORCE WAS AVANDOBMENT ENOUGH. I DID THAT BECAUSE MY KIND LITTLE QUIET SISTER WOULD NEVER HAVE THE COURAGE TO. SHE WOULD NEVER DARE TO STAND UP AGAINST OUR DAD OR QUESTION THEIR BAD PARENTING AND UNDEDUCATION WHEN IT COMES TO RACISM/ADOPTION INDUSTRY BECAUSE SHES SCARED. SHE HATES CONFLICTS AND FIGHTS BECAUSE THOSE ARE THINGS THAT TRIGGERS HER. SHE GETS TRIGGERED BY FIGHTS AND I GET TEIGGERED WHEN PEOPLE IGNORE ME BECAUSE SHES AVOIDANT AND IM ATTACKING. I WANT TO FIGHT BC THATS HOW I FEEL PPL CARE. WHEN MY DAD WALKS OUT ON ME WHEN I TRY TO FIGHT OR SAY SOMETHING THATS MY BIGGEST TRIGGER. WHEN I FIGHT WITH MT BF AND HE DOESNT ANSWER MY TEXTS OR HE SUDDENLY HUNGS UP ON ME THATS THE BIGGEST TRIGGER. MY SISTER WOULD HUNG UP BC SHE WOULD FIND SOMEONE LIKE ME SCARY BUT WE ALL GET TRIGGERED BY DIFFERENT THINGS. WHAT WE HAVE IN COMMON THOUGH IS OUR TRUSMA AND OUR ABANDOMENT ISSUES. SHES ALSO AFRAID OF BEING ABANDONED, WE ALL FUCKING ARE, MANY OF US JUST DONT KNOW IT YET BECAUSE OUR PARENTS ARENT EQUIPPED TO HANDLE KIDS WITH TRAUMA. I KNOW BECAUSE I LOVE POLITICS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE SO I EDUCATED MY OWN GOD DAMN SELF. MY SISTER LOVES NATURAL SCIENCE SO SHE DOESNT KNOW A SHIT SHE DOESNT EVEN KNOW WHAT A BISEXUAL IS AND SHES FKN 15, SHES AWESOME AT NATURAL SHIT AND THATS IT. I KNOW BECAUSE IVE ACTIVELY SOUGHT INFORMATION ABOUT IT BUT NOT EVERYONE DOES. NO ONE HELPED ME. EVERYTHING IVE LEARNT AND EVERYTHING I KNOW IS THANKS TO MY OWN GOD DAMN SELF. ADOPTIVE PARENTS DONT KNOW SHIT ABOUT RACISM OR TRAUMAS. MY MOM UNDERSTANDS BECAUSE SHES A FUCKING PSYCHOLOGIST, BUT IF I DIDNT COME UP WITH THESE THEORIES ON MY OWN SHE NEVER WOULD. SHE TELLS ME NOW AT AGE 19 THAT ADOPTING ME, SEEING ME SCREAMING FOR DEAR LIFE AS I WAS HANDED OVER FELT WRONG. SHE FELT LIE SHE WAS TAKING ME, THAT IT WAS INHUMANE. AND NOW SHE KNEW WHY. BECAUSE IT WAS FUCKING WRONG AND INHUMANE. SHE WOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THAT CONCLUSION IF I DIDNT PUSH HER WITH MY KNOWLEGE. IM THE ONE EDUCATING MY PARENTS AND ITS ONLY MY MOM LISTENING AND SINCE SHES WHITE AND NOT ADOPTED HERSELF SHES STILL ONLY ABLE TO UNDERSTAND LIKE 50% OF IT

i honestly dont get enough appreciation in this family. the only thinkers in this family is me, my mom and one of my brothers. but fuck him as i said, he abandoned us during their divorce and he’s been absent all my teenage years. we could have been close, he could have helped me bc he also suffered from depression. he gould have protected me like i proteced my little sister but he didnt. maybe it was the age gap or the fact that me and my sister are adopted while he and our other brother isnt, we’ll never know. all i know is that unlike my other brother and our dad he’s not completely unfamiliar with what racism, sexism and capitalism is. he’s not dumb and empty. he got a brain and he would be capable of understanding these things just like mom if he wanted to. but its been so many years, he’s fucking 28 and he betrayed me that bitch.

i really dont get enough appreciation. no one ever tells me they love me or appreciate my brain since im the only one analyzing shit. my mom does too but only personal and psycholgy shit never society or groups like oppression and structures and systems. im the only one doing that and im good at it. i always see patterns and i know my politics very well so i can easily see what kind of ideology people have. but i never get credit for it. im still just the lazy kid while my sister get cred for..... idk studying and working our and being didciplined. also ive been through mich more than anyone in this family. my mom and brother has also been through shit, i mean okay ALL OF them have because all people go through shit, but ive LEARNT things and they havent. they’ve repressed it or ignored it. only my mom and brother have also learnt but they never talk. my brother is avodiant like my sister. he never talks. hes quiet to himself and thinks. my mom talks but shes still a pussy

#odfidk #diary

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