#like i sobbed my eyes out watching the revival 6 or 7 years ago. i had to be dragged out the theater.

[youremyonlyhope]

I can barely handle scrolling through tweets about how good the Color Purple is without tearing up, how in the WORLD am I supposed to survive finally watching the movie?

[fuller-writing]

Knowledge is Power

The grainy surveillance footage was from the 7-11 across from Kalela Jones’s house. The policeman pointed at her dot sprinting towards her front door and then to the man following her, Tony Albeniz.

On the screen, Dr. Jones seemed to trip and almost topple over. She paused for a second, and then continued running. Later, Martin identified her expensive high heels that she had been so proud of lying forgotten in a snowbank. The right shoe had a broken heel, and Martin knew that while she ran from her attacker, nothing else had mattered to her except escape.

The video showed the man approaching Kalela as she frantically tried to unlock her door. At first, he only shouted and pleaded with her. Eventually, he grabbed her arm and Kalela shrieked and kicked out her leg in his direction. He jumped back and her bare foot scraped uselessly across the ice of her driveway. She redoubled her efforts to open the garage door, strange sobs escaping her throat.

“Please, Dr. Jones, just tell me. I swear, no one else will find out. You have my word,” Tony Albeniz had told the police later that he’d said that.

Kalela shoved him away and managed to lock herself inside her house. For a moment, the video surveillance seemed peaceful as Albeniz seemed to be walking away.

Inside, Kalela pulled out her cell phone and dialed 9-11.

April 2, 2020. 11:15 EST

Martin had worked with Dr. Jones since they were both in college and he had never seen her lose control like this. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, which practically vibrated with fear. If her emotion hadn’t been a huge factor in their experiment, he wouldn’t have cared. On his worse days, he might have relished in her stress.

Martin exchanged a look with Andrea, who held Dr. Jones’s right hand. For a second, they battled silently about who should comfort Dr. Jones, and in the end, he lost.

“You’re ready,” He said. Martin knew Dr. Jones would appreciate the succinctness of his compassion. As it was, she still glared coldly at him, just will less energy than usual.

“I am,” Dr. Jones agreed.

When she stood, she looked as statue-like as ever. All traces of doubt left her figure and she began placing the electrodes on her forehead and heart with admiral detachment. When she was ready, she nodded once to Martin and Andrea, before calmly striding to her execution chair.

Martin, Andrea, and the twelve assistants took their places, none of them sparing a glance at Dr. Jones. Now, she was just another practice dummy. The beats of her heart echoing through the chamber sounded no different than the simulation.

It seemed to Martin as though the team worked to the beat of Dr. Jones’s heart. On the diastole of the beat, he engaged the program. On the systole, he typed in the first command. On the diastole, the fourth in command administered the first shock. On the systole, another shock. After two more, Dr. Jones’s heart beat one last long diastole and gave out.

Without her heart to guide them, the work felt more chaotic and terrifying. The worst part was that there was nothing left to do now except wait and monitor for four full days. As the team began to turn their computers to autopilot and discuss the experiment in low voices, Andrea clapped Martin on the back. The pat felt more like she was trying to dislodge a piece of food from his throat than encouragement, but he smiled wanly at her. He doubted he would sleep for the next four days.

April 6, 2020. 11:15 EST

Life went on while Dr. Jones turned grayer. The machines kept her cells from rupturing and releasing the enzymes that would decompose her body. For all intents and purposes, Dr. Jones was dead; Her brain and heart no longer sent signals through her body. But the team kept enough of her body fighting that bringing her back would be possible, even after four days. The hardest part was maintaining her consciousness throughout the procedure.

For years, Dr. Jones and Martin had researched. Well, Martin thought ruefully, Dr. Jones had researched and Martin, a Harvard graduate, had brought her take-out. Finally, three years ago, Dr. Jones created ‘the thinker’. This machine didn’t really think, but used a tiny part of Dr. Jones brain to channel conscience streams onto its hard drive. When she woke, Dr. Jones could examine ‘the thinker’s’ conscience as though it were her own.

Martin wasn’t worried about waking Dr. Jones. Her body was in optimal condition for resurrection. All day they had worked slowly to revive her organs and remove some waste products that had built up. Now it was as simple as restarting her heart with the defibrillators.

“Ready?” Martin whispered into the intercom.

A shock went through the body. Then another one. For ten whole minutes of terror, Martin thought it might not work. But then the assistant at station 8 announced that she was breathing. Four doctors approached Dr. Jones and their fiddling obscured her from Martin’s view.

“We have to download the memories now, before she can make true sense of the real world. Otherwise they might be tainted by her experiences now,” Andrea reminded Martin.

Martin commed to the 8th assistant as much. One of the doctors pressed the ‘eject’ button. It took only a second for Dr. Jones to process her new memories, but in that time Martin could tell something was terribly wrong. Her eyes screwed up like she might sneeze, and then she screamed and didn’t stop until her voice gave out.

August 29, 2020. 18:12 EST

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Kalela Jones, Nobel prize winner for physiology and medicine and the scientist that recently discovered the answer to humanity’s oldest question: what happens after death.”

Kalela squeezed Martin’s hand once before she stood. He didn’t start when she made gestures of affection like this anymore. This new and softer Kalela had taken some getting used to, and even more surprising was that Martin actually quite liked her when she wasn’t so stuck-up. The audience clapped politely, although they stopped quickly, too eager to hear Kalela talk.

“Thank you,” She smiled graciously, “Thank you New York City for inviting me to this incredible dinner. I must be completely forthright with you: my decision has not changed. I will not now or ever release the contents of my fifteen year investigation. I will take this secret to the grave and it will die with me. I have found the bounds of science. More than anything else, I have discovered a branch of science that should never again be investigated. There are some things that humans are not meant to know. Not yet, although you will find out eventually.

“I have discovered the power of knowledge over and over through my years, but this is the most conclusive evidence I have ever found that humans are slaves to curiosity. My team and I are most guilty of this. We sought power over our curiosity. We achieved that power, and now I must wield it wisely. There is no higher responsibility in my life than ensuring that no one else ever repeats this experiment or endeavors to understand death again. If you looked at the ramifications of this knowledge logically, you would agree with me.

Religion would become extinct or else transmogrify into a horrible cult-like imitation. Without the fear of the unknown, murder, war, and suicide would increase. Everything that once was beautiful because of the immediacy of death will dim: music, art, laughter, family. No amount of grandieur or money’s worth the collapse of society.

That being said, my various patents and notes on the subject have been destroyed. Anyone wishing to know the answer will simply have to wait, or waste years of their life recreating my inventions.”

Kalela’s voice dropped in volume and she spoke tenderly, as if to a child.

“I can tell you this. There is nothing so important as life. You’ve heard it all before, but cherish every second and especially every person. Something I’ve realized is that the thing we call power which humans crave with every fiber of their being is truly a craving for love and admiration. With love comes responsibility. A responsibility to our loved ones and to that which we love. A promise that we will not destroy each other for personal gain. A promise that we will be loved and love as many people as possible. I swear to you that if you do this, you will feel powerful.”

Kalela nodded to the silent audience. It was the first time in Martin’s memory that an audience did not clap. Some were obviously angry, while others looked thoughtful. Everyone was too absorbed in their thoughts to notice Kalela’s quiet descent from stage.

August 29, 2020. 21:47 EST

“Please don’t make me walk home alone,” Kalela said, her hand hovering over her seatbelt, her eyes pleading with Martin.

Martin glanced at the bus, where the driver looked pointedly at his watch.

“Sorry ‘Lela, I really do have to get going. I’ll see you at work tomorrow, yeah?”

Kalela looked like she wanted to storm off, and six months ago, she would have. But tonight she only smiled her forgiveness and hugged Martin with one arm. Martin watched her head of enormous hair disappear and boarded the bus again.

September 20, 2020. 14:47 EST

Later, a combination of the police, Tony Albeníz, and security footage helped Martin piece together what had happened on Kalela’s fateful walk home.

Albeníz, a desperate, sad man, had followed her all the way from the dinner in the City. Neighbors reported screaming for minutes before the first gunshot, which had shattered Kalela’s patio door, but missed her. The second bullet shattered part of her rib cage and ruptured her liver.

In her case, it didn’t matter at all that Kalala hadn’t suffered much. All Martin could think of was her horrible drawn out scream after she woke up after her experiment.

He turned the small leatherbound diary over in his hand. It was the only record Kalela hadn’t destroyed, although he didn’t understand why she hadn’t. Or why she had left it to him in her will, but Martin knew what he had to do. She was giving him the option to know information that Tony Albeniz had been willing to kill for. He supposed it was her way of saying…he didn’t know. Maybe ‘sorry’ for treating him so poorly for most of their time together. Maybe as a sign of respect to him for standing by her side for so long. Maybe. But he couldn’t help thinking that, knowing Kalela, it was probably a test. Did he trust her enough to heed her last warning?

He stuffed the book under the fold of the ridiculous dress the embalmers had stuffed her into. “I guess you really will take this secret to the grave,” he murmured. Martin thought that Kalela would have liked his attempt at humor. He took one last look at the body, so much like how he’s seen her for those four days before everything changed.

As he walked away, he remembered one more thing, “Thank you.”

[schninner-writes-some-stuff]

Dear Damian Part 7 (Older! Damian Wayne x Reader)

Schninner: okay guys, before you get your hopes up thinking that this is going to end happily, let me just tell you right now, that this will not end well. Thank you all for all your support and kind words throughout this series (even though I definitely don't deserve it for putting you guys through all this) But, without further ado, presenting Dear Damian, the 7th and final part. :D

(Reader is a female)

Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4 * Part 5 * Part 6

Tagging: @isabellegunawan @gothxmsirxns @loverbug1123 @maruthor @the-singing-canary @somestuff101s (who, by the way, made some AMAZING fanart for Dear Damian Part 6 that is right here) @cuddles-for-cassie and @preppygothica

Warning: THE ANGST!!!! There is no happy ending, sorry

Word count: 850

Master List

My dearest reader,

You have no idea how much I want to tell you that you were miraculously revived, brought to a hospital, or thrown in the Lazarus pit. I want so badly to tell you that this has all been a nightmare, that in any moment, you would wake up next to Damian, ready to begin a new day with the love of your life. But sadly, this is the real world. We don’t always get a happy ending, sometimes the world is a cruel place that aims to break you and what you believe in, it will often take away what matters to you the most. But all you need to do, is find closure, and only then can you move on.

Be well reader, with much love,

Schninner

He would never see you smile again, never hear your voice or laugh ringing in his ears, never see you beautiful [E/C] eyes stare lovingly into his. You were gone. Dead. He watched and did nothing as you bled out in his arms, in that second, all the years he had spent with you, all the years that you were going to spend together, vanished. All that was left now, was the empty shell of a man once full of life.

It had been a week since your funeral, only a week, and yet it felt as if it were an eternity. He had hardly slept, ate, or showered; all he did was wake up, and lie there, numb from all the pain. Nothing physical, no, his broken bones and stitched up slashes were mere scratches compared to the emotional pain he felt after losing you.

He had to see you again, had to have something for closure. And that’s why, dear reader, we find Damian Wayne back at your father’s domain.

After losing you, all he wanted to do was burn this wretched place to the ground, but he couldn’t. You had stayed here for so long, he felt as if it were the last place he could be connected to you, if that made any sense. He had found your room easily, it was after all, the room you had as a child. That is, before your father’s fall out with the League of Assassins. He held his breath as he opened the door, and nearly sobbed as he took a deep breath in. Your [S/N] scent wafted through his nose, it was so strong, so new, that he half expected you to be sitting there on the edge of your bed, reading your favorite book. But you weren’t.

 He swallowed hard, and shook his head, dismissing the flood of tears that had threatened to break through mere moments ago. He slowly walked over to your bed, and hesitantly sat down, hands resting on the red regal blankets. He looked around the small room, taking in his surroundings. His eyes then fell on a bright white piece of paper contrasting greatly on the dark brown Oak nightstand.

He walked over to the nightstand and picked up the paper, only to find that it was an envelope, then, gingerly, as if it were glass, turned the envelope over.

His breath hitched when he saw your handwriting on the envelope, his heart hammering as he read who it was addressed to.

To Damian

He gently peeled the letter open, and eagerly began to read it.

To my dearest Damian,

What I am writing will most likely never make its way into your hands, it may never even leave this room, but I need to tell you, I need you to know that everything that I have done, or will ever do is for your protection. I’ve hurt you so much in the past several months, and that is something I can never forgive myself for, but that isn’t the purpose for this letter. I love you Damian, with my whole heart and soul, I love you with my every being, but in order to let you live, I need to let you go, and I need you to let me go. Things will only get worse if you keep holding on to the past, please, I don’t want to be the cause of all your pain. I love you Damian, and wish you the best.

[F/N] [L/N]

Tears slid down his face and onto the paper he fell prostrate as new and cleansing sobs racked through his body.

You were gone forever, he knew that, but his seemed to be what finalized it. Never again would he hear you, feel you, kiss you, or tell you how much he loved you. He read through your letter several more times, staying in your room for countless more hours, before finally running out of tears to cry. He stood up, his eyes red and swollen, letting your letter flitter to the ground.

With his head held high, shoulders back, and body shaking ever so slightly, Damian walked out of our room, out of your father’s domain and toward the new chapter of his life, and moving on.